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I've been reading some of the RPG threads here on dakka but have never understood how they are played.
Could someone please fill me in.

Thanks, RaptorsTallon

K, I'll give it a shot -

So, you have two, maybe three different types of game going on in this section of Dakka, and each play completely differently to the others.

You have the Linear types - These are the ones you can see the majority of the regulars playing in. People such as Darkvoidof40k, Sillyboy, Fitzz, Myself, Kais, and Halonachos all frequent this type fairly regularly. This type of roleplay comes under the heading of "Chain Fiction" in the sense that a story is set up, and together, as a group, you all essentially write a story. Its often very rewarding, and due to everyone having different ways they want to have the story flow, the roleplays tend to get very complex and diverse very quickly.

Now, examples of chain fics are:

+ Blood Moon - this had recently ended, but had pretty much all of the regulars playing, and was very successful, and enjoyable all round. It's also an example of the variety we have going on down in dakka. It was essentially a three way war between werewolves, vampires and Hunters. I'd recommend having a read through it if you ever are bored, there is some pretty fantastic plots in there, and a generally good standard of roleplay involved.

+ Space Hulk - This is something you'd expect on a 40k forum, a 40k roleplay. Again, from what I've seen from it (I haven't looked too deeply) a generally good standard of Rp goes on in it, and it shows a nice overarching plot throughout.

+ Your life, your decisions, your survival - Another rp showing the variety we have going on here. Post apocalypse world, with fallout connotations. I didn't really enjoy my brief period within it; didn't really enjoy the atmosphere, but each to his own.

Those three are the successful ones running at the moment.

As to how they play, I'll give a brief run down of the mechanics of the game to ensure some equality and fairness throughout. This concept appeared originally in the Dawn of the dead thread; it was the introduction of 'events', Dming, and Pms. Essentially, it takes some well versed concepts from Dungeons and dragons style games, and added them to the flavour of the game. It also worked at creating a sort of 'goal' to the rp, as opposed to letting the story 'fizzle out' when people lost interest. It keeps people interested, and sticking to the story.

So now I'll go through the three things I just posted above in some detail for you, to better understand what they meant and the significance of them.



+ Events - Essentially, when a large and impressive event is about to take place in the story, such as a horde of zombies swarming a fortress, a space ship hurtling toward earth, or generally player vs player action, instead of giving the players free reign over the situation, which has been proven to make people make themselves impossible to kill, control over the characters is given over to the Dm/Gm (More in them in a second!) who will then oversee how and what happens fairly, normally with the use of dice and other such shenanigans. Now, just because the player is no longer in control of their characters (More in them in a moment!) it doesn't mean they can't have say in what happens...

+ Pms - Personal Messages - I'm sure you're completely aware of them. Anyway, basically, when an event begins, the players will send Pms to their Gm explaining what they would like to do, what preferences they have in line with the event.

+ Lastly, the Gm is in control of the rp. Normally he doesn't choose to play a character in the rp itself, so he doesn't become biased in events involving his own character. He controls the way the story flows, creates obstacles for the players, and generally keeps people interested. Dawn of the Dead, a nice little rp we had going for a while had the master of Gming, Silver. He doesn't frequent Dakka so much any more, or at least not this section, but he was amazing at what he did.


So now onto another section -

Players and their characters.

If you're familar with anything roleplay related, you should be aware of characters. Basically, they are who you play in the Rp, someone who you eventually become quite attatched to. In most rps at the start, when you create your characters you're normally given a template to fill out about them, so for example,

Player:-Fitzz
Character-Bob the Guy.
Race/affiliation:- Hunter.
Physical Description- Bob the Guy looks like a guy,he's tall like a guy,weighs as much as a guy...and has a beard like a guy.
Equipment:-Bob has lots of guy stuff
Backstory-Bob hates vamps and wolves cuz to him their not guys anymore.
Location/resources..Bob lives in the city,in a guy type house..he has a small income from being a guy and pawn stuff he takes off of vamps.
Vehicle:..Bob drives a guys car.
Other info:..Bob is schizophrenic and often dresses up like his mother.

See? Obviously these templates can vary from rp to rp, but it's normally the standard form that you see around.



I'm sure there's more I can think of, which I will post up later, but until now, this is enough for you to go by, feel free to ask any questions, and I'm sure someone here will pounce to answer them.

Nest section I'll talk about courtesy, standards and spelling, and introduce you to a monstrous creature, whom you may find yourself coming head to head to frequently in this here corner of Dakka. He's really quite nice. Sounds fun, doesn't it?

Nicely written ghosty, this thread should be stickied.

As you have read above we have various types of roleplays, Ghosty told you about Chain Fiction, i'm going to tell you more about another type of roleplay.

The second one is what I liked to call a controlled rpg.

The difference between a controlled rpg and Chain Fiction is the amount of power the DM has. In chainfiction you can do almost whatever you like, and the GM will add your toughts/ action into the rp, this can turn the story in another way the DM wanted.

In a controlled rpg it's different, the DM says what your options are and you can choose which one you want. The DM will then look if the option you had chosen worked out and will give you a new option.
______

Ex:

DM: Bob the guy get out of his car.

A) get some beer
B) get back in the car and drive to somewhere else

Player: I choose option A

Dm: Bob gets his beer, but doesn't has enough money to pay for the beer.

A) Place the beer back, no beer today.
B) put the beer in your jacket and try to walk out.
_____

This continues until the player is dead, or they have come to the end of the story line.

Advantages of controlled rpg's

- You don't have to be online frequently, it is perfectly possible to post once and give your option in the following week.
- The DM has a clear visage of the endgame, and can clearly work the rp in the way he wants.

Downsides of controlled rpg's

- If the DM is not online you will have to wait.
- You can't do what you want because you have to choose between options
- You can't really play together with other players.

P.S; I'll pm Not_u and ask if he wants to tell about Maffia games.

Sure I'll add in a little about them, I'd also suggest asking Thor if he wants to cause he knows a great deal more about them as well.

Basically the game largely doesn't stay with the Role Playing element for too long and becomes more of a discussion after a while, though some games manage to keep the role play element strong and throughout the entirety of the game.

There are generally two teams, town and anti-town, these change names depending on the theme of the game but are generally distinct opposites in order to make it fairly obvious. The goal is to be the surviving team and each goes about this in a different manner. When a player is eliminated from the game the game master will make a story post to describe it then reveal the role assigned to the player that was killed, though sometimes they will only reveal if they are on the town or anti-town team. As is the case in the game I'm currently running which has it's roles assigned based on random numbers generated from 1-100, meaning if I revealed roles smarter players could figure the whole thing out; so some of the below mentioned roles might be a little vague. The game involves two distinct phases, the day phase and the night phase. The day phase is the main part of the game and generally will run for a week or two. During this time players may freely discuss in the game's thread and come to the conclusion for the lynch. When the lynch is made or the time runs out the game switches to the night phase. The night phase is the smaller part of the game and will usually run for about 48-72 hours. During this phase players are not allowed to post in the game's thread and any with role abilities assigned to them can only use them during this phase. Generally all the abilities will involve coming to a decision then PMing it to the game master to use it.

For the town team they generally out number the anti-town team significantly and have to combat their enemy through deduction. All players get to place a vote during each of the game's day phases and the player who gets the majority of votes is lynched and eliminated from the game.This however is the town's main way of removing the anti-town team and winning the game. Their other drawback is that they will have no idea who else is on their team, so as the game is going you have to pay attention to any suspicious posts by the other players to try and find out who the anti-team members are so they can be the day's lynch.

For the anti-town team they're a fair bit different. They know (unless the poster running the game wants to have a little extra fun with them) who else is on their team and as they win by being the surviving team they have to outsmart and trick the town players. Every night phase they can communicate with each other and send their night kill to the game master, that person is then eliminated from the game.

Of course there are a bunch of other abilities that players can be given, such as the doctor, cop, mason, role block, innocent child, serial killer and vigilante roles. Though most of the time not all of them are used.

For the doctor they have sort of a shield ability. During the night phase they let the game master know who they want to protect, via PM here of course, and whoever they protect will be immune to a night kill effect. This generally means the doctor is a big target for the anti-town team as they generally can't shield themselves, though in some cases they can.

For the cop they get to investigate and there are also a variety of flavors to the role. There's the sane cop who will get a straight up answer, the insane cop who will get the opposite and the flavor cop who gets a tiny bit of the information given in the role PM before the game starts and have to figure it out from there. There are probably more, but I haven't really seen others besides the sane cop used here. Anyway they PM the game master during the night phase the person they want to investigate, the game master will then give them the relevant information depending on the type of cop they are. Sometimes the game master will give away the role name and whether they are on the town or anti-town team, sometimes it will just be if they are town or anti-town.

The mason is kind of the most pointless role in my opinion. Basically they get the ability to communicate with other masons during the night phase as generally no one is supposed to be talking about the game outside of the thread it is happening on unless stated otherwise. Since the masons all have to know who the other masons are to even really have an ability, sometimes the game master won't say which team they are on and that generally creates a smaller version of the game within itself. The ability does allow them to co-ordinate themselves though and share thoughts about the game amongst themselves.

Role block is pretty self explanatory. Basically they have the ability to cancel out abilities. They PM the game master the name of a player during the night phase, then if the person they chose has an ability it becomes useless for that single night phase. This role is very useful if the group figures out who has an important role assigned to them, like the doctor. The person who has their ability blocked is not informed of it though. This role would easily be a big target for the opposite team.

Innocent child is a role I've yet to see come up in a game, but sounded interesting enough when I heard about it. Basically they can be on the anti-town team, I think, but when investigated by the cop they will always appear as a town player.

Serial killer and Vigilante are pretty similar but at the same time rather distinct. Basically the Vigilante will usually be on the town team, they have the ability to night kill just like the anti-town team can, but have the distinct disadvantage of not knowing who is on their team which can lead to them unintentionally aiding the enemy team. The serial killer, however, is basically the same but are usually on neither team and can have some additional abilities to counter the fact that they are essentially a one man army. If all of a single team is killed by the serial killer is still around the game will continue until either the remaining team or the serial killer die.

Thanks nOt_u ,

Lets refresh:

We already have the following types:

- Chain Fiction
- Controlled Rpg
- Maffia games

I feel like i'm missing some...

Well there's the create a story ones where each poster puts in a single word, multiple words or an entire sentence to continue it. Also there's hurt and heal ones (also known as survivor, has an ancient sticky here already), the occasional modify the sentence and make a wish ones. They don't have much RP going on in them, but they do show up a fair bit in this section.

Thanks for all the info guys, it was really useful!

My thread (SIG) is the most basic kind. There is one character, and posters decide what he/she does as events occur.
I don't know if they have a name for it, but usually there are only a few posters.