Getting Started At Fight For The Lost

So, you got your character approved and ready to start roleplaying. Now what?

First of all, post a link to your character's profile in your signature, then:

Decide on your character's goals and motivations
Think about your character's goals and motivations. What does the character want? Where is s/he gonna go? Does s/he want to settle down and away from the life of thrill and adventure? Does s/he want to explore the galaxies? Does s/he have some unresolved business s/he needs to take care of?

Having an idea about where you want the character to go, will help you a long way with starting the character on the boards. Think of a conflict in your character's motivations, those can be the base of some very interesting plots.

Meet other players
Socialize on the boards, post plot ideas in the story planning board, hop into our members' IRC channel and talk to other players, get noticed so you could get started.

Also it's a good idea to look through the approved profiles. Read active threads. Review new profiles waiting to be approved. This way, you can find other characters whom your character can connect with and start plots with. We're not talking about just romantic plots - although those are quite fun- but we're talking about plots in general. If you find a character you feel like starting a plot with, contact their player.

Work on your writing skills
While being an expert writer is by no means a prerequisite here, being able to express yourself clearly is definitely important. You need to be able to put your thoughts in words, clearly and without many mistakes so other players can read and understand what you mean and interact with you
 * Try not to mix between words. Their instead of there, where instead of were...etc. Those can hurdle the flow of the post greatly. Proofreading goes a long way, as usually those mistakes spell checks can't detect.
 * Always write up your post in a word processing program first, not just because of the spell check and the very handy thesaurus, but because browsers (and the board) have a tendency to eat post -believe me it happened to me a LOT of times- and it's very frustrating.

Posting Etiquette
There are a few rules in Fight For The Lost for positng. Make sure you follow those, as it makes everybody's life easier.

Dialogue Color
As you could see in our threads, dialgues are written in a different color for each character. This is not just there for all the pretty colors, it's there to make the dialogue stand out and avoid confusion between who's speaking, rather than just relying on the dialogue tags.

Each character should be assigned its own color, and the color code must be posted in the signature of the character's account. You can find color palettes all over google, or you can just check this one or this one.

It should be posted in your signature in this format.

[color=yourColorCode]Dialogue color = ColorCode[/color]

Copying/Pasting Dialogue
Sometimes it's essential to copy the dialogue from the previous post in your own, to show what exactly your character is reacting to. When doing that, make sure you only copy what's between the dialogue tags (The colored dialogue) as the ones outside are usually character specific thoughts or actions.

For example: "Are you kidding me?" Rose said, thinking that Mark was being a complete douchebag.

When Mark decides to reply to that post, he'll only copy : "Are you kidding me?" - and the dialogue after that is going to be Mark-specific thoughts or actions: Rose asked indignantly.

Dating threads and OOC notes
Indicating the date the thread is taking place in helps players co-ordinate and make sure that the other plots they're envolved in do not conflict.

At the beginning of every thread, the date that thread is taking place must be written between brackets. The same should be done with any OOC notes. Either post those at the very top or at the very bottom between brackets.

To know what IC month the board is currently in, check out the date box on the left of the board.

Sometimes, the board would be in a month, while you have a thread or so in a date older. For example, the board is on February while you still have a thread that was dated in late January. No worries, just catch up.

Thread Status
There are five thread statuses in Fight For The Lost
 * Open: This type of thread is open for any player to participate in.
 * Closed: This type of thread has a specific purpose and plot. Usually pre-planned by the players participating in it and no one can join in unless they're part of that specific plot.
 * Semi-Open: This type of thread are not closed to other players, but to join in you must co-ordinate with the threads players and OP. PM the OP or one of the players to join in.
 * Undecided: Sometimes, a thread would have no tag indicating wether it's open, closed, or semi-open. It's either the OP forgot to add one, or is undecided about which way to go. If you want to participate, PM the OP and ask him/her to see if they forgot or if you can join in.
 * Complete: Those threads' plots are completed and are scheduled to be archived.

Post Length and Rotation
Here at Fight For The Lost, we want to ensure the quality of roleplay occuring in our boards, as well as avoid flooding the boards with threads with short posts. Thus, we expect each post to be at least  two paragraphs, six lines each. While we understand that sometimes your post might be a bit short, we expect you to make an effort to abide by this rule. If for some reason you feel that your character doesn't have much to do or say, you can change posting order by discussing this with other players. This brings us to our next point. To ensure that the threads are moving in an orderly, logical fashion, please try your best to keep a consistent posting order as best you can, which can be established by the order members post in in each individual thread. For example:

Commander Shepard posts the first post, followed by Joker then Miranda. The next posting round should also start by Commander Shepard >Joker>Miranda. and so on. This way, if someone is to join the thread at a later time, they can implement their charcters.

Example: Commander Shepard>Joker>Miranda, then jack joins right after Miranda. Then the posting order would change to Commander Shepard>Joker>Miranda>Jack and so on.

We understand that in open threads with lots of traffic, this rule can be difficult to implement, but we ask you to -please- make an effort to try.

Envolvement in multiple threads Sometimes, you'll find yourself involved in multiple threads. Which is fine. But it’s a good idea to try to stick to an order for replying to each thread. Usually there will be threads that take priority over others. Examples would be threads that are part of a board-wide event, or threads that must be completed before the next step in a plot can take place, and people are waiting on that.

We understand that sometimes, a certain idea will be begging to get written, or a character of your will be “speaking” louder than the others. So you might not always stick to the high-priority threads first. Which is fine, just try to be timely about your posts, within real-life constraints.

Also, do not take on more threads than you can handle. It can be very easy to do, especially when you’re starting to settle into your character and getting excited about his or her direction. Taking on too many threads makes posting feels like work instead of fun is, it's the first step on the road to burning out.

We want you to have fun! Not feel like it's an obligation, so manage your threads well.