Game & Posting Conventions (Important)

[Priest]

These are quite simple, and follow those used elsewhere;
1. Post as often as you can (more is better) There is nothing that makes the game boring than having to wait ages for someone to post.
2. Please put your characters name at the top of you posts. (Or use a suitable picture)
3. All names should be emboldened.
4. Anything you say should be colored 'Blue'
5. Anything you think should be italicised and coloured 'Green'.(Or use the suitable controls)
6. OOC stuff should be coloured 'Red'. (Or use the suitable controls)
These conventions are in use elsewhere and seem to work.

Rate of post is important f(or the above reason). Combat can slow it to a dead stop, therefore once combat begins the characters involved have twenty four hours to declare their actions, after this time limit I will NPC their character (possibly to their detriment). Likewise any player that has not posted for 7 days will find their character gone.
Whatever else CoC is a horror game, horror relies on atmosphere, and atmosphere has a very short shelf life. I will do my best to maintain atmosphere, but in the end it comes down to you.

Dice Rolls may be made via http://invisiblecastle.com/ or using the Forums own dice roller (I find Invisible Castle simpler, but that is just personal preference)

As for how the Forum dice roller works;

We've installed a new MOD on the forum to allow members to 'roll dice' on the forums.

The MOD has a number of features but it's only a beta and development on it is patchy and some features we might like are not supported.

We've tested the MOD over the past few weeks and think it's worth releasing in spite of it's shortcomings.

Here's a quick overview:

The Dice Roller is accessed via two new BBCodes, the BBCode is parsed when you make a post and the result is lodged in the database - when the post is viewed the roll is retreived and presented in the text. Dice rolls can't be edited once the post is submitted - Keepers can remove the rolls if they wish (as Moderators). One of the features I liked was the ability to see representations of the dice making up the roll, as inline images.

They way the MOD has been written means that access to it's workings is not automatic - it has to be selected as an option for each Forum as required - this being the case it is proposed that the Dice Roller will only be active on game boards.

How to Roll some Dice:

The BBCode supports the following syntax - 'the number of rolls, the dice type =/- modifiers' (this follows standard RPG dice rolling)

So three six sided dice plus 2 becomes : 3d6 +2
To roll this you would do this:

Code: Select all

[dice]3d6+2[/dice]

And that renders in the post like this:
[dice]134994:0[/dice]

This is the same as using he modes 'string' and 'total' together. We've chosen this as the default setting as it's the most useful when representing a dice roll.


There are some additional 'modes' that you can access:
total, string and quote (usage of these is straight forward - but quote does not actually do what it implies ) - here are the details:

Code: Select all

[dice=total]3d6+2[/dice]

[dice=total]134994:1[/dice]
This just gives the total... the end result.

Code: Select all

[dice=string]3d6+2[/dice]

[dice=string]134994:2[/dice]
'string' lists the dice rolled... it also has the total listed.

Code: Select all

[dice=string,total]3d6+2[/dice]

[dice=string,total]134994:3[/dice]
'string and total' - same as the first roll example as we've made the default methods list both the roll and the total.

Code: Select all

[dice=quote]3[dice]

[dice=quote]134994:3[/dice]
Quote: Actually quotes the referenced roll in the same post - counting starts at zero so this quotes the 4th dice roll in this message - which is the roll above. This is the only way to reference the dice roll in the same post (as the roll is made once posted).


Limitations:
The math support is pretty basic - best to keep to simple + and - amounts.
There is no support for multiple dice type in the same roll - so no 2d6+1d4 types of roll.
There is no handy direct way to tag what the roll is for.
There's no support for 'keep best three' types of roll.
As dice rolls are not made until you post the message you can't know the outcome until you post the message and once that's done you can't change it.
20 Dice rolls per post, no more than that.


Please note - This MOD only works in this forum for now - we will roll it out sire-wide (games only) in a few days and also the BBCode 'dice' is not yet showing on the posting part - we shall enable that once we roll the MOD out.