When stories get hot tempers often do so as well. I've seen more then one horrible OOC war fought upon some RP disputes. Naturally I'd like to avoid them if possible. The following sections are a collection of various guidelines for roleplaying games. They should help in all cases (I hope).

GM Decisions

The decisions of a GM are final. In case of a problem both parties should bring forth their arguments and the GM will try to settle them once and for all.

Effects of Roleplays

Said in a sentence you cannot change anything in the game world (advance the victory conditions in any way) via a roleplay. Roleplays are purely for entertainment value. That is not to say they are useless. Successful hackers rarely operate alone and secret alliances are all over the place. There are however some things that effect the game world, you can do in roleplays. For one you can trade sofware by just mailing the unlock code to someone. You can also trade hardware or libraries if both parties mail the GM that the trade is ok by them. Finally you can also RP to sell stuff (for a rather low revenue) to the free market or buy stuff from there, in the form of roleplays if you like.

Posting Guidelines

If any possible post roleplays over the normal neuromancer-main@yahoogroups.com mailinglist. Its more fun that way for anyone. Only if the discretion is really needed revert to private mailings.

Open Ended

Always write role-plays open ended. Don't start an action and finish it in the same roleplay. Give others at least one real day time to respond to 'bigger' actions you do. This especially holds true if you are sure nobody can interfere. It is quite likely that you are wrong. A player might have placed a trap in that abandoned building for example.

Time Conflicts

There are often cases where real-time and game-time can be quite different. So 3 days real-time passed do not mean that game-time advanced that far as well.

Another example is the fight engine. A good fight can need several weeks. So even with a turntime of 1 day that means about 1/2 month delay. As already mentioned on the respective page, the normal role-plays should be continued here as well with a 'neutral' outcome of the hack in mind. Then when the fight is resolved the result can be played as a flashback for example.

To make checking of these parallel stories easier, my suggestion would be to mark each post with a 'location' and a game-time stamp; if possible the game-time stamp should be the same as the real time. However if you want to empathise that only a short time passed since your last RP then pick a pure game-time according to the virtual time passed.

First Writer Privilege

Whoever writes first about a thing defines it. When a person is created as an old grumpy man, role-plays describing him as nice young guy and taking use of it are void, unless you can make a plausible explanation as to why it works. This also holds true for the GM. However you don't own your creations. Everyone can play with them within your set limitations. Also everyone can add to them - so for example one might be able to make a peaceful man a murderer if you kidnap his family.

First Come

If two role-plays continue from the same point, but contradict each other then the first one posted 'wins'. There is the rare case that both persons did not see the other RP at the time of posting because of net delays. Point of decision here is the order they appear on the yahoo.groups archive. Of course one should always try to take as much of the second RP as possible, so your RP is not completely lost.

NPCs

You can create NPCs at any time. However there are some restrictions: first no creation of huge entities without consulting the GM; for example creating a new mega corporation. Second you don't own your NPC. At any time the GM or another player can do RPs describing the actions of 'your' NPCs. Of course they have to follow the First Writer Privilege above. So the better you describe your NPC the more 'resistant' it is against 'abuse'

Death

Death of your character can happen in Neuromancer. However unless the player wishes to do so, it is a very unlike event. Severe injuries however will happen. This no death clause is also no free ticket. When you are warned twice that jumping of the building will result in dead and you do it anyhow it was your stupidity. So no crazy stunts against all odds or you might be paying the final price. Another reason for death - or at least vabishing from the game - is that one is caught once too often. So see that your crime record stays low. Depending on the state of the game you might be able to restart as a noob, start in a new game or have to wait until the current game is over to rejoin.