reverancepavane | etiquette (Reply)

I've been giving some thoughts on how to arrange role-playing on LJ.

First off, the entry will set the scene for the player characters, describing the initial situation (as you would expect). But as the scene plays out, and more information becomes available the entry might change to reflect the current situation. Thus the main entry will generally reflect the current situation. [And for the convenience of the people not interested in such things, it will be hidden behind a cut.]
The comments will create a linear description of the events that happen in the scene. The first comment will be from me describing the player character's entry into the scene. and it will progress from there. For this reason it is vitally important that players use the "Leave a comment" tag in the main entry to describe their actions.
Players should use short descriptions to describe what they are doing. They should refer to themselves in the third person in describing their actions, and preferably capitalise their names. If you want to have a personalised character icon, go right ahead. Speech bubbles should be double-quoted.
For example:
GRIMEY says "What do we do now?"
The direct consequences of an action will be described as a reply to the individual comment where appropriate, and thus will generally only be done by me.
For example if a player makes the comment
GRIMEY attempts to smash the goblin chief in the face with his mace.
the reply will be the result of this action
Blood spatters as the goblin's nose smashes under the impact of the mace.
Because of the way this sort of thing is handled asynchronously, it is always assumed that players automatically have the initiative. That is, NPCs will generally react to the player's actions. For this reason an NPC reaction might also occur as a reply to an individual comment, but in this case it will be a reply to the top-level comment.
For example:
The goblin chief attempts to gut GRIMEY with his scimitar but GRIMEY dodges artfully away
New actions on the parts of the players should always be top-level comments (ie: using the "Leave a comment" link), as should changes to the situation at hand provided by me.
In many cases a comment without a reply will be in the immediate future, only being resolved (and entering the "now") when actually replied to. Certain comments (such as the first example action above) automatically exist in the "now" without the need for a reply. Use common sense. I'm not an Adventure AI. [Although you should always be afraid of the grue.]
The exception to this may be natural dialogue, which, for simplicity, may continue to use the "Reply to" field until it is indicated that the conversation is over or interrupted. If a player posts a new top-level comment it is assumed the dialogue is terminated.
Comments may be deleted by me for gaming purposes. However when doing this I will add a reply to the deleted comment saying why this has happened. This will probably be for timing purposes, especially if the action heats up.
For example:
GRIMEY is still busy trying to disarm the thermonuclear device.
[Of course, in this situation a player could leave a new comment that leads off with
GRIMEY stops attempting to disarm the bomb and...
in which case this becomes the character's new action and won't be deleted.] The other reason why a comment might be deleted is if an overlong action is interrupted by a change of circumstances, in which case my reply will contain the part of the player's action that they managed to complete/attempt. This is simply because I can't edit your comments (and nor would you really want me to).
Players shouldn't delete their comments once they are in place in the event stream.
Direct OOC questions to the gamemaster should be bolded, and should be limited to quick rule questions. OOC comments to each other should be italicized, although I'd really prefer this to be limited. If you want to complement a player for his actions, complement the character instead.
For example:
EDGAR says "Well done Grimey. You've saved Atlantis."
Headings for individual comments should not be used by players. They many be used by me to indicate a critical breakpoint, especially with regard to changes in the scene.
I'll add a termination comment at the end of the scene, which will include links to the next scene. Nothing will happen after this comment is in place. Go play in the next scene.

If this works, we should have a main entry which depicts the current situation, and a log/script of what happened in that scene that is in some form of chronological order, with the end of the comment stream being "now."

Can anyone think of anything I've forgotten? Or would like to make any changes.