SWRP Guide

The Guide is compiled from a collection of inworld notes and information from players.  

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SWRP( Star Wars Role Play )

SW ( Star Wars )                              RP ( Role Play )

IC ( In Character )                            OOC ( Out of Character )

CS ( Combat System )               FFC ( Free Form Combat )

AV ( Avatar )                                     AO ( Animation Override )

BUMP ( to hit )                                TP ( Teleport )

IM ( Instant Message )                  NC ( Note Card )

Log ( Exit SL )                                   Relog ( Restart SL )

Logs ( Saved Chat )                        GM ( Game Master )

SL ( Second Life )                            RL ( Real Life )

ABY ( After the Battle of Yavin )

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WHAT IS ROLE-PLAYING?

In SWRP participants adopt and act out the role of characters (Jedi, Sith, Mandalorian, Trader, Explorer etc) that have personalities, motivations, and backgrounds often different from their own. 

Role-playing is about assuming the persona of a "character," they could be of a different gender, race, or even species, and describing the behaviour of that character in an imaginary setting. Other players in the game play their own distinct characters, which all interact with each other. 

There’s really no winning or losing in roleplaying games, just like there’s no winning or losing in a play.  Some characters may prosper and meet their goals, while other characters may end up brokenhearted or even dead.  

The true goal of good roleplaying is to have fun, which is often accomplished by suspending disbelief, pretending to be someone else, and being part of an exciting story.  Many players also enjoy collecting items, defeating enemies, and gaining power.  

SWRP offers a number of established paths to follow with a number of  groups able to take in and train new members.

Star Wars fan based role play in SL offers many planets and different groups to join and become a part of. 

There are a number of long standing established  Sith and Jedi. SL has  role players of all levels of knowledge and styles of play. Ask around and find a group that you like and make contact with the group leaders. Many groups have applications to fill in an get started. 

Backstory

SWRP like many other role play games uses backstory or background stories to describe history of places and characters. 

The background story for the planet, place or group will hopefully set a scene for you to interact with. 

Descriptions of setting and mood are included to show how a place would feel to be part of. 

Historic events could of changed things for better or worse. There are many things that can be part of a backstory and it can be revealed in whole or in parts as the main narrative unfolds. Story creators may write and react to events in RP surrounding the main story.

Timeline

SIMs in SL run in a number of timelines.  Some places also operate in an open timeline as many shorter role plays can take place in any year. Check the SIM rules as you arrive for information on each places time period.

Post-Legacy Era

Many SL-SWRP sims have chosen to operate in the Post-Legacy Era, a fictional time period that is separate from developed Star Wars time periods such as the Legacy Era, The Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War time eras.

The year most assign the Post-Legacy Era is approximately 220 ABY which is nearly one hundred years past anything described by the Star Wars movies, novels and comic books. This solves the problem of individuals coming into SL-SWRP and trying to play roles from said Star Wars media and forces players to come up with entirely new roles and situations to play. This time period now includes the vast majority of the history of SWRP such as the creation of groups and sims well known in SL-SWRP that have come and gone. The Post-Legacy Era is meant to be a very loose, broad time period and could include anything not described by Star Wars media from the fall of the Fel Empire in 137 ABY to past 220 ABY. 

Legacy Era. 

The Legacy Era is described as the time frame occurring from about 40 ABY (After the Battle of Yavin or the destruction of the first Death Star) to approximately 137+ ABY on the Galactic Standard Calendar.

The concept of the floating timeline is used to explain why some characters in SL-SWRP do not age. Another useful term when dealing with timelines and characters is rapid ageing also known as Soap Opera Rapid Ageing Syndrome or SORAS. This explains how a younger character might age into an adult over a period of days, weeks or months.

Community Standards.

SWRP is only one community amongst  many  that role play within Second Life. All Residents of SL are protected by the Terms of Service and community standards provided by Linden Labs. 

Role Play Etiquette

Have Fun

Relax and have fun. We are all fans of star wars and of role play or why would we be here. Sharing the dream of role play a happy healthy emotional release. We put our hearts into it

Incorporate and be friendly to new individuals. Remember how difficult it was for you to initially start off playing. However, if they act in a manner that is disruptive to your group, offer them the chance to make an attitude adjustment or as a final act, remove them from the situation.

Play Fair

Others players can do it the hard way, you can do it as well. Do not use cheats or faulty game mechanics/bugs/glitches,overpowered weapons, third party programs, or illegal afk macros to break the rules of gameplay which makes the game imbalanced and unfair for everyone.

Communicate

Problems do arise for many reasons. Communicate with the people involved, your group, friends and whom ever the dispute is with. Don’t let things get you upset or choose to take IC actions for any OOC argument its a shame to break up a game or a group of friends, because of the inability to express how you are feeling.

Attention grabbing

Don’t try to be the centre of attention all the time. Be polite and share attention with other characters. You aren’t the only one there to have fun, give everyone their turn in the spotlight.

If you are being out of character, crude, cruel, or even disruptive to a game or to other community members, do not expect to be liked, or have folks take your side. It's important to remember that people generally have social norms, and breaking them can get you trouble.

What happens in game, stays in game

People who do not know you may make assumptions about your personality based off the type of character that you play, or vice versa, but don't allow this to color your view of someone, or let it prevent you from making friendships. People are not their character.

Stay in character

stay In Character (IC) at all times. Do not drop Out Of Character (OOC) If you absolutely must say something OOC in the presence of people who are IC, then enclose the OOC comment in parenthesis.

Never use OOC information IC in any way. The best example I can give is...just because you can see someone’s name hanging over their head in the game, your character wouldn’t know that character’s name unless someone had told you in-game.

Assumeing to much

Never assume someone will react in a certain way just because you think they should. Always give others the chance to react in their own way, and don’t get upset if the reaction isn’t what you expected.

Actions should be attempts

Any action you perform on someone else’s character, no matter what the action might be, should be phrased as an attempt. By making an attempt instead of just doing it outright, you give the character’s player the chance to consent to the action or avoid it if it’s something they’d rather not have happen to their character.

Be considerate of ongoing Role Plays

Be considerate of the role-playing mood of others. If you come into a situation where other characters are already engaged in some RP, don’t just leap in with a radically different mood unless you get permission (Either IC or OOC, depending on the situation and whether you have any way to contact them OOC). As an example...say there is a couple sitting at a table discussing a recently deceased character and you jump in acting like a court jester and spill their drinks in their laps while telling bad jokes. You aren’t going to make friends like this if your actions offend the players behind the characters.

Give time for players to react

Give others time to react to you. One of the strangest things I’ve noticed in graphical online RPG’s is impatience. People will walk up, say something, wait about 0.0001 seconds and run off. The person they talked to would barely have had enough time to read what they said, let alone respond to it. This also happens in conversations. People will say something, wait a very short amount of time, then keep going as if they think the person they were talking to didn’t hear them or isn’t going to respond. In most cases, the other person was going to respond but simply wasn’t as fast as expected, and loses the chance because the conversation has moved on without them. There’s no need to hurry so much, just relax and enjoy the interaction.

Character Abilities

Avoid god-like abilities for your characters. roleplay isn’t about who can make up the best super powers for their characters, it’s about the personalities of the characters. Any character that is ridiculously powerful or has a perfect personality is going to be fairly boring to RP with and will end up being mostly ignored by others.

Attacking others

It is generally considered rude to just up and attack someone out of the blue. If you and your target are not part of some planned combat event, get OOC consent from the player before you attack their character (This can be done IC if you make your meaning clear enough and you can't contact the other players OOC). If there’s no good way to get this permission, at least give them plenty of IC warning that you might attack, and if they seem to approve IC, then go ahead. If they don’t seem willing to fight, or you can’t tell one way or another, it would be best not to attack them to avoid OOC troubles.

Player Rights

It is considered by the general role play community for many years that a player has the right to choose the following. 

Permanent Injury or Disfigurement.

No one can be forced to agree to the permanent injury of their character. If you want to make a permanent injury discuss it and then carry on with the fight to play it out.

Permanent Death. 

No one can be forced to agree to the permanent death of their character. It is normal to agree before a fight about permanent death.

Defenders Choice

When a fight is initiated through RP.

The Defender chooses to fight FFC or what CS to use. SIM Rules will make the choice if only one CS is specified for use. 

Combat

Combat in SL is Split between Meter Combat Systems (CS) and Free Form Combat (FFC).

Combat is only one part of role play and not intended to be the main focus all the time. Many SIMs will allow the use of a CS or FFC as defenders choice. Check the SIM rules for the place you are in.

Free Form Combat FFC

FFC is the text based combat extension of role play. In the same way you would normally describe your characters actions. You describe the actions you take in the fight each taking turns to make hits, moves and defend. FFC is generally best between two people.

Example FFC Rules

1. Post Order- Posting order must be established and maintained during Free Form Combat, it should be decided before the combat begins and a variety of ways can be used to decide this. a.)Natural flow of Rp, the aggressor making the first 'attack' has first in order, then priority goes to the first defender. b.) Decision via payer agreement, very simple and intuitive and relies on good sportsmanship and report between players c.) by GM decision via their interpretation or d.) Initiative Die roll, 1D20 is rolled highest roll goes first in descending order, if there is a tie a roll off to decide who has priority in the order.

2.Actions and the rule of three- Every player involved in a Free Form Combat may have a maximum of three actions per turn, one attacking action, one defending action and one movement action, it is commonplace to be allowed to trade them for another, such as staying still in order to attack multiple times and taking any hits that come, or not attacking in order to defend against multiple assailants, or taking a hit and not attacking in order to move greater distances. there are many other possible variations on this, it all comes down to how creatively you can use your actions

3. Conflicting actions- if a player finds a weakness in a stated defence and states that the defence would be inadequate to stop the attack, there is a dispute, as likewise, someone could claim an attack would be completely ineffectual as described and no defence is even necessary. There are several ways to resolve such disputes the most common should always be first and foremost simple logic and common sense, but other methods include GM Arbitration, or employing a die roll to decide the outcome.  a Die roll should only be used in situations where the result cannot be fairly decided upon by either of the parties involved and the GM and players agree to leave it to chance, this action and only this action will be decided by the die in this kind of resolution.

4.Godmoding and power gaming - Godmoding is more than simply dictating a characters actions or forcing it, it is also attacking in such a way without the other player placing themselves in a position that leaves them vulnerable or is manoeuvred into such, that defence is nearly impossible. Use of absurdly over powered attacks and weapons that are obviously intended to 'instantly defeat' an opponent of relatively equal standing in order to gain a quick victory is simply bad form, this kind of attack is to be avoided, every attack should have some out, even if not immediately visible or obvious. No attack must FORCE someone to take a hit unless the player has through their actions or the normal course of the combat placed them in a vulnerable position

5.Disputes- if a situation's conflict cannot be resolved normally, then one of three things must happen, a.) a GM must intervene to settle and oversee the dispute b.)Dice must be rolled to decide a dispute that is simply a matter of chance and c.) the role play must be voided, and the players encouraged to not inter-act with each other due to irreconcilable differences

 

Written History

Never include someone else’s character in a written story that didn’t actually happen exactly as you wrote it without letting that character’s player proofread and approve the story before you post it.

When writing up a story about combat that happened in-game, don’t be literal. Gaming engines invariably have the loser of a fight "die". Since no one likes building characters over and over, there’s always some way to get raised from the dead. But just because you killed someone’s character and chopped up their body in the game doesn’t give you the right to write this up exactly as the combat engine portrayed it. There’s two reasons for this...either the character that lost has to get resurrected and put back together, or the character is permanently dead or maimed. It gets very old having people die all the time and getting dismembered only to show up the next day just fine. It would also get old if people had to waste their character development by killing off their character due solely to something that happened based on the combat engine of the game (which we all know is much less than fair due to lag and computer crashes) and not on RP. So it’s polite to alter events a little bit. If the combat was a large battle, mention casualties but don’t give names to the dead. Just assume the two sides had several no-name extras along for the fight that can provide convenient dead bodies. If it was a duel, then have it be to first blood or to loss of consciousness...unless of course a character’s true death was agreed upon OOC ahead of time by the character’s player, but these situations will be very rare.

Dealing with Drama

SWRP is made up of a wide selection of people all playing the game how they see it defined within the group or sim they play in. Many conflicts arise from SIM rules and peoples different interpretation of them and attitude used in enforcing them. If you feel strongly that you are in the right and being treated unfairly.  Contact the SIM Admin team or owners via note and state your point clearly, be polite. Other than that take a step back and a good look around, find out who you fit with and play on. Overall people will form their opinion of you on many IC and OOC actions thats just life SL or RL. 

Summary & Thanks

These are all just suggestions to help you on your way. There are great groups and may people involved in swrp. If you have questions feel free to ask others.  

Thanks to swrpdia and to all others who share info.