An overview of How Forces of the Empire role-plays

A great deal of the role-play that goes on throughout the year occurs by e-mail. Someone will come up with an idea, e-mail it to the others who might be involved, who will respond with what their characters will do in response to the idea, and so on. Sometimes this kind of thing will happen over the phone, though it does get expensive, and more and more role-play is happening over Aol Instant Messenger.

When everyone involved in a scenario has worked out what will happen, one of a number of things could happen: Nothing (everyone involved knows what happened, what more do you need?), it is quite often added in the club timeline, or they may publish an account of what happened in the newsletter, or they might get together and write a story about it that could be published in the club fanzine, e-mail list, newsletter, or simply distributed to those interested.

A copy of stories submitted to the E-Mail list, and sometimes those submitted only to the News Letter, is maintained here on the cantina archives page.

We also do live action role-plays. This may be as simple as getting together for a weekend and role-playing our characters, or as complicated as the Blaster Battle at MediaWest*Con.

Here are some of the things to keep in mind when role-playing (rules, if you will):

• You must be able to separate in-character and out-of-character information.
  • in-character information is information you learn while playing a certain character. Only that character can act on that information. If you have more than one character, only the character who learned the information can act on it, unless you have a good in-character reason your two characters have met and shared information.
  • out-of-character information is information you learn while not playing your character. Information such as is contained in a persona bio, or if someone tells you in advance what they are going to do. Out-of-character information cannot be acted upon by any character, unless that character knows the information in-character.

• You must get permission from all players who's personas are involved in a story you've written before the club will print it (and you should get permission before you print anything your self). This is to make sure everyone's characters don't do something out of character in someone else's story. If the person requests any changes in their persona, you must make the changes, try to work it out with them (if what they are doing is vital to the story), or drop that persona all together.

• A word about movie and book persona's, consult with the players of these characters before using them in a plotline or a story just as you would for an original character. If you do not consult with them, they do not have to include your action into the timeline of their version of the movie character.

• You cannot kill another player's persona without their permission. We spend too much time creating our personas to have them killed out of hand.

• Discuss plot lines and storys with everyone involved. This is just good communication. And besides, it is more fun the more people are involved.

  Make certain that everyone involved in the story and in the plotline is informed of what their characters know, keep folks informed of role-play changes that may occurr, and online meeting times, use the meeting announcement form. If elements of previously role-played story line must chage, discuss this with everyone invovled and effected by the plotline, especially if they have role-played out reactions to the role-play, before it was changed. This is just good communication. And besides, it is more fun the more people are involved.

  This also means that when you are in the middle of a plotline and a person may be gone for a while, hold the role-play until that person returns, or get their permission before going on.

  In the same vein if a person has done something to another character with the player's permission and another character wishes to undo the action, then the undoing of that action is not between the person whom the action was done on, but the initiator of the action and the person wishing to undo it.

• As the club encourages creativity. It is very important that everyone respect each other's ideas and characters.

• And above all, have fun!.

This isn't really as bad as all the rules make it sound. Once you get into the role-playing you will get a feel for how things work.

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