On this page, the original, official, complete guide to role playing by myself is readable by anyone.  ;-)  This should get you started here if you don't know how to role play or don't know what our rules here are.  In fact, this was first written when someone wanting to join an older, no longer active warren of mine asked me how to role play.  I'm pleased to say it was successful, as that person is an active role player today, and has her own style and everything.  Occasionally, the guide needs to be brought up to date if a new rule is brought into effect, so it's a good idea to re-read it if you see on the updates page that something on this page has been changed.  Also, as a side note, if you are a fellow RPG master and would like to post my guide to role playing up on your site, it's totally fine with me as long as you ASK PERMISSION FIRST and you make sure to credit me as being the author, as it is copyrighted.

An RPG is basically an ongoing interactive story. Every member of the RPG has their own character(s) and can only write, or post as we sometimes say, for their own character(s). Playing other people's characters is a no-no and it can get you kicked out of an RPG. Sometimes you may have to write a little something on someone else's character. Say your character was talking to another person's character, and the plot was beginning to advance, say all the rabbits are heading into the warren because it starts raining. If your character has been outside talking to the other person's character and in the story it starts to rain, and you want to post but the player of the rabbit your character has been talking to hasn't posted in awhile, you can do a tiny bit of playing their character. It's all right to post that your character headed on into the warren with the other person's character. Usually the person that plays the other character won't mind, they may even be glad you wrote in that their character went inside for them, but some people are really picky about these things and might get ticked off. To add a bit of sugar to the post, right after you write that the other person's character is going inside with your character, put SFL in double parentheses, something like this: "...and Mallow came in right behind her ((SFL))." SFL stands for "Sorry For the Liberty", basically "Sorry, but I needed to do this one tiny thing to keep things moving along." This brings us to abbreviations commonly used in RPGs. Here are all the ones that I know of:

OOC= Out Of Character. Use this when you need to post something outside of the RPG, for example if you need to let everyone know that you'll be gone for a couple days or if you want to ask a player a question about their character.
BIC= Back In Character. If you use an OOC: at the beginning of a post, then you should skip a line first before using BIC: to show that the next part is being written as part of the RPG, "in character." Some people use IC: instead of BIC:, the two basically mean the same thing; it shouldn't matter which you use most of the time.
SFL= Sorry For the Liberty.  Explained in the above paragraph.
ATTN= Short for "Attention."  Used in the subject line of a post  to get a specific player's attention, which hopefully leads to their reading the post.  For example, if you're starting a new thread in which your character Redbud confronts another player's character, Mallow, you can get "Mallow's" attention by having a subject line that looks something like this:  "Confrontation (ATTN: Mallow)".  There are lots of different ways of doing it, and if you REALLY wanted Mallow to read the post, you could have the "ATTN: Mallow" part in bold since our board supports html.
TBCB: = To Be Continued By. Use this at the end of a post to show who you'd like to continue with a response. For example, if you were talking to Mallow, at the end of the post you'd want to put "TBCB Mallow." "TBCB: Mallow" is fine too; it really doesn't matter wheather or not you use a colon. You can ask more than one character to respond; there are many possibilities for many different situations. TBCBA: = To Be Continued By Anyone. Use this if you don't have anyone specific in mind that you'd like to respond to your post. Many people use "TBCB Anyone" too.

As far as how to write things out in an RPG, most people just write their posts as if they'd write a story, with quotes around speech and actions written out ("Mallow looked up" for example). However, some people use astericks, or double or single colons to show actions, and speech just hanging out in the open with nothing around it. (For example "*Mallow looks up* I don't know. Perhaps soon... *says quietly*") I personally find this a little awkward and sometimes cumbersome if you're reading through posts in a hurry because you've been gone a couple days and you need to catch up with the story. The best way to do it is just to write things out as you would if you were writing a story, but if you're used to doing things differently, that's fine as long as we'll be able to easily understand your posts.

Another thing that's important in any RPG is reading through recent posts to find out what's going on so you can successfully join in.  You could even ask someone in an OOC post to fill you in on what's going on if you're new or if you haven't been active for awhile.  This is pretty important.  If there's a war going on and you make a post saying "Mallow hopped in and sat down.  'Hi everyone!' she said brightly," you've just made yourself look completely rediculous.  At best, your post just won't be responded to, however, one of us may not-so-patiently remind you to stick with the storyline.  I may even delete your post if I think it's neccessary or if I'm just in a bad mood.  But hey, it will never happen to you if you read all the recent posts and stay updated on what's going on in the story.  Read to succeed!  (Ack, that sounds like something you'd read on a school poster, but hey, it gets my point across!)

Perhaps the biggest and most important rule in any RPG is this: DON'T KILL OR SEVERELY INJURE ANYONE ELSE'S CHARACTER UNLESS THEY GIVE YOU DIRECT PERMISSION TO DO SO!! You can't post that your character Red the fox has ripped off Mallow's head if Mallow isn't your character. You'll definately get kicked out of any RPG for doing something like that. In addition to being totally innapropriate, a post like that would be just plain ridiculous. Stick to the topic of what's being played, in this case, Watership Down. Keep in mind what the rabbits can and can't do in the book. So, pink rabbits with wings aren't allowed. You get the picture. Also, try not to make any of your posts too graphic, and don't post anything that might make other people in the RPG uncomfortable or upset. The rule for this at Nildro-inlé Warren is nothing worse than what you'd see in a PG-13 rated movie. This means I only allow mild swearing if for some reason you find it necessary for you or your character to swear. In different RPGs the rules for this are different. It's always good to find out what the guidlines for this are at each different RPG you join.

And remember, it's a sort of game, so have fun!