Elliquiy FAQ

[NightBird]

Awesome! Thanks very, very much!

That segment has been added, with the link to Help! active, and with a comment that there will be a link to the current Mentor list.


*laughs*

It gets eerier and eerier m'dear. Not only does that nudge us just a tad closer, but I was early, too. Six weeks early, way back when, was enough to earn the title of preemie and cause much concern. Seriously, I was my parents' mid-life crisis!

[Xillen]

Q. How does the Die Roller work?

A. The person that is going to roll the dice simply clicks on "Die Roller" at the top of the screen to get to the die roller page. There, the person can enter the different factors of the die roll. Details about which factor does what is listed at the bottom of the page. Be sure to make the "Character" and "Comment" entry clear enough if someone (like the storyteller) is supposed to check on them later.

The "Test Roll" button allows you to make a roll to see if you have the right factors configured. This can also be used if there's no need for anyone else verifying your role at a later time. Note that there is no way of saving that specific test roll, as it would be abusable. If you click the "Roll Dice" button, a similar roll (with the same factors) is made, but this time it's saved as well, allowing others to verify the roll. You could of course make several such rolls until you have a good result, but old rolls remain visible as well, making the whole thing a tad fishy. Likewise, if you don't add comments about what the roll is for, it can become just as fishy, mentioning that that low roll was actually for a simple skill check, and that high roll that followed after it, happened to be your attack roll.

Others can view the rolls you made by clicking the "View my rolls" link, that is right above your avatar. It simply returns a list of all the rolls you ever made (not counting test roles). Alternatively, all players can agree on keeping the rolls together, by sending the rolls to a specific player. The story teller is usually a good choice, but if he or she is involved in multiple games, it might actually be wiser to take one of the players that's not involved in any other dicegames. To do so, you either enter that specific player's User ID in the "Send to" entry (If you click someone's profile, the url will end on u=number. That number is that person's User ID), or simply click the "Send me a roll" link right above that player's avatar. If all players do so, then they can view all the rolls sent to that player to get all the rolls made for the specific game.



What is a freeform game? What is a system game?

You might have heard of games like Dungeons and Dragons, Gurps, World of Darkness, Exalted, etc...? Those are all examples of system games.

System games usually involve making a character sheet that indicates your character's strengths and weaknesses, which are determined by certain rules. Though your character is still capable of trying anything he or she would like, the system actually determines the success of more challenging actions. This way, system games provide a line of balance for the characters' power, as well as providing a certain feeling of achiefment after completing something, that might not have been there if one player simply decided "Yes, you succeed".

Freeform is basically lack of system. Whenever you perform a challenging action, you can decide for yourself if it succeeds or not, or write it so that success is not indicated, so that the other player can decide on it.

Combat remains a clear example. Assume for the moment that you're shooting an arrow at another creature. In a freeform game, you basically have three options:
- You describe how the arrow hits the creature, deciding for yourself that you hit.
- You describe how the arrow flies wide, deciding for yourself that you missed.
- You describe how the arrow flies towards the creature, ending your post there. Now, your writing partner can choose, describing how the creature got hit by the arrow or how it managed to dodge it.

In system, it works a little different. Usually, the person shooting the arrow has a certain attack value for shooting arrows. Likewise, the creature that's being shot at has a certain defense value, determining the chance of being hit. Most systems include a random element, such as a die, to determine the outcome (For example, the person shooting the arrow rolls a die, and adds the attack value for shooting arrows. If this equals or beats the defense value of the creature that's being shot at, it is a hit, else it is a miss.), but there are also systems that don't include random elements, working purely by statistics.

It's a common misconception that system actually determines the story for you. Most (but not all) systems are setting related, meaning that if you pick a specific system, you're bound to that setting. If you take D&D for example, that means you've basically decided that you're going to play something involving high fantasy, but you usually decide on the setting before the game starts, so that's a case of taking the right system for the right setting. Other than that, the story, background, villains and all other details of your story are still up to the storyteller and the players, allowing you to play whatever story you want.

What do all the tabs and links on the forum pages do?

Are these the tabs above and below all the threads (Reply/Notify/Mark Unread/Send this topic/Print) or those at the top (Home/Links/Forum/etc...)?

[NightBird]

*applauds*

Awesome, Xillen, thank you!

My thoughts on the tabs and links was to aim towards eventually having some sort of explanation for all active points on the various page views, so that would be Home to Logout on the top tabs, the rotating messages right under them, the way the thread tree is actually links below that, and the ins and outs of using the links visible through 'Show unread' and 'Show new replies' at the top and 'who's online' and so forth at the bottom. After the conversations yesterday, I think it would be a really good idea for there to be warnings about how you can see the board from the two pages linked up top, but not in 'who's online,' so that latter needs to be treated with caution. The way I see it, if management here has a good FAQ that covers some of these details, they won't have to keep explaining things, but can refer common questions to the FAQ.

This is a big one, so it would probably make sense if you (or anyone else who wants to jump in), just does a section at a time.

[Trieste]

It occurred to me that this might be helpful:

https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=418.0

Especially the part telling newbies how to turn on pop-up notification for PMs. I have found the pop-up notification infinitely useful; I miss far fewer PMs with it on than I do with it off...

Just a thought that just occurred to me while wondering if someone's read my PM and waiting for them to respond ... because I am impatient.

[NightBird]

Awesome link, thanks!

I found several good things to put in the FAQ.

Reading over the whole thread raised another question for me, though: what is the difference between 'elf' and 'fae' over on the left info area?

[Trieste]

*goes to look*

*returns*
I'll just give the list:

Name            Required Posts
Virgin            0
Olive Oil         1
Threesomer    3
Seduced       10
Sprite           31
Bacchae       100
Elf               316
Seducer       1000
Fae             3162
Carnite        10000
Sidhe          31622
Addict         50000

And no, I have no idea why the number of posts required for some of the categories are seemingly-random numbers. I can only guess that they were created as people got up to that post amount, for the top poster. :)

[NightBird]

Oh, lovely! More good info!

We'll have a spiffy FAQ yet!

[Xillen]

And no, I have no idea why the number of posts required for some of the categories are seemingly-random numbers. I can only guess that they were created as people got up to that post amount, for the top poster. :)

They happen to be square roots of factors of 10. This way, the progress remains streamlined. Every time you reach a new rank, you need 3,1622 times your current amount of posts to get to the next rank, except for Addict. (Carnite -> Sidhe is actually more posts than Sidhe -> Addict. Bug?)

We don't have Sidhes and Addicts yet. Elvi is around 1k posts short of Sidhe.

[Sherona]

I wonder if we post a list of the ranks, if we will suddenly get more one line posts all over the place just to get a post count up for rank?

[Xillen]

I doubt it. The ranks aren't that special, and actually appear a bit lost among all the other stuff listed there. E is the forum that has the most stuff there of all forums I visit, even with the karma mod gone.

[Sherona]

I doubt it. The ranks aren't that special, and actually appear a bit lost among all the other stuff listed there. E is the forum that has the most stuff there of all forums I visit, even with the karma mod gone.

I like the karma stuff gone. I hope it stays gone. But Your probably right :) Just its good to think about all the possibilities.

[NightBird]

I think explaining what they all mean is helpful. Frankly, I've been around here a long time, and I wasn't sure of what order they were in and what levels the cut-offs were. Also, most of the places where one-line posts make a whole lot of sense don't add to post count anyway. I would hope that site management's efforts to select reasonably mature individuals to join us here would also make that less likely than on other sites.

Still, you're absolutely right, Sherona, to bring up any other way to look at this or any other of the questions currently in the FAQ or to be developed in future. I think the FAQ will be the strongest if the largest possible number of people participate in discussing it and writing up pieces of it. With one of my goals being to have Elliquiy-specific info for all the active links on the various screens (since the SMF Help is for the generic SMF look and feel, and Veks has modified a fair amount), Elliquians can contribute in a very meaningful way by writing up descriptions for a single screen element.

[Xillen]

Might need to add something to inform people that you can only post in game threads that you already agreed on being in.

I'll write it out better when I'm back at home.