Role Play-by-Wiki

Why Role Play-by-Wiki
Why play-by-wiki and not play by email, or play on one of the forums set up for the purpose? Basically, because this allows for a more dynamic form of world-building in which players can freely contribute, and a more natural style of interaction. Playing on forums tends to result in chopped-up and disjointed conversations, actions, etc, as posts inevitably occur out of in-game chronological order. A Wiki's dynamic editing makes the game transcript much clearer to all participants.

How To Role Play-by-Wiki
Locations are in square brackets.

Eg: [Exterior: Earth - New York - Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park]

Actions and descriptions are within parenthesis.

Eg: (Bog draws his sidearm. Jims steps to the side and grabs the gun.)

Dialog is within quotation marks preceeded by the characters name in bold letters.

Eg: C-3PO, "This is madness."

The first appearance of something or someone significant in a scene should come with a wiki-link: e.g. each PC or NPC's entry should have a link to their page (if it exists).

Immediate threats will appear in bold text (three ' in wiki-code).

Metagame disputed actions (e.g. if the player describes something that violates something he said previously, or a PC does something that requires equipment he lost, etc) should be bulleted (an * starting a new line in wiki-code),


 * like this

and once the issue is resolved the bullet will be deleted.

If you want to alter someone else's action in-game, you should use strike through text (surrounded by &lt;strike&gt; and &lt;/strike&gt; in wiki-code) and describe what happens immediately afterwards. Once the issue is resolved, the strike will be deleted.

Eg: (Bob draws his sidearm and shoots the cultist informant . Jim grabs his arm before he can shoot.)

Out-of-character table-talk, game mechanics, comments, etc will appear on the Discussion page and should be taged with the player's name (three ~ in wiki-code). If you want to send a private message, do so through the wiki's email system.

[The original version of this page came from http://roadtosamarkand.wikidot.com/how-to-and-why-play-by-wiki]