RPQM Guidelines

RP Etiquette and Best Practices

Many of the below facets are things we take into account when handling ‘RPQM,’ known as roleplay quality management. Basically, at NWO we are looking for a strict experience of realistically portrayed people-- not just characters, but people. We expect full sentence to multi-sentence narrative posts that aren't just engaging with the character you write, but the world around it and paint a narrative and engaging experience to help enhance the theatre of the mind.

That all might sound elitist, or a bit prissy, but it helps make for an immersive and engaging experience. View the following sections and recommendations through that lens as you read through this list and try to put yourself in the shoes of the experience we're trying to curate.

Take them into consideration yourself as you write; always take a moment to consider whether you are engaging in best practices or not before writing. The best thing for the server is when everyone is on the same page about both how to engage with scenes and with one another to create the most cohesive narrative experience possible as we all write a story together.

As a generalized piece of advice to help you follow these guidelines, sometimes writing posts can be done out of game in Notepad or another Word document so you can proofread your posts in real time. Enter a quick line in the PZ chatbox to engage the writing prompt– then finish your post out of game so you can be mindful of any faults you may have made while writing.

• Ctrl + A - Select all text in a field. Useful for pulling your text out of Zomboid or for selecting your text in an external process for use in zomboid.
• Ctrl + C - Copy your selected text. This leaves the text you are copying in the field you are copying it from.
• Ctrl + X - Cut your text. This removes text from the field you are copying it from.
• Ctrl + V - Paste your selected text.
• Up Arrow- In Zomboid’s chat box, this will pull back the last typed emote you inputted. Continuing to push Up will pull prior emotes as well. Helpful for last-minute grabs before an unfortunate restart.
• Down Arrow - In Zomboid’s chat box, will scroll to the most recent emote if you are scrolling through your last chat box inputs.
• Home Key - Takes you to the start of the line/Zomboid’s chat box.
• End Key - Takes you to the end of the line/Zomboid’s chat box.

These are some of the best practices and agreed upon preferences in roleplay recommended not only by staff but also the majority of the playerbase. We’ve taken multiple concerns from the playerbase into account when writing these out, including multiple different writing styles, examples, and generalized feedback. Adjusting and moulding to accommodate one another is the best way to create an engaging experience for everyone.

1.0 Scene Flow

When engaged in a scene with multiple participants, or even in 1:1’s, it’s best practice to try to engage in what is in most RP communities– an unspoken rule, but one upheld for best scene flow: the turn order. This is something akin to merging on a highway when joining a scene– you pick a person you post after in the unspoken turn order, and you keep posting in that order for the whole scene. To break it is akin to not returning a shopping cart (or trolley) to the cart return at a grocery store.

Generally, much as might occur in dice combat, scenes flow naturally and best when person A emotes, then person B– and then C. Repeat. This allows for a natural narrative structure to emerge. It also prevents overspeaking, or people of different WPM speeds from being overtaken by faster typists.

At the same time, you should try to be considerate of others and not make a massive wall of text that has many different things they could have responded to. Eventually, that type of behavior may lead to someone feeling like they're a character in your story, instead of being what should be a co-author situation. And in some cases, can even be tantamount to soft powergaming. There are obviously exceptions to this rule, but in group scenes it helps things not get lost in the flood of emotes.

This brings us to our next point, rapid-fire messages.

Rapidly sending out double, triple, or even quadruple messages in a row can overwhelm other players who prefer to send one singular chunk of dialogue or an emote in one combined message. Ultimately, it’s best practice to keep your emotes condensed. Take your time, think about what your character will say and do, and send it all in one message.

Obviously, this also comes with specific exemptions. Rapidly sending a number of messages for a specific comedic purpose of meta-humour is allowed within reason:

“Just.”
“Like.”
“This.”

Use this in moderation, not to disrupt scenes or message flow, and not to fourth wall break or wink at the camera.

1.1 Fourth Wall Breaks

Fourth wall breaks, while at times funny, can often become too excessive and break immersion as well as narrative integrity of a scene. Especially when done to garner an OOC reaction or purely for baiting specific players with injokes or winks at the camera. These are something we may more harshly RPQM if spotted or reported. Try to keep them to a minimum, especially during serious scenes or group settings.

1.2 Grammar and Perspective

When writing, especially in group settings, there are some best practices to ensure legibility and understanding. Ensure you always include an explicit reference to the character you are addressing– if you cannot get an exact name try to include a verbose description as best as possible. Avoid confusing phrasing such as;

• “/me regards the woman”

This can be confusing if you are in a scene with multiple women, your emote becoming lost or unaddressed by the intended player. As a potential example of being verbose, you can try something like;

• "/me tilts their head toward the towering woman in front of them, raising a brow in curiosity."

This specific example is toward an incredibly tall woman ahead of your character, but you can also go further and describe their self-explained expression, posture, et cetera, for the sake of being explicit.

Try to avoid using second-person perspective when addressing another player. Much as above, not only can this be confusing for group scenes, but it can also be considered a form of yourself writing in the first person perspective, which is something we prefer to avoid. Examples below:

• “/me passes you a lighter.” versus “/me hands CrystalChris a lighter.”

Additionally– sparking off the confusion the above can give in group scenes. Try not to use /envs without explicitly naming your character in group scenes. And effectively never use /envs in an event to avoid confusion of both players and Staff on who is emoting.

1.3 Consistent Portrayal

While character development can certainly occur, and characters can dramatically change as RP unfolds and moulds them into different personalities. Unrealistic portrayals or immediate, dramatic shifts in personality or breaking your own written portrayal of your character in your application are things we may pull you into an RPQM ticket more explicitly for. Character justifications and core tenets are something that should require significant/traumatic events or longer periods of development to change.

1.4 Leaving Room To Respond

When leaving a scene, it’s courteous to wait until your character’s exit is acknowledged by the other players you’re writing with. This is most important when in a scene involving disagreements of some kind. Should another character mean to keep you from leaving the scene, exiting mechanically without giving them a chance to do so is strictly powergaming and will be met with an even firmer repercussion than a simple raising of an RPQM ticket.

1.5 Respect - Don’t be a Greedy Writer

Make sure your replies, messages and emotes, are a ‘back and forth’. RP should be viewed as a call and a response. You are giving room for other players to actually work off of your writing and are not just simply writing for yourself– purple prose can be nice– but make sure it actually is providing something for others to properly engage with and build off of you. Don’t be a ‘main character’ or a greedy writer, and be conscientious of your fellow writers when in a scene. Engage with them, be engaged with, and create a scene and a narrative together, rather than as an individual.

1.6 Keep it Realistic

Your character can’t hear conversations through walls just because you see it in the chatbox– can’t hear whispers, etc– or see actions taking place behind them without looking over their shoulder. Your character’s limitations also need to be taken into account - a 5’0” bookworm isn’t likely to be able to lift a machine gun with ease; someone who’s been heavily injured isn’t likely to be heading back into the dunes immediately after their broken leg was set– and even the jacked bodybuilder isn’t going to Herculean lift the semi truck off it’s wheels. There’s a hundred examples we could list in specific detail, but they all boil down to a simple directive - keep in mind your character’s current state, mental faculties, emotional wellbeing, and abilities and skills when roleplaying.

This also applies to events– we won’t reward players who are ‘first to arrive’, and many of our events feature no mechanical incentive but rather exist purely for a narrative experience and to provide ‘walls’ for our player and community to climb collaboratively. There is no reward system for being the quickest when it comes to our events. So try to take the time to have your characters engage with the events and the environment and realistically react how a person might, address them first before speeding off to the finish line of the event.

A meteor crashing and sonic booming overhead? Stand in awe for a moment– talk with others, plan, then run off to engage with the crash site if it is something they would do. Sandstorms finishing or starting up– your character would bundle up to protect their eyes and skin from blistering sands, and be dissuaded from prolonged exposure to the environment.

1.7 Keep it IC

Everything your character does– within reason excluding horrific game bugs, crashes, other common sense issues where it wouldn’t make sense to enforce IC, should be considered IC. Your character unfortunately trips on a cactus and rips their pants? Embarrassing and annoying OOCly sure, but take it as an opportunity for RP with a Tailor or engagement and a conversation starter. Mistakes happen, engage it as a story beat instead of OOCly running up to a tailor and OOCly asking them to fix your clothes. Make it an opportunity for engagement. This can apply to other scenarios and instances as well beyond the example above.

1.8 Mechanical Vs Canonical skills

Zomboid is a game at the end of the day. It’s a vessel for story with a dopamine loot collector attached to it. Our characters can– for hours on end, slice and dice through thousands upon thousands of hordes without tiring or exhausting. This is something called ludonarrative dissonance, you might’ve heard your favorite youtuber making a video essay about it once or twice.

Our mechanical characters are not our canonical characters. On NWO, virtually the only thing to truly be considered canon is often our dice encounters. They hold the stakes and narrative weight that the infinitely capable murder machines our mechanical characters lack.

In order to not wholly discredit our mechanical actions– a rule of thumb I often abide by is dividing mechanical kills by the hundredth value. AKA; every 100 kills is a canonical kill of a nightmarish entity.

1.9 EVENT ETIQUETTE – BIG ONE

Writing in large group events is hectic. It becomes even more hectic when players aren’t courteous of the experience of others. Everything mentioned above matters significantly more when writing in large groups, as well as the specifics mentioned below:

• Use /w and /low where possible to avoid clogging up the chatboxes of players on the other end of the event. Admins can see all messages, regardless of syntax used.

• Avoid purple prose (fancy, long-winded writing) if you intend for your character to be engaging in conversation with or taking action in regards to another player. There’s nothing wrong with it outside of large group events, but in these instances it can hold back other players, event staff, and yourself.

• Be understanding. It’s incredibly easy to miss an emote from a particular person when there’s twenty other people also writing.

• Do not use /envs during events to avoid confusion of both other players, and event runners. The lack of immediate comprehension on who is doing an action can snowball into frustration for players and Staff alike and slow the progression of events down.