So you want to start your own game... huh? Well follow these steps and I'll walk you through the process real quick-like.
I. At the Main Menu (assuming you already have an account to play by), scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click on the hyperlink "Start your own game!"
- You are now at the "creategame.cgi" menu. It tells you how many games you are authorized, and how many you own. If you own as many (or more?) as you are authorized, you're going to have to beg jase to adjust your limit.
*Important* Do not attempt to use colors, bold, underline or italics in setting up the game, character info or game messagebases. You can only use special text formatting codes when in a message editing box, such as the Character Sheets, Character Descriptions, Game Introduction, or when entering a message into a public or private messagebase.
(Moving on assumes you have a spare game slot left.)
II. Now you need to fill in essential information about your game.
A. Decide a unique and interesting name for your game. You are limited to fill out the
Game Name slot with a name of a hundred characters or less. To make it easy for players to identify your game system you intend to use, I suggest you end the game name with one of the following acronyms for easy identification.
A
ADnD _ed - AD&D (insert edition number)
ADRP - Amber Diceless Roleplaying
Alt - Alternity
B
BB - Blood Bowl
BBSW - Big Breasts, Small Waist (hentai version of BESM)
BEER - Brawn, Ego, Extraneous, and Reflexes: Kobolds Ate My Baby (aka KAMB)
BESM - Big Eyes, Small Mouth
BFG - Battlefleet Gothic
BnB - Bunnies and Burrows
BP - Babylon Project
BtS - Beyond the Supernatural
BtVS - Buffy the Vampire Slayer
BWBH - Bat-Winged Bimbos from Hell
C
CF-T - Castle Falkenstein (original Talisorian version)
CnS - Chivalry and Sorcery
CoC - Call of Cthulhu
CoC d20 - Call of Cthulhu d20 rules
CoC v5.5 - Call of Cthulhu version 5.5
CP - Cyberpunk
CP2020 - Cyberpunk 2020
CS - Crimson Skies
CtD - Changeling the Dreaming
CX - Conspiracy X
D
DBZ - Dragonball Z
DnD 3rd - D&D 3rd Edition (sometimes D&D3e)
DCH - DC Heroes
DCU - DC Universe
DL - Deadlands
DQ - DragonQuest
E
ED - EarthDawn
EPT - Empire of the Petal Throne
EQ - EverQuest
F
FFRPG - Final Fantasy RPG
Free - Free-form (only a suggestion)
FS - Fading Suns
FUDGE - Er... Fudge
G
GCF - GURPS Castle Falkenstein
GG - Ghouls and Ghosts
GT - GURPS Traveller
GURPS - GURPS... as you'd expect
GW d20 - Gamma World d20 rules
H
Hack - HackMaster
HB - "Home-brewed" rules (ie: not commercially avalable, and not free-form)
Heroes - Heroes System
HU - Heroes Unlimited
HU2d - Heroes Unlimited 2nd Edition
HW - Hero Wars
I
=][= - Inquisitor
IN - In Nominé
J
JD d20 - Judge Dredd d20
K
KAMB - Kobolds Ate My Baby
L
L5R - Legend of the Five Rings
LOTR - Lord of the Rings
M
MERP - Middle Earth Roleplaying
MH - Mordheim
MMM - Man, Myth and Magic
MSH - Marvel Super Heroes
MSPI - Mercenaries, Spies, & Privat Eyes
MT - Megatraveller
MtA - Mage the Ascension
MW - Mech Warrior
MWG - Macho Women with Guns
N
Necro - Necromunda
O
P
Pal - Palladium RPG
Para - Paranoia
Pen - Pendragon
PnP - Powers and Perils
Q
R
Rifts - Rifts (duh?)
RM - Rolemaster
RNW - Renegade Nuns on Wheels
RQ - Runequest
RT - Robotech
S
SC d20 - Spycraft d20 rules
SLA - SLA Industries
SR - ShadowRun
SM - Spacemaster
SO - Space Opera
SPQR - Steve Perrin's Quest Rules
SW d20 - Star Wars d20 rules
T
T2K - Twilight 2000
T4 - Mark Miller's Traveller (aka Traveller 4)
T5 - Traveller 5
T20 - Traveller d20
T2300 - Traveller 2300/2300 AD
Tal - Talislanta
TC - Classic Traveller (the Little Black Books)
TMNT - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
TNE - Traveller: The New Era
TnT - Tunnels and Trolls
U
V
VnV - Villains and Vigilantes
VtM - Vampire: the Masquerade
W
WB - Worlds Beyond
WEG SW - West End Games Star Wars
WHFB - WarHammer Fantasy Battle
WH40K - WarHammer 40K
WFRP - Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying
Win - The Window
WM - Warmaster
WoD - World of Darkness
WoT - Wheel of Time
Wt - Wraith
WtA - Werewolf the Apocalypse
X
Y
Z
(If you have anything to add to this list of acronyms, please email
admin@rpol.net.)
(II.A. continued)
So, for example. Let's say you want to run a Middle Earth Role Playing Game called "Quest for the Rings". You would enter into the
Game Name slot
Quest for the Rings - MERP. Players will know by looking at the title you intend on using the Middle Earth Role-Playing game system.
B. The next slot,
GM, (going right to left, top to bottom) is for filling out the GM's primary character name. How do you want to be known within the game? Do you prefer to use your account name? Would you rather be called Dungeon Master, Keeper, Narrator, or Story Teller, etc? Whatever you want the players to address you as, this is where you assign
YOUR name in the game. You are limited to 30 spaces for your GM name.
C. Select a classification. Would your game be better off in a fantasy setting? Is it a horror game? Is it comical? By properly categorizing your game into an appropriate classification, it will be grouped with like-minded games. A player can come along later looking for a specific classification of game, and be presented with only those games that apply.
D.
bio1 and
bio2 slots are for filling in any extraneous information you feel might aid the players. Perhaps an E-mail address, or a phone number... maybe your mother's maiden name. Whatever you feel comfortable putting in here. Or, leave it blank - optionally. Both of these slots are limited to 30 spaces a piece.
E. Click on
Create Game.
- Your game is created, and you will be redirected into it.
III. Set Up Your Basic Game Information. At the top of the screen, click on
Admin Game.
A. If you decide you want to change the game name or classification where you have the game located, you can do so in the
Edit Game Details section. (If you decide to change the game name or classification after you have players, send them all private messages afterwards to reattach the game to their 'sticky list'. See the FAQs for details on what a 'sticky-list' is.)
B. Next thing you want to do is set up your game introduction. Click on
Edit the game introduction. (You can edit the text format using colors, bold, underline, strikeout, or italics)
1. The game introduction is what a player is going to come look at to see if the game is interesting to them. Put an introductory preface of what the game is going to be about. Introduce the people to your game's story and gain their interest by making it exciting and/or intriguing to read.
2. Follow up with a reitteration of what game system you intend on using (see the list above).
3. Post what sort of character concepts you are looking for, or limitations on character creation (levels, money, magic items if applicable).
4. Feel free to come back as the game changes direction or you need to find more players and update the information posted here.
C. Return to the
Admin Menu and click on the following to link your game with external web space files:
1.
Update the game map - this selection can be used to upload a game map to RPOL of 30 kbytes or less in size. Use .gif, .jpg, or .png for map file images.
a. Enter the map path/name or click on the
Browse button to find it on your harddrive.
b. Click on
Upload Map.
2.
Specify the game website link - this selection is for linking your game with a web site dedicated to the game. This is a great way to add and enhance your game and show off your html programming skills. Plus, some players are attracted by games with fancy websites. To show the extra effort as a DM to fancy up a web site for a game tells the players just how enthused you are about it.
3.
Edit the external file links - this selection is for adding specific URLs for reference sake so the players won't have to worm their way through the Internet to find important files.
D. Click on
Toggle players wanted status. By default, the 'players wanted' indicator (a little red asterix next to your game name on the main menu) is on. If you want to toggle it off or on, this is the place to do it. For now, just click on
just return to the admin menu.
IV. You are ready to start adding messagebases now. Click on
Public Messages.
- You see that you have no public messagebases yet. Not a problem. We'll add one.
A. At the top-right corner area, you'll find
Post a new Topic. Click on it.
B. You are at the Message menu where you can add/edit your first post of a message.
1. Select the name you wish to post under. You really should only have one to select from if you've followed the walkthrough. If you only have one, it's selected for you. If you have two or more player names, you'll have to select one to post with. If you want to, you can post with some other name by typing it in the slot
Other Name:.
2. Select a
Subject for your messagebase thread. This will appear as the title of the messagebase. If you want to change the title later, you can merely edit the first post's
Subject in your messagebase thread, and it will change the title displayed.
3. Enter your post, a welcome to the game note, or maybe set up the adventure... whatver you want to do with this messagebase. You can use text formatting again in this section, colors, bold, strikeout, italics, and underline.
4. Click the
Preview box to check it if you want to check how it looks before posting it. Good for if you're using a lot of formatting to make sure you don't miss any tags or got all the colors and highlighting right. (If you do preview the post, remember not to use your browser's "Back" button. There will be a selection to take you back to the edit mode. Use that if you want to go back. Very important, I can't stress that enough.)
5. Select your
group. Groups are 0 through 8 for the game play. 0 is default and typically open for everyone. Group 9 is special and shouldn't be used for regular game play. See the FAQs for notes on Group 9. Group Public is a message base that everyone will be able to see, but only the GM can post to. Leave your first message base for 0. You can change it later by editing the first post in the messagebase thread if you decide you want it as a different group.
6. Select
Notice if you want this messagebase to remain on the top of the list at all times. Otherwise, just leave it unchecked.
7. Once your initial message is complete, click on
Post Message and it will be posted into your Public Messages section.
V. Advertise your game - Now you're ready to advertise. Remember how we had typed up the Game Introduction? Let's take another look at the Game Introduction:
A. Click on
Game Info.
- You see the entire game introduction you typed up earlier.
B. Click on
Edit the game introduction (to get the formatting tags if you used colors/bold/etc.)
C. Highlight the whole passage with your mouse.
D. Hit Control-C to copy (or right click and select copy).
E. Click on
Main Menu
F. From the Main Menu, click on
Wanted - Players
G. Click on
Post a new topic (upper left corner area)
H. In
Subject type your game name.
I. Click in the Message box and hit Control-V, or right-click in the message box and select paste.
J. Select
Post Message.
- There you have it. Your first game is set up and you're ready to accept new players! Good luck!
