New Players' Guide

Welcome to Wandering Star Role Play! This article has the basic steps and info you'll need to participate. Please read it thoroughly.

Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for mankind to keep all its eggs in. — attributed to Robert A. Heinlein - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein

Earth was a long time ago. Perhaps as far from us now as the first recorded history is from now, but we have no way of knowing. Time and time again, humanity has been cast down to the dust to lift itself and begin anew - by war, plagues and occupation. The Earth itself is a legend and now too, the dimension it occupied as we leave it behind. But humanity survives, as distant travelers with new homes and new colonies as familiar to them and as home to them as Earth is to us.

Technology has advanced in strange directions and our fundamental understanding of reality has changed. Gravity, high energy weapons, faster than light travel, the transmutation of the mind into information and a means of taking energy from space itself, but not without consequence.

We have escaped a world not unlike the one we have described to you and venture forth into something strange and new in exodus, exile, abandon and loss. The remains of civilizations which arose in this strange place begin anew at peace.

There are however threats to that peace; lawlessness, civilizations unmet, aliens incomprehensibly strange and most frightening of all, ourselves.

Like classic text-based roleplay, you and other players create your dcharacters who then live in the universe of Wandering Star. Your imagination defines the actions of your character and that action and their dialog defines their future in collaborative stories which affect the setting for future players.

Roleplay comes in many shapes and forms: Commonly beginning with a roleplay thread that acts as a string unifying the sequential events of a given sub-story within the setting and can be thought of an episode. Following the first 'episode' of content, a story can be given a sub-forum which can be thought of as a 'show' within the setting.

These stories are often on starships, or may move from place to place over known locations and unknown locations. It is important that you should read up into the background of the kind of character you want to play and to get a sense of how the nations and entities within the setting work to determine which plot you feel would best suit you, the kind of story you want to be part of and the kind of character you want to play.

Other methods of roleplay do also exist, but detailed below are the methods most used:

The posts two or more players make are conjoined with direct interaction in a chat or pad. In this way, these collections of players can rapidly produce a very complex scene or very personal interactions. These are often very intimate and emotional moments in roleplay.

Posts which come one after another and contain only a single player and their characters. In this way, players who can't normally be online at the same time can post and then have others see their post and respond. More public and less intimate, sequential posts are ideal for moving something forward for players with busy schedules or different timezones.