When beginning a role playing adventure or game, please keep these few simple rules in mind:

1. Your character isn't you: This may seem strange, but this is the big one that leads to many a disaster. I'm not talking about the extreme, I'm reffering to fights, arguments, and flame wars, all of which we want to avoid if at all possible.

When creating a Role Playing Character, feel free to create an identity for that character, a persona if you will. If you aren't sure you can keep that up, then go with a character that is similar to you. In the fantasy world, you are free to become just about anything you wish; feel free to excersize this right, but please keep it in the game.

2. Have Fun: Role-playing is simply creative story telling, shared by a group of friends or aquaintances. If you have to strain yourself to play the game, it loses its draw on you. Why would you play a game that holds no appeal to you?

3. Be creative: Just because the game-master paints a linear line doesn't mean you have to follow it. Talk to townsfolk, explore the shore-line, dig for treasure. It's alot of fun, and it makes the person running the whole thing think every once in a while.

4. Be Litterate: Depending on the format of the game, if you want to participate you will either have to write in complete sentences and provide detail to your actions or show when you are completing an action by separating it with (parenthesis) or *asterics*.

5. Don't play a turn for another character: When typing, leave open ends to your statements and be careful with what you say. Don't say you took an item from the cleric without her noticing when the cleric is holding a staff of visions, is wearing a cloak of foresight, and has a wisdom stat of 16.

6. Don't God-Mode and Don't play randomly: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Unless your character is capable of it, god-modding is considered cheap, disrupts the flow of the game, detracts from the experience, and is oftentimes ignored by the Game Master. While it's hard to God-Mode in a D20 game, it happens a suprising amount in free-form RPGs.

When playing a D20 game, please state what you are doing or hint toward what you are planning on doing before you do it. It's damn frustrating for everyone involved when a character uses an item that would have affected earlier checks or changed the way an earlier scenario would have played out. Such actions usually result in being penalized in experience gain, overall experience, or the removal of the item from your inventory, so as to not affect the pace of the game.

Don't play dumb unless it's fitting for your character. It's annoying, detracts from the experience, and often results in a penalty. Sometimes players will simply overlook things and the Game Master will usually help them out, but unless the character falls below 3 in Intelligence (basically crossing from borderline to mental retardation) certain actions are unacceptable.