Joining a game

Sign up with an email address and a password, or with Discord or Google. A confirmation link goes to the address you gave and the account works once you click it. The three routes lead to one account rather than three: signing up with a password and later using Discord on the same verified address gets you back into the account you already have, with your characters still in it.

Two things are worth knowing at this point. Your username is permanent — it is the address of your profile at /u/yourname, it is what people type to mention you in a post, and it cannot be changed afterwards. Your display name can be changed whenever you like. And new passwords are checked against known breaches; if yours comes back as one that has appeared in a public dump you will be asked for a different one. Only the first five characters of a hash leave this site to do that, never the password.

You must be at least 16 to have an account here.

An invite link. The usual one. Whoever is running the game makes a link and sends it to you; you open it, sign in if you have not already, and it tells you which campaign it is for before you confirm. You are in immediately, with no approval step. If the link will not open — chat clients cut long ones short — the same invite is a short code you can paste at Join a group. An invite can be set to expire or to work only a fixed number of times, so one that has stopped working has usually just run out rather than been withdrawn — ask for another.

Applying to a listed campaign. Some GMs advertise in the campaign directory, which is readable without an account. Applying means writing a short message about what you are after; you can attach one of your characters, and if you do, that campaign’s GM can read its sheet for as long as the application is open and not afterwards. Somebody has to say yes — you will be told either way.

Putting up a notice. The opposite direction. On the player board you say what you are looking for, which system, and when you are free, and GMs come to you. That board is members-only and kept out of search engines, because a notice is a person saying when they are at home and a listed campaign is not.

1. 1

   Read the front page of the campaign

   The overview lists the most recently edited wiki pages and the threads with the newest posts. Between them that is most of what you need to know about where the game currently is.

2. 2

   Read the wiki before you write anything

   Whoever set the campaign up has probably written down the premise, the place everyone starts, and who matters. Pages you have not read are a better use of the first twenty minutes than a character concept that turns out not to fit. How the wiki works.

3. 3

   Make a character

   Characters belong to you rather than to a campaign, so you make one from Your characters in the account menu and then put it forward to the games it plays in. Pick the system your GM is running and the sheet changes to match. Characters and sheets.

4. 4

   Put it forward to the party

   On your character’s own page, use Playing in and choose the campaign. That is what puts it on the party roster, where the GM can see its hit points, armour class and conditions while running, and what lets you post and roll as that character rather than as yourself.

5. 5

   Post

   Find a thread on the roleplay boards and write. The box has an In character and an Out of character setting; use the second one freely for questions about scheduling and rules, because an OOC aside rendered as something your character said reads badly for everybody. Play-by-post.

A campaign is offered what it can use and nothing else, so the row of tabs across the top depends on what kind of game it is. A D&D campaign has a bestiary and a party roster; a Minecraft server has nations, places, wars and seasons and has no use for a session poll; a worldbuilding group has no characters at all and therefore no dice.

Nothing is deleted by any of this. If your GM changes the system or the mode, the tabs come back with everything still in them.

Unread counts. Threads with posts you have not seen are marked, on the group switcher in the header and on the boards themselves.

Waiting for you. The site’s front page, once you are signed in, leads with the threads that are actually waiting on you — where it is your turn, where you were mentioned by name, or where the scene has moved on since you last looked.

The bell. Notifications cover being mentioned, replies to your threads, wiki edits, session times being proposed or confirmed, handouts being revealed, and answers to your applications.

Search. The box in the header searches everything you are allowed to see, across every campaign you are in: wiki pages, posts, characters, places, nations, wars, timeline events, maps, handouts and sessions, plus the spell list and the bestiary. Things people at your table wrote outrank reference material.