The Unseen Servant forums

Welcome to The Unseen Servant, future player! This forum is intended to be used for any game that fits under the description of a role-playing game and works within a Play-By-Post environment. If you want to play a game like that, then you are on the right forum!


User ID
Hello, Guest! Are you still lurking? If so, you need to create yourself a User ID. STOP LURKING AND START PLAYING! Thank you!


Introductions and Welcomes
Yes, well... NOW that you finally have a User ID, go to the Introductions and Welcomes folder and make a new thread (or add a post on the general Welcome! thread) and tell us about yourself! Who are you? What do you like or not like? What is your gaming experience thus far? Have you ever played in a PbP (Play-by-Post) forum before? What is your favorite on-line banking service? What was your first pet's name? What is your mother's maiden name? What is the make and model of your first car?

After you fill that out, you might want to familiarize yourself with the general forum functions. The following threads are a good place to start:
New To Play-by-Post Games?
Tips For Using The Forum
The Helpful Friendly Macro
Tips For New Play-By-Post(PbP) Players

When you're bored with that and want to actually do something, read these:
Setting My Signature
How Do I Give Myself An Avatar?
How Do I Add A Picture To A Post?


Looking for players or games
Obviously, this is where you go to look for games you might want to consider joining. Start reading the threads to find a game you're interested in. If you find one that is still looking for players, then post something indicating you want to join or send the GM a PM.

Note: We are currently trying to encourage GMs to begin their Looking For Players threads with "LFP" and end the thread title with a STATUS indicator. This would let you know at a glance if the game is openly accepting new players or if the game is closed or if the GM has a waiting list you could sign. (Thank Vargr1105 for this idea!)

Sometimes the games fill up quickly, so it isn't a bad idea to check this topic frequently.

Of course, if you want to be proactive, you can create your own thread under this topic with an "LFG" at the beginning to indicate you are looking for a group to join! GMs LOVE proactive players! It shows you are going to be an active player in their game!


General Play-By-Post Forum Tips

• You basically have ONE form of communication available to you in a forum PbP game, and that is written text. 99% of the members of the forum don't know you in real life, so they have no idea if you have a jovial personality, a serious personality, or a sarcastic one; they don't know if you're laughing when you type something or fuming smoke out your ears. The only point of reference they have is the words you write. So choose them wisely.
• It is also good to remember that a player in one game is a lurker in every other game. And a lurker in your current game is a potential player/GM in the next. So a snarky comment about someone (or a group of people) might seem funny at the time, but it also creates an impression of YOU as a Player/GM that carries over to other games in which you might participate or lead. Again, choose your words wisely.
• If you ever feel the need to post a picture that is NSFW (Not Safe For Work), then please use the Spoiler tags to keep such an image hidden unless someone wants to view it. No dirty piece of fan art or humorous (sic) picture is worth anybody's job.
• Finally, always remember to be respectful of the other members of the forum.

Great post and much needed for noobs such as myself. Much appreciated!

angelicdoctor wrote:Great post and much needed for noobs such as myself. Much appreciated!

As far as I know, being new to a game/forum/process/method means you're just a "newb", brother. Nothing bad about that.

You don't want to be a "noob"...

Ya see. I don't even know the lingo. Thanks for making me feel old.

may be fodder for another thread... but to continue the threadjack, what's the difference between noob and newb?
Thought they were the same thing?

The spelling.....(snare drum roll)......

Seriously; I have no idea. I'm too old to know that kind of thing.....(Damn whipper-snapper-newbs......get off my lawn!)

boob or bewb?

A thread hijacker is a noob.



(hehe... sorry, Ron. Just kidding.)

In DDO (D&D Online... I'm a D&D Multimedia player), a "newb" is just someone new to the game who is willing to learn. A "noob" is someone who might or might not be new to the game, but their play style is childish. Noobs can be trolls, trying to cause strife or chaos for no reason other than to cause strife or chaos. You can try to offer suggestions to them on how to improve their play style and they stick with the inefficient way they're playing, regardless, even if it messes things up for other people.

Newbs learn and become veteran players.

Noobs get blacklisted because it messes with other people's games.

You basically have ONE form of communication available to you in a forum PbP game, and that is written text. 99% of the members of the forum don't know you in real life, so they have no idea if you have a jovial personality, a serious personality, or a sarcastic one; they don't know if you're laughing when you type something or fuming smoke out your ears. The only point of reference they have is the words you write. So choose them wisely.

I can attest to that. I've done it on several occasions, even recently. When you get careless with your writing people can read into it all sorts of ways. When it does happen just do your best to clear it up, move on and have fun.

I note that some of the players are using image art to represent characters. What sites might you recommend from which I can pull freely from their galleries and use here?

Mmmm... Unfortunately, AD, I'm a bit of a chaotic neutral when it comes to character art on the interwebz.

Certainly I'm not going to post something and claim it as my own art (unless it is mine), and there is no profit-making involved with PbP posting (at least here on this site), so I don't feel too badly about using Google to search for the image I want.

I've toyed with the idea of trying to link back to the originating site, but in almost every case, the place where I found the image was already not the origination of the art (i.e. it had already been copied from somewhere else).

Now, if I were trying to somehow generate a profit that involved using one of those images, I would act differently. But, in this case, I don't feel as if using the images I have used warrants such efforts to try and determine the original source.

Please keep in mind, this comes from someone who has had his imagery taken illegally in an attempt to create profit from it. I took a picture when I was in Ireland one time and sent it to an artist to have her turn it into a lager-sized watercolor. That was the only permission she had for the imagery. She did a great job, and I love the finished product. But a few weeks later, I was back on her site and saw that she'd made several other copies of the image and was trying to sell them on her website, as well. I politely told her the image she was using was still my property and she did not have permission for any use other than the original request. She had to take the other paintings down and hopefully she had enough integrity to destroy them, as I also asked.

So I don't take the subject lightly.

It's just that it isn't often easy to appropriately credit the author when using the image.

I use photobucket to upload pics I steal from the Internet.
I use Google Images mostly. The whole not-using-it-for-profit thing that Al said pretty much clears you for usage. I'd beware of hotlinking to someone's site, which is why I like to upload to photobucket.

rredmond wrote:I use photobucket to upload pics I steal from the Internet.
I use Google Images mostly. The whole not-using-it-for-profit thing that Al said pretty much clears you for usage. I'd beware of hotlinking to someone's site, which is why I like to upload to photobucket.

To slightly explain rredmond's comment, if you hotlink the image from somebody else's site, and they take their site down, then your link is broken and the image will not display.

So screen capture the image or otherwise copy it and host it on your own photobucket (or similar) site. That way, you are in control of the image and don't have to worry about the link breaking.

Actually I didn't think about that, but that's a good one too!
Hotlinking uses up their bandwidth, or so I've heard. So for the "little guy" this could affect their site.
But I'm just an old country social worker, not a computer guy dammit.

angelicdoctor wrote:I note that some of the players are using image art to represent characters. What sites might you recommend from which I can pull freely from their galleries and use here?

I can recommend Google Images and DeviantArt. Those are my search engines of choice when I am looking for a pic.

I use TinyPic to host the pictures I select.

Photobucket is not the most user friendly imo but its done the job in the past for me. For the purposes of PbP I wouldn't sweat it about using google images. Have yet to see a for profit PbP game.

so...yes, I'm a greenhorn. I see a lot of character sheets posted but have yet to figure out how to make one for AD&D campaign. Am I blind? Missing something? Thanks in advance!

tooleychris wrote:so...yes, I'm a greenhorn. I see a lot of character sheets posted but have yet to figure out how to make one for AD&D campaign. Am I blind? Missing something? Thanks in advance!

Character sheets are generated via the Unseen Servant dice roller.

Check out this thread for more info on that subject.

viewtopic.php?f=33&t=473

I got it. Thanks for quick reply! (A little google searching helps as well)
I'm up and running on character generation.

tooleychris wrote:I got it. Thanks for quick reply! (A little google searching helps as well)
I'm up and running on character generation.

No problem! Happy to help.

Welcome to The Unseen Servant forums!