For those of you who are new to OURPGsoc Society Games, this page is here to serve as a primer to the wikis and how we are using them for the game.
As always, if you have any questions regarding any of this, don't hesitate to email the GMs.
The wiki is used primarily to keep all the information you need to know about the game's setting in one place (at game start anyway; as the game progresses the information may become out of date, and you will need to find in-game sources to keep up). Also, the wiki is used for players to submit their turnsheets, which is how we facilitate actions between sessions (see the page on turnsheeting).
You won't be able to edit most of the pages on the wiki—the GMs keep on top of that—but you will be able to edit the turnsheets and other pages in your user space, as well as the playground, which is an OOC page for game-related stuff. To get to your user page, you can use the buttons up at the top right of any page (when logged in) to reach it. If you are on mobile, the interface makes it rather annoying to get to your user page—searching for your character name is often the easiest work-around1)
Most formatting that you may want to put into a page can be accessed by the buttons at the top of the editor; but if you want to know more details of this wiki's syntax have a look at the syntax page.
Once you have come up with a character concept and gone through the Character Creation process, you need to email the GM Team, who will make sure that everything is alright with your character before setting up a wiki account for you. Note this process may take some time, but as long as you've submitted your character by the deadline we guarantee these will be up in time for the first session of roleplay. This will be under the name of your character, and will provide you access to a user page with turnsheets and up to date information about all of the mechanical details of your character.
This page is private, so only you can see it—you cannot see the user pages of any other players. You can, however, see their public bios in the Characters page, and will be required to create one of these for your own character.
On your user page should be a series of red links, named 'Turnsheet #'. These link to pages that don't exist yet, so when you are ready to begin writing up your actions, click on the link for that week and then click “Create this page” in the top right on the subsequent page.
The turnsheet will have a template prepared to show you the basic layout. Sticking to this format makes it MUCH easier for GMs to process turnsheets. Once you have written everything up, click the save button to create the page so that you (and all the GMs) can see it. You may want to click preview first to make sure everything reads like you hope it would; but do remember to save it afterwards. Editing the page after this point is fine as long as it's before the deadline on the turnsheeting page—nothing will be taken as final by the GMs until then.
On your user page you will also have links to briefs for factions that you are a member of, and briefs you may have for other reasons. These briefs are visible only to certain players and in the case of faction briefs may be updated regularly. Information on these pages is visible only to the players in that faction (or who have obtained that brief). As such, while you are free to pass on such information in character, we would prefer that you do not copy and paste the information, but instead put it in your own words.
When a user account is created, you'll also receive an email address of the form your_character_name@aftermath.chaosdeathfish.com. This will actually just link emails sent to that account to the email account you provide when signing up, and any emails sent to an xxxx@aftermath.chaosdeathfish.com email from that account will appear to come from your character email.
The function of this is that this system allows you to have IC conversations outside of session without anyone else necessarily seeing them (except the GMs, of course: A copy of every email is sent to the GMs to allow us to keep tabs on what everyone is planning to do). It also keeps your real world email address private from the other players (emails will appear to come from your character email address). Please do not use these emails for out-of-game communication—a quick email to ask someone for alternative contact details is fine, but the GM team get enough emails (over 200 in a typical turn) that OC emails just add to the flood and distract us from things relevant to the game. Where possible, please have any IC conversations either in session or via the email system. It makes it a lot easier for the GM team to keep tabs on what is going on, and provide a better game.
If you use an email program that allows you to send from multiple addresses, you can add these to the list of your email accounts by clicking the 'Update Profile' button. Emails will only ever be sent to your primary address, but this is just a precautionary measure and of course is entirely optional. This is especially useful if you use the Gmail + function, for example, and sometimes forget to send from a particular mailbox.
If a character email does not seem to be working, first check that you have the email spelt correctly (by looking at the character's bio) then check to see if there are any spaces in the email, and if so, replace them with underscores (and let the GMs know so they can fix the link). If that does not work, please contact the GM team.