Sample Thread Starter

From TCWiki

Purpose

It's a lot of work to make a starting post of a thread. Most of us just copy the old one. Here's one with the thread-specific stuff stripped out, to make it easier to make new ones.

The Thread Starter

*Flavor Text. Put flavor text here, setting the tone and mood of the thread, build interest, and get people excited, possibly hooking in the name of the thread. This can be a few paragraphs or just one. It varies wildly from thread to thread, so I will not produce one here.*

*Insert link to previous thread here. Use the [URL=http://forums.megatokyo.com/index.php?showtopic=123456789]Previous Thread's Title[/url] format, replacing the title and the number after "showtopic".*

[B]MegaTokyo, The Clans[/B]

*This paragraph describes what MegaTokyo, the Clans is like as a game and universe. A sample version follows, but feel free to replace.*

MegaTokyo, the Clans is what happens when you take the city portrayed in the MegaTokyo comic, make all the comic characters gods, and give control of the city to their worshippers. Of course, you also have to add in a certain smattering of evil corporations battling for world domination, alien conspiracies, zombie rampages, holy and unholy interventions, and general popular culture and anime influenced zaniness.

*Help for players. This bit should only need to change as the metagame changes.*

There are two important resources for getting oriented to the world of MegaTokyo, the Clans.

1. [url=http://www.mttcwiki.org/]MegaTokyo Clans Wiki[/url]. This is a world-editable archive of as many characters, groups, plots, places, items, and more. In short, it aims to be a complete reference to the game. How complete it is depends on how much stuff the players add. Go players! Add stuff! The New Player Page should feature a relatively up-to-date summary of what the world is like, hopefully suitable for things like DISC threads.

2. The MegaTokyo Clans IRC channel. This is the best way to get yourself up-to-speed in an active, real-time manner where you can communicate with players in real time. irc.irchighway.net is the server, and the channel is mttc. We're all nice people. Mostly nice people. People who aren't nice to new players will be hit in the head with a bright green duck. There are instructions for getting on the IRC channel on the wiki. Also, some players don't do IRC much (or at all) and can be contacted by AOL Intant Messenger. Most of us have AIM addresses in our forum profiles.

[B]Rules:[/b]

-Please be civil to other authors.

-Characters (and to a lesser extent factions and gear) are fundamentally their authors' property. Please be courteous with your use of other people's characters. Remember that sometimes people have abilities and effects on their character that you don't know about.

-Have good spelling and grammar. While you can use [url=http://www.grammarstation.com/index.htm]an online spellchecker[/url] there is no substitute for rereading your post to make sure it's correct.

*Help for new players. This section is optional.*

[b]New Players[/b]

We highly recommend the [url=http://www.mttcwiki.org/wiki/New_Player_Page]new player page[/url] of the wiki. The new player page should be linked right in the title page. If stuff is unclear, PM BozoCat, and he'll work on getting it clearer, as he spends FAR too much time editting the wiki. The new player page is an ongoing process.

BozoCat is typically available weekdays during the day (USA East Coast time). Other senior authors are also good resources, as well as faction leaders. PMs are a good way to get in contact, or many of us have our AOL instant messenger contact information on the boards (click the AIM button at the bottom of an author's post) and can be contacted in real time. Just let us know you're from the boards so we know you're a new player and not, say, aliens from the 8th dimension trying to kidnap us and prevent us from inventing the planetary defense AI in twenty years.

Many posts are written in interactively on AIM or in IRC, or in a more time-delayed fashion by PMs and e-mail, if you're not feeling comfortable enough to whole-sale borrow another person's character.

*This section is about stuff specific to the individual thread. I'm stripping out the thread-specific bits.*

[b]This Thread[/B]

Time: *How long does this thread take IC? What's it's relation temporally to other threads that have already been posted or are still running? Is time linear or squishy? Is one person actively managing the forward progress of time like Sabyr did when he was Plotkeeper?*

*Level of canonicity. Options are Soft, hard, none. If you spell "canon" as "cannon", you will be shot out of one. Hard-canon: Things happen literally the way they were written. Plot-fixes are used to erase inconsistency. Soft-canon: Things happen mostly the way they were written. Rules are squishier, time is squishier. Non-canon: None of this ever happened.*

Intent: *Optional. Why is this thread here? Continuing the previous thread? Drawing MttC to an epic new height? Just being silly? To show off certain characters' awsome abilities? To sucker in new people?*

Mood: *Optional. Does this thread have a unified mood that all participants should echo? Silly? Serious? Dramatic? Badass? Romantic? This is also a good time to point people in the direction of dramatic elements the plotters plan to run during this thread. Also a good place for weather notes, if the weather's being dramatic.*

In this Episode: *Optional. Foreshadowing goes here.*

GAME ON! *Or if you're an old Mt:tM thread, one might say NEXT!*