Welcome to a tutorial on how to play Shatterbridge, brought to you by your Game Master, Timeon.
Play by Post[]
Shatterbridge is a Forum RPG, meaning the action will take place in the Shatterbridge section of the upcoming forum. You, as a player, will get your own individual thread for your character. This means that you will post there to play the game. Other players will get their own threads, and although they are playing the same game as you, you have your own personal, uncluttered space.
In Shatterbridge's Play by Post system, the Game Master presents your character with a post - an update - which is a scene or situation involving your character. You, the player, will then respond to the Game Master with a post of your own, detailing your reaction to the situation that you have been presented with. That way, you post, then the Game Master posts, then you post again. This exchange is how the game will work. For an example as to how to this works, you can see the Game Master's previous project, the Great War . The difference between Shatterbridge and the Great War is game mechanics, and that this time, each player gets their own thread rather than everyone posting in one giant thread.
The game will start for your character via a Prologue.
Prologue[]
Once a player has made his character, he will be given an introductory post by the GM. This introductory post introduces the Prologue. The Prologue is a part of your character's story which takes place before the year 2485. The Prologue helps set your character up, introduce the character to the world, and decide the character's history and background. After playing through the Prologue, you join other players by starting at the same point in the timeline - the year 2485.
The Prologue uses the same Play by Post system described above, the only difference is that it takes place before 2485 as a tutorial.
What time is it?[]
In Shatterbridge, there will be a certain aspect of realism concerning the timeline. Your character may take a few weeks to cross a region in the game. As he does this, the calendar will change, and time will pass.
Each post by the Game Master will be dated, to show you what year it is, what day it is, and generally, what time of day it is.
A possible problem that may arise is that players may want their characters to meet up, but if one player gets too far ahead in the timeline than someone else, that may become very difficult to co-ordinate. Another problem is consistency errors. If a player, for example, kills one of the Archons in the year 2387, two years after game start, but another player is two weeks ahead of him - then why did he not hear about this historic event in those two weeks since the event happened?
Consistency issues are important to consider, and therefore, the Game Master is going to try and make sure that all players are AT LEAST not more than 7 days apart from one another. If this creates problems ingame - for example, if a player is trying to travel a large distance - then a solution will be improvised or found.
However, when making ingame decisions, it is important to consider distances and time. Do you want to spend the next couple of weeks travelling across the continent? Or do you have something closer you want to do first? Or maybe, to make the journey interesting, you can complete 'quests' along the way, so that your journey is not so monotonous. The possibilities are endless.
Finally, for simplicity's sake, while ingame cultures have their own calendars, updates will be dated using the Earth calendar as we know it. The game map is set above the equator, with the equator falling across the Dark Heart, and thus, winter shall take place around the December months.