"Frequently Asked Questions"
- What is Shadowland7?
- What are the rules?
- What do I do?
- Permissions?
- How do I use the sidebar?
- Dice rolling? What?
What is Shadowland7?
Shadowland7 is like a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) crossed with a forum. The basic operation is almost exactly like a forum. You can create pages (threads) and post comments interacting with other users. But instead of just having a conversation, you can play Shadowrun. If you're interested, you can read a short history of Shadowland. The previous versions were created and maintained by Dave Hyatt.
What are the rules?
Generally speaking, the rules are: don't be a jackwagon. I've attempted to create some systems to prevent abuse, but I know that someone out there will think it might be fun to ruin other people's fun, but I won't talk a lot about it here, because those people will probably never read this page. For those of you who will play fair, please know that the administrators of this web site will make every reasonable effort to prevent repeated abuse. Be respectful of other players, but feel free to play a jerky character.
What do I do?
First of all, introduce yourself. Reality Check is the place for "Out of Character" (OOC) discussions. Meet people, discuss the weather, and tell me if you're having any problems using the web site.
The idea is that you create "Aliases" that allow you to post comments as characters in different areas of The Sixth World, and interact with the other characters here. Except, instead of a traditional MUD, where there is a very strict system in place that restricts how you interact, there are very few restrictions here. The biggest is that you must describe your actions, and type out your conversations.
Shadowland has three major areas for play: 1) The Sixth World, 2) Shadowtalk (the matrix), and 3) Private Campaigns. The Sixth World is a representation of the physical world. Shadowtalk is the world-wide and "private" networks, where the deckers rule. Private Campaigns is probably self-explanatory. If you want to organize a game and not allow anyone else in, do so in that area. Create a new group, add the players you would like to include to that Group, and create a folder under Private campaigns that belongs to that Group. Folders and pages inherit their parent folder settings when created, but can be customized after creation.
Every page that is "IC" (in-character) can also accept "OOC" comments. The links at the top of the page automatically switch between "view ic" and "view ooc" allowing you to view the opposite of the version you are currently looking at.
Once you get to a page, if you have permission to post, you will see a form at the bottom of the page allowing you to comment. If the page is for In-Character comments, then you'll be able to choose an alias, and also configure any dice rolls that should be attached to your comment.
The comment editor works much like any modern document editor, but it's limited. If you know HTML, feel free to click "Source" and edit away. Be aware that we have implemented filters to prevent certain elements of HTML from being displayed. Filters are applied non-destructively when comments are displayed, so your illegal tags will be kept, but they won't be displayed. For example, <script> tags are not allowed. The editor has been preloaded with some styles to help bring some consistency to commenting. If you're posting in-character, try to mark text that is a character's thoughts/feelings/internal monologue in the orange style labeled as "Thought" in the Styles select menu in the editor. There's also styles for dialog, and matrix activity described in the real world. If you'd prefer to follow a different style pattern in your private campaigns, you'll need to manually select those colors from the color selector. You can manually set text and background color for any text in the editor. If you have suggestions for improving these styles, or requests for additional styles, feel free to make them. The other buttons in the editor will hopefully be self-explanatory.
Permissions?
When you create a page or a folder, you are the owner, and you are always allowed to edit, write and create folders and pages under folders. Moderators and Administrators have special permission to manage everything (including Private Campaign content).
If you assign a group to a folder or page, you can customize the group permissions in addition to everyone else (world). Permission to read is self-explanatory. For folders, permission to write gives people permission to create pages and folders inside that folder. For pages, permission to write is the permission to add comments. Edit permission gives permission to change all of that page or folder's settings and hide the page, so don't give this one out to the world.
How do I use the sidebar?
The sidebar is under construction, and changing hopefully for the better. The top panel contains the main tree of folders and pages for SL7. Clicking on folders will open or close that folder, displaying the contents. Clicking on a page will display that page in the main content area of the window.
If you are using a mouse, you can right-click (ctrl-click for single-button mice) to open a context menu for the item that you click on. You can "mark read" pages or whole folders. You can toggle a page or folder's bookmarks from this menu. You can also create new pages and folders from this menu as well. If you select "create ..." on a folder, you will create a folder/page underneath this folder. If you select "create ..." on a page, you will create a folder/page at the same level as the page.
In the future, I hope to enable drag and drop sorting for pages and folders. This will be restricted to the permissions system mentioned above. If you have edit permission for a folder, you'll also have permission to reorder the pages/folders underneath it.
The bottom panel of the sidebar is (right now) only a partly functional system. For some reason when you click on a page down there, it resets the main tree's open/closed state, so that everything collapses. Eventually, I may rework the sidebar to act like a tab system that integrates with the main navigation.
Dice rolling? What?
The dice roller that is available on in-character pages can support 4 kinds of dice. d6, d10, d20, and d100. When you create pages, there is a dice configuration option that allows you to select a different dice system for that page. In The Sixth World, all pages should be configured for Shadowrun's d6 system that sometimes allows dice to "explode". This means that if a die rolls a six, then that die gets re-rolled, and the next roll gets added to the six. So if you roll a 1, 6, and a 3 with exploding dice, then the 6 die will get rolled again. If you get a 3 on your second roll, your final results would be 1, 9, 3.
If you select d10, rolls on that page will only be ten-sided dice. If you select free dice, then rolls can be configured for d6, d10, d20 or d100 dice.
Dice rolls aren't completed until the comment is posted, and if you make a mistake, you can remove the dice roll, and reconfigure another one before posting the comment. Once the comment is posted, and the rolls are calculated, the rolls cannot be changed. Additionally, comments cannot be deleted for a number of reasons, including people rerolling for better rolls.