The Beginner's Guide to Forsaken Lullaby

[Administration Staff]

Getting Started on Forsaken Lullaby

What's up ladies and gents, Your Admin, Dies Irae, here, bringing you newcomers a guide to getting started on our lovely home away from home, Forsaken Lullaby.

Now when you get past all the account making and browsing you might be a little confused on just what you should do to get started and get some roleplays going or chats with fellow members, well that's what I'm going to explain here, following this should get you off to a nice start. But first a little formating and streamlining is in order, so here's the rundown on what we will be learning here, the table of contents below will give you an idea.

Table of Contents:

i: Forum Index.
        - The Welcome Center.
        - Roleplay OOC.
        - Roleplay District.
        - Avant-Garde.
        - The Human Equation.

ii: Forum Basics.
       - Making a topic.
       - Posting.
       - Private Messaging.
       - Chat.

iii: Getting Started, Making Yourself Known.
       - Posting an Introduction.
       - Posting a Request Thread.
       
iv: Required Reading.
       - The Site Rules.
       - Chat Rules.
       - Other things.

v: Important People.
       - Your Staff.
       - The Regulars.
 
vi: Closing.
       - Conclusion
       - Contact.

So without further delay let's get started on the New User Guide to Forsaken Lullaby.

[Administration Staff]

The Forum Index

This is the main page you view whenever you visit Forsaken Lullaby, in this post I'll be going over each of the sub forums and their categories in a brief summary, so lets not wait and dive right in shall we.


The Welcome Center:

This is the subforum that encompasses most of the site related topics such as introductions, admin notices and Q & A.

Admin Notifications: This is where the administration post announcements, notices and rules, new users are recommended to take a look at the rules for chat and the forum before they begin posting, links to both of these will be posted later on in the guide. Keep a watch on this section for important announcements.

Introductions: This is where new members introduce themselves, or old members announce their return, this will be where you as a new user start your journey but we'll explain that later.

Questions and Suggestions: This is were users post questions to the staff or occasionally a suggestion to improve the site, don't be afraid to ask a question, even regular members can answer to save us staff members time so if they do don't be alarmed, if they give incorrect information an admin will rectify the mistake with the correct answer.

Advertisement: This is a section where other sites may advertise within reason, member poaching is a banable offense so please if you wish to advertise, message one of the admins myself, Dies Irae or TakodaVega for clearance to post here.

Roleplay OOC:

This subforum is where members post their roleplay request threads, males, females and everything else, let's take a look at what there is.

Roleplay Requests by Females: This is where females and people who play females post their request threads for roleplays or those looking for a female partner go in search for one.

Roleplay Requests by Males: Exactly the same but opposite gender, males and people who play males post their requests here and those looking for males search for one here.

Alternative Roleplay Requests: This is usually used to find group roleplays (Roleplays with 3 or more people), Open roleplay interest checks, or for request threads that can't be categorized into male or female.

Roleplay District:

This is the subforum where the magic of roleplaying takes place, a category for all kinds, find out where your roleplay would fit by reading the summaries.

General Roleplay: The category that most roleplays fall into, roleplays that are original or could be found in everyday fiction or non-fiction or categorized as vanilla (Meaning standard or normal).

Fan-Based Roleplay: A category for roleplays based on the works of others, which include books, movies, anime, games and any other work written by another person, even other roleplays.

Taboo Roleplay: Roleplays that comprise plots or characters that would be considered forbidden go here, BDSM, Incest etc things you wouldn't find in everyday fiction, But be warned, Lolicon or Shotacon is not permitted, Meaning no characters under the age of 16 are allowed to be played here or anywhere on site.

Semiprivate Roleplay: This category is special in that it cannot be viewed by guests so if you'd like your privacy from everyone but Forsaken Lullaby members post your roleplay here no matter what it's about.

Design Your Universe: A fairly new category, this is where you post if you'd like to rp in a premade world made by another member, the member who created the universe has control over it so if you'd like to take the challenge then post your rp here, make sure to get clarification on the world from the creator first.

Open Roleplay: Open roleplays are just that, open, anyone can join and leave at anytime, as long as the roleplay follows the TOS you may post whatever aside from banned content, you must post a character bio in the appropriate thread first though.

-Open Roleplay Bios: The threads that house the character bios, post your bio thread for your open roleplay here, people wishing to join the open roleplay must post a character in the appropriate bio thread before posting to the roleplay.

-The Scenic Route: A subcategory for the sexual side of open roleplays, if your character and another are going in a sexual direction play it out here then return to the open roleplay once it is done.

Avant-Garde:

Bohemian Sector: The Creative corner of Forsaken, post your art, music and films here to be critiqued and viewed by the members of forsaken.

The Vanguard: The intellectual discussion part of Forsaken, limited to serious discussions only, share an opinion on a topic that interests you, not for fighting, keep it purely discussion based.

Writer's Guild: For the solo writers, post your short stories, novels or any written work here for viewing by the forsaken community. There is also a sub-forum dedicated to our Newsletter, Whispers from Troubled Dreams, here as well.

Belletrist Table: This category is for getting opinions or ideas on your writing, characters or settings, post tutorials for other members to view or ask for help on something for your roleplays or writing by another member.

The Human Equation:

This is the chill out zone of the site, random chats, journals and game talk happen in this subforum, lets see what we can do down here.

General Discussion: Talk about anything and everything here, it's all alright to post as long as it abides by the Terms of Service. Topics breaking the rules or topics that attract drama will be deleted.

Journals and Absences: Need to record you thoughts or track your roleplays?, taking a vacation or leave of absence?, post them here.

Gamer District: Anything gaming, from videogame discussion to forum games and quizzes, post your forum games for members to play or talk about your favorite games here.

Word of Mouth: The Tabletop gaming section of Forsaken, D&D, Warhammer and all that fun stuff, Review your favorite systems, which versions you like or dislike and discuss your tabletop adventures with fellow fans.

Closing:
Now that's the sites subforums, I hope you have an understanding where your topics should go based on the content, so lets head on to the next part Forum Basics.

[Administration Staff]

Forum Basics:

Now we'll move on to the basics of the forum, like making a topic, posting, messaging and chat, stuff you'll come to learn on your own fairly easily but here I'll explain how to do them for those who might be new to forums or just have trouble with Forsakens set up at first.

Making a Topic:

So first thing you'll want to do is make a topic, since your first thing will be your introductions, so what we'll do first is go to the introductions category in the welcome center.

Once you're there underneath the chat window on the right you'll see a few buttons you can click, these are, mark read, notify, new topic and post new poll, we want to click on new topic.

Once you've gone to the new topic page, enter a title in the subject box and then you can get started on the post part of your topic.

Posting:

Once you've made your title you can start writing your post in the big box at the bottom, you'll also notice a bunch of buttons above the box that can be used to format and alter your post in various ways, take some time and experiment using the preview button at the bottom to see what they do without posting.

You can also use the additional options pane to tinker with the settings, experiment some more with those over your time here to find out what they all do.

Once you've finished your post and are happy with it, hit the post button and you'll get taken to the new topic.

When you want to reply to a topic, go to the topic and under the chat box on the right side the first button will be reply, hit that to be taken to the posting window, don't enter a title this time, just type your message and hit post and you'll reply with RE: "Topic name".

Private Messaging:

The next part of the forum basics section of this guide is the private messaging, a useful tool to contact members of Forsaken privately, to do so just follow these steps.

Go to the profile of the member you want to message, this can be done by clicking on their name in the online box at the bottom of the index page, through the member list which can be viewed by clicking the members button at the top of the index, or clicking their name in a topic they've posted in.

Once on the profile of the member you want to message scroll down to additional information, the first link in this box will be "Send this user a personal message" click this and you'll be taken to a posting window.

Enter a title for your message then type your message and hit send message, after doing a preview and spell check to make sure everything is in order before sending.

Chat:

This will cover the awesome chat box that appears on the index page of Forsaken Lullaby, very easy to use and requires no setup to start chatting*.

First notice the buttons at the top and bottom right, the top buttons are update and open pop up, the first refreshes the chat manually in case you missed a message or chat stopped updating automatically, the second opens the chat in a new tab or window so you can stay on chat while doing other things.

Down the bottom we have the stuff that affects your messages, these are Bold, Italics, Underline, Smileys and Text Color. There is also a button that enables and disables sounds, when enabled each time a message is sent a small sound plays, when disabled the sound is muted.

Once affiliated with all the buttons just type your message in the white box and hit enter or click the send button to send your message.

Also a little side note, typing /me before you message will make it into an emote for example.

If I typed, Waves to the people in chat. It would appear as Dies Irae: Waves to the people in chat.
If I type /me Waves to the people in chat, It would appear as Dies Irae waves to the people in chat.

A nice trick that many people have to ask about.

*- The only people who may have issues with chat are those using IE. If you have any problems please try the following solutions found here.

Closing:
Now you know how to make a topic, post to threads, private message and use chat, next is the Getting Started guide on what you should do once you've joined.

[Administration Staff]

Getting Started, Making Yourself Known:

So here's the most important part of the new user guide, the making yourself known, by means of an introduction thread and a request thread, both of these will help members get to know you better and you'll be able to start getting requests for roleplays by other members. For now let's start off with the introduction thread, which is basically saying hello to everyone on the site,

Posting an Introduction:

This is your first post most likely, so try to be clear and coherent, use spell check and check through to make sure you make sense, first impressions are important, but don't stress to much over it, we're all nice people here, we don't bite.

If you're unsure what to write, first take a look at some of the other introductions by other members, see what they wrote and figure out if you want to include that yourself.

Generally you'll want to write some things like what i suggest below, note these are only suggestions feel free to write whatever you like.

- A name you'd like to go by, Example I'd type "I'm Dies Irae, but call me Dies"
- Why you joined Forsaken.
- What you hope to gain by being here.
- A little about yourself.
- Some hobbies you enjoy, some members might share them and you can start from there, such as video games, books etc.
- your roleplay history, whether your a novice or an expert, its a nice thing to know if you plan to be an active roleplayer.
- contact information (optional) like msn, aim, yahoo, skype etc, you don't have to put this if you don't want to.

That is a general introduction and will do well telling users about you and what your here for and also give them an idea of what your experience in roleplaying is. For an example look at my introduction here. Click Me!

Posting a Request Thread:

Next on the list of things to do, is the request thread, which is the calling card, bread and butter, whatever important phrase you'd like to use for a roleplayer. This is how people will know what you like, your writing skills, whether you share intrests and whether or not they want to roleplay with you, with this you want to make sure you spell check and edit your message to make sure it's clear and error free, or you may get requests that you don't want because of a typing error.

So what you want to do first is type up a small introduction, but focus more on your roleplaying, your experience, how much you type per post on average, your level of literacy, for example I view myself as lit to adv-lit.

After your small intro, I suggest but it's optional to write a list of rules, as many as you need to ward off unwanted requests, so stuff like a post length requirement, a literacy requirement, what you do and don't want in a roleplay etc, avoid writing rules of posting times, real life happens and can throw off posting, having a hard posting time of say once a day can potentially ward off requests you might have wanted. Generally people post as much as they are able to.

Once you've finalized your rules you can move on to your pairings list, this is the roles you would like to play with a partner, an example list would be something like:

Student/Teacher
Neko/Master
Angel/Demon
Hunter/Hunted.

Or anything like that with two roles. You can also do the same with settings, which I'll extract from my request thread, a settings list would look like this.

Settings:
.Hack// (The World).(++)
Feudal.
Medieval.
School/College/University
Modern Era.
Futuristic Era.
Apocalypse Setting.
-Viral (++)
-Zombie (++)
-Natural Disaster
-Nuclear War
War.
-Supernatural
-Modern
-Futuristic
-Past

This is my settings list, see how I've got a base setting then the branches of that setting, such as apocalypse, which is a base, then the cause of the base setting which could be zombie, nuclear or viral, use your imagination to expand your settings and pairings into bigger ideas.

Once you're done with that, you can finish up with a closing statement and post your request, it's also a good idea to post a few replies with "Reserve" as the message just in case you need more space, you can just edit the reserve posts later when you need to add more.

As an example here's my request thread, take a look and see how it all comes together. Click Me!

Closing:
That's all for the posting your introduction and request, next we move onto the required reading when you've joined the site, I hope you enjoyed this part of the guide, let's move on to the next part shall we?

[Administration Staff]

Required Reading

As with all websites, we have a bit of stuff that all new members need to read once they've joined up, most of these are on the entry page but for clarification and to make sure all users understand the importance of the rules, I shall repeat them here, along with the chat rules and some other things new users need to know.

The Site Rules:

These are the laws of Forsaken Lullaby breaching these will result in an immediate warning or ban depending on severity, the proper authorities may be contacted if need be.

The rules are as follows.

1: By registering you are agreeing to obey International and United States Federal Law.

2: You must be 18 years of age or older to register or enter this website.

3: No Lolicon or Shotacon allowed, any character, image or conversation involving fictional or non fictional under 16's in sexual situations, the offender will be immediately banned. Breaching this will result in the contact of the proper authorities.

4: In accordance with Federal Law, Images or Videos of Bestiality is strictly forbidden. Breaching this will result in the contact of the proper authorities.

5. You understand that Forsaken Lullaby's staff and owner cannot confirm the validity of posts, that we do not actively monitor posts, and thus are not responsible for content contained within posts. However, we strive to remove objectionable content and encourage you to report it to our staff, as we reserve the right to remove objectionable content.

6: You agree to refrain from posting any nude images of yourself or others, unless you can reference a 2257 document offsite, in the case of another they must reference the 2257 document, a valid form of identification and expressed written consent to the publishing of their image by you.

7: Any harassment or general drama from members of another website against the members, staff or owner of Forsaken Lullaby will be immediately deleted and the offender will be banned, if the issue persists the proper authorities will be contacted.

8: Please be civil to other Members on the forum - We are adults who should know how to handle our attitudes towards someone else. In other words don't make an ass of yourself just because you don't like them.

9:  Please try to keep posts relevant and substantial to the current thread. As well attempt to keep all 1x1 and role-play discussions through PM's to keep the boards from getting too cluttered. This is imply so Forsaken's spam guard does not decide to label a user as Spam by mistake. Also, please try to keep OOC conversation in Roleplay threads to PMs as well, or in chat.

10: Have fun!

Chat Rules:

The chatbox has it's own set of rules each user must follow, breaching these may result in a warning, ban and if severe enough contact of the authorities. Please make sure to follow the rules of chat and forsaken as well.

The Rule of Chat are as follows.

To ensure everyone enjoys their time on Forsaken Lullaby, All users must adhere to the following rules for chat.

1 - Harassment will not be tolerated. Ever - you will be chat banned for a minimum of One week should you do so.

2 - If any user takes offense to a discussion, speak up and it shall be stopped immediately. If ignored please report it to staff with a chat log! We will take care of the situation.

3 - Serious RPing is not allowed in chat. Goofing off is more than welcome.

4 - Be courteous and respectful of other forums. Even if you don't like them try to give them, and their members, the same respect you give to Forsaken and it's members. If you cannot be polite about it please keep it off-forum or restricted to PMs.

5 - RP discussions are more than welcome in chat! However if it overrides whats currently going on, please take it to PMs.

6 - Be respectful of others. People come from different backgrounds, faiths, lifestyles - you name it we probably have it! Please treat them like you would yourself. 

7 - Do not Troll, at all.

8 - Lastly, Have fun and enjoy your time in chat!

Lastly there are a few more topics that new users may want to read, links are below.

Concerning Open Roleplay.
In Concerns to Other Sites vs Forsaken.

Keep an eye out for new announcements and news that pops up in the Admin Notifications.

Closing:
That wraps up the Reading material for now, next up is the Important People section, let's continue on.

[Administration Staff]

Important People:

As with all sites we have a few important people that make the site keep going, this part of the user guide will let you know those people if you ever need help from staff and if their not online, the regular users should be able to help.

Your Staff:

These are your staff members and the people you should go to when you need help.

TakodaVega - Admin/Owner.
Dies Irae - Admin.
Altair - Global Moderator.
BlisteredBlood - Global Moderator.

We can answer any of your questions about the site or how to do something, so don't hesitate to ask if you have a question.

The Regulars:

These are the members of the forum who have been on awhile and can help with most of the basic questions about the forum, if they cant help just message a staff member and they'll respond as soon as possible.

DoctorRed - Forum Regular.

Closing:

So that does it for the staff and users you can contact for help, last bit is next, closing and contact, hopefully this has proven helpful to you.

[Administration Staff]

Closing:

Finally done, hopefully this guide has helped you on your way through figuring out how to get started and what everything on the site means, how you can get help and how to talk to people.

I'd like to take the opportunity to welcome all the new members to the site and wish you all the best of luck in getting your introductions done and your request as well, as well as finding good partners to roleplay with.

With that said, if you ever need assistance, message me or any of the staff at anytime and well get back to you as soon as possible, you can also contact me on any of the messengers I'm registered to listed below.

MSN/Email: In-The-Unblind@hotmail.com
Skype: diesirae243
AIM: SnowScene243
YIM: abeltocain

Enjoy your time on Forsaken Lullaby, Thank you for taking the time to read this guide to getting started on Forsaken Lullaby.

This has been Dies Irae, one of your admins, thanks for reading again hope to catch you on chat.