Gameplay

[section3mods]

Game Environment

Physical Environment | Ms Mourne's Store | The Cell Block | Medical Care | The AES | Game Time vs Real Time

• Physical Environment
  
  The bungalow your character will be living in has the following layout:
  
  
  
  Your character will be assigned a roommate. If your character isn't happy with their roommate, they will have to convince someone else to swap rooms with them. Every room has a private back entrance and a private bathroom and closet; kitchen and living area are shared. Kitchen and bathroom come with basic equipment--pots and pans, kettle, toaster, basic food items like milk, eggs, rice and bread, towels, washcloths, toothbrush, one bottle each of shampoo, conditioner, and shower gel. The closet will have one set of clothes in your character's dress style and three or four changes of underwear. The room itself comes with basic furniture--a reasonably comfortable queen size bed, a closet, a desk with chair, a drawer unit, and a computer, a telephone and television. (More info about what the house contains upon your arrival can be found here.)
  
  The television runs four channels of cartoons. Avid television watchers will notice that the cartoons repeat themselves weekly. The computer is reminiscent of public library terminals--you can access request forms and official village updates, and you can take notes. You cannot connect to any sort of network or send any sort of messages. The telephone has no numbers pad, just ten buttons--one for each of the other rooms, and one for the supply store.
  
  Leaving the bungalow, you will enter the village, which is laid out something like this:
  
  
  
  Five bungalows and the supplies store circling a "market" place, with the AES--Artificial Environment System--and the cell block behind the supply store. East of the village, there's a small brook and some woods. West, north and south of the village is open grassland. If you walk long enough--for about five hours--in any direction, you will eventually re-enter the village opposite from where you left it. If you walk far enough, you might spot some animals--grazing wild ponies, deer, maybe the occasional sheep or cow. No people, though.



• Ms Mourne's Store
  
  The supplies store is where your character will be shopping for everything, from pets to food to furniture. It is open daily from 8 am until 10 pm, so make sure not to leave your shopping till late at night. When you enter, you will find yourself in a bare room, clean but depressing, with a curved counter along the backwall. Behind the counter, there's Ms Mourne. Ms Mourne is a stern-looking, mature lady (you can admire her in the icon of this post) who will never talk to you or interact with you unless the matter concerns supplies or request forms. There's a price list pinned to a blackboard next to the door.
  
  Ms Mourne will take your orders and will usually give you what you asked for, in exchange for appropriate payment, of course, which you will acquire in form of a weekly allowance. Upon arrival in your room, you will have found a card on your desk--it looks very much like a debit card, and it has your name printed on it--which had your initial allowance on it. Your computer has a card slot, in which you can insert your card at the start of every week to receive your allowance. This card is what you'll be using to pay Ms Mourne.
  
  If for any reason Ms Mourne feels that it would not be appropriate for you to receive the requested item, she will reject your request. Sometimes she will also give you a form to fill out. The form is a Special Items Request Form, and will ask for your personal details as well as the reasons for your special item request. Handing such a form in won't always mean that you'll be given what you requested, but it'll definitely better your chances, since Ms Mourne is not in the habit of giving out special items without having received the appropriate form.
  
  You can request special items using the computer as well, but if your request is approved, you will still have to pick up the item at Ms Mourne's store.



• The Cell Block
  
  Another thing you can request per form either on the computer or at Ms Mourne's store is leave to imprison another inhabitant of the village for a limited amount of time. Again, you will have to state a reason, and, if appropriate, provide proof. If your request is granted, you will be provided with a cell door code.
  
  There are two cells. Each cell is equipped with a wash basin, a toilet and a bunk bed for a maximum occupancy of two prisoners, and is fronted with glass rather than bars. The cells are heated, so any discomfort should come from the limited amenities rather than environmental complaints.
  
  If someone's request to imprison another village inhabitant is granted, this will make them responsible for the prisoner. Meaning they will be the only one in possession of the door code--unless they give it out to someone else--and will be the one responsible for providing food to the prisoner. The cell will unlock automatically once the time of imprisonment requested is up. If a prisoner is being neglected, Ms Mourne might step in, if she feels the prisoner's well-being is at stake.



• Medical Care
  
  If your character gets hurt or falls ill, they can request medical care. The computer has a form for that, too. So does Ms Mourne. Since death is not a possibility in this game, your character's life will not be at stake as they wait for their request to be granted. They might be in pain, but we all know that bureaucracy does not care about anyone's pain.
  
  If/when medical care is approved, medical supplies can be picked up at the store during opening hours, daily from 8 am till 10 pm. If a surgical procedure is required, Ms Mourne will take you into her back room, which contains a medical examination bed and something that looks like a full body scanner. Your character will always be fully anesthetized for any procedure, so unless someone tries really hard, it'll remain a mystery how exactly medical procedures are being done.



• The AES
  
  The AES is the Artificial Environment System. It's essentially a holodeck. It's locked. Ms Mourne has the key. Ms Mourne also has a variety of programs that run on the holodeck. Your character can purchase them at the store using a Special Item Request Form. Once you've purchased one, you can reuse it, or give it to other characters. Owning an AES program will allow you to unlock the AES--you simply insert your program disc into the slot next to the door, and the AES will let you in and run the program.



• Game Time vs Real Time
  
  One week of game time equals a month of real time. Meaning that four days real time roughly equal one day game time. If you get your character through about a quarter of a day, each day, you should always be up-to-date.

Game Style and Etiquette

Characters And Character Development | Game Balance | Cameos | Pup Trading | Style | Violence, Death and Adult Content

• Characters And Character Development
  
  Character development is awesome! Please do not shy away from pushing your character out of his or her comfort zone and building a development arc that will make your pup realize things about themselves they may not have realized before. On the other hand, please also let other characters be the focus of the game for a while, if appropriate.
  
  Do not handwave consequences of traumatic experiences. If you put your character through a traumatic experience, you must play out the effects this experience will have on them. Do not trivialize emotional and psychological reactions to trauma. If you're not sure how to have your character react to their traumatic experience, Google can help out.
  
  When playing a plot, please avoid insisting on previously decided outcomes if those do not seem appropriate anymore. Your or other player's characters might not do what you thought they were going to do, which might change the outcome of a plot. Please do not compromise your or other characters' characterization for plot reasons.



• Game Balance
  
  No character will be able to bring any weapons or technology into the game. The Doctor will lose his TARDIS and screwdriver, Jack Sparrow will lose his knife and sword. There are no weapons available in the village--if you want a weapon, you will have to either use a kitchen knife, or build your own gun.
  
  The normal level of power for any character entering the game is that of an average human being. If your character is an average human being, they will keep all of their abilities. If your character is an alien or a mutant or a wizard etc, he or she will most likely lose some powers and abilities. As a rule of thumb, you can assume that anything your character can wield and exercise control over will be stripped away, while things that your character has no influence on or cannot wield as a weapon will remain.
  
  Physiology will not change. Time Lords will still have two hearts. They will also have to sleep and eat, though.



• Cameos
  
  To keep Section Three manageable, the comm has a cast member restriction of ten main characters. However, it is possible for outside players to apply for a cameo. This means you can play at Section Three even if you're not a permanent comm member.
  
  To do so, you will have to come up with a plot idea about why your character would end up in Section Three and what they would do there. Usually, your character will be an acquaintance/friend/enemy of one of the main cast members, and would be coming in either because they have a bone to pick with the cast member, or because the beings in charge of Section Three decided there were unresolved issues that needed to be worked through. Write your plot idea up in a short synopsis, fill out the cameo application form, and send the whole thing to the mods at section3mods[at]gmail[dot]com.
  
  You can find more info about cameos in the cameo application post.



• Pup Trading
  
  As players in this comm are allowed to play up to two main characters, you might find yourself ending up threading with yourself. This is not against comm rules, as long as you don't overdo it. It's not exactly a whole lot of fun, though. So, if you ever find yourself in a situation like that, you're allowed to hand one of your characters over to another comm member of your choice.
  
  You're always allowed to do this. You should have one, or a maximum of two, main character(s) as your primary focus, but you're always allowed to temporarily hand them over to another comm member if you want to take an "outside look" at your character, or if you need someone else to take the wheel for a while in order to avoid having to thread with yourself. You are not allowed to hand your characters over to someone who is not a member of the comm--at least not without mod approval and, depending on the situation, possibly a cameo application.
  
  You can also give general permission to one, several, or all players in the comm to play your character in your absence, should they be needed for a scene.



• Style
  
  Present tense, third person, straight prose. No asteriks or square brackets or action in italics. Use quotation marks to indicate speech.
  
  Wrong:
  
  
  [The Doctor raises an eyebrow before he leans back in his chair and puts his feet up on the desk.]
  
  I think you're lying.
  
  [He really doesn't like you very much.]
  
  
  Wrong:
  
  
  The Doctor raised an eyebrow before he leaned back in his chair to put his feet up on the desk.
  
  "I think you're lying."
  
  His tone underlined the obvious dislike clearly visible on his face.
  
  
  Right:
  
  
  The Doctor raises an eyebrow before he leans back in his chair and puts his feet up on the desk.
  
  "I think you're lying."
  
  His tone makes no secret of his obvious dislike for the person occupying the visitor's chair.
  
  
  Any tags that use a blatantly different format than the one requested above will be deleted by a mod. For small mistakes--wrong tense, or wrong person--a mod may contact you and ask you to fix it, if possible. If you keep getting it wrong, consequences might follow. We're anal about this one because we're trying to uphold a certain continuity in the narrative. Backreading/re-reading is much more fun if the format doesn't change with each tag.
  
  As a panfandom game, Section Three unites characters from a broad variety of fandoms. This kind of environment sometimes creates the temptation to go meta in your writing--to let your character react to things as if they were fictional rather than real, and let them address their own subtext in a calm, digressional manner. Please try to avoid this. Meta threads can be fun as one-offs, but Section Three is attempting to create a stable, game-realistic environment for characters to interact in. Meta tends to undermine that sort of stability.
  
  Threadjacking is allowed, within reason. If two characters are having a conversation somewhere where another character could easily overhear them, feel free to have your character tag in with a reaction or an interruption. If you are reading a more private interaction and are thinking that you'd love to throw your character in, contact the muns of the threading characters and ask permission to threadjack.



• Violence, Death and Adult Content
  
  Death is not possible in Section Three. Your character can get hurt, but they cannot die. They got stabbed through the heart? It will hurt like a bastard, and take a while to heal up, but your character won't die from it. Same with any other cause of death imaginable. This means that you should avoid getting your character hurt too badly--advanced, automated medical care is provided in the village, but if your character was burned to a crisp or blown to smithereens, their recovery will most likely take a good long while.
  
  Violence and adult content are allowed and encouraged, as long as they don't happen in a gratuitous manner. Feel free to have your character hit on anyone you think they would hit on, and, if they're successful, you're welcome to thread the sexual encounter at the comm as well. You're also welcome to fade to black, if you prefer that. It's up to you.
  
  Same with violence. If your character is the violent type, feel free to thread as much gore and blood and brutality as you like. As long as there's a in-game reason for it to happen, and it's not just gratuitous violence, nobody will stop you.
  
  Any and every thread containing triggering material absolutely needs to be tagged with a trigger warning. Triggering material includes but is not limited to rape, dubcon, gore, violence, violent sex and abuse of any kind. If you're not sure if your thread needs to be tagged with a warning, just go ahead and tag it. There can never be enough warnings.