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Anyone is welcome to read and even comment in OOC if they wish. The first game is a 3+ year old M&M3 game and the second is only a few months old but I'm doing some creative things with M&M3 in it.
"It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things."
So I've been using the Sheets for a long time but I haven't used the forums before, and I've just joined an online game here for the first time. Does anybody have any reccomendations for how I should be formatting posts? I'm not used to the site's UI yet.
I should clarify my question further, in retrospect. I don't necessarily mean "how" mechanically. I'm more asking what steps I should be taking to make my posts more visually readable than just a plain wall of text.
Such things are all opinion and personal preference so with that understanding I'll provide the things I like to do.
First, I like both the fieldset and the setfield tags. Fieldset allows you to embed a little tag in the top left corner of a bounding box with whatever you want inside:
[fieldset="Text"]Other Text[/fieldset]
Setfield gives you the same bounding box but without the tag in the corner.
[setfield]Text[/setfield]
You can also put image tag in there but you cannot resize it (via Img2). So I cut out portraits of my PCs that are 100-150 pixels square.
In this field I put my dialogue and text, separating speech by bolding it and adding color (dark green is my preference) so it stands out.
Usually below the fieldset I will either add a stat block or a setfield with crunch related information inside so it can be easily digested and is clear what is mechanics and what is not. For some sheets like the D&D and Pathfinder ones there is a statblock field on the sheet that can be called with a simple command, but only if the sheet is attached to the game.
[SB][/SB]
[SB][/SB](see nothing happens without a sheet attached)
This one can be spoiler tagged so that you only see if if you open it, like players may prefer to not see the crunch text.
As a GM, I will use a fieldset separated below my posts to line out a summary of action since somethings can get lost when you are using a narrative style.
Another thing I like to do with walls of text is use clip art dividers to break up sections. Ones with transparent backgrounds work best.
In short, break things up into useful sections and add whatever decorative elements make you happy.
My advice is to find a post format that you like, use the Quote function to grab the BBCode text, and then repurpose it. Spending a little while fiddling with things and hitting 'preview' will teach you a lot. You can also use the MW Wiki for help with stuff like dice rolls and whatever.
My personal advice: keep character images and decorative stuff to a minimum, and try not to flood the post field with stats and numbers; it gets busy very easily on here. I recommend using spoiler tags to hide the crunchy stuff.
YMMV with all this; I like to keep the post formats pretty simple because I hate having to parse through a lot of noise to find the relevant bits. In all honesty, no post format is ever as bad as somebody who writes 6 paragraphs of inner monologue in what's supposed to be a single 6-second round, which isn't something you encounter when you play IRL. The best advice I could give about posting on here at all is to remember that we're all playing together, not writing fanfic for our own indulgence. The formatting just takes a little practice and experimentation. Find one you like, steal it, and modify it as needed.
Paragraphs help a lot. Bolding speech, as well as adding color, can make a small, but noticeable difference. Adding a character image can be helpful.
Also, I find it helps clean things up using spoiler tags to keep OOC talk, character data, and even mechanical talk (such as rolls, action economy, etc) out of the way, but easy to find.
But seriously- the real trick is being generous with paragraphs. It breaks up the wall of text more than anything. 3-5 sentences is my general guideline, but it's more about the general feel and pacing.
With some experience and experimenting, you'll figure out what works for you.
Paragraph roleplay is the enemy. There is nothing more annoying than 3 full paragraphs of things another character is thinking about, to which I cannot respond, because my character would not know anything about it.
So maybe try to discourage excessive use of thought ballooning.