From DirtyWiki

This is how we play the game!

Contents 1 What We Use 2 Where We Play 3 How We Play 3.1 Character Journals 3.2 Main Community 4 Rules of Activity 5 Dirty History 5.1 About 5.2 Gameplay 6 In A Nutshell

What We Use

We use LiveJournal communities and journals to play. The game has a main community and its members are character journals.

Where We Play

The main community, dirty_life, is where all third person roleplays go. This is the major plot, the major action, paper journal entries, etc. News articles belong in the IC news community, fuckyestheydid (incidentally, fuckyestheydid welcomes fake fangirling journals or even characters to comment--IC--and treat it a bit like the community we modeled it after, ohnotheydidnt).

The out of character (OOC) community is located at dirty_lives. All posts are locked except those that may concern or interest people not in the game. Anything, even things not related to DL, is allowed to be posted there. From plotting to general insanity.

If you want to roleplay canon backstory, see Dirty History.

The fan community is located at dirty_fans. Anyone may join and post anything game-related. However, there is a stict no character bashing rule that will always be honoured.

How We Play

Dirty Life is a journal/third person roleplay. In a nutshell, the characters have LiveJournals. They update these like regular LiveJournals. Threads and major roleplaying goes in the actual, official community, and are all third person (past or present tense). You can log over email or IM or something other than LJ, but always post it afterwards (and LJ-cut if it's excessively long).

If you want more specific information, proceed.

Character Journals

Each character has his or her own personal journal (Example!). These are not paper journals. They are used as actual, authentic, 100%, red-blooded LiveJournals. Your character can post memes, quizzes, picspams, phoneposts, e-mail updates, comment sprees, anything that you do with your own. It's all go. Please do be considerate and put large or inappropriate pictures behind an LJ-cut.

If your character chooses not to use their LJ (two examples: in_futility and yourclaire) it may be reserved only for threading/logging in the main community. You can't use it in any other way (as in, you can't update it with paper journal entries, backstory, fiction, or other generally OOC items). They can always start using it as an LJ later. ***SPECIFY IN THE APPLICATION OR OOC COMMUNITY IF YOU DECIDE YOUR CHARACTER DOESN'T USE THEIR LJ***

The following apply to journals being used as LJs.

• If a character has to lock or privitize an entry, do not ever really lock, filter, or privitize it! Instead, use LJ's own images for locked or private posts and stick it in as an image at the top of the entry. (If it's easier for you, you can also put 'Friends-Locked' or 'Private' in the subject of the entry.)
• If a character has to filter an entry, use LJ's locked image and put 'Filtered: [character names here]' in the subject. You can also just use 'Filtered: [character names here]' and leave out the image.
• If an entry is "filtered, locked or private" and your character is not able to see the information, do not act as though they did/can. Unless you worked something out where a character hacked into another journal or the original character forgot to privitize an entry at first and did it later, your character is not going to know what has been posted. Don't pretend otherwise.
• If you have something OOC to say, do not say it anywhere on the journals! Save it for the OOC community, an e-mail, or an IM. Use of "OOC:" anywhere in the character journals is not allowed. No OOC comments.
• If your character uses strikethrough, all other characters will be able to see what they said. This is LiveJournal. If you can see it, your character can see it.
• If your character uses *actions*, those are considered netspeak, not actual actions. All actions take place in threads and logs in the main community.

Main Community

Third person narratives belong in the community. This is where the actual meat of the roleplaying takes place. Logs should be written in third person, past tense, but present tense is acceptable if you can't get used to past tense. No solidly first person logs, save paper journal entries and other non-thread IC interaction.

Which brings me to my next point.

• If you make a post, include a subject. The subject should feature the characters involved and a rating. (To see the rating system we use, click here.)
• If no rating is known at the time of posting, please put TBD (to be decided). Remember to fix this later.
• If you think your post is too explicit, believe us when we say that it isn't. Don't feel the need to LJ-cut or to lock it (again, we don't allow locking).
• When adding tags, add the character's name, any supernatural species involved, and pairing names, if applicable.
• If the post is well longer than 500 words or takes up quite a bit of space, please LJ-cut it past the second or third paragraph.
• If you thread in the LJ post itself, please reply to the post, not to the comment above. This prevents comments from collapsing, and allows people to edit comments if they have the ability to do so (this requires a paid account).
• If there are multiple conversations or interactions going on in one thread, use party-style threading. This means you reply to the relevant comment, not to the post. See the example here.
• If you have an NPC in your thread, use dirty_one. The password can be found in the OOC community, or ask a moderator.
• If you thread outside of LJ, you can use any method you wish but remember to post the entire thing once you're done. And add the LJ-cut after the first couple of paragraphs!
• If your post takes place a day or more before you posted it, please backdate it by editing the time and date and specify at the top when it really takes place.
• If your post takes place in the future, please do not have it predated any more than one week. Remember to specify by changing the time and using a note at the top of the entry.
• If your post is three months old or more than one week early, do not post it. Backstory belongs at Dirty History, and futureverse (anything well into the future) belongs at Future Life.
• If you start a paper journal for a character, please add '[character's] journal' and 'journal entries' to the tags. You may format how they write their entries. There is no rule. (Many people choose to italicize paper journal entries.) See the examples.
• If you post an e-mail, texting, telephone call, or otherwise non-prose thread, put the entire thing behind an LJ-cut. You can see examples for email threads here, and examples of letter threads here. You can, of course, add prose to these posts.
• If your characters use a language other than English, either use the language itself and provide translations at the bottom of the post or in the OOC community, or format the speech differently. Some players choose to italicize things that not spoken in English. (Again, specify what language is being spoken using a note at the top of the entry.)
• If your timezone means you are far ahead or behind certain events, please remember to post the log and shift the time to the appropriate date if it will cause some complications. (Example: so if your character is in Australia, it is appropriate that they are a day ahead, whereas if you are in Australia and the roleplay is with a character who is in South Africa, remember that you'll have to set it back. Because we do real time, it can get confusing when some characters are doing things a day ahead despite being in the same time zone as other characters.)
• If you have a news article to post, use our community, fuckyestheydid. The journal we use to post here is thingstheydid.

Rules of Activity

• Update at least once a week. This includes commenting on entries, threading, or posting entries. You can and will be removed for inactivity.
• Keep your character's friends list up to date if you can. The friending code is always updated.
• Comment on other entries! This is often how characters bond. You don't need an excuse to find a person on the internet.

Dirty History

Dirty Life has a second game, a sister game that is both canonical and follows many of the same rules as above. However, this game is for backstory roleplaying, so there are some differences and explanations that need to be taken care of here.

About

Dirty History (or Dirtyverse) is both a supplement community and a sister game. All of the roleplays here are backstory, reaching into history as far back as players know to go. All characters in the game are related in some way to characters in DL, if not DL characters themselves, so many of the journals overlap. You will also find new characters from family history or past events.

Gameplay

See also: Dirty History FAQ

• Characters will not update their LiveJournals for this game, whether they're new or old. This keeps confusion to a minimum.
• All roleplaying (all roleplaying) goes into the main community. The same posting rules apply here, except that backdating isn't relevant and you can post fiction and drabbles you've written, as long as they're canon and backstory. You must always include a date and some context at the top of the roleplay, preferably in a small font to keep it cleanly separate and noticeable.
• Characters don't have to (and characters in both games should not) friend everyone in DH. Since commenting on/reading friendslists is not part of this game, it doesn't matter.
• Any period of time is open, within reason. We'd like to stay within the last three thousand years (preferably within the last thousand) and not any more recent than three months ago.
• You can redo a roleplay at any time. While DH is more stable than future roleplaying, it's still not as stable as DL. If you change anything as you develop your character, deleting and fixing is appropriate. You can do this as many times as you need to. Posting is not chronological and doesn't have to be relevant to any specific event.
• There will be new characters that only appear in DH and there is no limit on the amount you can make. If you have a character in DL and you want them in both communities, you don't need to make a new journal, although you can. Keep in mind that it can get confusing to host too many journals for the same character and you never know what time period you'll cover. It's recommended to use the same journal and specify the date on posts in DH (or have appropriate icons).
• The NPC journal is historic_one. See the OOC community for the password.
• If roleplaying fantasy more than four hundred years ago, take note that some beings have evolved since then or were still evolving at the time. See the specific fantasy sections and the people in charge of each for more information.

In A Nutshell

Roleplay third person stuff at dirty_life. Post OOC stuff at dirty_lives. Use character LiveJournals like the real thing and keep them IC. Post IC news articles at fuckyestheydid. Post future canon roleplays/fiction at future_life. Post backstory canon roleplays/fiction at thedirtyverse. Post alternature universe (AU) roleplays/fiction at life_alternate.