Contents

Welcome to the Black Dragon Inn

This is a condensed guide with everything you need to get started without leaving out any important details.

We are a text-based roleplaying community. Everything that happens is done in text and all the graphics are in your mind. This leaves a lot of room for imagination and character building. BDI has been around for over 25 years now, and there’s a lot of lore to dig into. Thousands of years of it, to be precise. That can be overwhelming, so read this and then feel free to ask questions in whatever channels you deem fit.

The Prime Rule

Nothing happens to your character without your consent. Especially not death.

You come up with a character and describe what they do and say. Other characters can interact with yours and try to befriend or harm them, but you get to decide if and how they succeed. That goes both ways; you can only affect other characters in the way other players let you.

Examples of how this work are below.

Drache Map

City of Drache (Created July 2018, by Uzzo)

The Main Setting

The Black Dragon Inn is a tavern and inn set in the medieval fantasy world of Siveth. Technology is simple and there are no guns.

Feel free to delve deeper in the religion, geography, language and politics of the world, but in-depth knowledge isn’t required to play – unless you want to be a politician, geographer, linguist or priest.

Here are all the basics. The Inn is located in Drache: a bustling port city on the southern coastline of the main continent of Veth, in the southern hemisphere with ships, cobblestones, a marketplace, a castle, and so on. A few blocks to the west of the Inn, is the Forest Reserve, a thin strip of park area running along the Darian River. Drache is the capital of the duchy of Transdariania, one of the seven duchy of the Confederacy of Arangoth, ruled over by the Sithire (duke) Dolurn ul-Dorn Rumunire. Transdariania is primarily aristocratic estates and tenant farms for several days’ ride in the three main roads out of Drache. The local religion is Menxism. The native language is Arangothek, but most people speak a trade creole language called Common.

Background Characters

Dulcina: the head bar maid, all the time until the end of time
Rantan: the rarely-seen owner
Woolly: a dire sheep who lives out back and eats power-gamers
Orwell: the town crier and village drunk

These are four bots, so you can’t interact with them directly.

The Civic Guard is located nearby so appointed members of the guard can handle any major events quickly. All guards have in-character authority and are generally meant to be obeyed. Only those with express permission are allowed to be guards.

The Inn Building

The Black Dragon Inn itself has one long bar-top, two fireplaces, and tables scattered throughout. There are stairs that lead up to as many rooms as required, usually for sleeping. The Inn has people working there doing anything necessary to keep it running, so you can narrate a server bringing you a drink. It’s also enchanted to regenerate anything broken and it’s immune to fire.

Everything in #BlkDragon-Inn takes place inside or just outside the Inn, but that’s not to say things can’t happen elsewhere. You can use one of our many Main Setting channels in our Discord server for any characters involved in a visit to a shop or a walk in the woods. You can also invent things that happened to your character elsewhere as part of your backstory or plot. Keep in mind that per the policies, anything like an area of effect or requires government officials response or input must be discussed with a mod prior to play.

First Steps

So you’re new to the server, what do you do? Hang out for a bit, see what other people are typing, and get an idea of what’s going on. Feel free to ask questions to moderators about character creation, and Setting Nerds are there to help with questions about BDI’s world lore. People in BDI are helpful and very forgiving so long as you follow the basic OOC rule: Don’t be a jerk.

If one of the Moderators (Indicated with the Admins/Staff/Staff Trainee role on Discord) tries to give you instructions, they are genuinely trying to be helpful and make sure everyone’s having a good time. Nemmiecakes runs the show, with lore support from Shayde, and Nicci providing security. Grey Day Mourning is currently training to be a full member of staff.

If you’ve watched for a bit, you may have figured out the gist of how people post. The Inn channel on Discord is for classic drop in/drop out style tavern roleplay, while the other channels may have session or play-by-post scenes. Session scene responses happen within less than 3o minutes Play-by-post scene responses may take more than 30 minutes or longer depending on posting expectations between players, which should be communicated.

Here’s a rudimentary example of how RP in the Inn can works:

Bob: Enters the room smiling and waves to Edna.
Edna: Returns the wave and walks over to Bob in a non-threatening manner.
Bob: Opens his arms to greet Edna with a warm non-sexual hug.
Bob: Adjusts his pants.
Margey: Walks in through the door and nods to Bob and Edna on her way to the bar.
Edna: Embraces Bob in a mutual hug.
Bob: Enjoys the hug.
A Dragon: Smashes most things and eats almost everyone present.

Now, what’s right and what’s wrong about this?

First of all, you will see WAY more text and description going on in the actual room. We’re a literate server, which means we like a little more meat on bones. Paragraphs, multi-paragraphs, etc. Make a story line, invent a plot, describe your character. Set your mind free. A more detailed character will make it easier for people to interact with you. Too many details and people may not want to read all that.

Try to do interesting things, interact with people and try to give the other players something to write with. You’re working with everyone in the room to try to create something. If no ones noticing you, you may need to acknowledge them first write some kind of a ‘hook’ for them to work with.

Now, before Margey came in, the post order was Bob-Edna-Bob-Edna. But Bob messed up and posted twice. It’s rude to post twice before your partner/s had a chance. It’s assumed you’ve said everything you had to say already so it means people now need to re-write their reply to accommodate the new events.

When Margey came in, she would have established a new order – except that Bob and Edna did not acknowledge her (also rude, you should be trying to involve everyone in the game if it’s plausible) so she doesn’t have to post in their order. It’s possible to have a few different conversations or events happening around the Black Dragon where one group doesn’t have to wait on another to post, unless someone writes something that would directly affect a player outside the group. Sounds confusing – but trust me – it’s way easier than it sounds.

Notice how Bob did not say he hugged Edna outright, but rather left it open to a mutual agreement to hug? Anything you do that affects another character should be done with the same consideration. If Bob went and hugged Edna, that’s powergaming. When The Dragon came in and killed almost everyone, that was also powergaming and would result in a ban.

Now you have a good idea of how to play, so play on. There are races to choose from with their own histories which might make it easier for a first-timer to fit in, but you can honestly do whatever you like – within reason. Like, don’t be a two-hundred foot tall giant made of lava – instead – be a 5’9″ blacksmith made of elf or human or half-goat-person. See? Lot’s of options.

All characters must have an approved sheet. After reading our policies, create a Google Doc using the provided Character Sheet Template, then submit your sheet to the appropriate channel on our Discord server. It may take up to 24 hours for a moderator to review a sheet. We’re volunteering our time here, so please be patient!

Have fun!