New Player Guide

It may seem daunting at first: Such a vast amount of information about the setting, rules, new people. It really isn't. Nobody is going to yell at you for messing up or asking questions. We're a friendly bunch, honest. Okay, i know that's what all the creepy serial killers in the World of Darkness say, but in this case, it's actually true. On this Wiki, we've gathered all of the important information about the setting aswell as the rules that we expect you to live by while playing with us. For the overall site rules, refer to the General Site Rules for instance. Whereas if you want to make a character with us, check out the Character Creation section. These should already help you on their way a tremendous amount. Surely though, you still have questions beyond the ones answered in those sections. Hopefully we can answer a few more in this area. Don't forgot to stop by our Getting Started section aswell.

Shadows over Amsterdam is a Roleplaying site that uses a combination of Chat and Forums for players to communicate and play together in an in-character manner. Generally speaking, we prefer the Forums to be used for things like mails or phonecalls, aswell as moodposts or history posts. In other words, things that don't neccesarily take place in real-time, or that when they do, can be handled relatively quickly. Forum scenes tend to get dragged out, and we certainly don't want combat to occur over forums for instance. It would take forever! Therefore the Chat allows you to play out scenes in a much quicker manner. What's important to know about the chat is that you can jump in at any time! You do not need to wait for an ST to show up to run a scene for you, you can just go in, and start playing with other characters. This means that there's a lot of responsibility on the part of the players to make sure they treat each other with respect and don't cheat. It's the honor system in the case when there isn't an ST around. Remember, when in doubt; you can always contact an ST.

You may have noticed that we are affiliated with a number of other World of Darkness RP communities, noteably set in Toronto, New York, and Portland. These form a continuous gameworld that we colloqially refer to as the 'verse of darkness. Each of these sites is a self-contained one; meaning that they have their own rules and (hopefully) playerbases. It is not our intention to have certain players dominate each of these cities. Don't like the ST's, setting, or rules of one site, but still enjoy the players and the roleplaying? Then join another site set in the same universe!

Characters can potentially cross over between cities; in-character, this is a difficult process, and not meant to be a common occurance. But we still want to give you the option. Events that happen in one city may have consequences in others set in the same universe, and ultimately, we hope that you as players, in conjuncture with us as ST's, deliver an almost global storyline that continually evolves.