FAQ

[Sullivan Marsh]

Alphabet City FAQ

The place looks nice and all, but I know nothing about RENT…

And the beauty of RENT RP is that there’s not a lot you need to know to play in it. Unlike, say, Harry Potter, where there is a ton of canon information, the RENT world is surprisingly easy to navigate. There are 8 canons, whom you can learn about from interacting with them. The time is 1993-4. Alphabet City (East Village, NYC) is a dump full of starving artist Bohemian types trying to make a place in a world that has little use for them. Drug abuse, HIV, and poverty are all problems, but the cast lives the credos “Forget Regret” and “No Day But Today”. That’s really all you need to know to make a character and jump on in. If you'd like to read more, head on over here and read away.

Ok, but you have over 60 members, why do you even need me?

No, we don’t have that many, actually. That member number at the bottom of the board goes up by one every time someone registers. If that person registers and never applies, or does apply and make a character and then doesn’t stick around, the member count doesn’t go down by one. We actually have about 20 players (give or take a few). Most have multiple characters. And we need you because having one more active, creative, great writer enriches this place. We like enrichment.

Why do players have to be 18?

The short answer is because those that started this board are older, and wanted to RP in a more adult environment, and the boards we had access to had no age limit/requirements. So we started our own board with that rule as one of the foundations. If you truly want the long answer, ask an Admin.


Why no netspeak?

Because when you boil it down, an RP is writing, just with many people creating a finished product instead of one. We're old fashioned and like our writing all proper like.

Ok, but why no netspeak in the cBox, it’s for chatting, not writing, after all.

Honestly? Because it’s annoying. That having been said, we do advertise the board in the hope of attracting new members. The cBox is visible to these visitors. What good writer is going to want to RP (write!) with people who talk like that? So please, do us the favor of avoiding it. New members aren’t just for us to say we have a high member count; they’re possible characters for your own to interact with, so it’s just as beneficial to you as it is us for you to observe this rule.

Why the limitations on the number of characters we can have?

Because, the fates have seen fit to grant this board some success and we know for a fact how hard it is to actively maintain more than two characters. We want quality characters and RP at AC more than a large character population. Because really, what good is having a lot of characters on the list if half of them are rarely around?

But I noticed a few of you have a lot of characters?

Those with the limit (6) are admins. We took on the allotted maximum amount for purposes that would help the board (one reason being at the time there were a lot of single characters, mostly female, and not enough males for them to be able to find love). Actively (and actively is so very much the key word here) playing that many characters is very time consuming, trust us, and we freely admit that we have no lives in order to sustain them all.


How can I get my own apartment forum?

Go toThis Thread. If you meet the criteria, reply asking for your own place. Exceptions may be made, refusals are up to management.

Is there a rule on signatures?

Have one, don't have one, we don't care. Just don't make them huge, and don't make them so wide they mess up the board parameters ( no bigger than 500 px wide, that is. Should this happen, you will be getting a PM from an admin asking you to change it). If you don't like seeing all those sigs (as some of us don't), simply turn off viewing them in your preferences. Don't know how to do that? Ask an Admin.

Do Avatars have to be of a famous person?

No, not at all. Some of us just find it easier to use a famous face. All we ask is that your Avatar be a picture of your character, we don't care if it's a celebrity, a random person you found on Getty, a drawing, or whatever else you can come up with.


As questions arise, this will be added-to. Keep an eye on it.