Furscape New Player's Guide
You're welcome to ask questions on the guest channel or talk about MST3K on the chat channel for as long as you want. But why not just jump right in?
NOTE: If you already have a character and are requesting a second or third, please use your existing character (not a guest) to run the @request program.
There are a number of reasons why a character @request might be denied: If you failed to provide a plausible-sounding real name, if you requested a character name the staff consider unacceptable, if you failed to provide a valid email address, if you already have too many characters, or if you have recently been given a character and have not yet configured it.
After your character is approved, you should receive an email with a temporary password and instructions for how to log in. If you don't get the email after 24 hours or so (and it doesn't turn up in your Spam folder), you should ask a wizard to check on it. It may be that your @request was denied for some reason, or it may be that no wizards were available to process it, and they just need a reminder.
New players should take a look at this guide before deciding what their characters are going to look like.
The majority of characters in Furscape's setting are recoms: animal-like beings created by humans back on Earth before the Apocalypse War. The majority of recoms are based on mammals: cats, canines, rabbits, skunks and so forth. However, there are also some birds, some reptiles, Belters, some centauroid species, and a few other odd types. Keep in mind that recoms vary a lot in size. Some recoms have odd traits such as extra tails, wings or other extra limbs, strangely colored fur, or nonstandard gender (herms or androgynes).
After you have logged into your new character, there are several basic steps involved in configuring it. These are things you should do before getting into roleplay.
First, you need to set a permanent password. The one emailed to you is considered temporary, and you will want to change it to something you can remember. The command is:
@password <old password>=<new password>
So, for example. . . If your randomly assigned password was FJ874 and you want to change it to fooble, you would enter:
@password FJ874=fooble
If your client supports colors, you can turn color on.
Since Furscape is open to socially mature players of all ages, we need to verify your real life age. (It won't be shared with other players except as a yes/no check.) To confirm your real life age, just type @birthday. Note that this is different from your character's age, which you set up with the biography.
Next, define how your character is seen by others. The most important things to fill in are:
You can check your description by typing look me.
We also have a CINFO (character information) program, which is used to make information about your character available for other players to read. This will help them roleplay more effectively with you, but does not mean that their characters will know this information. Your cinfo is also what allows staff or another player running a scene to determine what your character is capable of. Thus, please stay within theme and be reasonable and realistic in your choices.
You are not required to fully fill out all of these fields immediately. To begin with, you need to fill out at least a few, such as homeworld, history, and skills, so that other players will have at least some idea who you are. More information can be added as you develop your character and as a result of your character's new experiences. However, once you have roleplayed a part of your character's history, please do not change it retroactively, except as directed by staff.
You can check your CINFO by typing cinfo followed by your name. Ask a staff member to check your CINFO and description when you're done setting these. (If a staff member isn't handy at the moment, just leave page #mail.) The staff member can help you make any revisions so that you can be approved to play!
(Just as with @desc, you can use {nl} to break up long cinfo entries.)
Some fields you can set are:
The command for setting any of these fields is cinfo #set <field>=<text>
It is possible to set custom CINFO fields, so you can add any kind of info that you think others ought to know about you, or set secret fields with information that only staff should know. (If you need to use custom or secret fields, please choose names for them that are different from the standard fields listed above.)
cinfo #setmisc <fieldname>=<text>
cinfo #secret <fieldname>=<text>
You may want this information to appear on the character bios wiki page as well.