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shouldknow information.
Roxas' addition
updated on January 2, 2012; from this post, written in 2/2010.
It depends on what you want to know. I'll start with the application system, since it is the point where everyone finds themselves afraid, and go from there.
Applications
A lot of people are confused about the application process, and they are worried about being funny enough. Many appers tell others that they never make an effort for humor in their application, and that's true. But there's a difference between a humorless application that's amusing and interesting because it's an IC response, and an application that's dry, without anything interesting, and is very bland.
The key thing to avoiding the latter is knowing your character. How would they respond to zombies, psychic toucans, horny goats, manhandling gorillas, and a giant tentacle monster in the lake? While these are not the only things to come into play—whether you use them is up to your own discretion, which I’ll go into later—it’s important to make your camp app campy enough to show that you are understanding your character in the setting. CFUD is a comment spam atmosphere, and being able to engage with it quickly and rapidly is a huge part of playing your character. You can consider the app a test of that—not your humor, but a full on way of testing your ability to engage. There are other things to use: Livejournal used to be an effective tool and I imagine with the shift over to Dreamwidth, meta jokes will come into play. Diaries and letters have also helped from time to time. Just ensure that the voice is there.
Once you have decided on how to utilize these things in your application, it’s time to start your app.
Apps are not that difficult to write in the theoretical way, but everyone has a different way of writing them. Some people spend two months on every sentence. Others write them in thirty minutes. Neither person is better than the other. I, the writer of this information, am personally a quick writer, but I do things well in advance so I can edit obsessively. Some people enjoy the rush of last minute apping. Think of it like school: you have all types of writers. And all different types of people succeed. Only, of course, this is a hobby.
Now, thinking of school, here’s another thing from it: remember the five paragraph essay you had to write for school, but eventually started to deviate from? That’s how applications are. There’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning should effectively draw in the reader, not only opening the “story” of your application, but setting up your character in the situation. As a word of advice, a snappier intro to your application is sure to keep someone reading. The middle is where your character does things. And the end is where it ends with a punch—or, often, a climax, but you can assume where it will go. A number of different jokes can help in the middle and end section, but also interesting ways of interpreting and responding to the setting. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer likes being called cute, so he might ignore the fact that the gorillas are gorillas if they are calling him cute. This is just one quick example. Puns are a great way of making someone laugh. But some don’t always like them. Some people like cleverly used song lyrics, while others will question why a character is doing that. Some enjoy zombie’s losing their parts, and others don’t. You do not have to worry about every players’ preferences, as you can’t make everyone happy. We’re a reasonable bunch and understand that not every app is going to tickle our fancies. But perfect ins happen a lot despite that.
A general rule of thumb regarding length and aesthetics, which might be weird, but bear with me, is a length of at least 400 for your sample and 300 for the canon. The canon should always be 100 words or more shorter than the app. As complicated as a character’s canon is—and trust me, I’ve apped Kingdom Hearts of all canons, which spans multiple games, has convoluted interviews, and has Japanese only scenes that impact the interpretation of the rest of the series—the app reader doesn’t need to know all that to understand the character in question. But don’t leave out pertinent info, either. Find a happy medium. Succinctly writing a canon is difficult for most appers, especially those of us who came from games with long-form histories and personalities.
As for the best types of app that work, the ones that involve speaking to an audience usually hit off great. Very little off-screen interaction occurs in these applications. Weaker apps have issues with flow, weak voices (where there’s no rhythm, inflection, or obvious voice present—sometimes voices are like this, and unique philosophical insights can help)—and a lot of work assumed on the reader’s part for off-screen events. Or even narrating the off-screen events.
Good: Wow, she said I’m cute! Ah, I can’t believe that happened ... Right, right, Santa sent me here to do something. Um, I’m sorry, everyone. I guess I’m here to give a demonstration on how to appreciate your read beaks!
Bad: Eh—? You just--? That hurt! Don't slap me with that! I just wanted to—eh, you slapped me again, and slapped me again—is that a jealous face for me being called cute?
Monologue and “memoiresque” apps can also be effective, which falls in-between, but they also come off as very passive and don't always show how the character will speak in camp, but they are often necessary with quieter characters. We also have accepted applications without voices, IE action tag apps, but the biggest advice I can give is to show your character. Writing a setting is fantastic, but absolutely keep in mind what the reindeer thinks, how the reindeer reacts, why the reindeer doesn’t like the smell of Tuesday soup but feels compelled to eat it anyway ... It’s showing why your character is interesting, not writing an app for toe number six in the soup.
For a good idea of what apps have done well recently and to use as a good guide, look at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cfudapparchive. Apps that do 90-100% are generally what you want to look at, and stick to more recent rounds. It will give you a better idea of what the voter base (which does evolve, as we do evolve as players) are currently looking for. It may also behoove you to look at apps that have done poorly to see how voters have criticized them if you’re concerned.
On another note, it is not absolutely necessary to get a beta for your application, but if you are a new player, I do suggest it. You may be really good at this app thing, and that’s great. But don’t do it just for having someone look over your app—which is nice, since CFUD apps aren’t like you can fix your app up five days later, so it’s a good measure just in case—but also so you can have someone help you out and show you that they are interested in getting you in. Now, I know not everyone gets back a beta from betas. It has happened. Sometimes people sign up to beta and then forget. This is not an offense to you as a player, and they mean no harm. If this happens, I recommend checking out the last minute beta post that will go up in CFO the day before apps open. These people are dedicated to helping out your application. And they can help you on the basics of camp, too, generally.
Remember! You only need 70% in. Some players have been in CFUD since “the dawn of time,” so to speak, but they still have trouble with apps. But they are fantastic, brilliant players. After an app round, no one will remember if you were almost out or if you got a 100. You’re the only one who will remember! So just get to playing. No one is judging you personally by judging you out, and sometimes things just don’t click. It happens! We’re all human here. But I have had people vote me out who have become the players of my characters’ biggest relationships, so it’s not like they were gunning for me or my characters.
As for the app process, remember to be polite and don’t demand crit. Don’t treat people as if they are misreading your application and are missing a point. Stuff happens. Sometimes I write stuff and it makes perfect sense until I read it later. It happens to all of us. So just remember to try and keep your cool, but this is a process that is a little rough, especially the first few times. We understand. (There are some people who like to sleep through their rounds to avoid the anxiety; others lose sleep over it. That’s how it works.)
And most importantly: CFUD is all over all types of characters. CFUD’s voters don’t vote accordingly to wanting one character or another. If mods think someone is voting biased because they hate a character or may think they know who the player is or even if crit is uncalled for, they will speak to you. You will be talked to. So don’t worry too much on this front. Our game is on top of this, so the confusing or worrying aspects of the process are handled. They are absolutely anonymous and the mods are on top of keeping it that way. In general, though, CFUD is a “takes care of itself” environment.
But please don’t worry that other people don’t want your character. They absolutely do! I’ve downloaded series after finishing an app or even in the process of betaing them. This is the kind of atmosphere CFUD is; we love introducing each other to new things. Voting itself is not based on fondness on a canon, and the mods have often reminded people to vote even on stuff they don’t know. That’s why the canon is there to help you out. Now, admittedly, some fluke outs have happened, but in general, CFUD has been really good about that. Overall, CFUD has an honor system about apps, and does a pretty good job upholding it. It’s surprising, but it is something we’ve managed.
Gameplay
Congratulations, you’ve gotten in! Make sure to intro on the OOC before jumping into play if you’re freshmeat, because the warm welcome from all the players is something that’s very, very nice to have. It’ll make you feel involved. CFUD loves its new players. (Or freshmeat!)
Now here’s a separate list of things to keep in mind that are important. Originally, I took some of this off anontalk, but years have passed since this was originally written, and so has RP culture. So, plurk has a part in this!
Chats: Chatting for CFUD takes place on IRC on the server Lunarnet. The info for joining these servers will be linked easily so people can figure it out. This isn’t really an AIM heavy game, but there are a lot of people who use Gtalk because we’re usually in our gmails (or we’ve downloaded the program). Gmail is good for this, if you’re not using it already!
Of course, you don’t have to go into all the chats. In fact, you don’t have to go into any. Several of our players never visit chat, but they still are some of the most active and exciting players in the game. They get high comment counts, they get praise in love memes, and in general, they’re fantastic. No one resents them and they love playing with them. CFUD is open on all people’s preferences on this.
However, most players do utilize the network. This is a journal that adds everyone’s journals and that’s how we read CFUD—so it’s not only the communities, but also the journals associated with the communities holding memes, essays, and information. It’s a good way of letting people know what’s up with your character, as we rarely do status updates on characters in our OOC community.
But we do sometimes have cast channels, given the girth of CFUD. There is one main channel (#campfuckudie), and then several off-shoots for casts. These are not necessarily cliques as people of all types are typically welcome, and they’re good ways of getting to know people in a setting that’s not as intimidating as the main chan. Main chan is a fun place to be, but it’s also a blend of personalities that are sometimes going at a very past pace. When you’re new and not used to everything, it’s easier to get to know a smaller group to feel comfortable. But there are others who are bold and love jumping into the big chat right away. It’s all up to you. The point is, if you’re not big on OOC stuff, people will get it; if they ask you onto IRC, it’s because they want to get to know you and probably think you seem awesome. CFUD is a very inviting and friendly atmosphere.
Plurk: Ah, plurk. How did it become so ingratiated with RP culture? As it is, it has become a big part of RP and people do wonder how involved with CFUD it is. The mods do not do mod business over plurk because we have a very large playerbase and expecting them to keep up with a plurk when plurks are not for everyone would be difficult. A lot of players do have plurks. And they do memes on plurks. But it is not necessarily a part of CFUD culture. It’s more like CFUDers happen to have plurks, rather than plurks are a part of CFUD.
Paid Accounts: A myth about CFUD is that you’re expected to have a paid account. Mind you, a good chunk of CFUD characters have paid accounts, but you are hardly expected to have one. We just like our icons as a playerbase, but no one will frown on you for not having one. If you think you can easily play your character on fifteen icons, then you’re both awesome and allowed to do that. No one will wonder why you’ve decided to not use the 100 icon set of Rudolph if you’re comfortable that way.
As this relates to outside perspective, one of the unusual parts of CFUD is that there’s a culture of “shameless begging” in CFUD, as we’ve termed it. This is not because we are greedy for paid time, but instead, it’s a very “you scratch my back, I scratch yours” kind of atmosphere. CFUDers are, for the most part, very welcoming and understanding of this. It’s unusual and unheard of in other games, but it is not against the rules.
If you play off fifteen icons for a while and realize you could do with fifteen or eighty-five more, you can easily ask for paid time. People are generally fairly understanding of this.
Actually Playing: This gets divided into several sections.
Posting: One of the great things about CFUD is that you don’t need to ask the mods for permission before creating a post that’s like, “SUDDENLY YOUR CHARACTER IS FORCED TO TELL THE TRUTH,” or “SUDDENLY, THERE ARE FIREWORKS AND IT’S A STRANGELY WARM WINTER NIGHT. CUDDLE.” These are only loose examples, but others have involved plots, ongoing ideas, and different ways of doing things. You don’t have to ask unless it’s an overarching plot, and almost always, that will get the okay, anyway. Of course, make sure your posts are within reason. I’ve seen players mention that they want to randomly blow up everyone’s cabins to see how people react. That will cause a lot of hurt feelings, and honestly, it’s not very funny. But on the other hand, the people who used to run the Lawyertarium would have it blow up every couple of months because it was a tradition. One is interrupting play for a massive amount of people without them expecting it; the other is handled within a select group of players. Communication is always key!
Hooks are important. Even if it’s a minor thing, having a good hook that can lead to a lot of conversation will help. Even the smallest hook (“hey, recommend a book to me?”) can be interesting. Bad hooks are where there is mostly just a character sitting around and not doing anything of interest. Sometimes character-focused posts work, sometimes they don’t.
Posting hours also come into play. If you’re Australian/Asian/from that side of the world in general, CFUD will be a lot slower. But those players usually try to band together and get one or two posts up every night. Sometimes they don’t, but that’s just how things are. It’s an unfortunate fact of CFUD, but there is almost always someone awake to play with, no matter what. Don’t get disheartened, and don’t be afraid of posting at what is a good time for you if you want to play. People will probably come around. They may have just been dry for ideas for a post themselves at that time.
CFUD’s crack CFUD is a crack game in the “you can easily genderswap your character on a whim” way, rather than the definition of altering them for humor or parody. The best I can recommend on this is to look at the community and see how we’ve managed play ourselves in the setting. The setting itself is often the “crack.” Our characters are just dealing with it.
Plotting: Plotting within casts and having major, ongoing interaction is interesting, fun, and acceptable at all times within the setting of CFUD. If you want to play a villain, people will want to play with him or her. They are fond of moments where they can interact with someone like that. Of course, always be respectful. As mentioned before, bigger plots should probably be ran by the mods, especially if they might minorly change the shape of camp’s atmosphere for a while. The mods will almost always say yes. But one of the amazing things about CFUD is that the mods will let you come up with things yourself. You can approach ideas and have fun. Numerous times I have gotten the “are you having fun? Well, good, go for it” response. Just remember all things within reason.
Getting CR: A myth about CFUD that I’m not sure is still accurate, but I’ll cover anyway, is that you automatically get CR by posting a lot. This is incorrect. You need to follow up on threads. CFUD is a game where you need to jump people in posts. Now, if you’re used to games where time flow is stricter, this might seem unusual, but you’ll understand how it works out. It’s hard to explain other than “we handwave the timespace continuum except when we want to include knowledge.”
If you haven’t seen someone out for a while that dropped a thread on you, you can probably poke them about it. They are generally open to these kind of things. If you’ve dropped a thread and are worried someone won’t reply: reply, and if you don’t get a tag in a day, contact the player, apologize for dropping initially, and say you’d love to keep the thread going. It’s really just a matter of working things out and playing.
Other Things
Things that obviously don’t fit into a section above.
The Network: This is the network. It’s a player-run thing that friends all the journals and makes it possible for you to keep up to date on things going on in the game. I’d recommend keeping an eye on it. CFUDers like to essay and do memes a lot in their personal journals, and you are actually recommended to do this, too—but don’t feel required or pressured to do so! As you can see by the length of this, CFUDers sometimes like to get long-winded. Given the comment spam atmosphere of the game, it is sometimes very nice to be able to sit down and explain why Sarah kissed Johnny even though she clearly is dating Matthew. It’s fun to read about other people’s interpretations.
Concrit: Though a lot of CFUDers participate in the LJ-wide HMD, there is also![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
cfud_concrit. It’s posted weekly. Admittedly, not a lot of visible crit happens there, but some people feel safer going there where a moderator can step in. It’s not a mod decreed community, however; like with many things in CFUD, someone came up with that themselves.
Cry_Wolf:cryfuckuwolf is an off-community AU setting that goes on from time to time. It’s basically cry_wolf, but with RP characters! It can go from being very basic to being very, very plot heavy, depending on who’s running it at the time. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s not for everyone. Don’t feel left out if you feel like you’re missing anything. No one will ever hold not playing the game against you if you aren’t up to it. Play in cry_wolf does not carry over into camp, however. Please keep that in mind.
GENERALLY: BE RESPECTFUL: Being rude to others won’t fly in CFUD, and if the mods don’t get there first, players will often handle things themselves. Don’t take that the wrong way—but it does mean that if you’re in main chan talking offensively or in a racist fashion, someone will probably find some way to get you banned for a day. People are generally very respectful in CFUD, and while we enjoy our penis jokes, we also shy away from the usage of a lot of frequently used offensive. Cast chans are not really used to backtalk against other people, and are settings to be respectful toward one another. I’m in quite a few right now, and I’ve never seen people using them as an opportunity to bash other players.
We have a pretty unique sense of humor as a game, but we try to be smart about things. Keep that in mind. If a word has a questionable definition even if “taken back,” consider the greater context of that. Things like that are wise to keep in mind. Hate speech and racism isn’t cool, at all. CFUD is a setting that is very welcoming to its players. We frequently have chicken soup posts where people can be paranoid behind a lock and understand one another or be told that hey, no one hates you, chin up! Everyone is mostly there for everyone else.
originally posted in this form atshouldknow.
first anon's addition (I'll edit this with who it is if you'd like that)
I can't possibly compete with the previous anon's wondrous tl;dr, but I'll add a few things that make CFUD different from some games in terms of culture and play style. I don't have a LOT of personal experience with other games, actually, so I'm sure there are others that handle some of these the same way and stuff that I'm missing, but in all these cases I've at least seen one game that works differently, so it's something.
The Audience
In CFUD, people are allowed and even encouraged to comment to characters with IC journals, whether they're non-players watching for their own amusement or current players who want to heckle their friends! This has gotten much, much less common over the years, but many people regret that, and I don't know of any players who seriously don't want to play with audience. The only caveat is that audience shouldn't be severely influencing events (like giving away characters' secrets). It's also been traditional for interested audience members to claim a new character for marriage when they intro, or adoption for younger characters, but again, this has gotten rare. Sadness.
Playercest
CFUD is much more accepting of playercest than most places. Indeed, many players will gladly tell you about some of their playercesting heroes or favorite moments. The general attitude is that if it's fun for you to play out and it's fun for the rest of us to read, where's the harm in it? That said, it obviously still shouldn't be infringing on your play with other people, nor should you use your characters to manipulate plot for each other or anything like that. Many people simply assume some amount of offscreen interaction for their characters even if they don't play it out, and some relegate playercest to private posts in their own journals. And, of course, many don't bother at all.
Icons (which goes back to paid accounts and other such affluence too)
Basically, CFUD happens to have a whole lot of icon whores. That's all. These people really, really like icons - they spend a lot of time getting them just right and they spend a lot of money on space for them. Most people in CFUD actually do make their own icons, and many will cheerfully make a set for anyone else at the slightest prompting; in fact they may have done so already, if it's a character they really want to see. To many, making icons is simply part of the process of getting a new character, along with making the journal and apping. But again I must agree and restate that none of this is mandatory. There are absolutely well-loved characters played on 15 icons or less, and nobody cares - I'm not sure anyone notices, why would they care? You can get a whole lot of help on the icon front if you feel overwhelmed by it, but if you don't care, that's fine. Some people just... they just like icons is all.
Posting
Since CFUD is big and high-volume and has an emphasis on creative wackiness and all, it's generally considered a good idea to make posts that are themselves very creative, engaging, and easy for anyone to respond to in an interesting way. I do think, however, CR is also a major factor. Frankly, a character with a ton of CR can get away with posting some way less interesting stuff, and likewise if you only post without tagging around yourself, you won't get as much response. (Except intros, obviously, people are good about tagging those.) So, at least early on, it's a good idea to tag more than you post and save posting for when you have a particularly interesting idea. That's this anon's opinion, at least.
Etiquette
It's absolutely true that you don't really need to be in chat, but since most people are, CFUD is in the habit of an awful lot of OOC communication. We also seem to hate cluttering up our IC comments with OOC notes if it can be avoided, compared to some games. If you do go for chat, or even if you don't, you should never feel reluctant to ask questions of the person you're threading with, or run your ideas past them, or just flailing about what's going on. You might draw in some interested observers anyway.
It also seems like every game has its own take on threadhopping, so: jumping into the middle of a thread seems to be pretty unusual in CFUD, and when it does happen it's generally because the thread was directly relevant to the hopper, or they were already established to be in the area, or such. So you might want to check with people before threadjacking, or they might see it as rude if they're not used to it. Conversely, hopping onto someone's first comment in a post, so that it creates its own thread, is very common and very popular, and from what I've seen, just about everyone in the game wishes they could both do that and have it done to them more.
AU
Frankly, I have no clue whether other games are like this or not. All I know is that if you talk about doing an AU with no other modifiers, people will assume you mean (camp AU, in someone's journal) sex. Other kinds of AUs also happen, apparently post-camp AUs are popular? I don't know.
anon two's addition (I'll edit in credit if this is you)
One more thing that hasn't been mentioned, just cause I've seen people ask about it before: even though CFUD is a big game, it's not actually that hard to keep up with. Game plot doesn't happen very often and activity requirements are actually very low. Most people really don't spam constantly, there are even some who do fine playing only on weekends, it's just high volume because there are so many players. Still higher maintenance than a small game, but you don't really have to quit your life. It's just that addictive
updated on January 2, 2012; from this post, written in 2/2010.
It depends on what you want to know. I'll start with the application system, since it is the point where everyone finds themselves afraid, and go from there.
Applications
A lot of people are confused about the application process, and they are worried about being funny enough. Many appers tell others that they never make an effort for humor in their application, and that's true. But there's a difference between a humorless application that's amusing and interesting because it's an IC response, and an application that's dry, without anything interesting, and is very bland.
The key thing to avoiding the latter is knowing your character. How would they respond to zombies, psychic toucans, horny goats, manhandling gorillas, and a giant tentacle monster in the lake? While these are not the only things to come into play—whether you use them is up to your own discretion, which I’ll go into later—it’s important to make your camp app campy enough to show that you are understanding your character in the setting. CFUD is a comment spam atmosphere, and being able to engage with it quickly and rapidly is a huge part of playing your character. You can consider the app a test of that—not your humor, but a full on way of testing your ability to engage. There are other things to use: Livejournal used to be an effective tool and I imagine with the shift over to Dreamwidth, meta jokes will come into play. Diaries and letters have also helped from time to time. Just ensure that the voice is there.
Once you have decided on how to utilize these things in your application, it’s time to start your app.
Apps are not that difficult to write in the theoretical way, but everyone has a different way of writing them. Some people spend two months on every sentence. Others write them in thirty minutes. Neither person is better than the other. I, the writer of this information, am personally a quick writer, but I do things well in advance so I can edit obsessively. Some people enjoy the rush of last minute apping. Think of it like school: you have all types of writers. And all different types of people succeed. Only, of course, this is a hobby.
Now, thinking of school, here’s another thing from it: remember the five paragraph essay you had to write for school, but eventually started to deviate from? That’s how applications are. There’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning should effectively draw in the reader, not only opening the “story” of your application, but setting up your character in the situation. As a word of advice, a snappier intro to your application is sure to keep someone reading. The middle is where your character does things. And the end is where it ends with a punch—or, often, a climax, but you can assume where it will go. A number of different jokes can help in the middle and end section, but also interesting ways of interpreting and responding to the setting. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer likes being called cute, so he might ignore the fact that the gorillas are gorillas if they are calling him cute. This is just one quick example. Puns are a great way of making someone laugh. But some don’t always like them. Some people like cleverly used song lyrics, while others will question why a character is doing that. Some enjoy zombie’s losing their parts, and others don’t. You do not have to worry about every players’ preferences, as you can’t make everyone happy. We’re a reasonable bunch and understand that not every app is going to tickle our fancies. But perfect ins happen a lot despite that.
A general rule of thumb regarding length and aesthetics, which might be weird, but bear with me, is a length of at least 400 for your sample and 300 for the canon. The canon should always be 100 words or more shorter than the app. As complicated as a character’s canon is—and trust me, I’ve apped Kingdom Hearts of all canons, which spans multiple games, has convoluted interviews, and has Japanese only scenes that impact the interpretation of the rest of the series—the app reader doesn’t need to know all that to understand the character in question. But don’t leave out pertinent info, either. Find a happy medium. Succinctly writing a canon is difficult for most appers, especially those of us who came from games with long-form histories and personalities.
As for the best types of app that work, the ones that involve speaking to an audience usually hit off great. Very little off-screen interaction occurs in these applications. Weaker apps have issues with flow, weak voices (where there’s no rhythm, inflection, or obvious voice present—sometimes voices are like this, and unique philosophical insights can help)—and a lot of work assumed on the reader’s part for off-screen events. Or even narrating the off-screen events.
Good: Wow, she said I’m cute! Ah, I can’t believe that happened ... Right, right, Santa sent me here to do something. Um, I’m sorry, everyone. I guess I’m here to give a demonstration on how to appreciate your read beaks!
Bad: Eh—? You just--? That hurt! Don't slap me with that! I just wanted to—eh, you slapped me again, and slapped me again—is that a jealous face for me being called cute?
Monologue and “memoiresque” apps can also be effective, which falls in-between, but they also come off as very passive and don't always show how the character will speak in camp, but they are often necessary with quieter characters. We also have accepted applications without voices, IE action tag apps, but the biggest advice I can give is to show your character. Writing a setting is fantastic, but absolutely keep in mind what the reindeer thinks, how the reindeer reacts, why the reindeer doesn’t like the smell of Tuesday soup but feels compelled to eat it anyway ... It’s showing why your character is interesting, not writing an app for toe number six in the soup.
For a good idea of what apps have done well recently and to use as a good guide, look at
cfudapparchive. Apps that do 90-100% are generally what you want to look at, and stick to more recent rounds. It will give you a better idea of what the voter base (which does evolve, as we do evolve as players) are currently looking for. It may also behoove you to look at apps that have done poorly to see how voters have criticized them if you’re concerned. On another note, it is not absolutely necessary to get a beta for your application, but if you are a new player, I do suggest it. You may be really good at this app thing, and that’s great. But don’t do it just for having someone look over your app—which is nice, since CFUD apps aren’t like you can fix your app up five days later, so it’s a good measure just in case—but also so you can have someone help you out and show you that they are interested in getting you in. Now, I know not everyone gets back a beta from betas. It has happened. Sometimes people sign up to beta and then forget. This is not an offense to you as a player, and they mean no harm. If this happens, I recommend checking out the last minute beta post that will go up in CFO the day before apps open. These people are dedicated to helping out your application. And they can help you on the basics of camp, too, generally.
Remember! You only need 70% in. Some players have been in CFUD since “the dawn of time,” so to speak, but they still have trouble with apps. But they are fantastic, brilliant players. After an app round, no one will remember if you were almost out or if you got a 100. You’re the only one who will remember! So just get to playing. No one is judging you personally by judging you out, and sometimes things just don’t click. It happens! We’re all human here. But I have had people vote me out who have become the players of my characters’ biggest relationships, so it’s not like they were gunning for me or my characters.
As for the app process, remember to be polite and don’t demand crit. Don’t treat people as if they are misreading your application and are missing a point. Stuff happens. Sometimes I write stuff and it makes perfect sense until I read it later. It happens to all of us. So just remember to try and keep your cool, but this is a process that is a little rough, especially the first few times. We understand. (There are some people who like to sleep through their rounds to avoid the anxiety; others lose sleep over it. That’s how it works.)
And most importantly: CFUD is all over all types of characters. CFUD’s voters don’t vote accordingly to wanting one character or another. If mods think someone is voting biased because they hate a character or may think they know who the player is or even if crit is uncalled for, they will speak to you. You will be talked to. So don’t worry too much on this front. Our game is on top of this, so the confusing or worrying aspects of the process are handled. They are absolutely anonymous and the mods are on top of keeping it that way. In general, though, CFUD is a “takes care of itself” environment.
But please don’t worry that other people don’t want your character. They absolutely do! I’ve downloaded series after finishing an app or even in the process of betaing them. This is the kind of atmosphere CFUD is; we love introducing each other to new things. Voting itself is not based on fondness on a canon, and the mods have often reminded people to vote even on stuff they don’t know. That’s why the canon is there to help you out. Now, admittedly, some fluke outs have happened, but in general, CFUD has been really good about that. Overall, CFUD has an honor system about apps, and does a pretty good job upholding it. It’s surprising, but it is something we’ve managed.
Gameplay
Congratulations, you’ve gotten in! Make sure to intro on the OOC before jumping into play if you’re freshmeat, because the warm welcome from all the players is something that’s very, very nice to have. It’ll make you feel involved. CFUD loves its new players. (Or freshmeat!)
Now here’s a separate list of things to keep in mind that are important. Originally, I took some of this off anontalk, but years have passed since this was originally written, and so has RP culture. So, plurk has a part in this!
Chats: Chatting for CFUD takes place on IRC on the server Lunarnet. The info for joining these servers will be linked easily so people can figure it out. This isn’t really an AIM heavy game, but there are a lot of people who use Gtalk because we’re usually in our gmails (or we’ve downloaded the program). Gmail is good for this, if you’re not using it already!
Of course, you don’t have to go into all the chats. In fact, you don’t have to go into any. Several of our players never visit chat, but they still are some of the most active and exciting players in the game. They get high comment counts, they get praise in love memes, and in general, they’re fantastic. No one resents them and they love playing with them. CFUD is open on all people’s preferences on this.
However, most players do utilize the network. This is a journal that adds everyone’s journals and that’s how we read CFUD—so it’s not only the communities, but also the journals associated with the communities holding memes, essays, and information. It’s a good way of letting people know what’s up with your character, as we rarely do status updates on characters in our OOC community.
But we do sometimes have cast channels, given the girth of CFUD. There is one main channel (#campfuckudie), and then several off-shoots for casts. These are not necessarily cliques as people of all types are typically welcome, and they’re good ways of getting to know people in a setting that’s not as intimidating as the main chan. Main chan is a fun place to be, but it’s also a blend of personalities that are sometimes going at a very past pace. When you’re new and not used to everything, it’s easier to get to know a smaller group to feel comfortable. But there are others who are bold and love jumping into the big chat right away. It’s all up to you. The point is, if you’re not big on OOC stuff, people will get it; if they ask you onto IRC, it’s because they want to get to know you and probably think you seem awesome. CFUD is a very inviting and friendly atmosphere.
Plurk: Ah, plurk. How did it become so ingratiated with RP culture? As it is, it has become a big part of RP and people do wonder how involved with CFUD it is. The mods do not do mod business over plurk because we have a very large playerbase and expecting them to keep up with a plurk when plurks are not for everyone would be difficult. A lot of players do have plurks. And they do memes on plurks. But it is not necessarily a part of CFUD culture. It’s more like CFUDers happen to have plurks, rather than plurks are a part of CFUD.
Paid Accounts: A myth about CFUD is that you’re expected to have a paid account. Mind you, a good chunk of CFUD characters have paid accounts, but you are hardly expected to have one. We just like our icons as a playerbase, but no one will frown on you for not having one. If you think you can easily play your character on fifteen icons, then you’re both awesome and allowed to do that. No one will wonder why you’ve decided to not use the 100 icon set of Rudolph if you’re comfortable that way.
As this relates to outside perspective, one of the unusual parts of CFUD is that there’s a culture of “shameless begging” in CFUD, as we’ve termed it. This is not because we are greedy for paid time, but instead, it’s a very “you scratch my back, I scratch yours” kind of atmosphere. CFUDers are, for the most part, very welcoming and understanding of this. It’s unusual and unheard of in other games, but it is not against the rules.
If you play off fifteen icons for a while and realize you could do with fifteen or eighty-five more, you can easily ask for paid time. People are generally fairly understanding of this.
Actually Playing: This gets divided into several sections.
Posting: One of the great things about CFUD is that you don’t need to ask the mods for permission before creating a post that’s like, “SUDDENLY YOUR CHARACTER IS FORCED TO TELL THE TRUTH,” or “SUDDENLY, THERE ARE FIREWORKS AND IT’S A STRANGELY WARM WINTER NIGHT. CUDDLE.” These are only loose examples, but others have involved plots, ongoing ideas, and different ways of doing things. You don’t have to ask unless it’s an overarching plot, and almost always, that will get the okay, anyway. Of course, make sure your posts are within reason. I’ve seen players mention that they want to randomly blow up everyone’s cabins to see how people react. That will cause a lot of hurt feelings, and honestly, it’s not very funny. But on the other hand, the people who used to run the Lawyertarium would have it blow up every couple of months because it was a tradition. One is interrupting play for a massive amount of people without them expecting it; the other is handled within a select group of players. Communication is always key!
Hooks are important. Even if it’s a minor thing, having a good hook that can lead to a lot of conversation will help. Even the smallest hook (“hey, recommend a book to me?”) can be interesting. Bad hooks are where there is mostly just a character sitting around and not doing anything of interest. Sometimes character-focused posts work, sometimes they don’t.
Posting hours also come into play. If you’re Australian/Asian/from that side of the world in general, CFUD will be a lot slower. But those players usually try to band together and get one or two posts up every night. Sometimes they don’t, but that’s just how things are. It’s an unfortunate fact of CFUD, but there is almost always someone awake to play with, no matter what. Don’t get disheartened, and don’t be afraid of posting at what is a good time for you if you want to play. People will probably come around. They may have just been dry for ideas for a post themselves at that time.
CFUD’s crack CFUD is a crack game in the “you can easily genderswap your character on a whim” way, rather than the definition of altering them for humor or parody. The best I can recommend on this is to look at the community and see how we’ve managed play ourselves in the setting. The setting itself is often the “crack.” Our characters are just dealing with it.
Plotting: Plotting within casts and having major, ongoing interaction is interesting, fun, and acceptable at all times within the setting of CFUD. If you want to play a villain, people will want to play with him or her. They are fond of moments where they can interact with someone like that. Of course, always be respectful. As mentioned before, bigger plots should probably be ran by the mods, especially if they might minorly change the shape of camp’s atmosphere for a while. The mods will almost always say yes. But one of the amazing things about CFUD is that the mods will let you come up with things yourself. You can approach ideas and have fun. Numerous times I have gotten the “are you having fun? Well, good, go for it” response. Just remember all things within reason.
Getting CR: A myth about CFUD that I’m not sure is still accurate, but I’ll cover anyway, is that you automatically get CR by posting a lot. This is incorrect. You need to follow up on threads. CFUD is a game where you need to jump people in posts. Now, if you’re used to games where time flow is stricter, this might seem unusual, but you’ll understand how it works out. It’s hard to explain other than “we handwave the timespace continuum except when we want to include knowledge.”
If you haven’t seen someone out for a while that dropped a thread on you, you can probably poke them about it. They are generally open to these kind of things. If you’ve dropped a thread and are worried someone won’t reply: reply, and if you don’t get a tag in a day, contact the player, apologize for dropping initially, and say you’d love to keep the thread going. It’s really just a matter of working things out and playing.
Other Things
Things that obviously don’t fit into a section above.
The Network: This is the network. It’s a player-run thing that friends all the journals and makes it possible for you to keep up to date on things going on in the game. I’d recommend keeping an eye on it. CFUDers like to essay and do memes a lot in their personal journals, and you are actually recommended to do this, too—but don’t feel required or pressured to do so! As you can see by the length of this, CFUDers sometimes like to get long-winded. Given the comment spam atmosphere of the game, it is sometimes very nice to be able to sit down and explain why Sarah kissed Johnny even though she clearly is dating Matthew. It’s fun to read about other people’s interpretations.
Concrit: Though a lot of CFUDers participate in the LJ-wide HMD, there is also
cfud_concrit. It’s posted weekly. Admittedly, not a lot of visible crit happens there, but some people feel safer going there where a moderator can step in. It’s not a mod decreed community, however; like with many things in CFUD, someone came up with that themselves. Cry_Wolf:
cryfuckuwolf is an off-community AU setting that goes on from time to time. It’s basically cry_wolf, but with RP characters! It can go from being very basic to being very, very plot heavy, depending on who’s running it at the time. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s not for everyone. Don’t feel left out if you feel like you’re missing anything. No one will ever hold not playing the game against you if you aren’t up to it. Play in cry_wolf does not carry over into camp, however. Please keep that in mind. GENERALLY: BE RESPECTFUL: Being rude to others won’t fly in CFUD, and if the mods don’t get there first, players will often handle things themselves. Don’t take that the wrong way—but it does mean that if you’re in main chan talking offensively or in a racist fashion, someone will probably find some way to get you banned for a day. People are generally very respectful in CFUD, and while we enjoy our penis jokes, we also shy away from the usage of a lot of frequently used offensive. Cast chans are not really used to backtalk against other people, and are settings to be respectful toward one another. I’m in quite a few right now, and I’ve never seen people using them as an opportunity to bash other players.
We have a pretty unique sense of humor as a game, but we try to be smart about things. Keep that in mind. If a word has a questionable definition even if “taken back,” consider the greater context of that. Things like that are wise to keep in mind. Hate speech and racism isn’t cool, at all. CFUD is a setting that is very welcoming to its players. We frequently have chicken soup posts where people can be paranoid behind a lock and understand one another or be told that hey, no one hates you, chin up! Everyone is mostly there for everyone else.
originally posted in this form at
shouldknow.first anon's addition (I'll edit this with who it is if you'd like that)
I can't possibly compete with the previous anon's wondrous tl;dr, but I'll add a few things that make CFUD different from some games in terms of culture and play style. I don't have a LOT of personal experience with other games, actually, so I'm sure there are others that handle some of these the same way and stuff that I'm missing, but in all these cases I've at least seen one game that works differently, so it's something.
The Audience
In CFUD, people are allowed and even encouraged to comment to characters with IC journals, whether they're non-players watching for their own amusement or current players who want to heckle their friends! This has gotten much, much less common over the years, but many people regret that, and I don't know of any players who seriously don't want to play with audience. The only caveat is that audience shouldn't be severely influencing events (like giving away characters' secrets). It's also been traditional for interested audience members to claim a new character for marriage when they intro, or adoption for younger characters, but again, this has gotten rare. Sadness.
Playercest
CFUD is much more accepting of playercest than most places. Indeed, many players will gladly tell you about some of their playercesting heroes or favorite moments. The general attitude is that if it's fun for you to play out and it's fun for the rest of us to read, where's the harm in it? That said, it obviously still shouldn't be infringing on your play with other people, nor should you use your characters to manipulate plot for each other or anything like that. Many people simply assume some amount of offscreen interaction for their characters even if they don't play it out, and some relegate playercest to private posts in their own journals. And, of course, many don't bother at all.
Icons (which goes back to paid accounts and other such affluence too)
Basically, CFUD happens to have a whole lot of icon whores. That's all. These people really, really like icons - they spend a lot of time getting them just right and they spend a lot of money on space for them. Most people in CFUD actually do make their own icons, and many will cheerfully make a set for anyone else at the slightest prompting; in fact they may have done so already, if it's a character they really want to see. To many, making icons is simply part of the process of getting a new character, along with making the journal and apping. But again I must agree and restate that none of this is mandatory. There are absolutely well-loved characters played on 15 icons or less, and nobody cares - I'm not sure anyone notices, why would they care? You can get a whole lot of help on the icon front if you feel overwhelmed by it, but if you don't care, that's fine. Some people just... they just like icons is all.
Posting
Since CFUD is big and high-volume and has an emphasis on creative wackiness and all, it's generally considered a good idea to make posts that are themselves very creative, engaging, and easy for anyone to respond to in an interesting way. I do think, however, CR is also a major factor. Frankly, a character with a ton of CR can get away with posting some way less interesting stuff, and likewise if you only post without tagging around yourself, you won't get as much response. (Except intros, obviously, people are good about tagging those.) So, at least early on, it's a good idea to tag more than you post and save posting for when you have a particularly interesting idea. That's this anon's opinion, at least.
Etiquette
It's absolutely true that you don't really need to be in chat, but since most people are, CFUD is in the habit of an awful lot of OOC communication. We also seem to hate cluttering up our IC comments with OOC notes if it can be avoided, compared to some games. If you do go for chat, or even if you don't, you should never feel reluctant to ask questions of the person you're threading with, or run your ideas past them, or just flailing about what's going on. You might draw in some interested observers anyway.
It also seems like every game has its own take on threadhopping, so: jumping into the middle of a thread seems to be pretty unusual in CFUD, and when it does happen it's generally because the thread was directly relevant to the hopper, or they were already established to be in the area, or such. So you might want to check with people before threadjacking, or they might see it as rude if they're not used to it. Conversely, hopping onto someone's first comment in a post, so that it creates its own thread, is very common and very popular, and from what I've seen, just about everyone in the game wishes they could both do that and have it done to them more.
AU
Frankly, I have no clue whether other games are like this or not. All I know is that if you talk about doing an AU with no other modifiers, people will assume you mean (camp AU, in someone's journal) sex. Other kinds of AUs also happen, apparently post-camp AUs are popular? I don't know.
anon two's addition (I'll edit in credit if this is you)
One more thing that hasn't been mentioned, just cause I've seen people ask about it before: even though CFUD is a big game, it's not actually that hard to keep up with. Game plot doesn't happen very often and activity requirements are actually very low. Most people really don't spam constantly, there are even some who do fine playing only on weekends, it's just high volume because there are so many players. Still higher maintenance than a small game, but you don't really have to quit your life. It's just that addictive