'Kay, I'm an old hack from sigil.co.uk. (not planescape related, despite the name.) The way I've always done this type of freeform is as follows:
1) It's bad form to "take control" of someone else's character and have them perform actions within your narrative. For example: "Bastion extends a hand to Patches in greeting" is okay, whereas "Bastion extends a hand to Patches, who takes it and shakes it vigourously" wouldn't be. Don't assume another character's actions, I guess, would be the axiom.
2) Characters can't affect other characters except by owner's (or overall narrator's) consent. For example: "Bastion crouches low, and launches himself at Zerdan, trying to rake his combat claws across the Tiefling's body" would be okay, whereas Bastion crouches low, and launches himself at Zerdan, bowling him to the ground and raking him repeatedly with his combat claws" wouldn't be. In a real game, there would be initiative, bluff/sense motive rolls, rolls to hit, and rolls to damage. Allowance must be given in the narrative for the affected character to react, and decide if they've been hit.
This is on the inderstanding that all parties within the combat (or other interaction) are going to be sensible and let the occasional blow through - no-one's impervious, but one so often sees people posting in such a way in freeform online roleplay.
3) In most cases, what a character thinks should not be posted like dialogue. There's no way for other characters to interact with "Patches thinks to himself "I wonder why Tarnil's acting that way?"" unless Tarnil happens to be psychic.
Well, those're the guidelines I usually try to adhere to when I'm posting. If it works differently here, or the guidelines I've presented are fly in the face of creativity/common sense, please let me know.
Azure, you seem to be the driving force behind the thread at the moment. Shall we assume you're the overall narrator/DM when need arises? I can gen Bastion up as a proper 3e character and post the vitals here or in the Character Index if needed.
) and interesting in the storyline. If you you were implying that I had overstepped in any way, I appologize.
I agree with these guidelines, it makes sense if we're playing a freeform diceless game.
I too can put up Tarnil as a 3e character, but I don't think there's much need for that really, considering the format that we are playing in.
In any case, I'm actually enjoying this game so far, even though Tarnil hasn't done much so far P: