About Show the Colours

General
StC was started a little over three years ago by Sharpie, who is an Age of Sail fan who just wanted to RP in the world of the Napoleonic Wars. Over the years she joined two or three boards set during the period, none of which lasted more than a few months. Having had the last board pulled from under her feet, she decided that if she wanted to RP in that time-period, she was going to have to run that RPG herself, and set up StC. Knowing only enough coding to be able to alter the colours of an LJ layout, the board opened within forty-eight hours of the previous board's deletion with a default skin ('Purple has got to be better than blue – at least it looks a bit different from other boards out there!') and a handful of members.

We have grown and expanded since then until reaching our present fifteen or so members, most of whom have multiple characters. We are a friendly group of people who are interested in the history of the Napoleonic period, wanting to get the details right but who don't want to have to slavishly follow the historical record as far as dates of battles and things go. StC is already slightly AU as our Battle of Oporto took place in-game time on the 22nd May 1809, rather than the historical date of the 12th May.

As players, we take a keen interest in the Age of Sail and we do try to get our facts right, so that we encourage research and a keen sense of the period. Although we may fudge things or go Alternative Universe at times, we don't include or allow wild anachronisms. We try to stay as true to the period as we can and we acknowledge it when we move away from the history books, which we only do for events, keeping clothing, manners, weaponry etc as close as we can to the period.

Above all, our philosophy here is that history is fun, and writing about it should also be fun. The Napoleonic era is interesting and intriguing and we have chosen to explore it together - and hope that you will choose to join us in our exploration.

Our Role-play Areas
StC has two main roleplay areas: By Land and By Sea. By Land concentrates mostly on the Second Division of the British Army (which, again, is AU as it consists of the 2nd Foot Guards, the 33rd Foot, the 3rd Company of the 5th/60th and a small detachment of the 2nd/95th ). We also have two French regiments represented: The 17ème and the 86ème.

Our second main roleplay area is By Sea, which concentrates on a 32-gun frigate, HMS Terpsichore. This was a real ship that was built in 1785 and decommissioned in 1809, the year of StC's setting. For our in-game purposes, she was re-fitted and recommissioned in late 1808/early 1809 under Captain Bolitho. Although we have a muster list, we are always pleased to accept new Navy characters as part of Terpsy's crew.

Posting Style
We are a no-word-count site, who tend to post short posts rather quickly. We believe that a few well-chosen words are better than five hundred words of fluff and purple prose. We would describe our overall posting style as 'fast and loose' and we see RP as collaborative story-telling where every character can be in the spot-light. This will mean that your own character will end up in a supporting role at times, but equally, he (or she) will end up in a starring role, too, although not necessarily in the same thread.

Our Rating
We are rated PG-13, or Language 2, Sex 2, Violence 2 on the RPG rating. Very roughly, we are the same rating as the Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell – we allow swearing infrequently in posts, though we refer to the F word rather than actually using directly on-screen, nudity is allowed but we practise fade-to-black for actual sexual intercourse, and we do show violence and its aftermath. Everything we allow, we allow only in moderation – we don't allow posts where every other word is a swear-word, or posts that are too graphic or explicit in gore or sexual detail. We prefer to choose words carefully when posting battles, rather than showing guts and gore all the time.

Please be aware of the TOS of this board. If it's Not Safe For Work (NSFW), please don't post it. The NSFW rating covers sexual content, as well as violence and graphic descriptions of injuries etc. We recommend a 'fade to black' approach to IC sexual encounters, which should also only occur naturally as part of a longer thread or plotline. The NSFW rating also includes swearing. 'Bloody' and similar words are fine. If in doubt, just say Character A swore. Violence in posts is more acceptable than graphic sex, but please do not go overboard, and please warn when the rating increases.

Face Claims
We do not have a face claim list on this board, as several of us use unnamed extras from various Age of Sail TV shows and films. If you wish to use a particular person, we would ask that you try to find pictures of that person that are a similar age as your character, as this will help your fellow writers. Being a historical board, we ask that character graphics fit the period as much as possible - obvious jeans and T-shirts are strongly discouraged.