Online Sessions

Sessions of this work, in essence, are lewd games meant for adults. As such, offline, in-person sessions are not recommended. Instead, it's strongly recommended that you play online, no voice chat, text-only sessions. Lewd sessions are meant to be played at night (or on days off) by sensible adults. Please be mindful while playing so as to not bother those around you. Here, along with some text etiquette, are some pointers for online sessions you may like to take note of. Below are some style recommendations based on this author's own standards. The proper etiquette for each individual community may vary to some extent. You don't have to follow everything that's written here.

= Play where it's okay = Even online, there are many places whose rules don't allow for posting sexually explicit text. If you use any chatting sites or other software, make sure to check the rules set by each administrator or server. Lewd sessions involve few people, and few exchanges of any detailed data. Private chat software may be useful to you for this. Much software of that type allows you to install dice bots, which should make playing little trouble at all. You can also use google search itself to roll dice. In an extreme case, as long as you trust each other's rolls, all you need is something you can exchange text in real-time with. If you can't change your display name to your character's name, you should start off dialogue and actions with their name. This goes in particular for GMs, who often have to manage several NPCs. You should try to include the NPCs name each time you describe them or have them speak.

= Sharing data = For character information, rather than a paper character sheet, you may want to use a text file or similar, any format that's easy (and also light on size) to share online. As far as images, you should consider any rules regarding uploading sexual or copyrighted pictures, as well as what's no good for who you're playing with.

= Basic manners = Online, you can't see each other's faces. If you step away for a moment, fall ill, or suddenly feel drowsy, you should always tell those you're playing with. Regarding the participants themselves, not their characters, you shouldn't say anything to criticize, slander, or draw attention to them in the midst of a session. If you're multitasking, you should say so. If a phone call, delivery, or your family pulls you away or similar and you don't have a chance to say so, you should always say a few words of apology once you get back. As well, if you're expecting something like that, it would be good to warn everyone ahead of time. No matter who you're playing with, in a one-on-one session, it's best to avoid getting distracted with other windows or tabs. You should focus on your session with them.

= Detailed writing techniques = Enclose your character's dialogue with "quote marks." The sentences outside of those are used for description. Describing the tangible results of your dice checks, the intents for acts that may call for skill checks, and so on, all fall within description. As well, to represent your character's inner thoughts, that which is not spoken aloud, you could perhaps use (parenthesis), or italics. To avoid confusion with using italics for emphasis, or other uses for parenthesis, you could further denote this by adding, 「~so-and-so thinks.」 or similar to the end.

Using "~", "♪", "♥", and similar instead of normal punctuation at the end of a sentence can be a good way to add tone. Even if as a writer, some of these don't matter to you, they can considerably reduce the burden on and ambiguity to the reader. Of note, the character “♥”, which may be used frequently within lewd sessions, may display far differently depending on the site or software. Some places may not be able to display it at all, so you might want to keep a small note of that in mind. In environments where you can't include newlines within a message, longer descriptions and similar may become hard to read. You may want to tell others in advance to break up such longer text into multiple messages.

= Time spent writing = Describing lewd acts takes the form of, back and forth, writing your own message and replying to your partner's. Each shouldn't leave the other waiting too long. That said, too short of a message can be difficult to reply to. If there's a vast difference in the amount of text each person sends, it can lead to frustration. The ideal would be for each person to spend about the same time and write about the same length of reply. Although it varies from person to person and setting to setting, with lewd scenes, it's recommended to get a reply back within 2 to 4 minutes. An average for half an hour would be about 10 posts, or 5 from each person if there's two participants. An hour, at most, should be good enough for a deep back-and-forth. Longer replies may end up taking over five minutes to write, with reading and understanding them taking some time as well. If you think people's posts have gotten too long, you may want to bring up shortening them a little. Another note, if you have some spare time, you can skim your text to edit it to be easier to read.

= Checking in = As mentioned before, you can't see each other's faces online. If you're taking a while because you're writing a long message, are unsure what to do, or similar, you should post a quick, 「I'm writing still」, 「I'm lost」, or something else to that effect to tell your partner. If you keep quiet, they won't be able to tell whether something happened to you, you disconnected, you had to get up to do something, you fell asleep, who knows.

= Other etiquette and advice = As far as online sessions, there's all sorts of guidance you can find on the web. You can do a search to look more into it. This page alone is not all there is to typing etiquette.