ONI Basic Orientation

Orientation into the community, definitions and current answers to questions audibly over the Orientation voice channel on ONI's Discord. Only available to those that have the role "Needs Orientation" on Discord. Contents to orientation is available in the #orientation text channel.

INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the Office of Naval Intelligence, an intelligence focused community based on the Halo universe faction 'ONI' and its military the UNSC. Many are overwhelmed by the amount of channels and roles that exist here and so this orientation was created to better explain any and all functions of ONI, ONI's Discord Server and ONI's Web quarters to you.

The ability to ask questions here is welcomed, please feel free to ask anything you want for the remainder of this session.

KEY CONCEPTS
Role-Playing is the changing of one's behavior to assume a role, consciously to act out an adopted role.

Role-playing can also be done online in the form of group story creation, involving anywhere from two to several hundred people, utilizing public forums, private message boards, mailing lists, chatrooms, and instant-messaging chat services to build worlds and characters that may last a few hours, or several years. Often on forum-based roleplays, rules, and standards are set up, such as a minimum word count, character applications, and "plotting" boards to increase complexity and depth of story.

There are different genres of which one can choose while role-playing, including, but not limited to, fantasy, modern, medieval, steam punk, and historical. Books, movies, or games can be, and often are, used as a basis for role-plays (which in such cases may be deemed "collaborative fan-fiction"), with players either assuming the roles of established canon characters or using those the players themselves create ("Original Characters") to replace—or exist alongside—characters from the book, movie, or game, playing through well-trodden plots as alternative characters, or expanding upon the setting and story outside of its established canon.

Role-Playing Clan is a clan in which the participants assume the roles of characters and collaboratively create stories. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization, and the actions succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines. Within the rules, they may improvise freely; their choices shape the direction and outcome of the games.

Events, characters, and narrative structure give a sense of a narrative experience, and the game need not have a strongly-defined storyline. Interactivity is the crucial difference between role-playing games and traditional fiction. Whereas a viewer of a television show is a passive observer, a player in a role-playing game makes choices that affect the story. Such role-playing games extend an older tradition of storytelling games where a small party of friends collaborate to create a story.

While simple forms of role-playing exist in traditional children's games of make believe, role-playing clans add a level of sophistication and persistence to this basic idea with additions such as game facilitators and rules of interaction. Participants in a role-playing can will generate development in characters and an ongoing plot. A consistent system of rules and a more or less realistic campaign setting in games aids suspension of disbelief. The level of realism in games ranges from just enough internal consistency to set up a believable story or credible challenge up to full-blown simulations of real-world processes.

It is important to understand the difference from reality in how the application of the clan is on Halo. Anything too realistic that cannot be applied to the game such as hand gestures/military signals will simply not apply to our group and is uninvited. It is urged that participants looking for more realism in military role play look to other clans, groups or games.

Characterization is the representation of persons (or other beings or creatures) in narrative and dramatic works.

Narrative A narrative, story or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare (to tell), which is derived from the adjective gnarus (knowing or skilled).

Narrative is found in all forms of human creativity, art, and entertainment, including speech, literature, theatre, music and song, comics, journalism, film, television and video, video games, radio, game-play, unstructured recreation and performance in general, as well as some painting, sculpture, drawing, photography and other visual arts, as long as a sequence of events is presented.