civility/ politeness

[searscuse]

Not to rant, but what is the norm for joining a game. Should the GM alert players they are excepted to play, state the game is cancelled, etc. Do players have to post a 'record' like ebay to qualify to play? I am a newbie to FG, but not to RP style games; whats the right way to join a game?

[longarms]

As a player who wants to join a game, you should respond to advertised openings by replying to the advertising post or joining on the calendar AND emailing or PMing the DM. In your email or PM to the DM, you can probably increase your chances of being selected if you say something more than that you want to play. For example, you might have some questions about the campaign and you might want to spend a couple sentences charactizing your play style to help the DM determine whether you would be a good fit for the campaing.

If you follow the above protocol, I would expect you will receive an invitation to join a campaign in no time.

To illustrate why the above is helpful, consider this: if you were running a game, and one interested player followed the above protocol while the other one merely adding himself on your calendar... which one would you choose?

If I misunderstood your question, let me know and I'll try again :)