The Anonymous Remailer

How to Use the Remailer

Please Note: This not a public remailer. [1]

Address your e-mail to remailer@not.for.dorks. [2] Somewhere in the body (The very top is recommended.) put the line "XSTo: <target-alias1,target-alias2, ...>" [3] and "XSFrom: <your-alias>." If you are allowed to bcc (blind carbon copy) the message to an alias, you would include the line "XSBcc: <alias>." Then simply write your message and send it off normally.

Example: Suppose "dworkin" sent the following message:

"Dworkin," "oberon," and "crimson" would all receive e-mail that looked something like this (note that the message no longer contains the real e-mail addrses for "dworkin"):

Rules for Using the Remailer

The remailer is to be used to hold trump conversations and face to face conversations between two or more characters (PCs/Adversaries/NPCs).

  1. You must get GM permission for bcc'ing e-mail to another character; to get it, you'll need a good in game reason for why that person can listen unobserved to your conversation.
  2. You may always bcc to your own alias.
  3. Do not send mail to the remailer that has signature files (even if you're just asking question or making a comment), or other identifying additions (your real name or real e-mail address, for instance). If your mailer has these features and you can't disable them, you'll need to keep sending mail through me directly, since the remailer forwards the entire body of the message.
  4. If you find yourself in a 3+ person conversation, and you notice that one person is not answering as fast as the others, pause for a little while to give them a chance to read their e-mail; some people can only read e-mail from work while others can only read e-mail from home. Also bear in mind that the players span eight time zones and keep vastly different schedules. The collary to this is that people deliberately doing or saying nothing should indicate that things should not be held up for them.
  5. Use (i.e. send to) whatever alias the owner is using for him/herself during a conversation. (In other words, if someone starts a conversation as "ivory" and you think you know the "ivory" is also "flora," don't start replying to "flora.")

Some Stylistic Guidelines

These are thing you don't have to follow, but will make your GM (who still sees all mail, often on a 24 row by 80 column screen) much happier with you if you follow them, and may cause her to spit upon you if you ignore them incessantly. (GM spit is sort of like anti-brownie points.)

  1. Put the "XSTo:" and "XSFrom:" at the top of your message.
  2. Capitalization and punctuation should be used in the customary fashion.
  3. Do not quote back entire messages. Limit quoted text to only a few lines when replying in context to something someone else has said. (Summing up in a few words is even better.)
  4. Refer to your character in the 3rd person in mail to the remailer. (Use whichever you prefer in mail straight to the GM.)
  5. Include descriptive comments with your dialogue. ("She smiles." "He winks." "It's in demon form.")
  6. Distinguish dialogue from actions by putting dialogue in quotation marks.
  7. Try to use descriptive subject lines of the form "Subject: Hydra: this message topic" or "Subject: [Hydra] message topic." Don't build up chains of "Re:"'s.
  8. Try to keep your mail less than ~75 columns wide so that you don't get funny wrap effects.
  9. Be aware that you may give yourself away by your spelling, if you're not careful. ;)

Generally, the idea here is to establish some sort of uniform format for e-mail so that impersonations, multiple identities, etc. aren't given away by the technical details of the mechanic. (Deducing such things from conversation, behavior, etc are okay, of course.) In general, you can deduce the preferred format of things from e-mail I send you.

Aliases

Aliases fall into three categories: proper names ("named" aliases, such as merlin, benedict, bill-roth), names of colors ("color" aliases, such as red, azure, vermillion), and assorted adjectives ("demonform" aliases, such as spiky, sharp, armored). Color aliases should be thought of as short hand for a physical description of a basically human type. Demonform aliases are also descriptions, but of demons or demonforms. Named aliases are just names that belong to a particular person. You can use that instead of the other type of alias if you prefer. I'm going to interpret "adjective" loosely enough to allow for demonform aliases like scorpion or crocodile. I'll also list ambiguous aliases currently in use on the examples page, so check there if you're uncertain. [More examples]

So let's take the case of Rinaldo, son of Brand and Jasra. He might have four aliases that he uses: rinaldo, luke, orange, and fiery. "Orange" is his human form description; "fiery" is his demon form. "Rinaldo" is his name and may refer to him in either form (his player should specify which upon encoutering someone, if it's not obvious). He also runs around claiming to be "luke" which like "rinaldo" may refer to either a human form or a demon form. His mother may know him as "rinaldo," "orange," and "fiery," whereas Merlin may only know him as "luke" and "orange."

You can get me to make more aliases for you by asking, but try not to accumulate too many, because we might eventually start to run out. In that case, we may have to adopt things like "red42," "spiky10," and "mary97" (which would be distinct from "red3," "spiky55," and "mary153") and no one wants that.

Special Aliases

Trump-contact If you want to initiate a trump contact via the remailer, you should do so as "trump-contact." (i.e. XSFrom: trump-contact) The body should just say "Someone is trying to reach you on trump." If you get a message like this, just reply (to "trump-contact") saying whether you accept the call or not. (You can also just tell me you want to make a trump call and let me handle it.)

You're on your honor to only initiate trump contacts with people you have trumps of, since anyone can send as "trump-contact."

Question If you want to anonymously ask a rules question (or other sort of question) that you think your fellow players might want to hear the answer to as well, you can use the special alias "question" for this. In this case you would send to alias "everyone." Also useful if you want to "Ask Dworkin" something.

Comment Use this for any sort of general discussion on the remailer. It's functionally equivalent to question and is primarily for those who would find question unaesthetic for comments that aren't questions.

Addressing

Note that you can only send mail as a given alias from an e-mail address that you've registered for that alias. You can register [4] as many addresses as you like. A given alias cannot necessarily said to any other address. (For instance, your full name and your nickname can't converse.) You can receive e-mail sent to your aliases at any address or list of addresses you want.

Useful Emacs Functions

Laura wrote an emacs function for rmail that automatically addresses mail to the remailer and inserts the "XSTo:" and "XSFrom:" when you type "R."

If anyone else writes any clever emacs functions or mail filters that they think might be useful to other players, please, let me know and I can post it here.

1 I wrote a web based form for using the remailer, but the Web is full of morons who can't read (the bit about "won't work if you aren't in hydra") and not a week went by when a couple of dorks bounced messages off the wall. If you want to use the remailer, contact your GM by e-mail.
2 This is not the real address. Get the real address from the GM and use it exactly as given, or it won't work.
3 You should include your own alias in the XSTo: line if you want a copy of the mail, if you want a copy of the message.
4 Just e-mail any addresses you want to use, and I'll take care of it.

Last modified Fri 20 Jul 01 11:57 PM