RPC Authority

Preamble

Welcome to the RPC's database. If you're on this page, chances are you've been inspired by the scary, disturbing, funny or unusual articles you've seen on the site and want to create your own. You probably have some cool concepts in mind, and this writing guide is here to ensure that your idea becomes a reality.

If you're coming to this guide having read only a few articles on the Site, we urge you to go back and keep reading- just make sure you have a good idea of the kinds of things we write about here before you start, to save yourself trouble later.

Brainstorming

When pondering an article concept, there are a few key things to consider:

• Is the concept interesting and original?

• Is the concept logically consistent? Does it make sense?

• Is this something that would fit well within the scope and scale of the RPC universe?

• Is this the kind of story or concept that translates well to writing?

It's strongly recommended that you consider these four pillars when drafting an article or even a rough concept- remember, the best kinds of articles are those that a reader can grasp without you having to explain everything to them- it's the aha! moment that really pulls a reader in. You're free to make your concept as out there and obtuse as you like, just remember you're not the only person who's going to read it.

If you want some feedback on the concept you've got, ask for feedback on the idea from the community in either the Forums section or in the Discord server and everyone will be happy to help. Remember that any feedback is useful, even if it isn't very detailed. Being told "It's boring" isn't a lot to work with, but at the very least it tells you you need to fix something.

If your concept gets panned, don't sweat it. Ask any senior writer- hell, any writer on the site period and they will tell you that not every idea, concept, or pitch works out. Don't get discouraged! Try approaching the concept from a different angle, or seeing what other people suggest you alter about it- it might lead to refining the concept until it works, or even inspire a new concept that works better.

As always, if you feel that a piece of critique you've received becomes less "constructive criticism" and more "personal attacks", feel free to contact a site or Discord moderator for help.

Gathering Thoughts To Feed The Idea Itself

So, you have an idea that you want to write, and the peanut gallery thinks it has potential. Now comes the task of actually writing the darned thing. There are a few categories of RPC that come up frequently, being as they are common horror/weird fiction tropes, and they're worth a little bit of extra analysis.

• Writing Plague/Contagion RPCs: Mutation, disease and the loss of the self is a pretty fundamental human fear, and thus pretty common fodder for a huge variety of horror media. Just remember, a disease that kills you… not all that scary. Death is a huge mystery, but it has a certain… predictability to it. If you really want to spook people with a contagion, remember that losing control of your body and mind is a hell of a lot more drawn-out and viscerally unpleasant than just outright dying. Death should be a last resort.

• Writing Cryptid RPCs: Scary monsters coming out of the woods to kill you is another pretty fundamental fear, and by no means a bad subject to write on. The thing to remember is that people have been writing about spooky cryptids since… well, pretty much since the invention of writing. Monster articles are great, but an original twist is pretty much mandatory- rehashing moth-men or skinwalkers or werewolves just isn't all that fresh anymore.

• Writing Extradimensional RPCs: These articles are an expression of our fear of the unknown, or the dark, or things that are a lot bigger than us- the incomprehensible, basically. They also give you a license to get weird- they don't operate off the same rules as we do. However, they still have to be logically consistent, and you'll have to explain them well for them to have the most impact.

• Writing Extraterrestrial RPCs: A sort of combo of the fear of monsters and the fear of the unknown, ETs represent the fear of strangers- the fear of something like us, but not quite. Something, dare I say it… alien. Alien invasion or abduction stories are another old staple, and they demand the same kind of lateral thinking or 'twist' as cryptids do- remember that realistically, aliens do not think like we do. They're not good, they're not evil, they just are, but in ways we can't easily wrap our heads around. And that's spooky.

Expanding an Idea

Sometimes a concept needs a bit of a shove to get it into a full article format- you might have a beginning and an end to the "story" that is your RPC, but you need a middle. Not to worry! Middles are tough to write. All you need is a solid plan, and there are a few techniques that can help you along the way.

• What is it about your concept that scares you the most? Why? How would it affect other people?

• Write something innocent or awful related to your concept, and then write how it got there. Invert it. Is one more interesting?

• Write about what you don't know about your concept- and bam, you're thinking from the same POV as a poor Authority researcher trying to figure this thing out. What do these mysteries make you wonder about the concept?

• Find an image or historical or event or person that just gives you the heebie-jeebies. A good image or bit of contextual detail is the bedrock upon which a concept can grow and prosper- the Discord has an excellent RPC Inspiration channel where you can find all manner of genuinely spooky photography and art.

Common Mistakes

• Strike Through - Context = Confused Readers: Sometimes it can be tempting to strike through big chunks of your text to make it feel like the article has been edited or changed, or to add stuff that had some past importance to the anomaly. The thing to remember is that you always need to explain why this happened in-universe. Just approach it from the point of view of an Authority researcher writing an article- if you had to change big chunks of it on the fly, you'd want to explain your reasoning for doing that, right?

• WORDS WORDS WORDS: A lot of people tend to put more information in an RPC article to either make it seem more professional or have it be more interesting, but at the same time, it is liable to get confusing. Remember, always ensure that the article you're writing isn't sloppy or messy and the information that you're giving to readers is going to be understood. If very complicated information is necessary to the total understanding of your RPC article, don't be afraid to add a footnote to explain the information therein. It's better to err on the side of caution and be corrected than write something that no one can understand.

• Dangerous + Complex Protocols = Overreaction: A lot of authors write very elaborate and overly complex protocols due to the extreme dangers that the entity exhibits. It can be fun to design crazy containment protocols, but 99% of the time it's not necessary. The RPC Authority generally doesn't meet complicated objects with overwhelming, blind force. They're working types who have to pay for all this, after all. Always keep it simple, understandable, and manageable. There are other ways to showcase an object's danger beyond four-meter-thick titanium walls, tank battalions as guard units, and feeding it a hundred CSD every week.

• Keep Gore Spooky: For the sake of writing dangerous anomalies, try to avoid writing or describing in full intricate detail what happens to the person being affected or attacked by an anomaly. You know how, in the dark, a pile of clothes on the back of a chair can look like a scary monster? It's kind of the same thing here- if you give the reader the barest hint of an idea of what your RPC is doing, then guaranteed what they imagine is happening is spookier/more awful than you had intended, and thus more emotionally absorbing. [DATA EXPUNGED] or overly clinical language works well to hide this kind of detail. Remember also that the article is about the anomaly being documented by hardened scientists. They see this stuff every day, so try to avoid sensationalized wording and descriptions unless you're quoting a character's personal response.

The Researcher's Reference

Many new authors have difficulty writing containment protocols, or in making containment protocols that make sense. A handy way to approach containment is to think about protocols from the point of view of someone in-universe.

An Authority Protection staffer looking at the file for an RPC looks at the containment to see what they need to know to keep themselves and everyone else on the site safe. The Containment Protocols are your quick-reference guide, so you know how to keep an entity from doing whatever it is that entity does. What it actually does isn't all that important- but stopping it, keeping it contained, is paramount. Does the entity need to be kept in a glass box? Tell us! Can you leave it in a footlocker with a padlock on it? Tell us!

To that end, Containment Protocols should generally be kept concise- they don't have to be short, and containment addendums or "in-universe" changes are 100% allowed, but remember that this is a quick-reference guide for how to keep your RPC locked in one place, and write it that way.

Scale and Containment

While it can be tempting to make the containment protocols for an entity really intense, to emphasize the power and threat represented by that entity, try to keep a sense of proportion. The RPC is big and powerful, but it is still an organization run and paid for by humans. Excessive containment protocols should be justified in-universe. That's not to say that your containment protocols can't be weird and esoteric- blood sacrifices, magic runes, beans- they all have their place in protocols, just remember to justify them.

The same goes for the treatment of human or humanoid entities- remember that the Authority is humane, but they're not running a luxury hotel. Lists of items requested by an entity can be an excellent window into the entity's mindset and personality, but once again keep things reasonable, and justify what you've done.

The RPC has to pay for all this, after all. And titanium cages with diamond windows and laser turrets and en situ tank battalions aren't cheap.

A closely related factor to consider is the human element. The Authority is a research organization, and scientists are hard to train and motivate, especially if they're dealing with a "contained" entity that kills people on the regular. Consider how people would work in, on and around the containment system you've created. Does it make sense?

Lastly, consider the containment classification of an RPC- quite often people tend to overestimate the difficulty of containing items which are only harmful when "activated", or when a certain set of conditions are met. Consider what sets and object off. Would it be set off by leaving it in a box? If the answer is no, then congratulations, you're on the right track to making your containment protocols.

Reading the Unreadable

You are likely to have stumbled upon words like [REDACTED], [DATA EXPUNGED], or even ██████████. So, what do they mean? Quite simple, these are known as redactions which represent attempts to obfuscate or otherwise censor information. Like real-world governments, specifically foreign intelligence agencies, the Authority uses this system to keep unauthorized readers from reading details that aren't cleared to know.

Now, obviously this is all fiction, so redaction serves a slightly different purpose. We redact to keep information vague and mysterious to the reader, or to skip over information that is extraneous. While redaction and censorship can absolutely be overdone, it is nonetheless a valuable writing tool in the RPC context.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

Do

• Redact whatever isn't important: Imagine you're reading an article about a car that kills people. Do you really need to know exactly how many people it kills in a month? Or its mileage per gallon? Probably not, unless these details are essential to the story of the article for some reason. This is the kind of fluff, or non-essential detail, that should be redacted from an article.
• Redact names whenever appropriate: Most of the time the identity of a person working on an entity isn't really all that important- certainly not important enough for any random employee who stumbles across the article to know. As a general rule of thumb, it's worth it to redact the names of any characters in an article who aren't entirely relevant to the storyline. Plus, it saves you from having to come up with names, if you don't like that sort of thing.

Don't

• Redact Information in Containment Protocols: As mentioned, the Containment Protocols are a quick-reference guide for people working on the anomaly in question. A quick-reference guide isn't very useful if big parts of it are hidden away, no? It's generally considered pretty nonsensical and frowned upon to redact Containment Protocols.

• Mangle Sentences: It can be easy to overly redact a phrase, and lose a lot of emotional punch in the process. Whenever possible, try to redact in a way that the reader can easily fill in the blanks and form their own guesses about what has just been cut out.

• Redact whole paragraphs: This is really just an extension of the above point. A big block of censored text is messy. It breaks the flow of reading. Keep your redactions as small and as neat as possible.

Keep it professional

Articles need to look professional, and read that way too. In-universe, articles are written as part of someone's job, and it's usually an academic job. This means that RPC articles should not only look like research documents but maintain the same clinical tone as research documents. But what does clinical tone actually mean?

Many new writers tend to assume that clinical tone means big, fancy words that would score well in a game of Scrabble, but this couldn't be more wrong. Clinical tone means precision.

Precision is using the word, or phrase, that suits the current situation and unlikely to be misinterpreted by the reader. It means choosing words that are unambiguous in meaning is at least likely to be misinterpreted. To put it another way, the words you use should be associated only with the exact and appropriate thing that you wish to describe.

Bad Clinical Tone Example #1:

"RPC-XXX is a giant bug that looks to be the size of a dog. It's not dangerous unless you annoy it."

There are lots of different kinds of dogs. And what does "dangerous" mean here? What about "annoy"? There are too many ambiguities in this sentence.

Bad Clinical Tone Example #2:

"RPC-XXX is an immense insect approximately the size of a common canid. It is non-hostile except when approached and buffaloed by human personnel."

This is just as bad as example one, except that it uses longer words which only exacerbate the problem.

Good Clinical Tone Example:

"RPC-016 is an insectoid animal visually similar to specimens of Opodiphthera eucalypti. Instances have been observed to grow up to 65cm in length. While RPC-016 does generally not exhibit hostility towards humans, it is has become hostile when approached aggressively by humans."

This tells you a lot. You know it's something like a bug- and what kind of bug it looks like. You know exactly how big it can get. You know that isn't not normally aggressive to people, it can be, and you know exactly what circumstances it becomes aggressive in. Boom. Precision.

Here's other examples:

• Sample 1: The non-clinical version gives a vague location of the anomaly. This might be enough for the average person, but it's not useful for someone actually trying to get to it. The clinical version gives a more tangible location of the anomaly.

• Sample 2: The non-clinical version says "it's really big". How so? Furthermore, it uses imperial units, which are not scientifically accepted and thus not used by the Authority. Meanwhile, the clinical version states the size of the ship cleanly. It also implies that the ship is not a perfect rectangle, and that its shape can change.

• Sample 3: The non-clinical version says that it's invisible. But what does invisible actually mean? Why is it invisible? The clinical version makes clear both how and why the anomaly cannot be easily seen.

Additional Information

• Refer from third person, not first: Remember, when you're referring an anomaly, you refer them as "RPC" or as "it". However, I've seen some people use the term "he" and "she" when referencing an RPC that is humanoid. Think of it from the perspective of the Authority. These are no longer individual people. Their genders do not matter. They are anomalies to be researched and contained.

• Note: This does not however include subjects, field agents, or researchers. You refer them by their name, position, and their appropriate gender.

• Keep it legible: Simple things like avoiding unnecessary bolding or italics and keeping your paragraphs short can go a long way towards making an article read well. Try to avoid giant blocks of text, or large sections of text in FULL CAPS.

• You don't need numbers: Many articles go way overboard on quantifying or assigning numbers to everything, especially when it comes to containment. This isn't always necessary- the Authority is the kind of organization that's all about mass-produced parts and sizes for things. Remember to keep it justified- would a researcher need to know exactly how big something is? Or how heavy?

• Act on it; don't ignore it: Always, always always proofread your article. The more the better. This can be as simple as reading it out loud to yourself- if you have trouble reading it, others probably will too. Once you've got a completed draft, take a break from it. Give your brain a chance to focus on something else, and when you come back to the draft you'll probably find something new to change. You can absolutely rely on other writers for critique, but self-editing is a vital skill that should be practiced.

• The Authority is Competent: It's quite understandable that characters can and will make mistakes. Characters in the Authority, however, should generally be reasonably competent, well-trained and professional in their work. If you want characters to behave recklessly or incompetently, make sure you have a good justification for why- Researchers causing mass deaths or injuries because of stupidity is not compelling storytelling.

• The Authority is Metric: Sorry to our writers in the United States, Liberia and Myanmar, but the rest of the world uses metric. If you don't feel comfortable writing in the metric system, try minimizing the amount of numbers you use in your article, or making use of a unit converter. The only exception to this is when the use of the Imperial system, or any other non-metric system of measurement, is relevant to the story of the article. In these cases, don't forget to include brackets or a footnote listing the metric conversion of the unit in question, so readers understand what you're talking about.

• Video Game Jargon = Game Over: For better or for worse, a lot of our modern terminology around spooky stuff is derived from video games. We talk about monsters spawning, or clipping through walls, or telefragging into people, or aggroing- the problem is that while these are technical terms within a very specific field, they are not clinical terms. If the word you're using to describe something comes from a video game mechanic, pick a different word!

The Process

If you are interested in writing an article for the RPC Authority there are is a specific process that you must familiarize yourself with. This writing process should be followed in order to improve your writing and to avoid "coldposting". If an article is coldposted¹ it will be removed.

• Starting out: Join the RPC Authority Sandbox. Click "Join" and then type in the name you wish your sandbox to be called. Click "create sandbox" and start working on your new page. You do not have to join the sandbox, but it allows you to test out your formatting and present your articles to others easily. Before beginning your RPC, review the rest of the Writers Guide and the Formatting Guide. Once you have reviewed these you should be ready to start writing.

• Rough Draft: Once you have written the basics of your article and are happy with your progress, post your draft to the Draft Forums. Users are required to submit a draft once they have finished writing the basic parts of their articles. Every article uploaded to the official site is expected to have received at least two thorough pieces of criticism in the draft stage, consisting of at least five points each. If this step is not completed the article will be deleted for coldposting. At this point, users viewing the draft are recommended to point out any sort of errors they find. Once you have received criticism on the forums you are expected to calmly take and apply a majority of it to your article. If you disagree with the criticism given to you then you do not have to apply it, but you are expected to receive and apply criticism from more users. While we do not punish people for responding poorly to criticism, it reflects badly on the writer's character.

• Final Draft: After completing a rough draft and acting upon criticism an article is expected to have most or all of its plot holes, grammar and other remaining issues fixed. It is encouraged to update your rough draft posted on the forums to reflect these changes. When this is done you may seek out more criticism to further improve your writing.

• Publish: Before publishing your article give it one last read over. If you feel confident in your article and have followed the previous steps then you are ready to post it. If you are uploading an RPC, find a number that you desire on the main list that has not been taken (marked with "ACCESS DENIED"). Click the number link and press "Click here" to open up the editor. Paste your article into the space provided and edit the title (Change the title Rpc 1111 to RPC-1111). Once you have saved your article go to the bottom of the Main list and edit the slot next to your chosen number. Change "ACCESS DENIED" to an original title that describes your article. Once you have done this check out the Tagging Guide and edit the Tags section at the bottom of your article. Then post the link to your forum critique on the discussion page of your article (You should also credit any images that you use here, and some authors take this opportunity to thank the users who gave them critique on their article.) Congratulations! your article is now an official part of the site.

If you are creating a page other than an RPC, go to the URL of the page you wish to create. Read the instructions in the information box and then create the page. Don't forget to add tags!

• Post-Publishing: If you ever feel that the article could be improved on, you are free to make edits. Note if the article ever remains under 2.7 stars with 6 user ratings, the article will be removed. If your article is removed, you are absolutely free to reupload it again, once you've gotten another two runs of critique.