Just out of curiosity, because I'm interested but confused too, has any FAQ been written?

Nope; the ghost writer blew the budget on ghost booze, and the result was a mess.

Seriously, aside from our vast laziness (we hate writing FAQs for those who want to join a game when all our games are closed), there's the problem of freestyle RPGs. Anything goes down in Freestyle; and a FAQ would be kind of counterproductive.

As far as writing conventions in GRPG go, Sal is correct about a lack of standards. You'll have to pull most of them out by context. For instance, we've got:
+Out of game/out of character+
<transmitted via radio or such like>
"spoken" or spoken or spoken in a color coded other language or spoken.
thoughts or actions taken by characters

and etc, all depending on the GM. When multiple GMs are in the same game (like Rifts), you'll see multiple conventions on the same page...which can be entertaining, but it makes an explantory FAQ maddening.

let me make a suggestion, and you RPG guys can take it or leave it. :)

Maybe every so often start a new game that's targeted at beginners (titled something like "The Crabs of Rangoon -(Novice RPG'ers welcome)". Sort of a Bunny Slope for RPG. Newbies could then get their feet wet in the world of RPG without worrying about looking like newbies.

I think that would help with the feeling intimidated about joining the big boys in the deep end of the pool.

But Dot, newbies are icky and slimey!

It would be smart for me to enforce posting conventions, wouldn't it?

Oh well.

On another note, thanks to Were, GRPG now includes FAQ Lite. Check it out ofr a small part of your RPG info needs!

I just opened a newbies-friendly game in FRPG. It is titled "A New Game by Skitz. First timers welcome." in order to prevent confusion.

cool, skitz! I'll pimp it in wgars, since i know there are some hesitant would be gamers that hang out in my neighborhood :)

Yeeeah... the game is almost full already, and it looks like most of the players are newb-ish at best. This is the stigma of GMdom I suppose.

Le sigh.

Yesterday, I actually made progress on an Intro to Role-Playing for Newbies spiel, with a particular emphasis on forum-style gaming. When it's done, I'll let my fellow GMs have a look at it and tweak it, and then it will hopefully be posted in both RPG forums.