Well, thanks for posting, so I can go into a little more detail without a double post...

Do you mean D&D rulewise or storywise?

About rules:
I've seen different approaches to FRPG rules, there have been games without any rules other than you can't kill another's character without his consent. These RPGs focus solely on the writing and developing of the story. They usually generate some situations where people start fighting over different approaches to a resolve but they can work out if you are willing to talk about some compromises.
Then there's FRPGs where basically you have a ruleset like D&D with random rolls, a lot of stats and such. These seem to focus more on the actual "playing" rather than writing.
My approach is somewhere in the middle I'd say. As much as an FRPG is about the story, you're gonna face fights and combat situations sooner or later in a story like this, so you have to deal with it somehow. At the moment I'm not set to how I want to do it and it is a bit dependant on the others who participate.

Some possibilities that have, imo, worked well in the past:

1) Fights are written "turn-based". While usually you can post whenever and there is no posting order in an RPG like this, as soon as a fight begins, all involved character post their moves in a set order, beginning with what makes sense story-wise (if one character jumps out behind a tree to ambush another, of course that would be the character to post first). Every involved character reacts to the other's moves and tries to do his own moves. After, let's say 3 moves the GM decides who has "fought" better and declares the winner who can then post a last post in where he triumphs. Wether he can actually seriously hurt or even kill the other char depends on what has been defined earlier, usually he can't. Sometimes this works with the GM deciding, sometimes it works out with the involved combatants agreeing on who wins the fight. The downside of this is, that the GM can't really insert his own character in the game as he has to remain as unbiased as possible.

2) There's some sort of rule-set, usually rather basic like a simple roll on who wins a fight. When the winner is determined both would still "play out" the fight storywise, just the winner is already fixed. Sometimes the roll can be biased, if both agree that one character should have the advantage in the fight or sometimes there is a rock-scissor-papers system in play with, i.e. elementary alignments or something like it.

3) Sometimes the two are combined. After 2-3 "turns" they would either agree on who has the upper hand or the GM decides that and then follows a biased roll in favor of that character. This way it's story oriented but still holds a random element.

In any way "powergaming" is frowned upon in such games... and even if your character is an axe-wielding giant with armor like a german Panzer he can still be beaten by a young boy with a stick... this is an extreme example of course but some of the best posts and situations arise when this happens and the combatants have to find a way to work it into the story. After all this is about the story, not about "pwning" other players.

There's not many rules on anything else but combat, it's rather a sensible approach to what makes sense, whats in-character for a certain character and such. Usually most characters have their own hidden, or non-hidden, goals in the course of such a game and will try to influence people to go their way or sometimes groups break apart for a time. Basically anything that makes sense can be done as you are not bound to a "game engine". I'm not a fan of the heavily rule-oriented FRPGs with rulesets like D&D.


As for the story aspect of the game, the setting is completely open to imagination. I've played FRPGs in "classical" fantasy settings, steampunk, cyberpunk, modern, sci-fi, mixed genres... anything, it's all up to the creativity of the GM and the players.
At the moment I have a few ideas that are floating in my head, storywise, but I'd like to see how much interest the idea in itself can get before I indulge myself in creating them to more depth...

So the way it would usually work is that the GM creates a world and backstory and then people create their own characters within what makes sense in the story-world (meaning that in a realistic RPG set in modern times you wouldn't create a mage). Then everyone would start playing, posting their entry into the story, find each other over time and start to work towards the (sometimes very subtle) goal of the game. Usually in these games there's a thread for the actual RPG and the OOC thread, sometimes also a characters and backgrounds thread... it all depends on how elaborate the world and backstory is. The OOC thread is usually needed to discuss things that have to be discussed between all players. Most story-relevant discussion between a small group of players or a player and the GM would happen in PMs...

So I hope your question is answered, if there's any more, just ask!