- General Rules:
- Maintain common civility towards your fellow players. Abusive behavior, harassment, deliberate exclusion, blatant sabotaging of each other's stories, and/or other similar acts of intolerance are grounds for removal from the campaign.
- All in-character posts should be written in past-tense, third person.
- An effort to maintain correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation is required.
- Refrain from the use of color-coding sections of posting as this can make them difficult to read. Readability is especially difficult when multiple colors are being utilized while trying to juggle colors that are readable on multiple themes. A single solid color for the entire post is easier to read and when in doubt, the default color is the easiest to read and auto-adjusts for whatever theme the reader is using.
- Refrain from over fluffing your posts with aesthetic imagery and formatting. It's very distracting to the readers, and this is a campaign that focuses strongly on the storytelling elements. This means that we put emphasis on writing rather than imagery. To clarify this point, occasional pictures for complimentary imagery are perfectly fine, but centered posts with sparkling banners and multicolored cursive font are unnecessary.
- Do not metagame. The use of out-of-character information that your character could not have known is regarded as cheating and is disrespectful to your fellow players and your DM.
- Do not auto-hit. Even in open-writing portions of the roleplay, you may not force the resolution of an action upon another player's character - or any object or location that belongs to another player - without the owner's permission. All characters that are the target of an attack or action must be allowed a response, and appropriate dice rolls made if necessary. This restriction may be voided for the sake of story development with the consent of all players involved. What this means is if your character gets drunk and sucker-punches a party-mate, the player of the defending character may wave this rule and allow the punch to land without an attack roll if they choose for the sake of fluid writing and the story development. Just communicate with each other.
- Do not use the IC areas for OOC content. Please keep all out-of-character discussions to the OOC threads, PMs, or the discord OOC channel.
- Keep content reasonable for a general audience. Violent themes and strong language are permitted, but keep it tasteful and please avoid anything overly vulgar or graphic. Think Lord of the Rings vs Game of Thrones. We're aiming for the former more family-friendly age group.
- Don't bulldoze storylines. What does this mean? It means the difference between playing in a sandbox with others and simply stomping on everyone else's sandcastles. The goal should always be to facilitate RP in which everyone's contributions can thrive, grow, and influence the direction of the campaign. Repeatedly sweeping aside other players' developments to force yours into the spotlight can lead to unhappy players on all sides. We should all work together to create a direction that fosters the growth and development of the campaign and individual character development rather than destroying them outright. How can you tell if you're bulldozing a plot? If your action will effectively eliminate all ongoing RP and force all players to adopt your singular story, you're probably bulldozing plots. If your action will merge with and allow other stories to continue but also influence their direction? You're probably within the spirit of cooperation and collaboration. If you feel uncertain if a story development you want to pursue might risk bulldozing the campaign or other players' side-stories then please reach out to me so we can find a way to work things out.
- Maintain common civility towards your fellow players. Abusive behavior, harassment, deliberate exclusion, blatant sabotaging of each other's stories, and/or other similar acts of intolerance are grounds for removal from the campaign.
- Modifications to the Rule Book (To facilitate the focus on the writing and story development of this campaign, we will be running these modifications on an experimental basis. If we find it's not working well or needs tweaking it may be addressed mid-campaign.)
- Any skill check or non-combat action may be treated as a 'passive' skill check at any point in or out of combat. For skills that don't typically have a passive skill check, simply take 10 and add your skill modifiers to find out your passive score. What this means is that a barbarian doesn't need to roll a strength check to break down a flimsy door, and a rogue doesn't need to roll a dexterity check to make an easy jump onto a ledge in combat. This will allow people more freedom of writing without needing to dice check everything that is equal to or lower than a character's passive skill check. If you're not sure if the difficulty of something you want to do can be accomplished with your passive skill score, feel free to ask. Any player is always welcome to choose to roll a skill check instead of using their passive score if they want the random potential for something epic vs something disastrous.
- Mook Status. To reduce the number of necessary dice rolls and to keep combat moving smoothly in a text-based game, some enemies may be marked as a 'mook'. Attack rolls aren't necessary to hit these targets. This status may change throughout an encounter. For example, if an enemy marked as a mook enters cover, it may temporarily lose its mook weakness and attack rolls will become necessary.
- Ranged non-lethal damage. A player may declare an intent to deal non-lethal damage with a ranged weapon, but the player will have disadvantage on the attack.
- Any skill check or non-combat action may be treated as a 'passive' skill check at any point in or out of combat. For skills that don't typically have a passive skill check, simply take 10 and add your skill modifiers to find out your passive score. What this means is that a barbarian doesn't need to roll a strength check to break down a flimsy door, and a rogue doesn't need to roll a dexterity check to make an easy jump onto a ledge in combat. This will allow people more freedom of writing without needing to dice check everything that is equal to or lower than a character's passive skill check. If you're not sure if the difficulty of something you want to do can be accomplished with your passive skill score, feel free to ask. Any player is always welcome to choose to roll a skill check instead of using their passive score if they want the random potential for something epic vs something disastrous.
- Optional Rule Variations in Play (If there's an optional rule variation in one of the books that you would like to utilize that's not in this list, please ask!)
- All additional action options outlined in the DMG are permitted. Climb onto a Bigger Creature, Disarm, Mark, Overrun, Shove Aside, and Tumble. A full explanation of these actions and how to use them can be found in the next post.
- Cleaving through creatures and applying overflow damage to nearby creatures will be in effect.
- Lingering injuries will be in effect (sparingly). These will remain at the DM discretion and typically will only be utilized in exstrenuous circumstances or during major plot-driving encounters. You need not worry that the party will accumulate excessive lingering injuries every skirmish.
- Initiative Score will be in effect. To keep turns moving smoothly in a text medium, all creatures will have an established initiative score of 10+ Dexterity modifier.
- Massive Damage will be in effect. A creature (characters included) taking damage from a single source equal or greater than half its hit point maximum must pass a Constitution save or suffer an ill effect.
- Facing will be in effect. Whenever a creature (or character) ends its move, it can change its facing. Each creature has a front arc (the direction it faces), left and right side arcs, and a rear arc. A creature can also change its facing as a reaction when any other creature moves.
A creature can normally target only creatures in its front or side arcs. It can't see into its rear arc. This means an attacker in the creature's rear arc makes attack rolls against it with advantage.
Shields apply their bonus to AC only against attacks from the front arc or the same side arc as the shield. For example, a fighter with a shield on the left arm can use it only against attacks from the front and left arcs.
- Healing Surges will be in effect. As a free action, a character can use a healing surge and spend up to half his or her Hit Dice. For each Hit Die spent in this way, the player rolls the die and adds the character's Constitution modifier. The character regains hit points equal to the total. The player can decide to spend an additional Hit Die after each roll.
A character who uses a healing surge can't do so again until he or she finishes a short or long rest. Under this rule, a character regains all spent Hit Dice at the end of a long rest. With a short rest, a character regains Hit Dice equal to his or her level divided by four (minimum of one dice).
- All additional action options outlined in the DMG are permitted. Climb onto a Bigger Creature, Disarm, Mark, Overrun, Shove Aside, and Tumble. A full explanation of these actions and how to use them can be found in the next post.
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