Equinox The Rules

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Knosis

Grumpy Badger
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Rules of Equinox: This is a roleplay designed for players wanting to write in a low fantasy realm. The GM's do not claim this roleplay, as this is a group effort. For disputes that cannot be resolved among yourself, a Game Master will review and make a final judgement on the subject.

Game Masters: Ottoman, CaerJester, Knosis, Glmstr, and Script

With that all said there are a few rules and guidelines that we must all adhere to, and when in doubt trust in the spirit of collaboration.

  1. The 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 roleplay.
    • All posts should be written in past-tense third person.
    • An effort to maintain correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation is required.
    • 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.
    • Do not auto-hit. You may not force the resolution of an attack or action upon another player's character - or a 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. This includes claims of your character having acquired sensitive information that isn't public knowledge without posting and thus disallowing the defending party the option of thwarting the attempt. Example: Hacking into a foreign governments military files. This restriction may be voided for the sake of story development with the consent of all players involved.
    • Do not use any of the IC areas for OOC content. With the exception of the place descriptions in the first post of every thread, keep all out-of-character discussion to the OOC subforums, PMs, or the chatroom.
    • Do not make a character for another player's group without permission. This is disrespectful to the creator of the content.
    • Actions require backing content to support them. It is your responsibility to provide this. Failure to establish your content may result in actions being voided. To clarify on this point, you may not in the middle of an encounter establish that your character - an hour ago - set explosive traps that now blow up and kill everyone unless you can reference an earlier post displaying that your character did indeed do so. Likewise you can't post that your character was spying on another player's character a week ago unless you posted your character doing so at the time, thus allowing the defending party an opportunity to respond if able. This rule may be voided for the sake of story development with the consent of all players involved.
    • Encounters being collaboratively written through a non-forum medium such as titanpad.com, google docs, write pads, or chat, are perfectly acceptable and even encouraged; however, the content should be posted up at regular intervals as it's being written to allow for other players an opportunity to see the posts in the forums and thus participate. This is to prevent players from excluding other players, either intentionally or inadvertently, from participating in the RP by writing entirely off site and only posting once finished.
    • Keep content reasonable for a general audience. Violent and graphic themes are permitted, as is alluding to sexual encounters, but strong erotic tones, cybering, and overly sexualized themes are not.
    • Don't bulldozing plots. What does this mean? It means the difference between playing in a sandbox with others and simply stomping on everyone else's sand castles. Within a collaborative RP the goal should always be to facilitate RP in which everyone's contributions can thrive, grow, and influence the direction of the story. Sweeping aside other players' content to replace it with your own can lead to unhappy players on all sides. Conversely excluding other players out of fear of your own content being altered in any way bulldozes their plots. We should all work together to create a direction that fosters RP growth rather than destroying it 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 collaboration. If you feel uncertain if a story development you want to pursue might risk bulldozing other players' stories then I encourage you to consult any of the Equinox GM's for advice.
    • We ask that you refrain from the use of color coding to distinguish dialogue in posts. It can be very difficult to read, and it also does not replace the need for using line breaks between changes in speakers. Readability is especially difficult when 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.
    • We also ask that you refrain from over fluffing your posts with aesthetic imagery and formatting. It's very distracting to the readers, and this is a collaborative writing roleplay. This means that we put emphasis on writing with words. To clarify on this point, occasional pictures for complimentary imagery is fine, but centered posts with sparkling banners and multicolored cursive font is unnecessarily.

  2. Not Rules but Recommendations/Things to avoid.
    • Avoid lengthening posts for the sake of length. Sometimes a post only calls for a sentence or two, and that's fine. Sometimes they call for five paragraphs. There's no one right post length for all contexts, and you should be comfortable with writing shorter posts if it's called for. Example: Heavy dialogue encounters are liable to result in shorter posts. If you open any book, dialogue is typically done with rapid one line exchanges to maintain a flow of conversation. Too much filler causes a reader to lose the rhythm and flow of the dialogue. Writing short dialogue posts is perfectly acceptable. Conversely, if you're engaged in a massive space siege encounter, you can expect a post to require much more substance to it so that the other players have something to work off with their own posts.
 
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