Rules
RULES
COMMON SENSE
- Be nice. We're all here to have fun, right? Right. Be nice to your fellow players and they'll (hopefully) be nice to you, and then we'll all get along and it'll be lovely.
- If you have any problems, tell a mod. If someone else in the game is causing you some serious bother, come to us about it and we'll try to sort it out diplomatically with minimum injuries. Or, you know, you could post to roleplaysecrets about it, but that wouldn't solve anything and it would make us sad.
- OOC ≠ IC. Someone's character was mean to your character? That's no reason at all for you to be mean to the player. In-character meanness is encouraged. Inflicting drama on the characters is fun. Drama for the players, less so.
- No godmoding. Even if in canon they are omniscient and omnipotent, everyone's completely powered down, so you have no excuse for your character winning everything all the time.
- No unapproved hacking, character interference or vandalism. Contact a mod if you're thinking of doing any of the above. Anyone that has not received mod approval beforehand will have comments on their thread frozen and be asked to edit or delete the post in question.
- No metagaming. This is important. Your OOC knowledge is not the same as your IC knowledge. Even if your character is very intelligent, they're unlikely to immediately realise they're an artificially created replica of a fictional character. There are mysteries aplenty in the City, and players are encouraged to have their characters attempt to solve them, but please approach it realistically. Even if you're playing L or Poirot or Phoenix Wright, that is not an excuse to work everything out with inhuman speed.
POWERS
- Your character has no superhuman powers, although they will, initially, think they do. Therefore, all magic skills, abilities and so on are null and void. However, any physical abilities such as knowledge of ju jitsu or fencing, or being able to to double front flips from standing, are completely within limits. Superhuman physical abilities, however they're explained in the character's canon, are right out. This goes for impossibly inhuman physical features, too.(Implausible anime hair may be kept.)
- Your character has no superhuman weaknesses. Werewolves don't have anything to fear from silver, fire elementals don't need to worry about water. Everyone's body is human.
CHARACTERS
- All kinds of characters are accepted from all kinds of fandoms, with the caveat that non-human characters will be created human. Abnormal mental processes will be simulated with chemical suppressants (for example, to remove the emotions of Nobodies), but all characters will be given human bodies. The particulars of new human bodies are up to the player as long as they are human bodies. Characters with plausible scars, tattoos or piercings will be given these before their memories are implanted - they may feel a little new.
- Duplicates are allowed with mod permission. The powers that be may slip up now and then and create two of the same character by accident, but, while we welcome doubles as loads of fun for plot, they are rare and players should check with mods before applying for one. Bear in mind that while characters may have non-canon blips in their memories, drastic AUs (eg. a Harry Potter who remembers being a sky pirate, or a Naruto who's an enormous pessimist) should be reserved for plot devices. Duplicates shouldn't be taken lightly; AU duplicates even less so.
PASSAGE OF TIME
- One week in-game is two weeks IRL - we allow two weeks to play out the events of one IC week. Threads can, of course, be backdated, and we don't expect absolutely every thread that's started in one week to be finished in the same one (although it's nice when they are!). Generally speaking (and for your convenience), passage of time will be marked by the weekly newsletter and ooc bulletin.
RESERVING AND APPLYING
- Don’t be greedy - you may only reserve one character at a time, as well as only applying for one character at a time. You cannot have two reservations at once. With applications, you may only apply again once a full week has passed since your last character was accepted, and also when that character has been in one active log.
- This is not Japan. Regardless of where your character might have originated, please use the western format for names. So thats first name first and last name last.
- We may ask you to redo some sections - sometimes if we think an application is good in some places, but is lacking in others, or we just want to know more about that character if we feel you haven’t impressed us enough, we ask you to redo some sections of your application. This doesn’t mean you’ve gotten in, and nor does it mean you’ve been rejected. We’d just like more information on your character as we feel you were too vague or didn’t get your point across.
- Don't bite off more than you can chew. You can have more than one character, but the maximum is five and players are advised not to app for more than they can handle.
- We provide the html codes for a reason - please format your applications properly. This means by either bolding the section titles, or by spacing the sections out. We’re only humans and a block of text with no formatting gives us headaches and does not impress us. We offer html copy/paste coding on the application page for a reason. Please don’t be hatin’ on our eyes.
ACTIVITY
- Please be active. We wouldn't expect any sane person to dedicate every waking hour to the game, but we do expect each character to be in at least one thread per in-game week (that's two weeks in real life). This only applies to third-person threads; there is no mandatory minimum for journal posts, as we realise regular journal updates aren't necessarily in-character for everyone. This goes for each character regardless of how many characters you play. Feel free to talk to us about it if you feel you can't keep up.
- Activity checks will be run once a month. Anyone who doesn't confirm their activity in the check will be contacted by the mods about it before they're removed from the game - we aren't about to indiscriminately remove anyone who doesn't check in. If you know you're going to be away, please let us know beforehand on the hiatus post.
POSTING
- Logs go in the main comm. First-person journal posts should go on character journals. Third-person RP threads should be logged in LJ comments. In-character AIM conversations do not need to be posted, but if you want to share them you can post them to the main comm in the same way as a regular log. Third-person threads should be posted in this format:
'title of post' [ATTN: CHARACTER1, CHARACTER2] OPEN (or CLOSED, as the case may be)
CHARACTERS:
SUMMARY:
PLACE:
TIME:
WARNINGS:
- with the opening post under an LJ-cut. Adding "FINISHED" to the title when a thread's done is advisable.
AIM logs should be posted thus:
'title of post' [IM LOG]
CHARACTERS:
SUMMARY:
TIME:
WARNINGS:
Warnings are advised for anything excessively violent or in any way not work-safe, although sexually explicit content is preferred kept to one-on-one logs.
COMMON SENSE
- Be nice. We're all here to have fun, right? Right. Be nice to your fellow players and they'll (hopefully) be nice to you, and then we'll all get along and it'll be lovely.
- If you have any problems, tell a mod. If someone else in the game is causing you some serious bother, come to us about it and we'll try to sort it out diplomatically with minimum injuries. Or, you know, you could post to roleplaysecrets about it, but that wouldn't solve anything and it would make us sad.
- OOC ≠ IC. Someone's character was mean to your character? That's no reason at all for you to be mean to the player. In-character meanness is encouraged. Inflicting drama on the characters is fun. Drama for the players, less so.
- No godmoding. Even if in canon they are omniscient and omnipotent, everyone's completely powered down, so you have no excuse for your character winning everything all the time.
- No unapproved hacking, character interference or vandalism. Contact a mod if you're thinking of doing any of the above. Anyone that has not received mod approval beforehand will have comments on their thread frozen and be asked to edit or delete the post in question.
- No metagaming. This is important. Your OOC knowledge is not the same as your IC knowledge. Even if your character is very intelligent, they're unlikely to immediately realise they're an artificially created replica of a fictional character. There are mysteries aplenty in the City, and players are encouraged to have their characters attempt to solve them, but please approach it realistically. Even if you're playing L or Poirot or Phoenix Wright, that is not an excuse to work everything out with inhuman speed.
POWERS
- Your character has no superhuman powers, although they will, initially, think they do. Therefore, all magic skills, abilities and so on are null and void. However, any physical abilities such as knowledge of ju jitsu or fencing, or being able to to double front flips from standing, are completely within limits. Superhuman physical abilities, however they're explained in the character's canon, are right out. This goes for impossibly inhuman physical features, too.(Implausible anime hair may be kept.)
- Your character has no superhuman weaknesses. Werewolves don't have anything to fear from silver, fire elementals don't need to worry about water. Everyone's body is human.
CHARACTERS
- All kinds of characters are accepted from all kinds of fandoms, with the caveat that non-human characters will be created human. Abnormal mental processes will be simulated with chemical suppressants (for example, to remove the emotions of Nobodies), but all characters will be given human bodies. The particulars of new human bodies are up to the player as long as they are human bodies. Characters with plausible scars, tattoos or piercings will be given these before their memories are implanted - they may feel a little new.
- Duplicates are allowed with mod permission. The powers that be may slip up now and then and create two of the same character by accident, but, while we welcome doubles as loads of fun for plot, they are rare and players should check with mods before applying for one. Bear in mind that while characters may have non-canon blips in their memories, drastic AUs (eg. a Harry Potter who remembers being a sky pirate, or a Naruto who's an enormous pessimist) should be reserved for plot devices. Duplicates shouldn't be taken lightly; AU duplicates even less so.
PASSAGE OF TIME
- One week in-game is two weeks IRL - we allow two weeks to play out the events of one IC week. Threads can, of course, be backdated, and we don't expect absolutely every thread that's started in one week to be finished in the same one (although it's nice when they are!). Generally speaking (and for your convenience), passage of time will be marked by the weekly newsletter and ooc bulletin.
RESERVING AND APPLYING
- Don’t be greedy - you may only reserve one character at a time, as well as only applying for one character at a time. You cannot have two reservations at once. With applications, you may only apply again once a full week has passed since your last character was accepted, and also when that character has been in one active log.
- This is not Japan. Regardless of where your character might have originated, please use the western format for names. So thats first name first and last name last.
- We may ask you to redo some sections - sometimes if we think an application is good in some places, but is lacking in others, or we just want to know more about that character if we feel you haven’t impressed us enough, we ask you to redo some sections of your application. This doesn’t mean you’ve gotten in, and nor does it mean you’ve been rejected. We’d just like more information on your character as we feel you were too vague or didn’t get your point across.
- Don't bite off more than you can chew. You can have more than one character, but the maximum is five and players are advised not to app for more than they can handle.
- We provide the html codes for a reason - please format your applications properly. This means by either bolding the section titles, or by spacing the sections out. We’re only humans and a block of text with no formatting gives us headaches and does not impress us. We offer html copy/paste coding on the application page for a reason. Please don’t be hatin’ on our eyes.
ACTIVITY
- Please be active. We wouldn't expect any sane person to dedicate every waking hour to the game, but we do expect each character to be in at least one thread per in-game week (that's two weeks in real life). This only applies to third-person threads; there is no mandatory minimum for journal posts, as we realise regular journal updates aren't necessarily in-character for everyone. This goes for each character regardless of how many characters you play. Feel free to talk to us about it if you feel you can't keep up.
- Activity checks will be run once a month. Anyone who doesn't confirm their activity in the check will be contacted by the mods about it before they're removed from the game - we aren't about to indiscriminately remove anyone who doesn't check in. If you know you're going to be away, please let us know beforehand on the hiatus post.
POSTING
- Logs go in the main comm. First-person journal posts should go on character journals. Third-person RP threads should be logged in LJ comments. In-character AIM conversations do not need to be posted, but if you want to share them you can post them to the main comm in the same way as a regular log. Third-person threads should be posted in this format:
'title of post' [ATTN: CHARACTER1, CHARACTER2] OPEN (or CLOSED, as the case may be)
CHARACTERS:
SUMMARY:
PLACE:
TIME:
WARNINGS:
- with the opening post under an LJ-cut. Adding "FINISHED" to the title when a thread's done is advisable.
AIM logs should be posted thus:
'title of post' [IM LOG]
CHARACTERS:
SUMMARY:
TIME:
WARNINGS:
Warnings are advised for anything excessively violent or in any way not work-safe, although sexually explicit content is preferred kept to one-on-one logs.