RULES & GUIDELINES
If you have any questions about any of the rules, feel free to contact a mod or leave a question here.
The rules and guidelines cover general etiquette, activity requirements, player plot and posting guidelines. If you can't find what you're looking for here, try the FAQ. We really recommend reading through this page even though some of it might be predictable.
BE EXCELLENT TO EACH OTHER
Treat your fellow players with respect and courtesy and we'll all get along and it will be lovely. We know we can't very easily make an LJ RP an absolutely safe space, but we'd like it to be as safe and comfortable for everyone as we can make it, practically speaking. (Characters can be jerks all they like, of course, but remember IC ≠ OOC.)
1. XI is political correctness gone mad.
When we say 'safe and comfortable' we mean that we want as few people as possible to feel marginalised or discriminated against. That means that in OOC and chat we would really appreciate it if you could keep from sexist, racist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, classist or sizeist language where possible; it means no rape jokes, no fat jokes, no 'fag' or 'gay' as insults, no 'retarded' when you mean stupid, and no language stigmatising mental illness, because while you might not personally think these things are objectionable, we promise you there are players here who find them very hurtful.
It doesn't mean that we want to shut down any kind of discussion that might lead to anyone having to question their privilege. While mods reserve the right to force a change of discussion, we will only do this if people are getting personal, mean or rude; if you find something to be objectionable or offensive, even if it's "just" fiction or "just" a joke, we won't shut you down if you want to speak up about it, and we won't turn you away if you're more comfortable asking the mods to do something about it.
Finally, don't take this to mean you can't say anything around here for fear of being told you've been accidentally offensive. If we need to call you on something you've said, we promise to be as gentle as we can if you promise to take the feelings of whoever's raised the issue into account.
If this is a problem for you, there are many other places on the internet you can go to where no one will call you on being offensive.
2. We will kick you out if you're an asshole.
If you're being a douche, and you keep on being a douche after we've had a word with you about it, then you're out. We're more concerned about the people who're in the game already being able to actually enjoy themselves here than about other people thinking poorly of us after you go away to RP!S or the anon meme to wank about how unfair it was that we kicked you out for being a wanker.
3. If you're having any problems with the game, let us know.
The mod contact information is there for a reason. If another player is giving you grief, or if you're having trouble playing, or if you just don't get something, drop us a line and we'll do our best to sort it out! We much prefer talking to our players about stuff than watching them wank about it on the anon meme. If you want to give us feedback about something but you're not comfortable doing it by PM or IM or email, comments to the mod contact post are screened and anonymous is enabled.
4. No godmoding, metagaming or grandstanding.
Your character might be really powerful, but if you want them to use their powers to hurt another character, or affect another character's mind, it is 100% necessary that you ask them first (and if we're talking serious maiming or prolonged mind-control or memory-altering or something, that comes under trauma and you need to talk to the mods even if both or all people involved are agreed on it). Similarly, the fact that you know something doesn't mean your character should unless there is a legitimate IC reason for it.
Further to this, if your character is really powerful, or really awesome, or really talented, or really influential, or whatever, we don't want to hear about it in chat all the time.
5. You cannot be the centre of attention the whole time.
It doesn't matter if, in their canon, your character is the main character, or if they're really powerful and have never been defeated. They are not the main character of the RPG. We wholeheartedly encourage player-run plot, and we don't mean to say that a player-run plot can't centre around a specific character! That's totally okay. Individuals are frequently catalysts for plot. But please remember that an RPG like this one is a group effort with an ensemble cast, and if you're going out of your way to make your character's business everyone's business, all of the time, then people are going to get annoyed.
6. Include a warning for anything you post that needs a warning.
This includes anything not worksafe, anything more than PG-13, and anything that you think might upset someone. If you aren't sure, warn anyway. This goes for the RP comms, the OOC comm, the crack comm and chat.
7. Call a hiatus if you need some time off.
If you're going to be away for a while, we need to know so we don't drop you when the activity check comes round, and so that other players know where you've gone.
If your life just got really busy, or even if you're just not feeling the game and you think you could use a little time off before you try to get yourself back into it, don't feel bad! Letting people know you'll be absent or slow to post for a while is much better than beating yourself up about not being able to keep up with threads.
When you come back from hiatus, please don't forget to reply to your original comment on the hiatus post to let us know!
8. If you're going to drop, say so.
If you're absolutely sure you're not going to play here any more, we'd much rather you told us you're leaving than idled out until the activity check, leaving us all to wonder where on earth you have gone. The drop post is here.
PARTY ON, DUDES
But how? How do I party?
1. Please put your character's info somewhere easily viewable.
Because this is a panfandom AU game, it's very important that everyone can check everyone else's character information easily. Either put it on your character's LJ profile information, or make a post with it in and link to it from their profile.
2. If you're going to change your character's backstory, let us know.
We're totally okay with people making changes to the backgrounds of their characters, especially to accommodate canonmates - after all, what kind of X-Men game would we be if we didn't allow retcons? - but if you're going to do this, please let us know first, especially if it's something that's going to cause any significant change to your character's personality, attitude, physical or mental health, or powers. We have an app process for a reason; if your character's background/personality/powerset isn't the one we approved any more, then we need to know before you make that change so that you're not inserting things that we would have rejected if they'd been in your app. We're not saying you can't change it! Retcons are A-OK. We just want you to let us know.
3. One week in-game = two weeks IRL.
For every two actual real life weeks that pass, one week will pass in the RP - at the beginning of each in-game week we'll have a post of updates and news reports so everyone knows what's up in Earth-21561926. These updates will always happen every other Saturday at 8pm GMT - on Sunday in-game. If you want to know when the next one will be, check xi_mods for when the last one was.
This is mostly so we can make sure plot events happen in a timely fashion and that everyone has a more or less unified idea of when things are going on. We recognise that a lot of threads will take a while to pan out, but we figure that, since the vast majority of characters aren't going to be involved in a thread every single day of the week, this shouldn't be a problem for the most part. Backlogging is totally acceptable!
If you've got something - a news item, event or similar - that you want to be put in the game update, ask a mod and we'll stick it in there.
4. xi_rpg
This is the log comm, where in-game events are played out. These logs can be either written in third-person prose, or in the first person, with actions in brackets, asterisks or similar. Generally speaking we suggest first-person action logs should be used for threads with lots of characters in them, like mentor group meetings, classes or the MUTANT PROM.
There are no length requirements for either format - write as much or as little as you feel you need to for each post, but remember your post should give the other people you're tagging with something to go off! Each comment within a log should be posted as a reply to the previous comment, not a separate comment to original LiveJournal post. If there are more than two people in your log, you might want to track the post to receive notifications of new posts to it. (The button that looks like this:
)
Log posts should start with the following information, followed by the body of the opening post under an LJ-cut:
Characters: Who's in the log. State here whether the log is open (anyone can join) or closed (only the characters listed here).
Location: Where the log is taking place.
Time: What time of day the evens of the log are happening at, or what day of the week, if you want to be specific about that.
Content: A brief description of what's happening in the thread.
Format: Third- or first-person (see above).
Warnings: If your thread contains any graphic violence, sexual content, or anything that you think people might prefer to be given the chance to not read, please include a warning.
5. xi_online
This comm is to be treated like a sort of online message board for the students and staff - if you've been in any LJ RP ever, you probably know the drill, but if you don't it's still pretty self-explanatory. Posts to this community should be in the first person, as if your character is updating an online journal or posting to a forum. They can be text, voice or video posts. They cannot be anonymous within the institute, as it is disabled to discourage trouble makers. They can be made private or filtered to certain people, but bear in mind that the Institute has enough computer-savvy technopaths that there is no such thing as completely unhackable. There are also tags to show which group you are posting as, !!xavier institute, !!brotherhood, !!internet (a general internet wide tag) and !!other for anything we missed. Please use the comm for this, not your character's personal journal. You can use the character journal for whatever you like, but xi_online is where the threading should go.
6. Posts to both of the IC communities should be tagged appropriately.
If it's on xi_rpg, it should have a name tag for every character who's in it; if it's on xi_online it just needs a tag for the character who made the post, but if your character has had a significant discussion thread in an xi_online post that they didn't start, feel free to add a tag for them - there's no official measurement for 'significant' here, it's entirely up to player discretion. If your character doesn't have a tag yet, give one of the mods a poke and we'll add one for them.
If it's a thread involving the Brotherhood of Mutants, or a post to the Brotherhood's network, please use the !!brotherhood tag.
7. Activity requirements.
Officially, characters based at the Xavier Institute should post at least once a week. Characters who don't live at the Institute only need to post once a month, because we know it's difficult to get as much CR and threadage for characters like lone villains.
These are minimums - threads may often go quicker than this. If you know you won't be able to keep up with a thread, don't join it - or, if you thought you'd be able to keep up with it but can't, let the other people you're threading with know!
Activity checks will happen once a month. Except in extenuating circumstances, inactive characters will be dropped (players on hiatus are, obviously, exempt from activity checks).
8. If you want to start a big player-run plot that will affect a lot of the rest of the cast, talk to the mods about it.
Player-run storylines are awesome! If you've got an idea for a big plot event or storyline, we'd love to hear it - if you tell us about it we can help you put it into motion and work it around the plots we've already got planned.
9. The above also applies any plot that involves any significant trauma (eg. severe injuries, rape, abuse, character death, &c.), even if it's just to your character.
Stuff like that has to be mod approved. Traumatic events are okay in moderation but 1. we want to make sure that these things are handled sensibly and carefully and 2. we don't want everyone running around having massive angst all the time when they could be having MUTANT PROM.
10. Smut logs are acceptable with adequate warning, but the characters involved had damn well better be adults.
Sure, it's a school full of teenagers and some of them are inevitably going to be doing sexual things, and we're fine with acknowledging it, but if you want to thread it, please, please do it elsewhere. Also please note that there's a difference between acknowledging that sometimes minors do have sex - because, yes! many of them do! it would be unrealistic to assert that they don't! - and sexualising and fetishising them.
For anyone puzzled on this point: if you're acknowledging that your underage character thinks sexual thoughts or engages in sexual activity or behaviour you are fine; if your underage character is trying to draw other characters' attention to how sexy they are you are fine; if you're writing or talking about your underage character in a way aimed to draw other players' attention to how sexy they are, especially in the context of how cute it is that they're a minor, you are not fine and we will ask that you stop at once.
None of that, please - not in threads, not in OOC, not in chat.
Makeouts are acceptable.
The rules and guidelines cover general etiquette, activity requirements, player plot and posting guidelines. If you can't find what you're looking for here, try the FAQ. We really recommend reading through this page even though some of it might be predictable.
BE EXCELLENT TO EACH OTHER
Treat your fellow players with respect and courtesy and we'll all get along and it will be lovely. We know we can't very easily make an LJ RP an absolutely safe space, but we'd like it to be as safe and comfortable for everyone as we can make it, practically speaking. (Characters can be jerks all they like, of course, but remember IC ≠ OOC.)
1. XI is political correctness gone mad.
When we say 'safe and comfortable' we mean that we want as few people as possible to feel marginalised or discriminated against. That means that in OOC and chat we would really appreciate it if you could keep from sexist, racist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, classist or sizeist language where possible; it means no rape jokes, no fat jokes, no 'fag' or 'gay' as insults, no 'retarded' when you mean stupid, and no language stigmatising mental illness, because while you might not personally think these things are objectionable, we promise you there are players here who find them very hurtful.
It doesn't mean that we want to shut down any kind of discussion that might lead to anyone having to question their privilege. While mods reserve the right to force a change of discussion, we will only do this if people are getting personal, mean or rude; if you find something to be objectionable or offensive, even if it's "just" fiction or "just" a joke, we won't shut you down if you want to speak up about it, and we won't turn you away if you're more comfortable asking the mods to do something about it.
Finally, don't take this to mean you can't say anything around here for fear of being told you've been accidentally offensive. If we need to call you on something you've said, we promise to be as gentle as we can if you promise to take the feelings of whoever's raised the issue into account.
If this is a problem for you, there are many other places on the internet you can go to where no one will call you on being offensive.
2. We will kick you out if you're an asshole.
If you're being a douche, and you keep on being a douche after we've had a word with you about it, then you're out. We're more concerned about the people who're in the game already being able to actually enjoy themselves here than about other people thinking poorly of us after you go away to RP!S or the anon meme to wank about how unfair it was that we kicked you out for being a wanker.
3. If you're having any problems with the game, let us know.
The mod contact information is there for a reason. If another player is giving you grief, or if you're having trouble playing, or if you just don't get something, drop us a line and we'll do our best to sort it out! We much prefer talking to our players about stuff than watching them wank about it on the anon meme. If you want to give us feedback about something but you're not comfortable doing it by PM or IM or email, comments to the mod contact post are screened and anonymous is enabled.
4. No godmoding, metagaming or grandstanding.
Your character might be really powerful, but if you want them to use their powers to hurt another character, or affect another character's mind, it is 100% necessary that you ask them first (and if we're talking serious maiming or prolonged mind-control or memory-altering or something, that comes under trauma and you need to talk to the mods even if both or all people involved are agreed on it). Similarly, the fact that you know something doesn't mean your character should unless there is a legitimate IC reason for it.
Further to this, if your character is really powerful, or really awesome, or really talented, or really influential, or whatever, we don't want to hear about it in chat all the time.
5. You cannot be the centre of attention the whole time.
It doesn't matter if, in their canon, your character is the main character, or if they're really powerful and have never been defeated. They are not the main character of the RPG. We wholeheartedly encourage player-run plot, and we don't mean to say that a player-run plot can't centre around a specific character! That's totally okay. Individuals are frequently catalysts for plot. But please remember that an RPG like this one is a group effort with an ensemble cast, and if you're going out of your way to make your character's business everyone's business, all of the time, then people are going to get annoyed.
6. Include a warning for anything you post that needs a warning.
This includes anything not worksafe, anything more than PG-13, and anything that you think might upset someone. If you aren't sure, warn anyway. This goes for the RP comms, the OOC comm, the crack comm and chat.
7. Call a hiatus if you need some time off.
If you're going to be away for a while, we need to know so we don't drop you when the activity check comes round, and so that other players know where you've gone.
If your life just got really busy, or even if you're just not feeling the game and you think you could use a little time off before you try to get yourself back into it, don't feel bad! Letting people know you'll be absent or slow to post for a while is much better than beating yourself up about not being able to keep up with threads.
When you come back from hiatus, please don't forget to reply to your original comment on the hiatus post to let us know!
8. If you're going to drop, say so.
If you're absolutely sure you're not going to play here any more, we'd much rather you told us you're leaving than idled out until the activity check, leaving us all to wonder where on earth you have gone. The drop post is here.
PARTY ON, DUDES
But how? How do I party?
1. Please put your character's info somewhere easily viewable.
Because this is a panfandom AU game, it's very important that everyone can check everyone else's character information easily. Either put it on your character's LJ profile information, or make a post with it in and link to it from their profile.
2. If you're going to change your character's backstory, let us know.
We're totally okay with people making changes to the backgrounds of their characters, especially to accommodate canonmates - after all, what kind of X-Men game would we be if we didn't allow retcons? - but if you're going to do this, please let us know first, especially if it's something that's going to cause any significant change to your character's personality, attitude, physical or mental health, or powers. We have an app process for a reason; if your character's background/personality/powerset isn't the one we approved any more, then we need to know before you make that change so that you're not inserting things that we would have rejected if they'd been in your app. We're not saying you can't change it! Retcons are A-OK. We just want you to let us know.
3. One week in-game = two weeks IRL.
For every two actual real life weeks that pass, one week will pass in the RP - at the beginning of each in-game week we'll have a post of updates and news reports so everyone knows what's up in Earth-21561926. These updates will always happen every other Saturday at 8pm GMT - on Sunday in-game. If you want to know when the next one will be, check xi_mods for when the last one was.
This is mostly so we can make sure plot events happen in a timely fashion and that everyone has a more or less unified idea of when things are going on. We recognise that a lot of threads will take a while to pan out, but we figure that, since the vast majority of characters aren't going to be involved in a thread every single day of the week, this shouldn't be a problem for the most part. Backlogging is totally acceptable!
If you've got something - a news item, event or similar - that you want to be put in the game update, ask a mod and we'll stick it in there.
4. xi_rpg
This is the log comm, where in-game events are played out. These logs can be either written in third-person prose, or in the first person, with actions in brackets, asterisks or similar. Generally speaking we suggest first-person action logs should be used for threads with lots of characters in them, like mentor group meetings, classes or the MUTANT PROM.
There are no length requirements for either format - write as much or as little as you feel you need to for each post, but remember your post should give the other people you're tagging with something to go off! Each comment within a log should be posted as a reply to the previous comment, not a separate comment to original LiveJournal post. If there are more than two people in your log, you might want to track the post to receive notifications of new posts to it. (The button that looks like this:
)
Log posts should start with the following information, followed by the body of the opening post under an LJ-cut:
Characters: Who's in the log. State here whether the log is open (anyone can join) or closed (only the characters listed here).
Location: Where the log is taking place.
Time: What time of day the evens of the log are happening at, or what day of the week, if you want to be specific about that.
Content: A brief description of what's happening in the thread.
Format: Third- or first-person (see above).
Warnings: If your thread contains any graphic violence, sexual content, or anything that you think people might prefer to be given the chance to not read, please include a warning.
5. xi_online
This comm is to be treated like a sort of online message board for the students and staff - if you've been in any LJ RP ever, you probably know the drill, but if you don't it's still pretty self-explanatory. Posts to this community should be in the first person, as if your character is updating an online journal or posting to a forum. They can be text, voice or video posts. They cannot be anonymous within the institute, as it is disabled to discourage trouble makers. They can be made private or filtered to certain people, but bear in mind that the Institute has enough computer-savvy technopaths that there is no such thing as completely unhackable. There are also tags to show which group you are posting as, !!xavier institute, !!brotherhood, !!internet (a general internet wide tag) and !!other for anything we missed. Please use the comm for this, not your character's personal journal. You can use the character journal for whatever you like, but xi_online is where the threading should go.
6. Posts to both of the IC communities should be tagged appropriately.
If it's on xi_rpg, it should have a name tag for every character who's in it; if it's on xi_online it just needs a tag for the character who made the post, but if your character has had a significant discussion thread in an xi_online post that they didn't start, feel free to add a tag for them - there's no official measurement for 'significant' here, it's entirely up to player discretion. If your character doesn't have a tag yet, give one of the mods a poke and we'll add one for them.
If it's a thread involving the Brotherhood of Mutants, or a post to the Brotherhood's network, please use the !!brotherhood tag.
7. Activity requirements.
Officially, characters based at the Xavier Institute should post at least once a week. Characters who don't live at the Institute only need to post once a month, because we know it's difficult to get as much CR and threadage for characters like lone villains.
These are minimums - threads may often go quicker than this. If you know you won't be able to keep up with a thread, don't join it - or, if you thought you'd be able to keep up with it but can't, let the other people you're threading with know!
Activity checks will happen once a month. Except in extenuating circumstances, inactive characters will be dropped (players on hiatus are, obviously, exempt from activity checks).
8. If you want to start a big player-run plot that will affect a lot of the rest of the cast, talk to the mods about it.
Player-run storylines are awesome! If you've got an idea for a big plot event or storyline, we'd love to hear it - if you tell us about it we can help you put it into motion and work it around the plots we've already got planned.
9. The above also applies any plot that involves any significant trauma (eg. severe injuries, rape, abuse, character death, &c.), even if it's just to your character.
Stuff like that has to be mod approved. Traumatic events are okay in moderation but 1. we want to make sure that these things are handled sensibly and carefully and 2. we don't want everyone running around having massive angst all the time when they could be having MUTANT PROM.
10. Smut logs are acceptable with adequate warning, but the characters involved had damn well better be adults.
Sure, it's a school full of teenagers and some of them are inevitably going to be doing sexual things, and we're fine with acknowledging it, but if you want to thread it, please, please do it elsewhere. Also please note that there's a difference between acknowledging that sometimes minors do have sex - because, yes! many of them do! it would be unrealistic to assert that they don't! - and sexualising and fetishising them.
For anyone puzzled on this point: if you're acknowledging that your underage character thinks sexual thoughts or engages in sexual activity or behaviour you are fine; if your underage character is trying to draw other characters' attention to how sexy they are you are fine; if you're writing or talking about your underage character in a way aimed to draw other players' attention to how sexy they are, especially in the context of how cute it is that they're a minor, you are not fine and we will ask that you stop at once.
None of that, please - not in threads, not in OOC, not in chat.
Makeouts are acceptable.