Post by Caecilia Domitia Snow on Jul 24, 2012 19:19:09 GMT -8
Yes, yes, the rules. We all hate reading them, but a site couldn't exist without them. And I know these are long, but it's better to have things lined up and explained than to have someone get in trouble for accidentally breaking a vague rule. Basically: use your common sense for most of these, and you'll be fine.
Staff reserve the right to change or add to these rules at any time. (But we will PM you if there is a change.)
- One character per account; you can register with any username you want, but remember to change it to first and last, or first middle and last. (Don't worry about the uppercase thing; there's a code that automatically makes it look that way.)
- No limit on amount of characters as long as you keep them active.
- "Active" means posting at least a few times a month. There isn't a requirement here, but if you don't sign in for a month, we will delete your account to keep the board clean. If you sign in but do not post an IC post for over a month, you will receive a warning PM and we will deal with it on a case-to-case basis.
- For site canons: we ask that you post once a week. This shouldn't be too much of a problem, and you will be excused if you post a missing note. (We're reasonable people; PM us if you have issues with this requirement.) If you miss one week, we will PM you a warning, but it won't be a big deal. If you consistently miss weeks (or post one week, miss a week, post one week, miss a week, etc.) we will PM you again and you will likely lose your canon. If you lose your canon for any reason, you can get them back, but you have to wait a month (during which someone else can take them) before you repost your app.
- If you are going to be away for any significant length of time, post a missing note so we know. This excuses you from activity checks during that time and keeps your fellow RPers in the know.
- 200 wordcount minimum. Quality is more important than quantity, but please make sure you give the person you're threading with something to work off of.
- Post in third person POV. I have nothing against other POVs, but we need to keep things consistent. You can use first person in letters and diaries/journals.
- Respect all members. No if's, and's, or but's about it.
- No OOC drama. PM about it or go to a staff member if you have any issues. If you honestly can't stand someone, don't involve yourself with them - and if you must thread for plot reasons, then keep it polite.
- No plagiarism of any kind will be tolerated.
- Keep chatspeak and swearing to a minimum. "Lol," "brb," etc. are fine, but no "u" or "l8tr" or anything like that; and you can swear, but just remember that we can have people as young as 13 on proboards.
- Similar to the swearing part above, proboards is PG13, so nothing overly graphic, etc.etc. During the Games there are bound to be some gory deaths, and hey, your characters can have sex and do morphling and drink, but you can be vague and fade to black and all that lovely stuff. Just be appropriate.
- Signatures cannot be bigger than 500x500, and icons cannot be bigger than 100x100. Staff will remove your graphics if they exceed these limits.
- No advertising anywhere but the advertising board. This includes the cbox. You can vaguely mention another site, if you're working on a post somewhere else, but no names and no links (not even in the email/url space). Note: your can link to resource sites such as Caution 2.0, as long as you're not linking to an advertisement there. We all love to share templates and graphics we dig up, don't we?
- This is a place to have fun! Don't badger people for posts, and don't come in here ranting and raving or throwing a pity party. It's not that we don't care, but there are a lot of people who RP to get away from stress, and that certainly doesn't help.
- No IC posts in OOC threads, and no OOC posts in IC threads. For example: if someone has an open thread but someone else has already replied and you want to know if they're up for a three-person thread, PM both other characters, don't post there asking.
- No Mary Sue's or Gary Stu's and no powerplaying or godmoding. (Godmoding is making your character super strong/smart/invincible/etc. Powerplaying is controlling another person's character without their permission. You should know this already if you're an RPer, but please don't mix up the definitions; that's a pet peeve of mine.)
- Keep the plot in mind while creating your characters - even if they aren't actively part of current events, they will have been affected in some way by the Dark Days. A civil war leaves no one untouched.
- Please try to spread your characters out a bit, both with genders and with districts. I know it's difficult to be the only character in your district, but we can't have everyone lumped together either. Try putting up some wanted ads to get other characters to interact with.
- Please use the coding for the app and don't change any of it. Post in the "Pending/WIP" board with your character's full name as the thread subject.
- Do not bug staff to look at your app. You may mention it in the cbox if you have been waiting for more than 24 hours, but we tend to be prompt anyway.
- Don't take offense if we ask you to fix/change something! It is nothing personal, and staff are reasonable. We just want to make sure that everything will work on the site and that you will be able to RP successfully here.
- Make sure to post all of your claims after you are accepted; staff won't remind you. Face claims must be established celebrities: actors/actresses, models, athletes, etc.
- If you kill a character, you can't bring them back! Keep that in mind before you decide to give them a dramatic ending.
- If you would like to have your character have children, let staff know. This rule will likely change once this point comes up, but currently we aren't going to worry about putting up a child app.
- Water time is allowed here, so you can go do past threads or future threads and have as many threads as you like.
- Communication and movement between the districts is possible but not very likely. Peacekeepers, avox, and Capitol citizens can travel, but all other Panem citizens have to sneak if they want to meet people from other districts. Check the map in the Guide thread to see which districts are near yours if you want to run into them in the border areas between districts (or your character could try and stowaway on a train). Just keep such run-ins reasonable, since the Capitol is very paranoid about more rebellions.