02 - Rules & Guidelines

[The Phantom God]

Rules & Guidelines
(Please note: Any rules related to who and what you can apply for in terms of characters are located in the Character Apping Guidelines area of the guide instead.)

OOC Behavior

1. Don't be obscene. As roleplayers our characters sometimes do horrible things and that's okay. However, when it comes to how you treat real, actual living people there are some things you're expected to accept as part of your membership here. For example, don't joke about death or suicide. Don't pick on disabilities. Have a basic level of acceptance for people's identities. Don't dehumanize other members, basically.
   
2. No "arguing". Intelligent debate is welcome as necessary, but the keyword is 'intelligent'. You cannot have an intelligent discusion of any nature if everyone involved isn't treating eachother like they're intelligent.
   
3. Easy on name debates Puyo Puyo and Madou Monogatari are both series with... poor official English release histories. Sega, in particular, is very inconsistent with names. Even the Puyo Nexus Wiki makes some decisions about character names that we could question in spite of their best efforts. This forum abides by the idea that if a name was ever correct it will always be correct regardless of new information. Therefore, Lidelle and Rider are both correct for example and it is up to the person playing that character which name they use.
   
4. Easy on pushing a ship. Sega's favorite joke is killing ships, so it could be accurately argued that all ships except Onion Pixy x Oniko are technically some degree of crack. However, that's obviously not the tone we want to take here at PPU. Ships are guaranteed to happen and it's rather unlikely that everyone will be supportive of the same ships. You may attempt to sell someone your ship, but if they are unwilling please do not push the issue. You may think that Amitie x Sig just makes all sorts of dollars and cents, but to the person playing one of those characters who has spent most of their life pretending to be straight that ship might hit a little close to home for them. Shipping can get complicated, is what I'm saying.
   
5. Do not lie to or intentionally mislead others. We would ask that you do not enter any information that is not true or leads others to reach false conclusions into your profile, mini-profile, applications or etcetera. Jokes are fine, so long as they do not mislead. That being said, you are free to simply leave fields blank if you are concerned about your character's privacy.
   
6. Minimize OOC in IC areas. If you need to communicate that's fine, just try to keep it brief and take discussions that require some back and forth to PMs, chat, or any other OOC area. If you do make OOC comments in an IC thread, it's requested that you attempt to remember to put them in quote tags.
   

IC Guidelines

1. Keep the RPG Rating in mind. As you can see, the RP is rated 2 for Language, Sexuality and Violence across the board. This means the RP is generally pretty forgiving with what you'd like to explore. However, there is a limit to how graphic you can get with your writing. This rule is very important because we are at the upper limit of what Proboards itself allows, meaning the Proboards staff may very well send me a PM forcing my hand in deleting content that might walk the line too closely.
   
2. Every thread has a posting order that should be followed. This order is established during the first round of posts usually for convenience. The thread creator creats the topic and then whoever posts first cements their place in the turn order. From then on they will post after the thread creator. Only the thread creator has the authority to change or break the post order and they should make it clear when they are doing so to avoid confusion. If you feel the need to break it yourself for some reason, run it by the thread creator and anyone else directly involved first.
   
3. Keep fourth wall breakage tastefully rare and metagaming non-existant. Additionally, breaking the fourth wall can only be done for laughs. Characters are never allowed to have fourth wall awareness as a legitimate power and can never break the fourth wall to give them an advantage in any nature of challenge.
   

Combat Guidelines

1. Not everything needs to be a roll. This guideline is for thread leaders and game masters. Rolling can become very frustrating for players if it's invoked at the wrong time. A good rule of thumb is: Don't make them roll if the outcome of the roll doesn't, strictly speaking, matter. For example, if the only consequence of failing the roll is that the character has to try again until they succeed, maybe just excuse them from rolling.
   
2. Logic ultimately trumps rolls. Rolls exist as an extension of logic, not a replacement for it. If there is a logical reason an action being rolled for would not work, a good roll should not change that. Likewise, rolls may have unintended consequences as logic dictates. If you roll well to strike an enemy in a crowd of other enemies, you may hit that enemy but the roll will do nothing to protect you from the others turning on you.
   
3. If no roll is present, it falls upon the GM, thread leader or opponent to decide its success. If a roll was asked for but not given, it is likely to result in failure. Else, it's at their discretion. This applies especially to threads where the rolling and stat system are not utilized.
   
4. Death is to be invoked only with the heaviest of consideration. As roleplayers, many of us are here to escape reality for a little while. Therefore, while keeping things grounded is important for immersion we are not a reality simulator. Nowhere is that more relevant than the subject of death. While death is allowed to happen, do not invoke it casually or with the intention of singling someone out. (Unless they laugh in death's face, in which case they are all yours) You should also warn someone that death is a consideration before it becomes a reality. People should have the chance to opt-out of risky situations if they don't want to risk their character dying. This is why quests have danger ratings, and if you feel the need to change the quest's danger rating mid-quest due to unforeseen developments you should let people know and give them the chance to abandon their quest before they are actually put in immediate danger.
   

Activity

1. At least 1 IC post per month is necessary to keep a character from going inactive. You will still be allowed to pick that character back up and continue where you left off if you return, however they will have been made appable by others in the meantime. OCs will still go inactive, but will not be appable without the creator's permission.
   
2. If you need to take a month long break, please let us know! This also applies to any other breaks from the site that will interfere with your ability to meet up to the activity standards. Generally speaking, we are willing to be a bit flexible as necessary. We're not going to pounce on your character immediately once the month lets up unless we have no reason to believe you may be coming back (relatively) soon.