Rules

This is actually going to be divided into two sections. First, we have the rules: the serious, hardcore, break-these-and-you-get-kicked-out rules. Then, we have a list of suggestions that make the game easier for everyone. You don’t have to follow the suggestions, but I’d advise prospective players to strongly consider it.

Rules:

  1. Treat other players with respect. Otherwise entitled, “Don’t be a dick.” This is the basic, common courtesy stuff your parent(s)/guardian(s)/teacher(s) should have taught you when you were little. We don’t care how good a roleplayer you are, or how perfect your grasp of your character is: continuous OOC drama will get you banned.
  2. Treat people’s flists with respect. Don’t spam the comms. If all we’re seeing is an endless series of logs or journal posts from one of your characters, the mods will want to have Words with you. Lots of characters doing things? Consolidate them all into one log post. There’s a bit more leeway with journals and whiteboards, but more than five posts in a row, in any combination, is grounds for a serious talk with the mods, and possible banning. This goes double for logs and journals which are locked to one character only.
  3. Say it with me: PRETENDY FUNTIME GAMES. This isn’t SRS BIZNESS. Your life doesn’t end because things don’t go your way in RP. If you find yourself deeply upset by something that happened in-character, that’s understandable — your mods’ characters are very, very real to them, and the same goes for certain of your fellow players. Sometimes a character’s bad mood can be contagious. But just because character bleedover can be a bitch doesn’t mean you have to be one. Step away from the computer. Go take a walk. Have some ice cream. Sing along to your favorite song. But whatever you do, don’t let in-character interactions spill over into out-of-character drama. That just ruins the pretendy funtime games for everyone else.
  4. Adult concepts are great, but keep the main comms non-explicit, and learn to love warnings. We love smut. Het, slash, femmeslash, threesomes, foursomes, orgies, it’s all good. Incest? Kink? Snuff? Bring it on. We love insane degrees of violence. One of your mods goes into squeefits at well-written torture scenes. However, we want people to be able to check their flists at work or at school without causing problems. You want to do an adults-only log? Play it out in one of your character journals with the ‘explicit adult content’ option enabled, and link it in the log community, with a visible adults-only warning. Additional warnings may apply for topics like incest, rape, torture, or any kink that involves blood or bodily waste. If you’re under 18, don’t read the smut. Don’t roleplay the smut. Pretend the smut doesn’t exist. If you know someone you’re threading with is under 18, for the love of God, do not RP smut with them. Doing a fade-to-black is more than acceptable, and doesn’t get anyone accused of promoting underage cybering.
  5. Proper spelling and grammar are essential in log posts. That means no chatspeak, no smileys, no exceptions. Journal and whiteboard posts are a whole different ballgame, though — feel free to have your characters mangle the English language to their heart’s content and scribble in all the smileys they like, assuming it’s in-character for them to do so.
  6. No godmoding. You control your characters. You don’t control anyone else’s. This means any action you have someone else’s character take in your logs, even if it’s a simple nod or taking a bag from your character, needs to be cleared with the other character’s mun first. Likewise, you need mun approval before your character hurts someone else’s. You can fire a gun at another character, but only that character’s mun gets to say whether or not the shots hit. (Muns, don’t take this as an excuse to get away with murder: see “IC actions have IC consequences”, below.)
  7. Stay in-character. You were asked for a writing sample in your application to prove that you had a good grip on your character and could brain for them. Once you’ve been approved, keep that up. Your characters are expected to grow and change, yes, but these changes shouldn’t happen overnight, and we should always be able to recognize the character from the source material.
  8. In-character actions have in-character consequences. Pissing off other characters may get your character into a situation where they could die, and if your character doesn’t have established abilities that can get them out of those situations, they probably will. Pissing off the Oracles can lead to all sorts of unpleasant consequences. In either case, the Oracles won’t provide a deus ex machina whenever you want one. Godmoding is bad, yes, but that doesn’t give your character a free pass to do whatever they want, and very few characters can reasonably dodge a hail of bullets.
  9. No more than five characters per mun. No more than one Major Arcana character on each side per mun. This one’s pretty self-explanatory. This rule may be lifted, depending on the number of players and characters, but for now, the limit’s there so everyone can get a Major Arcana character if they want one, and no one has more characters than they can handle.
  10. Stay active. One log per character per month is the bare minimum to stay in the game. If your character falls below that threshold, and you haven’t made arrangements with me for a hiatus, you’ll get a warning, and one week to make a post or your character will be dropped. If I have to warn you repeatedly, your character may be dropped without warning. Real life happens — if there are extenuating circumstance that kept you from arranging a hiatus, your character can be reinstated, no problem, but don’t make a habit of it.
  11. Tag your logs and label your posts. When your character’s approved, they’ll get an LJ tag to use on all their logs. Every time your character posts a log, or tags into someone else’s log, apply the LJ tag. This lets everyone know at a glance what your character’s been doing, and makes it easier to conduct activity checks.

    Likewise, there are a few simple labels that will let people know whether or not they can tag into a post. Journals should have the character’s name in the subject, and either [upright], [reversed], [all], or [locked to: character_name_goes_here]. This lets other muns know who can read those posts. Logs can also be [locked] to specific characters, or [open] to anyone in the area. Whiteboard posts should be labeled [upright] or [reversed], depending on which side’s whiteboard your character is using.

  12. Original characters are allowed. …with a few caveats. Completely original characters are fine, but fandom OCs will need to be cleared with the mods and any canonmates they might have in the game, if there’s an existing relationship with that character. (Say you wanted to play someone’s long-lost, never-mentioned-in-canon sibling: you’d need to clear that with the their mun first.)
  13. Real people are NOT allowed. Exceptions can be made for historical figures who have appeared in fiction, but only if they’ve been dead for at least 25 years.
  14. Your character’s powers may not be the same. There’s this thing called “game balance”. Overly powerful characters can screw the game balance all up by being able to threaten or kill anyone they come across. The point isn’t to take away everything that makes your character unique, but rather to give the other characters a fighting chance. Right now, any powers your character has that affect primarily them (super speed, strength, regeneration, telepathy, etc.) are completely unchanged. However, powerful destructive, preternaturally persuasive, or magical powers may not work quite as well as they did before your characters came to the City. They won’t be gone, but they’ll be more on par with the Tarot card abilities.
  15. You earn your redraws by roleplaying. This is going to be one of the biggest changes from how Goo and Pk ran things — if you ask for a redraw, you’ll have to back it up through roleplaying. Characters who are going to switch to Major Arcana cards need to have been active in the game, and demonstrated good use of their initial ability. If you’re not willing to prove you can handle your initial powers responsibly, why would the Powers That Be give you more? Likewise, they’re not going to give a power upgrade to people who aren’t doing what they were brought here to do. Redraws can also take place if your character’s switching sides — but again, they need to prove their loyalties really have shifted, or that they’re willing to be a double agent. And the final circumstance in which a character can get a redraw is the rarest of all — a major personality shift or life change that means their current card just doesn’t resonate with them anymore, and they need a card in another suit, or a different card in the same suit. This is a huge deal, and will require roleplaying the change out before a redraw is ever requested.
  16. And finally… Have fun! No, really. That’s what this game is for, and the long list of rules here only exists to try and make this game more fun for everyone. If you’re not having fun, and the game just doesn’t seem to be working for you, no one will hold it against you if you leave — but we encourage you to talk to us first. As your mods, we want to make this fun for you, and if there’s anything we can do to help you, we’re more than willing to hear you out.

In order to prove you’ve read the rules, make sure that, in addition to “Arcanum App: insert_character_name_here” in the subject of your app, you also include a silly nickname that fits your character. An example would be:

Arcanum App: Jack “Sex Machine” Harkness

Be creative. No one’s actually going to use these (well, the mods might, if they’re feeling snarky) — they just exist to make it obvious that you’ve read the rules.

Suggestions:

  • Try to include at least one good-sized paragraph in anything you post to a log. The more you write, the more others have to play off of, so everyone wins.
  • Keep your tenses consistent. Jaqui is fond of third person, present tense, since it makes things seem more immediate. (”Bob walks into the store and looks around, wondering where Jane is. She should’ve been here by now, but he can’t seem to find her.”) Others may be fond of third person, past tense, which makes things seem more like a proper story. (”Bob walked into the store and looked around. He wondered where Jane was. She should’ve been there already, but he couldn’t seem to find her.”) There’s no set rule about which tense is proper, but at the very least, keep tenses consistent within the same log, please. If someone’s using present tense, your reply should also be in present tense. If they’re using past tense, use past tense. This makes logs much easier to read.
  • Keep PWP logs to a minimum. We may love the smut, but this game has a plot, and the plot should take precedence. Smut is great if it moves the plot along (and occasionally, just for fun), but if you’re just using the logs to roleplay your fantasies about a specific character, this may not be the best game for you.
  • Summarize explicit logs. The rules say that you should keep explicit logs in your own journal, and just link them in the main log community. However, since sometimes explicit logs are used to carry the plot forward, it’s helpful to everyone if you wait until either you’re done with the log, or you have a good idea of where it’s going, and can post a short summary along with the link. You don’t have to go into any depth; something like, “After Bob was nearly eaten by the alien monster, he has sex with Jane, and realizes that he may be falling in love with her, despite not knowing if he can trust her. Jane reveals to Bob that she was molested by an Oracle,” gives everyone an idea of plot-relevant stuff that happened, without going into too much detail.
  • Check with your character’s canonmates before you bring them in. Every fan portrayal of a character has its own little quirks and bits of fanon. Although not necessary, it may help to talk to other muns and find out your ideas of each other’s characters and any shared history they might have.
  • Keep muncest/self-threading to a minimum. Sometimes, two of your characters may need to work together to move things along. That’s not a problem. The problem comes in when your own characters are interacting with each other more than they’re interacting with anyone else. If someone else’s characters can get involved, they should have a chance to.