Community Rules

1 - Community Rules

1.0 - Respect

• Treat your fellow community members with respect. Harassment, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or any other discriminatory or harassing behavior will not be tolerated.

1.1 - Spam

• Do not spam or advertise other communities while using our server.

1.2 - Impersonation

• Do not impersonate staff or other community members. If you are caught intentionally doing so you will be permanently banned from the server.

1.3 - NSFW Content

• Keep NSFW content in the NSFW section of the discord. No illegal content whatsoever should be posted on the server.

1.4 - Trolling/Flaming

• Continuous trolling or flaming of other community members will be met with a ban from our server. We get that sometimes things get heated and we don’t want people to have to walk around on eggshells, but we won’t tolerate people continuously being hostile.

1.5 - Adults Only

• We are an 18+ roleplaying server. Anyone found to be underage will be banned at the discretion of the community management team until proven otherwise. Additionally, characters played on the server must be at least 18 years of age.

1.6 - Toxicity

• The community management team reserves the right to remove disruptive or toxic users from Outlands RP’s servers at their discretion.

1.7 - Abuse of Game Mechanics

• Abuse of glitches, bugs, and other unintended mechanical outcomes is prohibited. This includes things like changing your size without the in-character ability to do so, performing construction in the middle of hostile RP, or using chairs that are partly sticking through walls to sit your way into someone’s base.
• It also extends to using other mechanics to troll or grief other players, such as intentionally kiting a boss into a tavern, repeatedly blowing on horns/knocking on gates and running away without any RP purpose, or stacking so many heat sources on your gate that it’s impossible to stand in front of it without roasting to death.

1.8 - Discord

• Discord is required to play on the server. All players must be on the discord server, but you are not required to use the same name as in game.

1.9 - No Streaming

• Streaming Outlands RP on Twitch, Youtube, other public platforms, or the Outlands RP discord is prohibited. This is to prevent metagaming and to avoid streaming potentially mature content written by other players without their consent.

2 - RP Etiquette

2.0 - Be Considerate

• Be considerate in your RP. This is not to say that you shouldn’t be hostile, or that your goals can’t conflict with the goals of other players, or that you should never interrupt someone’s plans. We expect, and even hope, that you will. But when you’re engaging in RP with people, whether it be hostile or friendly or something in between, please take the enjoyment of other players into consideration.
• You are not in a single player RPG surrounded by NPCs who only exist for your entertainment. You’re taking part in a collaborative hobby that should be enjoyable for everyone involved. Don’t take someone captive and leave them rotting in your dungeon twiddling their thumbs or sitting in a corner with no one to roleplay with. Give them a unique and memorable experience. Likewise, if you end up on the losing end of things, try not to be so salty about it that it spoils the fun. Remember that it’s a game.
• Roleplay isn’t a competition, even if our characters are competitive. Try to make sure the people you’re with are having fun and aren’t being made uncomfortable. The stakes we create in roleplay are all artificial, and as much as we need them for the story to be engaging, they’re ultimately there for fun. Try to keep that in perspective.

2.1 - Stay IC

• Remain in-character at all times while on the server.  The only time you may travel OOCly is when returning to your body or when in Out of Character areas (such as the character creation area)
• OOC communication should be reserved for DMs, and should not be posted in local chat. The exception to this is quick OOC communication to indicate that you have to go AFK, deal with a technical issue, ask for clarification, or other similar things. Keep it short and relevant. OOC chatter in local breaks immersion, so avoid it.

2.2 - No Metagaming

• Information obtained Out of Character cannot be used In-Character. This is considered metagaming and is prohibited. Additionally, the sharing of In-Character information Out of Character is highly discouraged in order to preserve immersion and mystery, and to limit spoilers and metagaming.
• Players may not discuss In-Character occurrences in the Outlands RP discord. While we will not police private discords and DMs, we do encourage players to voluntarily adopt this philosophy in their own private spaces for the benefit of the entire server’s roleplay.

2.3 - No Powergaming

• Powergaming is prohibited. Powergaming is defined in this context as taking control of another player’s character through your emotes or mechanical actions in-game. This can come in a few forms, such as failing to allow people a chance to react to your words or actions, making emotes that dictate another player’s actions or that impose a status on their character, walking away without allowing people the opportunity to emote, or otherwise removing the autonomy of other players over their own characters.
• Examples include:
  • Emoting hitting a character rather than attempting to hit them and making a roll
  • Picking a character up against their will without giving them a chance to respond
  • Posting repeatedly or out of order without giving other players a chance to respond
  • Taking numerous actions in an emote without giving other players a chance to respond
  • Walking away from RP without emoting or giving other players a chance to respond
  • Emoting another character’s reaction to a circumstance
  • Emoting another character’s appearance without their permission
  • ‘Finding’ evidence that wasn’t left behind in a POI , emote, or in-game item by that player
  • Ignoring the effects of a spell cast by another player
  • Ignoring a character’s attempts to restrain you (without initiating PVP)
• While it’s inevitable that you’ll interact with others’ characters, it’s their decision how to interpret the effect actions have on them and their own response. The sole exceptions to this rule are when you have explicit and specific permission from the player in question, or where regarding actions taken in the course of PVP consequences. However, even in these cases you should be using proper RP etiquette and giving players the opportunity to respond to emotes.

2.4 - Immersion

• All characters and roleplay must adhere to D&D lore, related to official campaign settings and materials. These include Forgotten Realms, Planescape, Spelljammer, Ravenloft, Dragonlance, Greyhawk, Dark Sun, and Eberron. Characters from other settings (Conan included), games, or other works of fiction, or from Earth, are not allowed.
• Additionally, characters should not speak or emote in ways that break immersion. Use of overly modern language or things like media references, in-character use of modern songs, or other anachronisms that detract from an immersive D&D setting are not allowed. This also applies to names as well as /act names
• Players are encouraged to make use of D&D lore resources such as source books, Dragon Magazine articles by official sources, and resources such as the Forgotten Realms wiki. More sources of potential lore information can be found on the discord.

2.5 - Adult Characters

• All characters must be adults physically and mentally, at least 18 years of age. Child characters or characters acting as though they were children are not allowed to be played on the server. Additionally, characters played on Outlands RP may not become pregnant.

2.6 - Don’t Freeze RP

• If there is an OOC dispute in the course of RP, whether regarding roleplay or a die mechanic issue, it should not be allowed to grind RP to a halt. Come to a resolution and move on or put a pin in it and FTB for later. Nobody wants to hang around for 2 hours waiting for a ruling or watching people argue.
• Unless there is a major issue, such as flagrant powergaming with major consequences, extremely disruptive BadRP, or outright abuse, you should never put RP on an indefinite hold.
• If a scene is FTBed due to a genuine dispute over the legitimacy of the content of the scene and a ticket has been opened, please wait on the result of that ticket to reference that particular occurrence IC.
• Players who repeatedly stop RP to argue OOCly will not be tolerated.

2.7  - Warps

• Do not camp waypoints or portals and try to avoid clustering around them to RP. Give a little bit of distance so that every person who comes in or out of the warp doesn’t automatically feel obligated to emote.

2.8 - RP Avoidance

• You may not ignore others as you go about your RP. If someone emotes at you or is attempting to type near you, give them the courtesy of an opportunity to emote back. While your character is in no way obligated to put themselves in danger, you should not simply treat people as though they’re not there. Your character can ignore someone, and you can even explicitly emote doing so, but you shouldn’t be ignoring characters or boxing players out of RP.

2.9 - Fade To Black

• Fade to Black, or FTB, is a way to preserve story when the limitations of time or player comfort make it difficult to RP out. It allows us to tie off loose ends when real life or our own well-being take precedence.
• Generally when a scene is faded to black, the player who needs to leave will briefly discuss the basic details of how things end up playing out with whoever they need to within that scene. This can be just enough to be on the same page, or it can be more detailed depending on the reason for the FTB and the comfort of the players involved.
• If a player needs to FTB abruptly and cannot determine the terms, other players involved should find the simplest way to get them out of the scene that doesn’t impact their character or eliminate options. Putting a character in an unlocked cell can be a good example of this, as they could either choose to escape or simply fail to notice that the cell is unlocked to keep the RP going
• What FTB is not is something to be weaponized in order to avoid being on the losing end of RP. Players who abuse FTB to avoid RPing the kinds of consequences they dish out to others will not be tolerated.

2.10 - Erotic RP

• ERP is allowed on the server, but should not occur in hubs or in generally public spaces. Clans may independently decide where to allow ERP or not within various areas of their bases, as well as at agreed upon volume levels. Players are expected to be respectful of these decisions, which clan members are welcome to politely inform them of.
• Any ERP whatsoever requires OOC consent, and may never be coerced using PVP consequences, IC hostility of any kind, or any other means. Players should use the /channel function to open direct messages with one another to establish boundaries, especially in the case of more extreme RP. Players may not engage in RP containing themes of scat, beastiality, ageplay, or pregnancy.
• Players found to be pressuring other players into ERP or ignoring their limits and boundaries, or engaging in overtly sexual exhibitionism (not simply nudity) in places where it isn’t welcome will be removed from the community. Don’t be a creep.

2.11 - Abuse of Game Mechanics

• There are many scripts on this server designed to faciliate roleplay. These include things like the jobs system, bounties, rituals, and a number of other things. These systems are mostly automated, but given the nature of the medium they're not always going to be airtight. These systems should only be used in a manner consistent with the roleplay around them. If you're doing things like triggering job statues without the accompanying roleplay, or trying to find loopholes to get around ritual mechanics, you'll lose access to them and may be banned. The same applies to triggering rituals and just waiting out the timer with no RP.
• If you do find a bug or an exploitable loophole, please do open a support ticket or make a bug report. It's fine if this happens accidentally and you report it, but we take hiding it pretty seriously. We set up webhooks and logs for this stuff, so we absolutely will notice.