Community Rules

## Introduction

These rules were last updated 2018-05-24 04:58 UTC. Version: 2.1.4.

### License

These rules, and any other administrative proceedings and publications, are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

### Credits

Primary rules authors: Caleb Johnson (@calebj#0001) and Dimitri Barronmore (@DimitriB1#7677).

Parts of some rules derived from the OneShot community rules by Wisty Lyrr and the New Null community rules by Varis.

## General Server Rules

### 1. You are required to give everyone mutual respect.

No verbal or otherwise abuse is tolerated at all. Constructive and **respectful** criticism is okay, but don’t dogpile or mention it if it might exacerbate a situation.

### 2. Staff have the final say on issues!

If one of the staff tells you to stop doing something, stop, as pushing it will likely make the situation worse. On top of this, minimodding is not appreciated. Do notify a moderator if you think something requires attention, however.

### 3. No NSFW or otherwise inappropriate content.

What is NSFW? NSFW stands for Not Safe For Work. This includes excessive blood and gore, overtly sexual content, unnecessary profanity, racism, sexism, and the like. Some examples are cropped porn in chat or on your profile picture, and inappropriate messages, including your status, username and nickname. Although Freedom Planet is an E10 game, **our standard is PG-13**.

### 4. Do NOT shill/advertise without permission.

This includes Discord invites, websites, or streams, or post any other type of promotion without explicit permission from a staff member.

Posting a link in chat when it’s relevant, or the proper channel (#links\_media) is fine.

### 5. No drama.

While some brief venting about your day is acceptable, topics such as suicide, heavy depression, etc. should be kept in DMs. Bringing in issues or drama from other servers is also not acceptable.

This does not mean you can derail or be disrespectful to someone who might be doing any of these things. Let the moderators deal with it.

### 6. Respect the channel topics.

Each channel has a purpose; please stick to it or move elsewhere. This also means to keep RP in RP channels, and extended OOC discussion in OOC channels.

### 7. Don’t spam bot commands in normal channels.

The **occasional** command and dice roll in regular channels is fine. Otherwise, do it in #dice-n-bots.

### 8. Don’t abuse the role pings.

Mentions of @Admin, @Moderator, and so on should be used responsibly. If you spam messages which mention these roles, you’ll be hit with a warning at the very least.

### 9. Our staff hold the right to enforce our personal RP Code of Conduct.

We won’t do this unless we deem it absolutely necessary, but it’s for the enjoyment and happiness of everyone in the server at large. No one is exempt, not even server staff.

### 10. Staff reserve the right to call out inappropriate behavior.

This should go without saying. If anything is determined to be detrimental to the server and our members, we reserve the right to take actions to correct it, but will not do so without reason.

If you see something that requires moderator attention, ping the Moderator role.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact a staff member by DMing them.

### 11. We reserve the right to use other ban lists.

Other communities’ decisions may be used as a reference for who we allow in and around this community. If you were banned for any reason from other servers, we reserve the right to remove you here as well.

### 12. Have fun!

That’s the entire purpose of this server and RPing in general. So… do that.

## Punishment

We have two independent means of dealing with disruptive members: timeouts and warnings.

### Timeouts

These prevent you from speaking in all channels except #basement. This allows the staff to have a one-on-one conversation with you, and for appropriate punishment to be given.

**Being put in Timeout is not always for punishment;** it may also be used just to tell you to calm down. Being uncooperative, though, will only make things worse for you.

### Warnings

If a moderator observes you breaking a rule, causing trouble in general, or receive complaints about your conduct from several people, you will receive a warning.

Warning #1 will be a slap on the wrist, but is not an empty warning.

Warning #2 will result in you being put on suspension and unable to play.

Warning #3 will result in a ban, which may or may not become permanent depending on how individuals handle it.

**Each tier of warning lasts two weeks** except for bans, which may have other criteria for being appealed at staff discretion.

### Ban appeals

…are handled on a case by case basis, and are submitted by contacting a staff member. When a user is unbanned on appeal, they start with a warning which replaces any they might have had before. For an appeal to be considered, the user must have:

1. Remain banned for at least two weeks, and
2. Not have been banned for raiding, spamming, or posting NSFW, and
3. Not have used an alt to evade the ban, and
4. Not have previously been unbanned on appeal.

## RP Code of Conduct

### 1. Ask, Observe, Investigate

When people describe their character, a scene, or anything in general, always assume there is more to find, explore, and learn. Don’t judge a book by its cover.

### 2. Give others time to respond

We don’t force turn-based RPing here, but please, give others time to formulate a proper response. And be polite—you wouldn’t interrupt someone in the middle of their sentence. Of course, if you *have* agreed to play a scene by turns, please respect that.

### 3. Put effort into your roleplaying!

You should want to describe what’s going with your character, what they are thinking, how they are reacting to things, what they feel about situations, and so on. Simply typing “s/he looked out the window.” not only sounds boring, it also makes it seem like you don’t care enough to write more. This not only limits your potential as an RPer, but comes off as not wanting to put in the effort to RP with the other person.

Laziness for the sake of laziness won’t be tolerated, so we request you put at least the minimum effort into your posts to ensure that they are legible and can be followed by a reader. Any player that is determined to be intentionally using sloppy spelling, grammar, or sentence structure will be asked by the staff to at least amend their posts. If said player refuses to put the minimum effort in, we reserve the right to remove their Player status.

### 4. Be original

A direct copy/paste of events or characters from an existing franchise, but starring you or others, isn’t cool. Taking inspiration from other things is fine, but don’t rip them off.

### 5. Be relatively realistic

If you are shot at, you can’t just not acknowledge it. If you do something wrong, your character will be held responsible. In fact, you will be held responsible for your actions—everything you do is likely to have consequences, whether good or bad. For example, if your character is training or studying something, they will naturally get better at it over time—the same way it works in real life.

Examples of what not to do include: gaining powers that your character cannot or should not have the ability to learn, inserting yourself into FP1 story events your character has no reason to be a part of (rewriting history), and making canon characters inexplicably have good relationships with their own character for no reason.

### 6. No godmodding, powergaming or metagaming.

These are forbidden unless explicitly allowed. See our wiki’s terminology page for more information on what these are.

### 7. Stay true to the setting

We understand that the setting of Freedom Planet isn’t as well-defined as others, and that headcanon confusion is inevitable. Even the server staff don’t have much to go on besides what GT has made public, though we have made some additional changes on top of it in the interest of better roleplay.

Rest assured, staff and/or your GM will do their best to keep things canon where possible, and reasonably true to the setting where guesswork is involved.

### 8. Don’t be afraid to ask

We know that it can be daunting to ask or any of the staff or tutors for help or advice. But we would rather you ask us than be too scared to RP if you are unsure about something. In fact, we would rather you ask one of us than not RP at all, as this RP server is for fun above all, and we want to help you improve. We wouldn’t be here if that wasn’t the case.

### 9. Communication is key

If you are not satisfied with the way someone handled a situation, TELL THEM. Nine times out of ten, the person didn’t think it would upset you, or just wasn’t aware that it would. So please talk to people, but be respectful. Talk to them the way you would want others to talk to you. Most of the time, if you voice your grievances, people will understand and work it out with you.

## FFRP Code of Conduct

### 1. Character Approval

Before you can use a character in FFRP, it must be approved. Post their bio and information in #character\_bios and wait for approval. Approval requires two Staff votes, and two Tutor votes count as one Staff vote.

Guidelines for what to post are in #server\_faqs. If your character needs balance or other adjustments, more fleshing out, etc., you will be asked to make the necessary changes.

Once approved, you should make a wiki page for your character and, if you don’t have one, for yourself as a player.

### 2. Keep the focus on Avalice

Although extraterrestrials aren’t prohibited, they shouldn’t define your experience here. Players are required to have at least one native character before they can submit any alien or naturalized alien characters, and can have no more aliens than they have natives. Furthermore, a player’s native characters must remain active in order to play their extraterrestrial ones.

### 3. This is your own story!

You are not required to do anything you think your character wouldn’t do. That being said, feel free to make your own storylines and character development arcs and see who ends up becoming a part of it. Some of the best scenes and arcs are ones that are not planned, and having more characters join not only adds more variety, it also makes the experience unique and fun for everyone.

### 4. Respect others’ scenes and characters

Joining scenes set in non-public areas (i.e. not in a park, university, or other public area) without any good reason or permission isn’t permitted. Physical confrontations should be clearly consensual or agreed to beforehand OOC.

### 5. Limit potentially off-putting conduct

Anything traumatizing to witness requires permission from a moderator. This includes, but is not limited to: torture, self-harm, death, and dismemberment. If in doubt, ask.

### 6. Ask permission before doing something that has a large impact!

Before taking actions that could affect not only your RP partner but a group of people as a whole, make sure you have permission first. Before you take an action that can affect more than yourself, you make sure it’s ok with anyone who will be directly affected by it. This includes destruction of property, both public or private, and things that might get you in trouble or reported on the news.

### 7. Stay consistent with server canon

This server has its own “canon” formed over the last year or so comprising contributions from most, if not all, of its player members. **In most cases, characters’ stories don’t interfere with each other, and important events are posted in #ffrp\_news.** If you start a non-canon scene, mark it as such to avoid confusion, or use a non-canon RP channel.

Keep in mind that if you have a requirement to do this for an extended plot arc, you might want to make it into a full campaign.

### 8. Freeform isn’t your exclusive playground

Using the server for your own wish fulfillment instead of engaging with others is highly frowned upon. If you want to explore a character concept, the best way to do so is to interact with others! You don’t need a community to write your own fiction about your character.