Legion
Posts: 9
Player: Legion
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Post by Legion on Oct 18, 2021 16:44:55 GMT -5
Site Rules
Before we begin, I just want to point out one way this page differs from your usual rule page. One goal of rules is to show what is and isn't acceptable, but another goal is to help keep a community strong, agreeable, and fun to take part in. For this reason, after every rule listing, I'm going to be including a section saying why that rule's in place and what can be done to avoid any problems associated with it. While I highly encourage reading these, I'm keeping them spoiler tagged by default to avoid throwing too many words at you at once.
Rule 0 - "There's a person on the other side of the screen."
That's it. If you take anything away from this page, I want it to be this. Nearly every other rule you'll see down here is Rule 0 expressed in one fashion or another.
Rule 0 can be easy to forget sometimes. We're all separated by distance and time, relatively anonymous from one another, and the primary medium we're interacting in is a fictional one. However, that makes it all the more important to treat people the right way. If you think the way you treat someone matters less because you're in a virtual space, well . . . you've certainly picked an ironic choice of fandom. Hurtful words and thoughtless actions can cause real harm, and anyone who doesn't care about hurting my members is somebody I don't want on my site.
I don't mean this just as a negative, either. A nice gesture at the right time can go a long way, even from a relative stranger. Please keep that in mind when you're interacting with your fellow members. Maybe if we all have that mindset going forward, we can make our little corner of the internet a better place.
OOC Rules
Don't Be A Jerk: Harassment, hate speech, and other forms of cruelty towards others are absolutely forbidden.
Come on. Do I have to explain this one? If you've ever interacted with a human being before, you should already know this. Instead, I'm going to detail a few edge cases.
Firstly, remember that everyone has different comfort zones. Some people may feel comfortable picking on and ribbing each other. Others may not want any part of that. That's a personal boundary to set, and everyone's is going to be a little different. You don't have to see eye to eye on that fact, but at least respect their wishes instead of brushing them off or deliberately antagonizing them.
Secondly, these aren't just rules for the site. They're rules for the community at large. If someone is making you feel uncomfortable through direct messages or other mediums, you can absolutely come to the staff with them. We aren't going to turn a blind eye to them just because they aren't happening right on our doorstep.
Finally, these rules don't just extend to our community. Treat guests of our site with the same kindness and consideration as you would your fellow members. Respect the rules and members of other sites just like you'd respect ours. Not only does it reflect poorly on us when you fail to do so, but it also reflects poorly on you. Trust me, you don't want to have a reputation of being a jerk that stretches between sites. That road gets lonely real quick.
Be Welcoming: Keep the site open and accepting, and greet new members and guests warmly.
Cliquiness is a real common complaint about RP sites, and obviously a very subjective one. Sometimes, it comes from people who genuinely feel excluded and pushed to the margins, especially if a site has a vocal, tight-knit group of members that seem to be at the center of all of its activities. At other times, it's what people say when they aren't the center of attention 24/7. Cliquiness can also come from a multitude of different places. A lot of the time it's unintentional. Sometimes a close-knit group of friends gets seen as the "cool kids" and become the group everyone's trying to be a part of. Sometimes particularly prolific RPers or chatters might seem like 90% of the site from presence alone, even if they're just a few of many members. At other times, the freezing out is genuine, though it's important to consider the context of why. Freezing someone out just to bully them isn't okay. Freezing someone out for making other members uncomfortable is a lot more understandable.
What I'm trying to get at with all of this is that the subject is complicated. There's no one size fits all answer. RP is a shared hobby, not an obligation. Nobody should ever feel forced to write with somebody else, or to suddenly start acting like their best friend. All that would do is breed resentment, which ironically makes it way more likely that someone would be frozen out or treated poorly. Instead, I can only ask that we do our best to be welcoming to new members, and give them a chance to find their footing.
How can you do this? It's surprisingly simple! If there are open threads or events that need filling, give new members a chance to try for a spot before immediately swooping in. If a new member's looking for plots, or has an open thread of their own set up, consider joining in if they haven't gotten any traction. Greet them warmly when they join, and feel free to loop them in on the conversation when chatting on the site Discord. You don't need to instantly become their friend or writing partner, but at least try to be friendly. Who knows? You might find out you have a lot in common with them!
Similarly, if you're new to the site, my advice is to jump right in. 99 times out of 100, people seem more intimidating from afar than they actually are when you get to know them. Even if the Discord seems busy, don't hesitate to join in on the conversation. If there's an open thread, why not give it a shot? At the same time, don't try too hard to force it. Monopolizing conversations or hogging threads can be a bit of a turn-off. The best way to become part of a community is to settle in naturally. Be chill and approachable and I guarantee you'll find your niche sooner than you'd expect.
Roleplay Rules
Respect Your Roleplay Partner (as a character): Do not override your partner's agency through metagaming, godmodding, or powerplay.
If you've been on an RP site before, you already know what to expect here. If you haven't, those three terms refer to different ways of taking away the agency of your writing partner.
Metagaming is using OOC knowledge your character has no access to IC. The reason why this is on the list is because it makes any scenario involving deceit, secrets, or dramatic irony way more boring. The dramatic reveal of someone's backstory isn't going to have any impact if your character casually asks about it before it even happens. A trickster or double agent is incredibly frustrating to play when everyone already assumes you're being sus. It's also frustrating in combat, because it basically gives your opponent a cheat sheet as to how your character fights. This is the problem both easiest to fall into, but also easiest to avoid. If it feels like you're straddling the line, just think to yourself "wait, would my character actually know this?"
Godmodding and powerplay are a little bit trickier, if only because the definitions for those two get scrambled all the time. Luckily, it doesn't really matter, because both are bad anyway. For these purposes, I'll say godmodding is taking control of others' characters, as if you're the god of this world. If you're narrating your attacks hitting opponents with no chance for them to react, describing their reactions to your actions as they happen, or changing up their histories without their consent, you're godmodding. Luckily, this might be the easiest of the three problems to deal with. Just stick to writing your own character and you're golden.
Finally, powerplay refers to playing in an incredibly overpowered fashion. Enemy attacks bounce clean off of you. Your plans go off without a hitch every time, and you never fall for any other character's. The universe contorts itself to prove you and your opinions right. You never lose, or even look weak for a moment. In essence, you're perfect and infallible. The main problem with this is that all conflict becomes one dimensional and predictable. If you can do anything with a wave of your hand, why would anyone get invested in your problems? It's also horrendously unfair to other members, whether competing with you directly or being overshadowed by you when you're on the same side.
Unfortunately, this can be the hardest of the three problems to keep track of. Nobody really likes losing, after all, and with the freeform nature of RP it can be easy to justify your successes and skirt around potential failures. The best solution for the problem, I find, is a change of mindset and a change of perspective. If you stop looking at RP as a competition, and instead look at it as a collaborative story, you might feel less pressure to always be #1. In addition, especially when working on something as touch-and-go as a fight, I recommend regularly chatting with your thread partners. You might be enemies in a thread, but you're friends and collaborators in real life. Its okay to ask if you're being out of line, or point out when someone else is getting a little too untouchable.
Respect Your Roleplay Partner (as a person): Do not go out of your way to make your fellow members uncomfortable or ruin their fun.
There's a reason why "but it's what my character would do" is considered the rallying cry of bad DnD players. Ultimately, we're not gazing into the lives of tiny people with immutable wills of their own. We're writing with people that, I'd like to think, we consider friends, and we should consider their happiness and comfort alongside the sanctity of the story.
This isn't to say that RP should never have conflict, or that characters should never be challenged. However, there's a difference between challenging someone's character and going out of your way to antagonize them. Challenging a character lets you experience them from new angles, see how they respond to the highs and lows in their life, and come out of threads with a new perspective. Even when it's detrimental in character, it builds them up out of character. If you're going out of your way to belittle or tear someone else's character down, you're not being constructive. You're just being a jerk. This goes for threads, too. Joining a thread just to derail it, waste people's time, or frustrate them isn't a fun subversion, it's being rude.
It's also important to keep people's personal writing comforts in mind. If a member doesn't want to write about a topic, please don't spring it on them. It could be due to the topic hitting too close to home for them. It could be due to them not feeling like they can depict the topic in a respectful fashion. It could just plain be because they don't want to write it. No matter the reason, no means no. If you're not sure whether a potential idea could ruffle feathers, try and bring it up with your RP partner first. The worst thing they could say is no.
Proboards Policy Says PG-13: Please keep your writing to what you'd see in a PG-13 movie, as per Proboards policy.
This one's out of our hands. Proboards policy says any site on their service needs to be PG-13 accessible, and that's how we're going to be running things. Some cursing, some violence, and some teasing here and there are fine. We're an RP site based on an action show, after all, and the kinds of shonen anime these sites usually take after can get pretty intense. However, if you're starting to get into explicit territory, we're going to have to ask you to tone it down.
Post Length Requirements: We have no formal word count on site. We only ask that you leave enough for your fellow members to work with.
There's only one objectively correct post length, and that's "something your partner can respond to." Anything else is up to individual taste. For that reason, we're not going to be putting a minimum word count on site.
This might seem controversial to some, but hear me out here. While the intent of minimum word counts is to ensure members put content into their points, the RP world's focus on wordcount as a measure of quality and effort risks breeding a lot of bad habits. RP isn't like regular writing. It's a functional, conversational medium. Your partner needs to be able to read your post, parse what's going on, find material to work with, and make a reply that flows well off of yours. A post with 3,000 words of internal monologue can make this just as difficult as a single barebones sentence can. Words aren't what makes a post strong. Ideas, themes, and actions are what does that. When working on your posts, consider how you can use those to inspire them, not how long you can make a post for the sake of length.
Ultimately, word count is a very personal thing. Some people write long, flowery prose. Some people write short, to the point snippets that'd make Hemmingway say "damn." Neither of these styles are invalid, and neither is superior to the other. It all depends on what you feel best writing and what you feel best responding to. You and your partner might not see eye to eye on it, and that's fine! However, if it's getting to the point where you're finding it hard to respond to each other's posts, consider reaching out to try and talk it through. Especially for something as easily changed as word count, a little bit of compromise can go a long way.
Activity Requirements: For most members we have no formalized activity requirements, bar an informal check every few months. However, please be considerate to the other players in your threads. Event threads may be exceptions: if so, please honor their stated time commitments.
I've always felt like activity checks are kind of counterintuitive. Sometimes they put pressure on people and scare them off. At other times, it turns posting into a checklist, where people decide "I just need to post three times this month and then I'm fine." That isn't the kind of activity I want to incentivize. I feel like people do their best writing and have the most fun with it when there's less pressure to perform.
However, it's important to consider that you're not the only person in a thread. RP isn't an obligation, but it's a commitment to the people you're threading with. Nobody likes being stonewalled or left hanging. Nobody likes being rushed or pushed into posting. Everybody writes at their own preferred pace, and it's the responsibility of those threading with each other to decide on that pace. This is one of those areas where I can't stress it enough: if you're not happy with how a thread's coming along, communicate with each other! Maybe there's a confusion about the thread's direction causing the pace to slow down. Maybe your partner's being overly excitable about posting fast because they're trying to distract themselves from IRL stress. Or maybe you just have two different posting paces, and need to work together to find a happy middle ground. Just don't try and force someone to change how they RP. If you truly can't work with someone's posting pace, fast or slow, there's no shame in writing with other people instead.
The one exception is event threads, and that's because their completion shapes the site itself. Delays to these can slow down not just the thread, but everyone on site, so it's especially important that their time commitments are followed. These will always be clearly stated and listed, and they won't be set to a breakneck pace, so please be aware of them.
Using Multiple Characters: You can freely app up to 3 active characters without any other requirements. Each character requires their own account. If you wish to app beyond this, your currently-active characters must be Champion level or higher. Retired characters do not count towards this, but if we notice consistent retirement or inactivity we may bar you from making more alts until your activity picks back up.
Apping a character is only half the fun. We also want to make sure people are using all of the characters they've made! As tempting as it can be to dive headfirst into a pile of alts, there are a few reasons why we have some rules putting the brakes on the process. One of these is that, while making a character is plenty of work in it's own right, it can be easy for those not part of the process to forget the work that goes into approving them as well. That effort being thrown aside and replaced over and over again in favor of a shiny new alt can get really demoralizing really fast, and also get in the way of other areas that need staff attention. Similarly, constantly starting and stopping new plots as you make new alts can get make it harder for your fellow members to get into a good threading rhythm with you.
Don't take this as us telling you you're not allowed to feel things out. Sometimes a character we're really excited about in theory just doesn't work out on paper. Sometimes our muse for characters rises and falls, instead of staying evenly distributed. We're not going to be sticklers about this kind of thing, and that's why there aren't any hard requirements on how active an alt needs to be. We just want to give those that already have a lot on their plates a little bit of time to think things through and see if they really want to go through with their newest app or not.
On Art and Graphics
Art theft is not okay! All fanart or code used on-site must be credited properly, either in your signature or at the bottom of the relevant post. We will not allow use of uncredited fanart or code.
We all know the problem with plagiarism by now, but uncredited use of fanart is something I see very, very often in RP circles. As with most of the rules on here, this is just a matter of common courtesy. Think about the reverse for a second: would you be happy with one of your posts being passed around without any credit or permission? Artists put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into their work, so if you like their work enough to stamp it on your posts, the least you can do is make sure people know who they are. Provided their page is safe for work, maybe even think about linking them in the credit. Those little steps can go a long way towards getting eyes on independent talent.
Accessibility is key! Code should be designed so that mobile users and those with vision impairments can comfortably read what you're writing. Please avoid fast-moving images and bright flashes of color for the sake of those prone to overstimulation, headaches, or epilepsy.
Form and function are both really important when it comes to code, but sometimes it can be really tempting to go all-in on one to the neglect of the other. While for some this is irritating at best, for others it can legitimately impact their ability to use the site. Please be careful with your template widths, text sizes, and color code choices, and show restraint when using certain codes such as hovers. At the very least, check your code on mobile in order to see if it holds up on a smaller, more limited screen.
The image requirement comes from a similar place. Don't think of it as a blanket ban on gifs. A well-placed one can really bring a profile together. However, if said gif is causing others legitimate discomfort, we may ask you to make some changes. Luckily, you don't need to just throw out the image. There are plenty of websites that tone down image brightness and slow gifs down, which can do wonders for making it easier on the eyes.
If you don't notice either of these problems at first, that's okay! Everyone has different tolerances for things like gif speed and text size. Just keep an open mind if someone asks for a change.
Keep it PG-13! All art used on site should be safe for work and in good taste. This goes doubly so for younger characters.
This one goes without saying. Proboards terms and conditions apply to the whole site, after all, rather than just writing. We're not going to be running around enforcing private school dress code levels of modesty on all of your icons or denying faceclaims just because they're attractive. However, if an image is dipping into NSFW territory, is cropped from an outright NSFW source, or seems clearly designed with fetishes in mind, we're going to ask you to change them out. We know it can be a bit of a line at times, especially with how common fanservice is in anime nowadays, so if it's unclear try this exercise: If you'd feel uncomfortable about somebody looking over your shoulder and seeing the image you've chosen to represent yourself on-site, that's a sign that you might want to reconsider.
I also shouldn't even have to say this, but just in case I'm getting it in writing: sexualized depictions of minors are absolutely forbidden. These are going to be held to a lot higher of a standard than adult characters.
Rule Enforcement
The most important thing about the rules is ensuring our community's full of good vibes. Whenever we have to make a judgment call, we're doing it to keep you guys comfortable and happy, not to lord our authority over everyone. Nevertheless, please keep a few key things in mind.
You Will Mess Up: Be patient and understanding, both with yourselves and others, when mistakes are made. However, you should always strive to be better.
Nobody's perfect. Nobody should be expected to be perfect. I guarantee you that most people on site have run afoul of at least a few of these rules in the past. We're not here to rake people over the coals for making honest mistakes. We're here to help the people who want to do better rise to the occasion. I'd rather have a conversation with someone that's having a hard time with the rules than just unilaterally throw the book at them. That isn't to say that following the rules isn't important. They're here for a reason, and they will be enforced to the best of our ability. I'm just not going to be hard on people unless they're giving me a reason to be hard on them. Please extend the same kindness to your fellow members, and to yourselves. It's a lot easier to follow the rules if you're not anxious or resentful over them.
Warnings and Bans: Severe rule breaking, such as flagrant hate speech, criminal activity, or consistent, intentional harassment efforts, will be met with a ban. Minor rule breaking will receive warnings instead. These will adding up to a ban if your rulebreaking is consistent and frequent, or if it makes others on site feel deeply uncomfortable.
This is pretty much standard operating procedure for sites. Full honesty, I've never been a fan of three strikes and you're out. It's too rigid of a structure for something as flexible as site rules. Instead, I'd like to think of it as a matter of intent and consistency. If you're learning from each warning, improving your behavior, and climbing out of the pitfalls you've gotten into before, the warnings are clearly doing their job. We'd prefer if you be a bit more careful, but we're not going to be too heavy-handed against those with a clear desire to get better. On the other hand, people that are simply out to cause trouble or don't care about their rule breaking are going to be treated with a lot less sympathy. If you're here just to troll and start shit with others, you're not going to be here for long.
Overturning a Ban: If you want a ban overturned, we will hear you out. However, we're going to need either good reason or genuine remorse, as well as the acceptance of those you've hurt.
I am a firm believer in second chances. I think anyone can change, so long as people put a genuine effort forward. Unless you're doxxing people or severely bullying them, I don't feel comfortable saying a ban is capital p Permanent. However, some people are less interested in bettering themselves and more interested in not having their toys taken away. It's a toxic cycle I've seen plenty of times before. Somebody shows up on a site they've been banned from, saying they've changed. Then they slip into the same unhealthy patterns that got them banned in the first place, taking a toll on the site culture in the meantime. When they're banned, they seem more angry that they've been denied the forgiveness they owed than anything, showing none of that remorse from earlier. That's not a cycle I have any interest in propagating here.
If you truly want a ban overturned, my advice is to come in with no expectations. Forgiveness isn't a right. It's a gift from those you've wrong. If you act like you're owed forgiveness, then your apology isn't coming from the right place. Think about what you've done wrong. Think about what you can do differently to avoid it the next time it comes up. Prove that you're willing to work with us, and we'll be far more willing to work with you.
In addition, we can only speak for ourselves as staff. If you've hurt someone so badly that they genuinely aren't comfortable sharing a site with you, then the ban remains in place.
Specialized Rule Index
Digimon, Digivices, and Digivolution: Your rules on everything you need to understand the site's titular Digimon.
Moveset Creation Guidelines: Rules for putting together and customizing your Digimon's movesets.
Rumor Board: Rules on the creation and running of Rumors, our site's NPC encounter and adventure system.
Site Currency and Item Types: Rules for how you acquire Memory and how the many things you can spend it on work.
Character Creation: Our app, primed and ready for a fill!
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