Role-Playing Rules and how-to

The different rules and how-to's for role-playing will be posted here

Godmodding

What is God Modding -
1.Deus ex machina. (God in the Machine.) Eg, a dragon swooping down from the sky just in time to block a bullet and save a character's life.
2.Surviving impossible wounds, Eg Bullet to the head, being lopped in half by a battle axe, etc.
3.Pushing magic too far (by community census)
4.Using your god in a way which breaks the rules or is pushing it too far (Community census)
5.Traveling vast distances in a short amount of time without a very, very good explanation.
6.Pulling stuff out of your backside just to save someone from dying. I don't care what you think is possible in your nation, if it's illogical and not in your bio, it doesn't exist.
7.Anything which is blatantly impossible or unfair
8.Making a simple man become a super hero.
9.Metagaming (Knowing something Out of Character and having your character automatically know it In Character with no clear reason how or why.)

What is not God Modding
1.Killing another players character. I've got a gun to your head, I pull the trigger, you're dead. You don't need anyone's permission to kill a character, destroy a building, launch a Nuke.
2.Generating your home terrain. If someones on your land, YOU decide what features there are. Hills, a river, a forest. If that happens to interfere with their tactics, well, sucks for them.
3.Winning a battle where the odds are 1 to 10. Just because you've got the numbers means nothing. If someone has a great formation, fortification, or choke point, then its highly possible that they can grab victory.
4.Anything which is decided not to be godmodding (Community census)

What Counts as an Offense:
1.Breaking the Rules of Magic, Gods, Daemons, Godmodding, Colonization etc
2.Flaming, trolling, angering Roleplayers, and spamming
3.Large mass of OOC or a string of small OOC in a IC thread

Map Rules

1. All map requests must be made in the appropriate thread.

2. A nation may request to be added to the map in one plot.

3. A valid request for addition to the map shall include the (short) name of the nation to be written on the map, the plot number and (optionally) the colour with which the nation wishes to be represented.

3a. A valid request for addition to the map shall be accepted and implemented by the Moderator at its earliest convenience. A plot shall be considered taken by the nation making the first claim (post) to it. Posts in other threads, private messages, telegrams, IRC messages, emails, instant messages or any other means of communication shall not be the basis of a valid request for addition to the map.

4. A nation may ask for other changes to the map and the Moderator shall then take it into consideration and decide on whether to make the changes or not. Changes to the names and colours of nations shall be accepted unless there is reason not to.

5. A nation's borders shall be expanded on the map according to the rules regarding colonisation.

6. These rules deal exclusively with the official map of the Imperial Legion and nothing in them shall be construed to imply any regulation of other maps.

Colonization

1. All colonisation must be described in roleplay, in character.

2. All colonisation must take place in the "Events and Incidents" forum. The colonisation may be linked to, motivated by or resulting in roleplay in any other IC roleplay forum except the "Free Roleplay Zone".

3. Colonisation is an endeavour that can be undertaken for an area constituting a plot on the map which is not owned by another nation. No nation may simultaneously roleplay colonisation in more than one plot.

4. Colonisation roleplay must entail, at the very minimum, the transport to and disembarkation (if applicable) on the new land, establishment of authority and recognition in the homeland of the acquisition, and official announcement from the homeland government to the other governments of the Legion.


5. A nation may contest the colonisation claim of another. Such a dispute shall be resolved between involved parties and the Moderator shall remain neutral in all such disputes, unless required to take sides to fulfill Moderator duties to enforce these and other rules in the roleplay forums. During an ongoing dispute, none of the involved parties shall receive the plot on the map. The plot shall however be considered taken for the purposes of not allowing new nations to claim it. The Moderator may indicate this situation on the map and/or announce it in the map thread as it sees fit.

6. A plot shall be considered taken for the purposes of not allowing new nations to claim it as soon as any coloniser has set foot on the soil of the plot.

7. After a dispute as described in 5 has been settled and all nations on the map and new nations with pending map requests have recognised the coloniser as the rightful authority over the new land by replying in character to its official announcement, or 72 hours have passed since the announcement was made and there is no ongoing dispute, the plot shall be considered taken by the coloniser. The Ministry of Roleplay shall update the map at its earliest convenience to reflect the acquisition.

8. Nothing in these rules shall be construed to imply any prevention of nations engaging in operations on neutral (unclaimed) territory, whether of a police, military, security, science, educational, commercial, logistic or any other nature.

9. Colonization is not affected by anything in LoU (e.g. City amount, score, rank, etc), or affects anything. It is merely there so you can expand the size of your empire on the forums.

10. If the community decides that you have colonized to many plots, and aren't leaving enough room for others, the moderator has permission to say you aren't allowed to colonize any more plots.

Magic

1) Mages need a focus: Be it a staff, a wand, a book, a sprig of holly, or a holy symbol, the mage needs some kind of tool to help them channel their magic.

2) Magic has to be inborn: In order to use magic, a mage has to be born with some semblance of magical ability.

3) Magic should be physically exhausting: And using spells that are too powerful will kill the mage, often in a spectacularly violent fasion.

4) Magic should be balanced: No killing a whole squad of soldiers with a couple of latin words; a spell of the magnitude of a D&D fireball would likely take several minutes of preparation. Magic healing wouldn't just automatically knit wounds, a mage would have to know what they're doing.

5) Magic can heal, but cannot save people from the brink of death. Eg Regrowing a limb, removing cancer, healing a broken/stabbed heart.

6) A mage (any mage, regardless of power sources they can use) can "reach out" with their mind and feel for any living things. They can sense life and its strength, but not direction, proximity, etc - only that a source is strong or weak. (Sources being stronger the closer they are to the mage)
- Once they've found a living thing, they can make contact, thus finding out what it is and establishing a telepathic link.

- If it's a plant, they can then use it as a power source until it dies (the spell's power determining how quickly this happens)

- If it's sentient they have to 'mind-wrestle' them to be able to use their life force. Non-mages can do this as well, and it would depend mostly on strength of will and discipline in thinking/whatever - however, non-mages can't reach out with their minds, only defend themselves and counter-attack (as the mage already established the original link). Animals are easier to mind-wrestle than people.

- A mage who wins this mind-wrestle can then use them for power or (if they're trained in doing the following) Brainwash them, Read their mind, or whatever else you can think of. The loser could be knocked out or something, depending on how well it goes.

- Due to the increased magical awareness from this, mages can 'feel' magic unless it's cloaked with illusion magic

7) The Following materials and situations affect magic:
- Silver acts as a magical insulator.

-Circles, when put to magical use, insulate anything magical going on inside of them from the ambient magic that is outside of the circle, much delicate work requires them. They are also useful as traps for things that rely on magic for existence, not allowing them to pass out of them without great difficulty.

This is only for characters in the forums, not involving mages in LoU

Gods

1) Gods don't create:
Gods do not directly create creatures, objects, and people though they can alter them.

2) A god has his/her own realm: Each god has their own realm, which is a separate plane that expands infinitely in all directions. That god has infinite power within their own realm, but cannot effect another god's realm. Realms do not exist within or intersect the world. They can create within their own realm, and can enter the mortal realm.

3) A gods' followers are their life: A god's life is directly related to the number and power of followers he/she has. If a god has no followers, they do not have any power, and are chained to their realm.

4) Gods can be created only under very extreme special circumstances See LRn's and my own national bios. You cannot just say, "Oh yeah, I have a god now too", you have to have 1) had one from the start or 2) have a damn good explanation for how you got a god.

5) Gods do not interfere directly with humanity, unless they have some sort of "Prophet" or any other mortal servant. I.E Jesus Christ, Mohammad

6) Gods can be killed: It requires great power, several Gods, Demigods, Zemigods. If a God doesn't have any followers for several centuries, then he fades into nothing.

There are two kinds of demons: Greater and Lesser.

1a) A Greater Daemon is what it sounds like, a daemon with extraordinary power in their respective fields. Several of them could possibly kill a God.

1b) Lesser Daemons are basically Stronger versions of Humans with powers in their respective fields. Lust, Rage, Fire, etc

2) Greater Demons can be killed by magic, Enchanted and Silver Weapons. If killed by a normal weapon, such as steel, iron, arrows, etc, the daemon will be sent back to his realm for several years to regain his strength, from there he can be killed by Gods or other Daemons. Lesser Daemons can be killed normally.

3) Demons can grow in power by possessing mortal mages with strong power and killing other powerful daemons to obtain their power.

4) Greater Daemons have all their powers in the mortal realm, and there, are not able to be harmed by Gods in any way when in the mortal realm.

5) Each Daemon has one specific type of power, which cannot be changed. They typically include this power or another talent in a title of some form.

War

1) 2 or more nations can go to war, and join sides. Each side as to have a name, and it has to have what type of team it is in the name (e.g. the Republic of the sky, Noodles Federation, etc)

1.a) These are the types of teams- Republic, Federation, Confederacy, States, Community, and Territories (these can be changed by the moderator). They do not have any definition, the definition is decided by the team at the time, based on how the team will be run.

2) Wars are a form of PvP, and so are subject to the rules of PvP.

3) Wars do not affect nor are affected by the amount of units you have in your LoU empire. So saying, you can have no more than 50% of your population in your military, and another 15% in reserves. (1 million population on your home plot, 500 thousand for each plot won in a war or colonized)

4) After a war is won, the winning team gets to decide a reasonable reward for winning

4.a) Reasonable rewards- one plot of land from each empire (not counting home plot, those cannot be taken), a certain amount of population. Unreasonable- all plots of the opposing team, all population, or others, decided upon by the community.

PvP (Player vs. Player)

1) These rules apply to wars between players

2) You are not allowed to role-play another persons character without their expressed permission. The other person ALWAYS gets a chance to dodge and/or block, and it is up to them whether they take the hit or the hit is a miss.

3) A battle cannot go on for an unreasonable amount of time. If the community thinks it has taken to long, it may say so, and it will have to end in the next 2 posts. (wars cannot go on for to long, but battles can).

Time and Dates

1) The date must be displayed at the top of each new topic (battle, colonization, etc).

2) A year consists of 4 seasons, each has 13 weeks, and each week has 7 days. This is the format- (day)1, (week) 8, (year) 17. It is correctly displayed like this- 1, 8, 17.

3)you can NOT go back in time, unless given permission by the moderator. The post will be deleted if you do not receive permission.

Forums-

There are 5 forums for RP

International Events- Events involving more than one nation. In-Character

Internal Events- Events involving ONLY your nation, no one else may join, unless given permission by the person whose nation is involved. Your post will be deleted if you do not ask permission. In-Character

National Biographies- The biographies of nations, made by the nations owner.

OOC Discussions- You may discuss events that are happening in RP. Out-of-Character

Freelance RP- For RP's organized independently. Not subject to rules listed above.

Note: New rules are able to be made by the Moderator. All rules are subject to change by the Moderator. The Moderator is designated in a vote.