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Mod Note: Although much of this information may seem needlessly overworded, keep in mind that this community was made for the purpose of fixing and preventing many of the problems that came up in its (TWO?!) preceding incarnations. Therefore, please be patient as you read through not only our policies, but our rationale as well. Thank you! <3 ]
1) Stay IC. No OOC comments within your character’s journal or plot posts, please, and if you feel that you need to contact another mun or mod with a suggestion or a question in regards to the thread you’re in, please use the
Contact List, (you need to be logged in as your character to access it), or
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif)
damned_lounge, the OOC community, to do so. (However, if you simply want to end with a link to a new thread or make a quick direction to jump to a new thread, that's okay, so long as you do it in a separate comment and delete the OOC correspondence once it's done.)
2) Speaking of
damned_lounge,
it is mandatory that you have it friended to either your character journal or, preferably, your personal journal. The reason for this is that it’s the community where us mods will be making announcements that you need to know about, such as updated rules, a warning of upcoming plot developments, polls that we want everyone's input on, and all that kind of administrative stuff. You’ll be held responsible for keeping up with the announcements, so make sure you do so. (If you're feeling confused about any of the updates, however, never hesitate to contact one of us with questions.)
On a lighter note, the OOC community is also your method by which to fool around and have fun with other muns! Share thoughts, opinions, silly comments, artwork, related fics... :D How can you go wrong? You’re free to post or comment there with either your personal journal or your character journal, and
although you may vote in polls wih your personal journal, make sure to vote with your character journal when we specifically ask for it.Also, on the topic of polls:
You may NOT vote in ANY polls if you--as a player--have not yet received an acceptance e-mail from us for at least one character and been given clearance to join the damned community. To us, voting with a character journal that has not yet been accepted--as is usually the case--is incredibly presumptuous, especially in polls that have a serious effect on the outcome of policies in the community, and gives us the impression that the voter assumes that they will be automatically be accepted, when, in actuality, we spend tons of time and effort reviewing each and every application for writing quality and correct characterization before we make our decisions.
If you are not yet accepted and vote in a poll anyway, not only will you be giving us this idea about your RP etiquette, but your vote won't be counted towards the final tally. So please, please,
please don't do this. Call it a pet peeve, but it really bugs us, especially since we use polls a ton and it's hard to keep track of the tallies as it is. :/
That said,
if you haven't yet been accepted to the community, you are still totally free to post to damned_lounge with whatever questions you might have about the application process or to ask for clarification and/or more information about the RP comm before you make the decision to apply, etc. Again, however, we discourage you from getting too chummy with players within the OOC comm before you're officially accepted, as we'd feel horrible if you were having a great time in the OOC comm and we ended up having to reject you and rain on your parade. :/
3) Although this probably isn’t an issue for you if we’ve already approved your application, keep in mind that
we expect you to maintain a good command over the English language as you RP. If you typo here and there in your plot posts, (we’ve all stayed up late at night RPing with our brains half-fried, so we know how it is), we’ll understand, but try to use LJ spell-check as much as you can even if you don’t proofread what you write. As far as posts in the OOC community... we're nuts in there with our ksdfjhskdljfhas and OMGs and WTFs all over the place, so no worries. XD;
4) ABSOLUTELY NO GOD-MODDING. What's god-modding? It’s when a player decides that their character is so awesome that he or she can beat up another character with no questions asked, kill a monster easier than anyone else can, or scale three stories with one jump. Stuff like that. D: Due to the power-limited setting of Landel's Damned, we tend to take this offense even more seriously than mainstream RPs, and let me make this perfectly clear:
When you apply for the Landel's Damned RP, keep in mind that part of the whole point of entering your character into this RP is for the purpose of making them far more vulnerable then they usually are, most prominently through a lack of powers. Because of this, be open and prepared to have your character lose almost all of their powers or at least have them severely weakened, and be aware that we're going to be very strict about the extent of magical/special abilities your character can keep. Basically, if you're the kind of player who loves to kick ass all the time, this is
NOT the RP for you.
Although we here at Landel's Damned try to be as fair as possible with powers and give anyone who has concerns individual attention, we're running a big RP here and we realistically can only devote so much time to each person. Therefore,
if a mod finds herself haggling with a player over their character's powers for longer than should be necessary (an hour or more--it's happened!) be aware that we are the ones who make the final decision on what is fair, and if a player is unreasonable with the amount of power-hindering that we feel is necessary, we reserve the right to give an ultimatum of accepting our offer for the character's powers or the player dropping their character from the game. Harsh, we know, but we want to make it
perfectly clear that this is
not the kind of RP where your character's abillity to kick ass should even be a motivation for your wanting to play--rather, your motivation should be your character's
lack of ass-kicking skills. (For patient characters, anyway, though even Nightshift-Only characters can get to the point of abused powers too.) Trying to haggle with us over how powerful your character should be is fine if you're a newbie who's trying to get a handle on how much your character should be hindered or if you feel we're
severely shortchanging your character in comparison to someone else, but continual and unreasonable haggling with us over character powers
will make us doubt your ability to RP without godmodding and
will have the opposite effect on us than the one you intend: We will feel your character should have perhaps even
less powers than the standard if you seem disturbingly keen on using them.
However, also keep in mind that we aren't asking for a lack of artistic license. The key here is that if you want your character to do something crazy, you can. The catch? You have to run it by the mods, the muns who’ll be affected by it, and finally, yourself. Are they all okay with it? Are you okay with it? Are there enough painful repercussions for your character to even out the good with the bad? Is it something that your character is physically capable of even with their powers diminished? Is it something that your character would choose to do? If the mods agree with you that your character meets all these standards, then chances are that any nefarious plans you’ve conjured up might be approved and even added upon!
We love insanity and chaos as much as any of you guys, but we don’t like it when its done for the sake of someone’s ego or without consideration of how other characters might be affected.By the way, this goes for NPCs as much as it goes for other players. If one of our Creatures mods or Orderlies is giving you a harder time than they should and dodging your every attack, we want to know straight away. It could be that you were unlucky enough to be attacked by some incredibly strong, impervious thing and that the NPC mod is being totally reasonable, but it could just as easily be an overstep in power--even just an honest mistake--and we want to make sure that there aren’t any contradictions or confusing breaks in policy.
5) This RP is a violent, gory, creepy, twisted thing, and it is for that reason that you need to understand that
stuff like exploding brains and sex (possibly) will be happening, and that your level of exposure to it is your decision.
6) Ah, the topic of
sex. Like we said in the previous rule, it’s allowed, but we have some
very strict rules concerning it.
Note: If you ever see the label "Adult Content" or "Mature" on any post to the main comm, keep in mind that it DOES contain graphic sex and it is YOUR decision whether or not to read it.
A)
You must contact the mods before you progress to anything NC-17. If characters make out or do other stuff that's only vaguely described, you don't need to let us know, but if anything happens BEYOND that, (ie beginnings of getting nekkid) you MUST talk to us first to get an okay from us. Why is this? We know that some players can get way too crazy with sexing up their characters, and although that kind of behavior may be totally IC for some characters, we want to make sure the suddenness or frequency of it is realistic.
B)
No sex involving characters under the age of 18. Sorry, but that's our limit, and it will be strictly enforced, especially after Livejournal's recent cut-down on... well, we're sure you know all about that already.
C)
No sex during the day. Nighttime is your business, but it’s highly unlikely that two lovebirds could get very far with nurses and doctors watching their every move.
7) On the topic of romance, let it be known that
pairings of all sexualities are welcome. That means shounen-ai/slash, shoujo-ai/femmeslash, or het. (Male on male, female on female, or male on female. ...Or female on male. What have you. XD;)
Of course, we don’t condone rampant sex everywhere with no rhyme or reason. Basically,
as long as you keep your character IC, you can pair him or her however you like.8) This is kind of a no-brainer, but
you can’t kill other characters. The only possible exception to this rule would be if you, the other character, and the mods all worked it out so that a character who was about to be dropped could be killed off for the sake of plot continuity. This also goes for mortal wounds. For example, if one character injures another character so badly that the wounded character is literally incapacitated, which is definitely not fun for his or her mun. If you want to get into a patient-to-patient brawl, it’s a good idea to check with the other character’s mun over how much damage you two are willing to do to one another. Basically, respect your fellow players and how they have just as much of a right to kick ass as you do. Okay? X3
9) Read and comply with the other, more specific guidelines in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
damned_info. (Yes, there are even more rules.) Although the other guidelines there are self-explanatory, one of the biggest necessities of Landel’s is
going by the Maps. They’re there for a reason, and that reason is comprehensiveness, continuity, and consistency, and you should also comply by the room descriptions when describing an area. (If you're in an area without a room description yet, please either contact a mod or make a post to the
damned_lounge.)
10) Communicate! This is perhaps the most important rule of all. If muns don’t feel comfortable talking to their mods, people end up trying to “get away” with things behind someone’s back because they think their character will be stripped of all fun otherwise. Bad idea. What we want to encourage most is that we want to hear what you have to say! Complaints, suggestions, compliments--we want you to talk to us and ask us about anything you need. Do you think we’re being unfair about enforcing particular rules and not others? Tell us! Do you think our characters are getting cooler stuff done to them than yours? Let us know! We’d love to accommodate any wants or needs you guys have, but first, we need to actually know what your concerns are. Be aware that as long as we’re online, we’re probably totally available to be pummeled with questions, and we appreciate the pummeling. <3 In the same way that you guys aren’t imprisoned, we aren’t crazy doctors on an intercom who think that only we should have fun, especially at night. (During the day, admittedly, your character is going to have to deal with a lot stricter rules for the sake of realism, and we can’t really change much of that. :/) But still! Be open! Be honest! The last thing we want to be is unapproachable. <3
11) Stay IC. You thought we went over this? Well, we sort of did, but in this context, we mean IC in terms of your character. Just because your character is in a universe where a satanic mental hospital is the scope of their entire existence doesn’t mean that you can completely throw their characterization out the window. This is another reason why we’ll be paying so much attention to the quality of your application. We want to make sure that you have such a good handle on your character that, if he or she is screwed with mentally or physically in the way that Landel’s tends to do, you are skilled enough to ensure that
your character remains the same character.12) Have fun! Yeah, it’s corny, we know, but if you disagree with any of the policies here and feel you couldn’t deal in an RP with such detailed guidelines, you might not want to apply, or, even better, let us know why you don’t feel comfortable applying so we can try to improve what we can. The general point of Landel’s is to create an environment where your character is at such a disadvantage that you, the mun, are challenged to find interesting ways to get around problems that wouldn’t be such a threat to a character in their native world, and therefore, give you something new and fun to work with! However, if you feel that this community fails to facilitate that kind of experience, please let us know.
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Read all of that? Not sure if you absorbed all those insanely dense masses of text? They’ll always be here for you to check up on, so if your memory gets hazy during the course of the RP, feel free to come back here and skim for what you need to know--or even drop us mods a line if you can’t find what you’re looking for! In any case, please add the words
“this guy are sick” to the end of your application so we can make sure that you truly got through all of this. After all, you certainly deserve a reward for being thorough. <3
Failure to comply with these rules will result in contact from the mods through IM, LJ, or e-mail. If, even after multiple warnings, you fail to respond and/or refuse to change your ways, you will receive a final warning and be removed from the community.Since we definitely don’t want to have to get to that point, make sure to stay in contact with the mods and let us know if you’re worried that you’re overstepping what’s allowed or if a policy should be tweaked. Forewarning and communication. That’s all we ask for. <3
