Rules and Guidelines


Player Guidelines

Treat These Games As If They Were Games: No one is going to come up with a cure for cancer while typing away at these stories and writing here won’t promote world peace. They're just games. This actually has three meanings:

First, it means never forget that your life isn't changed just because your character gets reamed.

 Second, remember that your actions can either contribute to the group enjoyment or take away from it. 

Third, if your real life is interfering in your game play, see to your real life first.

Fourth, games like these are interactive and fun, it's important that you remember that everyone is part of a team with their own character objectives. It's also important that you keep those objectives in mind when coming up with plots and storylines. Romantic plots are fun, we all love them, but this is a game about the end of the world, plot has to move at a good pace to keep everyone involved. There will be relevant posts to read, events that take place, minor research to be done, and mistakes will be made. Your character isn't perfect, and they will be prone to making mistakes. Don't hold it against them or yourself if he or she gets it wrong. It just means it's time to go back to the drawing board.

Always Remember The Most Important Rule: If You Become A Problem, You Will Be Removed. Be polite. Doubt your own infallibility. This has nothing to do with what your character does with the other characters - that should be whatever it takes to keep him or her in character. It involves other real people and whether or not they're enjoying the game with you in it. Be considerate and polite whenever possible.


Posting Guidelines


Post:  Yes, this is simplistic. So what. Ideally, you should be posting at least twice a week but school happens; life happens. I get that. If you are unable to post for a time due to say, vacation, or illness, just drop me an email, private message, or OOC post letting me know. I'm understanding and my day job can get pretty hectic from time to time too.

• Logs and Threads should be posted in the In Character Community with the formatting guidelines listed below. These are to be in third person, past tense only. I understand that it can get tedious to constantly write "and Sam sat there staring at the wall" during a conversation. Try not to post one line replies, it can be very frustrating for those you are writing a scene with to have one line of dialog to reply to. So do the best you can to keep your posts detailed and interesting.

• Your character journal is precisely that, your journal. It's not an online blogging tool, it's not some magically connected Harry Potter handwritten journal. This is where your character will write their hunting progress, their thoughts, their feelings etc. It's where you are going take notes where you will be trying to figure out what exactly is going on with the plot. You can put pictures in it, you can put whatever you want in it. Think John Winchester's journal. You can keep it on your character's computer, you can keep it in their backpack. It doesn't matter. Yes, this kind of takes the fun out of journal commenting but it does also add an element of character development without worrying about the rest of the characters finding out your deepest darkest secrets. It can be a good place to refer back to, and from time to time I will be giving you little magazine articles, and hints and signs and things like that to add to your journal. Posting in your journal is NOT required for every character, while I can imagine Sam Winchester sitting around writing in HIS journal, I can't imagine that Castiel is sitting around writing in his. 

• If you want to post messages (voice-email-text-facebook whatever floats your boat) to another character, or perhaps an email blast to your super secret network of  Ghostfacers then feel free to do this in the main In Character Community. Just note it as such, this kind of puts the fun back in journal commenting. If you have a character who is an obsessive paranormal blogger, feel free to post his blog posts in the In Character Community as well, just note it as such. Remember if it is a post in the In Character Community that is listed as posted on the Internet, anyone can see it. Emails should remain as private as possible, text messages as well.

Use Proper Spelling And Grammar: Regardless of what language you are writing in, choppy paragraphs and badly constructed sentences make your writing hard for other people to read. They are also prone to never read your posts if they continually cannot decipher what you read.

Tag, tag, tag: Organization is the key here, and if you are putting up a post, please tag it. Tag who is in it, and where it is.

Formatting Guidelines

I’m pretty big on organization (kind of obsessed with it, what can I say), so I like everything to be as lovely and as uniform as possible! While I’m not going to throw a tantrum every time something is not formatted correctly, I would be a much happier moderator if posts in the In Character Community were formatted as follows:

Format for basic interaction logs (please include a title in your posts indicating it's a log):

WHO: (The participants in your log.)
WHEN: (The specific timeframe of your log.)
WHERE: (Location or locations of your log.)
SUMMARY: (A brief summary of the ongoing action in your log.)
RATING: (G through NC-17.)
STATUS: (Whether your log is still in progress or completed.)

Place the full text of your log underneath an LJ-cut if was completed over AIM for length concerns.

Format for voice/text/e-mail messages (please include a title in your posts indicating it's mail):

TO: (Please identify the recipient or recipients of the message here.)
FROM: (Please identify the sender or senders of the message here.)
SUBJECT: (Please identify whether your message is voice/text/e-mail, and type a subject.)


*Asterisks* should really only be used for emphasis or actions in Instant Messages or internet dialogue. They shouldn’t ever be used for third person posting, but you can *pounce* or *tackle* or *poke* to your heart’s content on the internet.

Smiley faces and other emoticons? Only for internet and text messaging of course. ^_^

You’re smart. You can figure out what should and shouldn’t be used.