Role Play
1. Originality is key
You may use any image that does not break Gaia's TOS for your character, but you may not choose an official character from the Bleach Series itself. The reason being is these are special NPCs we use for special occasions or official battles. Mods play these exclusively. Now, the other reason for not allowing you to play an official character like Ichigo is because everybody would want it and then half the guild would be Ichigo with no originality - among other reasons. We would much prefer you to be creative. That being said, we do let you to borrow from other series, provided you add in your own twist. Have fun with your character. That's what this guild is for after all.
2. Plagiarism is absolutely forbidden. No exceptions.
Although closely related to the first rule, I must underline this one on its own. There are people who work hard to do their work. Your character may quote somebody, but you may not do things like copy an entire chapter of Frankenstein and change the names. That's not fair to the writer who busted her a** to write that book. And its not fair to your fellow players. We do consider it cheating and this is an iron clad rule. If you are quoting somebody then remember to put it into quotation marks - ' and '. Otherwise, it can be easily construed as plagiarism and that's just not cool.
3. Word Counts and Updates
Although we are pretty flexible about what you post for your characters, there are certain ground rules for your posts.
a) Please try to type out a decent amount of words when role-playing.
Please try to type out a decent amount of words so that you are not leeching off of others (seeing as we do allow you to count interaction words.) This is also to help ensure the others have enough to go off of for their replies. Generally speaking, a decent sized post is approximately 100 words. It sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. We will understand if you are having a hard time coming up with enough words for your character, and as such we are flexible with this rule, but it is considered impolite to post tiny posts that pretty much amount to one sentence. (TIP: If you are having a hard time thinking of things to say you can describe the area, show what your character is thinking, or even ramble on talking about your character for a bit. Heck, you can have your character day dream or have a flash back.)
b) When doing your word count, do not count the bb code.
When doing your word count, do not count the bb code or image markers as this is considered inflating your word count. Count your words either after you post, or before you stylize your posts. Word inflation is considered cheating and imbalances the system.
c) Spam posting is also considered word inflation.
Spam posting is also considered word inflation. What I mean by spam posting can be several different things. One is posting the same character in two different locations which is a huge no no. It not only is word inflation, but it hurts the guild's time line. We rp linear here to be a bit more realistic. Another example of spam posting is one of the gravest of offenses - typing out gibberish and calling it words. It is one thing if you are using another language (regardless of accuracy) but it is a whole other thing to put in things that are clearly not words as though the only thing you could think of was to type with your face slamming against the key board.
Example given: asdfghjkl kjwelrhtealibv uithg.
None of those count as words but a word counter does not know differently. WE, however, do know the difference and you will be warned. This is not only cheating but it is very aggravating to those of us who actually came here to role play. Its sad that this one has to be put in here, but thanks to a few who thought it would be funny to do this, we had to add this subsection to the rules.
d) OOC conversations belong in the ooc, im's, and pm's.
OOC conversations belong in the ooc, im's, and pm's. They do not belong in the role play designated areas. The reason for this is because it clutters up the role play and slows things down. If you must leave an ooc note, please mark it separate from the rest of your post and not in your post. For one thing, leaving ooc notes in your post instead of at the top or bottom, separated from your character words, makes it seem as though your character is saying these things and thus creating confusion. Another reason is because it tends to create word inflation. Also, it will help if you put your message either in a quote box or in some form of separating notation such as asterisk "*", parenthesis "(" and ")", or other such markers, just so long as people to know you are leaving a message. This will have the added benefit of showing you are trying to communicate where the others you are rp with can see.
4. Chat speak, 1337 speak, and the likes are kindly asked to be left in the ooc or not even used at all in the guild. However, internet slang and other colloquialisms are ok.
While we, here in B:ER, are a fun loving bunch, for the sake of keeping this role play literate we must ask that this be observed as much as possible. Possible exceptions to this rule might be that your character is leaving a message and that is how they actually write. Just try to keep it to a minimum since it tends to encourage some people to fill entire posts with internet gibberish. Internet slang like glomp and snog are perfectly acceptable, however, since they are technically words to a certain extent. Words that are not words such as 1337 to say 'leet (elite) are not considered slang and much of that is considered gibberish by many. Besides, typing out your words and posting up in plain English shows that you possess at least a 3rd grade education and therefore are smart enough to be understood. We will understand if you do a typo or misspell a word or two, that shows you are human. Having your character talk with an accent is also OK - for example when you are typing for a little kid and have them speaking with their childish mispronunciations (so cute) or when your character has a foreign accent and you want to underline how they sound when speaking out loud.
5. A player can only have 3 different characters at once.
It's fun having multiple characters to role-play, but we have had problems where some players can be a little... excessive with the amount of characters they have (I think the highest I've seen is 12). For now, especially while the number of members is low, having a limit of 3 is enough. This can always be discussed and revisited later when more members join the guild and activity increases.
6. Please respect others when finding a place to role-play.
This is a social guild and we want people to be able to role-play together and have fun, so we don't want to encourage people to only role-play by themselves. However, keep in mind that some people might be role-playing something specific or might be trying to get some character progression done somehow. If someone is role-playing alone (especially in a [TRN] or [FGT] area) or a group of people are role-playing together, please ask them if it's okay for you to role-play with them. Although we suggest to be courteous to others and ask if it's okay to join them, unless there's a major reason for it, there shouldn't be any problem with someone else joining the role-playing. Especially if the case is that a character (EX: Hollow) wants to cause trouble for characters of the other side (EX: Shinigami).
