Rules:Orl On Guidelines

On Avlis, there are two major forces at work to make this a better place: the Team and the Community. In reality, the Team is a subset of the Community.

For new people it is important to note something: Each group has its own rules.

The Avlis Team makes the official server rules. The purpose of these rules is to minimize the disruption caused by various asshats that occasionally enter our servers. Thankfully, these are rare, but every official rule you see has some story or reason why it is there. Examples of these rules are things like: Grief playing and exploiting are not allowed. The practice of "cheesing" is illegal. etc.

For a more complete listing of the official rules, see the rules forums and wiki entries.

If these rules are broken, there are penalties involved ranging from a simple warning to banning. To play here, these are the only rules you have to follow.

Aside from these rules are the Community rules, aka the "unofficial rules". These rules are made by the people who play here, much like the house rules you might have when playing monopoly or pen and paper D&D. It is important to note that these rules are completey player-driven. The Team has no stance on them, and does not enforce them at all.

When you break these rules, the Team does not necessarily care. However, the Community will care. If you wish to be a part of this Community, you might want to follow these rules, lest you get a bad reputation among them. If you do not care about that sort of thing, the Team is not going to do anything about it. You will not be banned or penalized until you break an "official rule".

There are loosely two kinds of unofficial rules: IC rules and OOC rules. IC rules are the actual character-created laws of the various cities and countries in game. They might say things like "you cannot summon creatures within the city walls", or "you cannot walk in public with weapons". OOC rules are things like "you cannot powergame" or "you cannot make super character builds even if your background story justifies it".

Again, the Team does NOT enforce these rules. The players do. If you break one of these rules, you might hear about it from the players.

Sometimes, the DM's will let you know if you are breaking a player rule. This is generally for your own good. They are trying to give you a friendly reminder so you don't run afoul of the other players here. It does NOT mean they are going to penalize you, or that the Team is enforcing the rule.

Sometimes, the DM's will possess NPC's that are city or nation officials in game. When they do this, they will often enforce the player-made rules because it is IC for the NPC to do so. Again, this does NOT mean that the Team condones the player-made rules. It simply means the DM's are playing along according to what the players have made up.

So, in conclusion, the official rules must be followed. The unofficial rules do not have to be followed, unless you want to be in good standing with the community.