Rules:CvC Gentlemen's Agreement
Player Guidelines
Player guidelines aren't official rules, and don't have formal punishments for breaking them, but they are community guidelines accepted and followed by the community of players. Team View on Player Guidelines
CvC Gentlemen's Agreement
Current Version
Version 3.0 Source: Gentleman's Agreement: 3.0 Draft
The Gentleman's Agreement on Character vs. Character (CVC) Combat
The Gentleman's Agreement on CvC exists to help players enjoy meaningful CvC encounters in a friendly spirit, and has been composed by players, for players. These are not official server rules. They will not be enforced by the team. Anything "prohibited under the Gentleman's Agreement" is not "Banned On Avlis". For the official Avlis CvC rules, see Avlis policy on: CvC Rules - Setting Hostile.
CvC is not just "fighting." CvC is conflict; emotional, romantic, spiritual, philosophy, physical, violent fighting... all of it. Some times these conflicts escalate into actual combat. Sometimes these conflicts can help define your character, some times it will help define your relationship with other characters. Given this, the Gentleman's Agreement is to encourage a fun-for-both-sides approach to combat and CvC.
Zero: Sporting Play
Be respectful of your fellow players. Win gracefully and acknowledge defeats gracefully. Do your best to deal with your consequences and understand that every action has a reaction. If a problem arises, discuss it with the other player first and foremost. Remember that the player on the other side is here to have fun, just as you are, and is deserving of the respect and good graces that you yourself would wish to receive.
When conflict arises, play to win by all means, but don't play to win at the expense of other people's enjoyment and happiness. Apply the Golden Rule when utilizing spells, abilities, healing consumables, etc. - fair is fair, but ask yourself how you would feel if someone did what you are considering doing. If they do it back to you, will you be OK with it?
Breaking the Gentleman's Agreement is not "griefing" or even necessarily bad behavior, but bear in mind that one can also cause distress without ever breaking any of these guidelines. There are no "punishments" for breaking the Gentleman's Agreement. It is up to us to discuss issues with our fellow players and come to solutions ourselves.
In short, be a good sport, discuss problems like adults, and have a good time.
One: Looting
Looting is a potential consequence of CvC loss and is not prohibited by the Gentleman's Agreement. However, in the interests of sporting play, we strongly recommend that only consumable or replaceable items are looted.
By consumables or replaceables we mean the following:
- Common buyable charged items
- All types of wands
- All types of potions
- All types of healing kits
- All types of crafting materials
- All types of ammunition (arrows, bolts, bullets)
- All types of scrolls.
If non-consumables are ever taken, the character in question should have a reasonable IC opportunity to reclaim them. We also strongly recommend that unique or one-item-per-character items (such as those given by certain static quests) are not looted.
Two: Withdrawal Upon Defeat
A character that is deathplaned after CvC must not attack or engage in CvC with the victor for at least 24 hours after suffering defeat. Under normal circumstances, defeated characters should leave the area after collecting their items from their corpse. For war-based characters, this means that the defeated character should not appear in the warzone until 24 hours have passed. This is intended to prevent defeated characters coming back from their deathplane and starting another fight (or continuing the previous one) immediately, and to preserve the meaning of defeat. This helps prevent escalation of consequences, gives victory/defeat meaning, and gives room for character growth.
When you find yourself on the losing side of the conflict, it is your obligation to adjust your character's attitude/approach/mannerisms/e.g. be passive, etc. in a way that can give meaning to the victory/defeat to the other party. However, this can go both ways. Especially within the initial 24 hour period if circumstances keep the two parties interacting (e.g., a DM event), if the behavior has been adjusted it goes against sporting play for the victor to continue aggressive, antagonistic behavior.
Note that if you wish, you may choose to simply knock a character to bleeding and RP with them after a fight. This is perfectly fine, but done at your own peril.
Three: Acknowledge
If you have read and understood the Gentleman's Agreement, please consider in demonstration of support of the agreement and encouraging others who are not familiar with CvC etiquette, or simply are hesitant to engage in CvC for fear of being dry looted or griefed, please sign your character(s) names on the Avlis forum thread, Gentleman's Agreement: 3.0 Draft.
Older Versions
1.0 Source: The Gentlemen's Agreement and other CvC rules
2.0 Source: Gentleman's Agreement 2.0 Draft
Forum Etiquette
More informal than other player guidelines, the forum etiquette can be summarized by the common sense rule. This etiquette is an informal set of guidelines with as goal to make it more enjoyable to read the forums, and is quite small.
- Don't post the same announcement in several taverns or marketplaces. Although it might make sense for your character to do so, it will make the forums very difficult to read if everyone started doing it.
The Meaning of "The Team Frowns Upon It"
What does "The Team frowns upon it" mean?
The best way to illustrate this is with an example:
Bob the player has been an upstanding member of the community. He has never broken the rules, and he has never powergamed or generally pissed off the other players. One day, Bob stumbles upon a bug that duplicates his most expensive item. For some reason, Bob does not report this to the Team. Someone finds out about it and reports Bob. The Team gives Bob a Watchlist entry and talks about whether they should ban him or not. Seeing as he's generally a good guy, the Team settles on taking the duplicated item away from Bob, vault jailing him for a few days, and then letting him go free to continue to play here.
Now look at Jane. Jane is a bit of an addict and went from level 1 to 20 in 2 months. Most of the time, the Team notices that she's playing alone and soloing the Lost River Caverns. For the most part Jane's addiction is allowed to continue. The Team frowns upon it, but is not going to penalize her. The other players may not like her for being a powergamer, but that's not the Team's problem. Then one day, Jane breaks into a player's private house and steals the entire contents of a persistent chest just as the owner of the house walks in on her. Jane's been caught stealing. The player reports Jane. Jane gets a Watchlist entry. The Team may have originally vault jailed her for a few weeks for the offense, but Jane is known to have a powergaming addiction, which is frowned upon. Because Jane broke the rules AND is also a powergamer, Jane gets banned.
Powergaming
Note on Powergaming:
Powergaming is one of those things where there is an official rule that says one thing, and a player-driven rule that says something else. Often, the players here will build a fence around the official rules so they become harder to break. This is one of those cases.
As it says in the rules forum, the official Team stance on powergaming is that we frown upon it and ignore those those who do it.
The player-driven rule generally says that powergaming is likely to get you a bad reputation in the community. Unfortunately, we sometimes have players that are quick to accuse people of powergaming. The term gets thrown around in this community much like the term "RP'er" gets thrown around like a curse in the Ultima Online or other MMOG communities. Please understand that this is a cultural thing and that you should take the accusation with a grain of salt.
"Officially" you should do what makes you happy in this server, so long as you don't disrupt other or break the official rules. If you choose to care about what names other people call you, that is ok too, but please do not take that as a reflection of our entire world. As a world, we try to welcome everyone, and we try not to wrongly accuse people of doing things that are not welcome here.