Rules

Avlis tries to have as few rules as possible. However, there are standards that we enforce to ensure that our vision of a roleplay server is met and to make sure that everybody has fun.

General Rules

• Grief-style playing, or griefing, is illegal. Griefing is defined by any style of play that makes the person playing a character feel genuine distress and anger through disruption of their gaming session.
• Avlis is a roleplaying server. People should be in character at all times. Shouting is disabled. Using tells, IRC, and the party channel to convey in-character information is illegal; however, it is okay to use these media to talk about out of game things. See Communication for more details.
• Player vs. Player combat is illegal. However, Character vs. Character combat is LEGAL. A "player" is defined by the person sitting behind the screen playing the game. A "character" is defined by the alternate personality you portray within the game. Characters can have disagreements and fight over them, but as soon as it becomes a personal matter between the players behind the characters, it is no longer justified.
• Exploitation of bugs to gain experience, wealth, or to save time is illegal and a bannable offense. This includes duplicating items and inappropriate server hopping.
• Cheesing of races or abilities is not acceptable on Avlis. "Cheesing" a race is the act of picking one of the standard NWN player character races and then entering some other non-NWN race into the subrace in order to try and pass yourself off as a non-standard race. "Cheesing" an ability is the act of playing your character as if they have an ability which the NWN engine would not otherwise allow them to have.
  • Example: You cannot be a giant-kin by picking half-orc and writing "Veerbeeg" in the subrace field. This is not allowed, and if you are caught doing this you will be forced to re-make your character. Only the standard NWN races and Avlis custom races are allowed.
  • Example2: You cannot say your character is a vampire with exceptional strength and the ability to make other characters into a vampire by biting them.
  • ONLY abilities that are granted by your class, race, and level within NWN are in-game. Extra powers that you make up or pretend to have are unacceptable. Anyone caught doing these things will be asked to remake their character to conform with the NWN engine and to stop faking abilities.
• Do not speak for or post forum messages as NPCs unless you have the title "DM" underneath your name. You speak for your own characters but not NPCs. The city guard, members of the government, commoners, priests at the temples of various gods, etc. are all off limits to non-DMs.
• The floating name above a character's head DOES NOT actually exist IC. It cannot be used to reveal a character's name if the said character has not told you his or her name. The floating name can be used if your character already knows the other character (as long as the other character told you their real name).
• No stupid names. Examples are names such as "i33t dood" and "Omagodhees Hungwell." It is STRONGLY recommended that names from fiction, literature, movies, etc. also be avoided. Major and Senior DMs have the authority to order a player to start a new character if the DM thinks the player's current character name is not in line with Avlis' name policy. The current character's level will not be factored into this order – if you have somehow reached 15th level with a character named "Amanda Huginkiss" before a Senior or Major DM finds you, you will still have to start over with a new character. If a player refuses to start over with a new character, the character in violation of the name policy will be deleted from the servervault.
• Common sense is a rule. If an action goes against common sense, it's not legal.
• See the Rules Forum at www.avlis.org for a more authoritative set of rules.

Servervault Purges

The servervault will never be purged of characters. However, in order to speed up the servervault, characters that have not been logged in for ninety consecutive days are moved to an archive. If you wish to have a character who was lost in this manner be restored to the servervault, you can send a request to staff@avlis.org.

Powergaming

Powergaming is level advancement without character development (see next section for details). Sure, you can make an excuse like "My character is a fighter so he likes to go around killing stuff," but that does not make for an in-depth character and such a person will likely not be included very much in community affairs and relationships. Powergaming is not against the rules, but it is not condoned, and chronic powergamers will be persecuted. A good rule of thumb is that if you reach level 20, the team should know who you are.

There is no real reason to powergame. If you want to be 40th level, fine. If you powergame your way to 40th level, and the team sees you do it, you probably won't be banned. But you also won't be part of any plotlines or special quests either. Basically you will shoot yourself in the foot because once you reach 40th there will be nothing for you to do in the world, and you will leave or keep powergaming characters to 40th until you get sick of it and then leave. Avlis will not miss you either, because you didn't contribute anything to it while you were here. It's the people who take time to smell the roses and put emphasis on roleplaying that will get the most out of Avlis, that being the old PnP feel of D&D.

The Avlis Procedure for Punishment

When a player is warned online by a DM for a rules violation, they will be placed on the watchlist. Also at this time the DM may remove equipment gained via rule breaking, and may impose an XP fine. The purpose of the watchlist is to facilitate communication among the team. If a character is seen breaking a rule after being placed on the watchlist, they will be subject to punishment.

We have decided to use what we call "Vault Jail" as a method of punishment for most infractions. "Vault Jail" consists of having all your characters removed from the servervault for a period of 2-5 days. The length of time is dependent on the type and number of infractions. Players whose characters are being investigated for cheating, exploiting, or griefing will also have their characters placed temporarily in Vault Jail.

Banning is reserved for players that cheat, exploit, grief other players, or continue to break rules after having being punished previously.

Review

All cases are judged by a Senior or Major DM and reviewed by Orleron. Please do not PM/ICQ/E-mail Orleron about any punishment unless asked to do so.

Interacting with DMs

If a DM speaks to you about a problem, please be polite. We are here to have fun also, and dealing with rule breaking is not fun in the first place; a player being an ass only makes it more unpleasant.

Contacting the Team

If you feel you have been griefed or have witnessed someone exploiting, cheating, or metagaming, or if you have an issue with a team member's actions, do not make a post about it on the Avlis forums. Instead, please send an e-mail to staff@avlis.org, and the team will look into it and take appropriate action.