~name{~enUS{policy,policies,rule,rules}} ~desc{~enUS{ This MUD maintains a number of policies. See the following help topics for more about them. help impmanners How to interact with MUD administrators help manners How to interact with other players help pkill MUD policies on player-killing help pthief MUD policies on stealing from players help multiplay MUD policies on multiplaying help complaint Lodging a complaint about policy or admins help bugs MUD policies on exploiting bugs help linkdeath Your link to the MUD, losing it and dying help death MUD in-game rules on death and dying ----- }} ~name{~enUS{link,lose-link,linkdead,linkdeath,lag,lagdeath,link death, lost link,lose link,lag death}} ~desc{~enUS{ We understand that sometimes you lose link. This happens to everybody. We understand that bad things can happen to your character when you lose link. Unfortunately, this happens to everybody, too. We won't, and we can't, give you any restitution for this happening to you. There's no way for us to verify this, and even if you _know_, down to your bones, that if you'd been on line to pick a more appropriate strategy against that Dark Faerie Archmage you'd be alive today, we really can't take your word for it. In some cases you can actually _avoid_ bad things happening to your character if you lose link. We try not to do this in our MUD, but there may still be cases where it's true. If so, we _really_ need you not to cut off your 'net link just to avoid Bad Things happening to you. If this becomes a problem, we have ways to enforce it. We know you put a lot of effort into your character, and we know that you'd rather only Good Things happened to him/her/it, but we will do Bad Things to your character and account ourselves if you avoid the consequences of other Bad Things by killing your link artificially. Sorry. We have to. It's our job. Besides, it's not fair to players with always-on connections that you can duck out on stuff that they have to be hurt by. }} ~name{~enUS{dead,death,dying,die}} ~desc{~enUS{ In the MUD, death of a character can be permanent. That character, once permanently dead, cannot pass on money, knowledge, skills or other in-game benefits to any of your later characters, heirs, successors and whatnot. However, you are welcome to make a new character from the same account (giving you player- level continuity, if not character-level) and there are some in-game benefits which apply at the account level, not the character level. You'll know those benefits when you receive them. They are unaffected by character death. Don't use information your new character couldn't reasonably have, such as the location of your former corpse and former belongings. They aren't yours any more. Any character may take it quite lawfully, and you have neither any specific claim on it, nor any reason your new "self" should know where to find it. Further, we're working on a system of "character points" which will allow you to "cash out" powerful characters, or gain points to use with your next character when one dies. More on this as it is implemented. Dying due to lag doesn't entitle you to any benefits in return. None. You remain exactly as dead as if you died any other way. See "help linkdeath". }} ~name{~enUS{pk,pking,pkill,pkilling,playerkill,playerkilling, pthief,pthieving,playerthief,playerthieving,pvp, pkp}} ~desc{~enUS{ In the current pre-Beta stages of the game, killing or stealing from other players is frowned upon. While it could be outright banned, it won't be unless some idiot tees people off by doing it. Don't be that guy. Plans for later in the MUD's evolution including allowing killing and/or stealing from players in certain areas. The idea is that the MUD enforces penalties in-character and you are punished by guards or other players in civilized areas, and punished by nobody at all outside those civilized areas unless you get caught. However, that is not yet the case. In any case player-killing and other 'crimes' against players must be in character, and may not escalate into harassment. Harassment is when aggressive actions against a certain player get carried beyond what is considered normal gameplay. This can mean killing their character(s) repeatedly; it can also mean verbal harassment. See also 'help manners' and 'help harassment'. }} ~name{~enUS{harass, harassment}} ~desc{~enUS{ Harassment is when you do things to harm another player's character(s) in a way that makes it clear it's not an in-character action. This may be killing them for something they said on an OOC channel, it may be killing multiple or consecutive characters belonging to the same player, it may be simply insulting them on OOC channels repeatedly. Admins get final say about what is or is not harassment. The penalties may be nasty, and may or may not have much to do with the severity of what you've done to them. Harassing newbies, for instance, carries a far harsher penalty than harassing people of similar power to yourself. You're threatening the welcoming attitude of our MUD here, and we need to make it clear how we feel about that. See also 'help manners' and 'help pkill'. }} ~name{~enUS{manners}} ~desc{~enUS{ As is usual in these enlightened (?) times, we don't put up with racism, sexism, other non-individual discrimination, or many forms of individual discrimination. Don't hurt people's feelings out-of-character. If you hurt their feelings in-character, and make it clear that it's in-character, we'll be a bit more understanding, particularly if they're roleplaying too. If you play a character that constantly harasses people (even in character), be prepared for us to be less understanding. Serious profanity will not be tolerated in public chat. While we understand the occasional 'oops', please make sure it doesn't go beyond that. Kids may read this trash. }} ~name{~enUS{multiplay,multiplayer,multiplaying,mp}} ~desc{~enUS{ Multiplaying is when a single (human) player controls multiple accounts or multiple human players sharing one account. Note that multiplay on this MUD is more interesting to define since one kind of multiplay (one account, multiple characters) is a standard and encouraged part of the game. However, account sharing or keeping multiple accounts will be treated harshly even if the extras are guest accounts, newbie characters, friends' or spouses' accounts, or otherwise excusable in your mind. This is true even if you say, in a whiny voice, "Aw, come on man!" and then an excuse. We, the administrators, would prefer that each human player control only one account and each account have only one human player. We understand that this can be inconvenient, however the temptation to misuse multiple accounts appears to be beyond the resistance of mortal man. That being the case we'll watch for cases of multiplay and should any abuse of that kind be detected, we'll cancel all of your accounts (yes, even if they're not yours) and maybe even site-ban you. (see "help siteban") }} ~name{~enUS{siteban,ban,site ban,site-ban}} ~desc{~enUS{ When you are on a site that has been site-banned on this MUD, it means that no characters may log in from that site. For example, if we have severe problems with players from dartmouth.edu, we might ban dartmouth.edu entirely so that nobody logging on from Dartmouth University would be able to create a player. Dartmouth is used only as an example here; we've had no players from there as yet, good or bad. }}