WormRP:Rules

Our rules are divided into two main sets, these overarching ground rules and the more specific character policy. The character policy is more intended to cover specific points, and is typically enforced at the character creation level (although they can come into play in gameplay situations as well).

If you would like to see a rule added, changed, or amended, talk to the staff, in particular your Community Rep.

Don't be an ass

Rule 1: In the words of Bill and Ted, be excellent to each other.

This is fairly self-explanatory. We're all here to have fun, don't ruin that for other people. Intentionally being rude, abrasive, or otherwise assholish adds nothing to the community. Of course mistakes can happen, but repeat offenses are not great.

Characters, Equipment, and Lore must be approved

Rule 2: Don't use characters or tinkertech that aren't approved. If you'd like to change something on your character sheet, have a character approver look at it first.

Unless we're hella backlogged, the approval process is usually pretty quick and painless. However it exists for a reason! Sometimes people, unintentionally or otherwise, create broken af submissions, and having a second set of eyes look it over nips a lot of problems in the bud, before they cause an issue.

If you do decide to make a change, please contact the original approver first, if possible. If a change is approved, please remember to edit the page both on the original post and on the wiki.

Cops and Robbers

Rule 3: Remember that this is Cops and Robbers.

Keep in mind for 99% of situations, you should be "holding back" so to speak. Villains shouldn't be murderhoboing, and likewise heroes should take measured responses. Heroes shouldn't be unleashing anti-aircraft cannons at C-lister harmless villains, and likewise villains aren't going to shoot up a hero's family because they got arrested.

The exception to this is kill orders and S-Class events, in which case go wild.

Note: Your capes are humans possessed by a shard that actively pushes them to use their force lethally. From an in-character perspective, holding back could be a struggle, but we expect out-of-character to keep the rest of the community in mind.

No Powergaming

Rule 4: Don't Powergame. Dodging every attack, unreasonably convenient items (EG, finding a machine gun lying around in a garage), and a "Min-Max" approach ruins the fun for everyone else.

Collaborative roleplaying is about having fun and telling a story. You're not the protagonist, don't act like it. Characters don't always get to have backup ten feet around the corner. Remember, it's okay to lose a fight!

Examples of powergaming behavior that should be avoided include:

• A hero calls for backup, and they show up one (1) turn later. Give time for an at least semi-accurate response time.
• A hero calls for backup against a villain, and ten (10) other players respond. This often happens unintentionally when everyone wants to hop into a spicy thread. All this dogpiling does is suck up fun and replace it with waiting.
• A villain is escaping a cape who is tracking them with superhuman smell. Thankfully, they just happen to notice someone watching the cape battle from an open balcony while eating hot Limburger cheese, and use it to overload the hero's smell and get away! (does that seem suspiciously specific? i'm not salty at all, nope)

No Metagaming

Rule 5: Don't Metagame. The knowledge you and your character have are different, please respect this.

This one comes up a lot more unintentionally than most of the other rules. Especially when we all have 3+ characters, it can be hard to remember who knows what. The top of character pages usually shows "public information" that everyone can be assumed to know. If you aren't sure you should know whatever fact, ask the other player!

Conversely, if the other character should know something that they seem to be missing, let them know! If your character is wanted for murderhoboing, the responding hero probably shouldn't be making smalltalk and jobbing the fight. Intentionally forgetting to bring something up is just as metagamey as bringing up stuff you shouldn't.

Respect Player Agency

Rule 6: Don't write for other players. Ex: Bobby swings a punch towards the angry turtle, not Bobby punches the snapping turtle into the wall.

This one is pretty straightforward. Don't assume everything hits, don't assume the other person goes along with whatever. If you're doing a long-ass post, consider breaking it up or running past them in DMs first to allow them to respond.

Patience

Rule 7: Keep in mind that people have lives outside of the game. Please use patience if things aren't going quite as quickly as you'd like.

This is a worldwide community, not everyone works from 9am to 5pm on the east coast of the US. If something's taking a bit, don't hound them constantly.

However, there are some things you can do to help alleviate this. In multi-person posts, you can arrange the turn order such that people in similar timezones go together. You could also consider large combat posting style, where everyone replies to a GM when they can.

This applies to approvals as well. Check the approval queue to see if there's hella backlog before complaining!

No Lewds

Rule 8: Sexual content should only take place over DMs, if at all.

This isn't an ERP. If things are getting lewd, fade it to black tastefully. We don't allow explicit content on the subreddit, discord, or wiki.

Likewise, please consider having characters fueled by more than constant thirst.

No Spoilers

Rule 9: Do try to avoid spoilers where possible- if not, then please add a spoiler tag.

All of our platforms support spoiler tags. We expect you to spoiler plot-changing elements of Worm, Ward, and recent big-name movies (ie no Star Wars spoilers the day it comes out).

Here's examples of how to spoiler text in each of our platforms:

• Wiki: {{spoiler|Ward|Furcate is best girl}}
• Discord: (Ward) ||Furcate is best girl||
• Reddit: (Ward) >!Furcate is best girl!< or click this button on New Reddit.

On the discord, we have #worm-spoilers and #ward-spoilers which allow you to discuss these works unspoilered. Note that prior to the spoiler tag being in Discord it was common practice to scramble spoilers using rot13 encoding.

Rules Appeals

Rule 10: In case of a dispute, a moderators ruling will be viewed as proscriptive. If you believe the ruling to be unfair, you may appeal the decision through the Community Representative.

This is fairly self-explanatory. Handling appeals is one of the primary jobs of the Community Rep, feel free to use it in a disagreement! The staff are all players, and we are as capable of mistakes as anyone else.

Content with Minors

Rule 11: No smut, sexual content or excessive violence directed towards or perpetrated by minors. Seriously, just don't. This doesn't give invulnerability to a young character, but we may frown upon someone torturing a middle schooler.

Please don't shoot up a school or go murderhobo in the hospital nursery. You're not the Slaughterhouse Nine, cool it with the edgelord bullshit.

Likewise, we know all the Wards are thirsty but we really don't need to see or hear about it. Fade it to black :v

Dispute Resolution

Rule 12: Can't come to an agreement on how two powers would interact, or have another dispute? Come talk to the staff, and we can arbitrate.

Have beef with another player? Weird power nonsense? Make it the staff's problem instead! Note that if you disagree with our ruling, the appeals process (as mentioned above) applies to these rulings as well.

Character Flooding

Rule 13: If you've just had a character approved a week or two ago and you post another character you might be put on the backburner while other people get their characters approved. New players always take priority for character approvals

While we try our best to get approvals done expeditiously, they do take time, and making a character every week adds to the backlog. If you write up a character, please make sure you're going to play them before you submit. Long and overly-complex powers take longer to approve than rubber stamps, so keep that in mind.

In addition, news will almost always get bumped to the top of the queue so they can get playing. Nobody wants to wait a week after joining in order to play!

Note that if you're planning a cluster, it may take a hot minute for those to get approved, especially if there's a character approver in the cluster (and thus can't approve any of the members due to conflicts-of-interest).