Game Rules

1: You must remain In Character (IC) at all times.

2: You cannot use Out of Character (OOC) information IC nor should you take IC issues OOC. You also should not base IC interactions on OOC ones. Any information acquired outside of the game is OOC.

3: You cannot harass or abuse a player OOCly.

4: You may not take advantage of any part of the game that is not working how it is intended, or use systems in ways they are clearly not designed to be used. (e.g. bug abuse)

5: You must be at your screen when playing the game.

6: You may have two characters logged in at the same time as long as one is natural and one is supernatural. If you have multiple characters they cannot generally be allies. See Help Alts.

7: You may not give your account to any other player or transfer anything from one character to another in an OOC manner.

8: You should always use channels for their appropriate purpose. Newbie, aid, and mtalk are to help new players. Stell is to aid Story Runners in running scenes. General purpose chat should be done with the tell, Legends, or OOC commands.

9: You may only have one account.

10: You must make every effort to write emotes, description and other content which is coherent and sensible. Not spam or copy/pasted nonsense etc.

11: Never use roleplay to represent having powers, abilities or other attributes you do not codedly possess, or otherwise attempt to roleplay around the code and/or lore.

12: Only write x-rated material while under the private flag.

13: Never roleplay any material covered by one of the game’s content warnings where it is likely to be seen/read by someone who has not accepted that content warning at that time.

Content Policy

Haven is fundamentally a non-consent game, other players do not need your permission or your interest to do things in game which have an effect on your character, that could include doing violence to your character, imprisoning them or even killing them. You have no right to control what others do just because it impacts your character and attempts to influence others to alter their character’s behavior is likely to be a violation of the rules.

However there are certain categories of content that are considered especially sensitive or abusable, these categories of content are locked out of the regular game and you will only be able to introduce them into the story if all people in the current scene have opted into them being included via the ‘make warning’ system. All players also have the ability to revoke their consent for this content at any time and that must be respected. Some grace is given if someone suddenly opts-out of something to allow you to smoothly transition out of it.

Content being restricted means it is restricted in all ways and in all venues, it means your character cannot do that thing, but also cannot discuss it or show pictures of it etc.

If your character has been in some RP that involved restricted content and is now in a scene without those warnings active when someone questions them about it it’s up to you to be sufficiently vague to avoid introducing the restricted content.

To reiterate:
You have no right at all to prevent any roleplaying or IC actions that are not restricted and it is likely against the rules for you to try.
You have the absolute right to not encounter any material that is restricted that you do not want to no matter the circumstances.

Gray Areas

Often the line between when something trips over into being restricted could be unclear, or somewhat subjective, also sometimes people make mistakes because they get carried away writing etc. How staff judge these cases is based mostly on what it seems like the intent of the person involved in. If the intent seems bad, that is that someone seems to be trying to grief or trigger or upset someone and are just trying to walk as close to the line as possible then we’ll interpret that case in the strictest possible way. If on the other hand it seems like someone was just trying to write and enable others fun and accidentally slipped then we will interpret that in the most generous possible way.

Restricted Content Types

OOC Policy

All OOC aspects of the game: tells, channels, forums, notes etc are granted on a probationary basis. Any time when someone’s use of those channels seems detrimental to the enjoyment of others playing the game in any way they will be removed from the player who is causing that detrimental effect.

This decision will be made entirely at the discretion of staff.

In general staff will look at how unpleasant, targeted and unavoidable communications are when making this decision. If you want to write a post about roleplay in general then the obligation is on you to make it sufficiently broad that it doesn’t come across as a targeted sub-tweet like post.

Content which isn’t aggressive but is nonetheless detrimental may also cause removal of those channels. For example if someone complains constantly or is very spammy or otherwise just annoying.

Removal of channels will not generally be announced to anyone else.

Roleplaying Policy

It’s generally expected that the content of anything IC you do, emotes or other IC commands follows reasonable standards with regards to staying IC and not being used to accomplish other things, in particular:

• You should not include any OOC information or communication inside an emote. SRs are exempt from this standard if they find they need OOC emotes to set up/run their scenes. If this is the case wrap the OOC emote in brackets or the like to make it distinct.
• You should not post fixed or corrected emotes, if you need to fix an error and cannot do so ICly you should do it with a small follow up clarifying statement. Do not repeat the whole emote again. This spams people unnecessarily and causes more information to scroll off their screen.
• You should not use color to an extent that is irritating or obnoxious. You should not color all your emotes. You should not overwrite people’s color say preferences with colored speech in your emotes.
• You should not include any ‘meta commentary’ in your emotes remarking on events as if you were a narrator talking about the scene. This is especially true of passive aggressive commentary such as. “Bob ignores @person and their stupid shoes.”
• You should not write the result of an action which may be contested unless the result has been determined by some coded feature of the game such as a compete or combat.
• You should not use emotes to control NPCs in any way that aids your character or their agenda unless they are professional NPCs simply doing their job, such as bodyguards or shopkeepers. Or are NPCs reasonably under your authority behaving sensibly, such as a secretary fetching coffee or a child obeying their parents.
• You may not deliberately damage the immersion or reality of ongoing roleplay with your emotes. Such as by deliberately focusing attention on any coded aspect of the game unequal to the task of representing a reality or on interpretations of coded events that are notably less sensible than other interpretations.

If you want to do an emote that another character might be able to stop, such as one interacting with them, use the attempt command instead to give them the option to look over it.

Also ensure you are following help content policy and the rules for not roleplaying having abilities you do not codedly have and for only writing explicit material while under the ‘private’ flag.

You can use report (person) if you feel they are violating these standards, which will send them a message referring them to this help file.

Metagaming Policy

Metagaming refers to playing the game outside of the game and covers anything you do outside of the game which changes things which happen inside the game. This often could mean asking, telling or pressuring people OOCly to have their character do certain things, or could mean telling other players things OOCly which will likely change their choices for their character. Such as giving them info their character wouldn’t know, or telling them that some other character is played by some particular person to influence how they view that character.

Some level of metagaming is unavoidable and normal, but the more of it there is the worse the story and roleplay become as the IC world becomes less sensible, believable and immersive.

In general when judging if metagaming is going so far as to warrant discipline or removal from the game the staff look at a few factors.

Factors Considered

Unavoidability:

The fewer characters who might have their behaviour altered by an instance of metagaming the less of a concern it is. So for example if you have a friend you regularly chat to about game stuff and neither of you chat to anyone else, telling them something has very low unavoidability. It’s only going to impact their specific character and presumably they’ve opted-in to being your friend. But if you started saying the same thing to several people who all talk to several other people it becomes very unavoidable, even someone who deliberately is choosing not to talk to you because they don’t want things spoiled is likely to be effected as the statement spreads. Things done on the game or on the game’s official channels also are usually taken more seriously for this reason, nobody playing the game can really avoid the information.

IC Effect Size:

How big of an impact is this likely to have on the behaviour of characters? If it’s some mild piece of trivia or a small suggestion on someone’s play style it’s not likely to be that large a concern, if it’s something which may significantly change how someone RPs then it’s a bigger problem. Similarly if it only has an OOC effect it isn’t a major concern, like telling someone they should not talk to the account “Charles” OOCly cause they’re dodgy would be fine if Charles’ characters weren’t known, but telling someone they should avoid the character ‘Charles’ would be a significant problem.

Negativity/Anticompetetiveness:

To what extent would the effect cause someone else on the game to have a worse time or be put at some sort of disadvantage? Some people enjoy some level of being told OOCly what to do, and as long as they’re the only one getting the message then even if the IC effect is significant on them it’s unlikely to be a big deal. But if someone doesn’t want things spoiled for them and you’re spoiling it that’s a big problem, or if you’re outing the alt of someone who doesn’t want to be outed, or causing IC problems for a particular other player etc. that’s a much larger issue.

Mind Control Policy

Many PCs and NPCs in Haven have some kind of mind control abilities. These abilities as well as things like drugs cause characters to have various ‘imprints’ telling them that they want to or need to do certain things.

With the exception of body-imprints characters are never aware of their behaviour has been affected by a mind control ability and must rationalize their behaviour.

The more serious types of imprints, those that state a character needs to do a certain thing can almost always be resisted by paying some life force.

In general how an imprint effects a character is the sole business of the player controlling them. There is no policing of this and part of the risk you take when you use those abilities is that you can’t control how they will be followed/interpreted. That makes it particularly unideal to try to use them in a way adversarial to the interests of the target character’s player.

The only exception to this is where someone is serially and conspicuously ignoring imprints, or when they have an option to resist an imprint are not doing so but are then clearly ignoring it. In which case they might lose their ability to imprint anyone else or eventually even be removed if it continues.

Rationalization and Self-Awareness

A person who has been imprinted is never aware that the desires or feelings he has been given are not his own. He will always rationalize why he wants or feels this way and, after the imprint has run its course, why he no longer does.

A person who has been imprinted does not act in a way that is robotic or otherwise out of character and it should be extremely difficult for another character to know he has been imprinted even if those characters know one another intimately. The new desires and feelings are integrated into a person’s personality so completely that he can rationalize any attempt by others to suggest that he’s been manipulated in some way, even against massive evidence. He feels entirely certain that he is still himself and all his desires and feelings are his own.

Conflicting Imprints

If a character has two or more imprints that conflict with one another, the resulting RP should make this clear to some extent. If bringing it across in RP isn’t feasible or the number of conflicting imprints becomes too great, it is permissible to RP each as being weakened by the resulting confusion along with some general emotional turmoil or something similar such as a serious headache.

Discovering Imprints

When and after being under the influence of hypnosis or psychic persuasion, a person has no awareness that they are being influenced or that they’ve been in a trance. If an imprint is accepted the imprinted person has no awareness that they are under another’s influence with the exception of ‘body’ imprints, in which case the character is aware that their own body is moving or behaving in abnormal ways that are outside of their control but not necessarily how or why or who might be responsible.

If an imprint is rejected, the character has no knowledge that any influence was attempted, and certainly no knowledge of what the rejected imprint pressured them to do. External observers may recognize attempts at hypnosis, but not psychic persuasion. While it is acceptable to believe that an acquaintance behaving strangely may be under the influence of mind control, your character should almost never be certain of it and should probably be wrong more often than they are right.

Tips and Notes

• If you’re on the fence about whether you should follow an imprint or not, follow it.
• If you think an inhibition or competing desire would stop you following an imprint, ask yourself if that inhibition or competing desire has come out clearly in your roleplay previously. If it hasn’t, you’re on pretty sketchy ground.
• If you decide not to follow an imprint, it’s usually a good idea to at least show through your roleplay that you’re thinking about following it or tempted to follow it.
• Being “strong willed” or anything similar is a completely invalid reason for not following an imprint.
• Having been imprinted several times before or being able to do mind control yourself is not a valid reason to be aware of mind control or be more resistant to it.

Angelborn

Angelborn are sensitive to the desires of others, and thus are essentially always mind controlled.

There are a few things it’s important to keep in mind when playing angelborn. angelborn are to some extent natural victims, the fact that they can be more powerfully hypnotized and in general more easy to coerce often leads to them being an ideal choice if someone’s looking for a victim or sidekick etc. You shouldn’t play a character like this if you’re too worried about bad things happening to them. Also though, and probably more importantly, angelborn are particularly resistant to angst. Even if one is captured and tortured while the torture is going on they want it a little bit, not enough to be ok with it, but it is not as bad as for others, and afterwards they’re surrounded by people who want them to get over it. Either because they’re their friends and want them to feel better, or because they find it irritating. Which through their empathy causes them to rebound fairly quickly. This is important because it means angelborn are an extremely poor choice of character if you’re seeking to RP the aftermath or seek sympathy.

Storyrunning Policy

Storyrunning in Haven is a privilege, not a right, and your ability to SR can be suspended at any time for any length of time if your use of SR tools is deemed detrimental to the game as a whole.

Generally this will be the case if you:

• Seem to use your SR to grief players, giving certain characters a harder time in your plots in a way that seems related to your OOC attitude about their player or your IC rivalry with their character.
• Use your SRing powers to aggrandize your own character or that of your OOC friends. Trying to make them seem more important or being overtly favorable to them with difficulties etc.
• Do not follow encounter prompts when running encounters.
• Run plots different to the idea you proposed.
• Try to find ways to make your plots or stories more important than those run by other players.
• Are making so little effort to make interesting stories that they lack coherence.
• Try to OOCly influence people to go on your plots, or use your plots as a way to incentivise people to engage in other behaviour they otherwise wouldn’t.