These rules are disclosed to clarify the various responsibilities of all community members here on Amia. They shall be adhered to by everyone to ensure that our board runs smoothly and provides a fun and productive experience for all of our community members and visitors.
Registration Agreement
These are the terms you agreed to upon account registration:
Amia is a persistent world and we will all as DMs do our best to try and enhance your experience here. Please help us in doing so by reporting any bugs or exploits to the Amia forum.
This is a roleplay server, so most things done in real life can be done here. We ask that you exercise sound judgment when indulging in your roleplay activities. There are players here who may be younger than you. Also, please be mindful that some subjects are more sensitive than others.
If you have questions, please don’t be afraid to ask a DM or post here on the forums. In addition, consult your journal for notes and suggestions. We encourage you to use your personal in-game journal for your own major roleplay notes. Your journal is persistently saved along with your character.
Use your common sense and good judgement. We understand that DMs are not infallible and we listen to players when they have an opinion. If you feel something is unfair, let us know.
General Do's and Don't's to clarify the above rules
Do not log in with another character to do something your current character began. (i.e. To raise your party or to attack another PC).
Do not log in with multiple computers at the same time. This is also known as multiboxing, and is a bannable offense if you are caught doing it.
Do not log in with any character to do anything OOC. You can't just decide that your character isn't doing something that you are having them do. The only OOC rooms are those attached to the Entry and the Travel Agency/Faction Portal Room.
Do not log in with multiple computers at the same time. This is also known as multiboxing, and is a bannable offense if you are caught doing it.
Do not exploit bugs and glitches within the Neverwinter Nights game. If you are unsure what is considered an exploit and what isn't, please ask! This includes any third-party tools that modify character appearances in-game such as adding wings or tails. Client-side overrides that do not affect the module or the way other players play or perceive you are fine. Hackers will be banned without discussion!
Do not resort to PvP (Player vs Player) battle without ample IC (In Character) reason. Senseless killing of other characters will resort in harsh punishment. Simply being evil is not reason enough to kill someone. If you do enter into RP-inspired PvP that results in deaths of any PC (Player Character), you must provide an OOC raise for that character (either by yourself, or arrange for someone else to do it). For more information on the PvP rules, see here.
Do not camp any spawns, this means you can't sit on the same spawn and bring it out 3 or 4 times. This is especially so for boss spawns. If you want to go after epic bosses, leave and come back to do another round of the hunting area and let other people have a chance at it.
Do not metagame. Metagaming includes asking for a raise OOC, sending tells for help, and having a player port to your dead character with the purpose of raising it. Players caught doing this will be docked one level, and have half of their gold taken away. Multiple offenses will result in a ban from the game.
Do not transfer items or gold from one of your own characters to another of your own characters. This is referred to as muling and, if caught, all involved characters will be stripped.
Do not use your "Use Magic Device", or UMD skill to activate these items with a class specific OOC warning of use limitations if you do not have the appropriate class levels. The item will be removed from your character without compensation if you are found to be doing this.
Do not spam voicesets. (This means using the same your voiceset repeatedly and flooding chat). To experiment with a voice set, please find a secluded place where nobody else is around (there are plenty of these).
Do not run ahead of another group, when hunting. Do not collect treasure from corpses that your party did not kill.
Do not attempt to determine the acts of NPCs or history of Amia. That is for the DMs to decide. If you wish to take part in Amia's historical events, or roleplay a character that had a part in the making of Amia's history, contact a DM.
Do not give your characters titles that they supposedly earned on Amia, unless a DM grants you that title. If your character's past in some other land or plane involved him/her having a title, that is fine, as long as you don't claim to have any unearned influence on Amia. Note: Legitimate nobility which means you still retain that influence elsewhere must be requested prior to the character's creation.
Do remember, that only the DMs play gods and NPCs. That's why they are called Non-Player Characters. Making decisions for NPCs is not allowed and is considered a form of metagaming.
Do remember that each settlement has its own set of laws, and it's a good idea to get to know them when you frequent these areas.
Do remember, that explicit sexual (cybering) or graphic torture roleplay is not permitted in any channel. This includes sitting silently somewhere in a private area, clothed or unclothed, with another person. If a DM comes across you in such a position, they may believe it to be a compromising situation and you may be booted or banned. You can either log off and continue elsewhere or simply "fade to black" and skip roleplaying it out. (See here for specifics.)
The following are rules to be used when engaging in PvP (Player vs. Player) combat. These rules are not optional (unless stated otherwise) and are to be used by ALL parties in PvP situations.
These rules are subject to changes and additions at any time, so you should check them periodically, as you should with all posted rules and guidelines. #
Roleplaying can be both fun and frustrating. These are some general rules of thumb that help cut down the frustration. While most of these are already covered in our rules somewhere, these guidelines should be easy to understand and follow.
Stay In Character (IC) at all times.
Do not drop Out Of Character (OOC) in the Talk channel unless absolutely necessary, and mark your OOC comment like ((this)) or //this. Use OOC discussion in the Party channel in moderation. Roleplaying in Tells is not allowed unless a DM explicitly asks for it or you are moving to the Tell channels for cybering/graphic torture roleplay, or to send IC messages (like with the p&p Sending spell). Regular RP and dialogue that isn't restricted like this must be done in the talk channels, so that DMs and/or characters you may not be able to see can react accordingly if necessary.
Never use OOC information IC in any way.
For example: Just because you can see someone’s name hanging over their head in-game doesn't mean your character knows that character’s name - unless someone tells you IC, of course.
Never assume someone will react a certain way just because you think they should.
Always give others the chance to react in their own way, and don’t get upset if the reaction isn’t what you expected.
Any action you perform on someone else’s character, no matter what the action might be, should be phrased as an attempt.
By making an attempt instead of just doing it outright, you give the character’s player the chance to consent to the action or avoid it if it’s something they’d rather not have happen to their character.
Be considerate of the role-playing mood of others.
If you come into a situation where other characters are already engaged in some RP, don’t just leap in with a radically different mood unless you get permission (Either IC or OOC, depending on the situation and whether you have any way to contact them OOC). As an example: say there is a couple sitting at a table discussing a recently deceased character and you jump in acting like a court jester and spill their drinks in their laps while telling bad jokes. You aren’t going to make friends like this if your actions offend the players behind the characters. This is not a rule, it's common courtesy.
Don’t try to be the center of attention all the time.
Be polite and share attention with other characters. You aren’t the only one here to have fun; give everyone their turn in the spotlight.
Give others time to react to you.
One of the strangest things in graphical online RPGs is impatience. People will walk up, say something, wait about 0.0001 seconds and run off. The person they talked to would barely have had enough time to read what they said, let alone respond to it. This also happens in conversations. People will say something, wait a very short amount of time, then keep going as if they think the person they were talking to didn’t hear them or isn’t going to respond. In most cases, the other person was going to respond but simply wasn’t as fast as expected, and loses the chance because the conversation has moved on without them. There’s no need to hurry so much, just relax and enjoy the interaction. Frequent extremely long dialogue can fall under this guideline also. Oftentimes wordy dialogue paragraphs either address too many things at once or come off as a monologue. Keep things succinct to encourage interaction whenever possible.
Do not give god-like abilities to your characters.
RPing isn’t about who can make up the best super powers for their characters; it’s about exploring and growing the personalities of the characters. Any character that is ridiculously powerful or has a perfect personality is going to be fairly boring to RP with and will end up being mostly ignored by others.
Never include someone else’s character in a written story that didn’t actually happen exactly as you wrote it without letting that character’s player proofread and approve the story before you post it.
When writing up a story about combat that happened in-game, don’t be literal. Gaming engines invariably have the loser of a fight "die". Since no one likes building characters over and over, there’s always some way to get raised from the dead. But just because you killed someone’s character and chopped up their body in the game doesn’t give you the right to write this up exactly as the combat engine portrayed it. There are two reasons for this:
The player behind the character that lost has to find a way to get Resurrected and put back together so it makes sense.
The player is forced to choose between ignoring your rendition of it and letting their character be permanently dead or maimed.
It gets very old having people die all the time and getting dismembered only to show up the next day just fine. It would also get old if people had to waste their character development by killing off their character due solely to something that happened based on the combat engine of the game (which we all know is much less than fair due to lag and computer crashes) and not on RP. So it’s polite to alter events a little bit. If the combat was a large battle, mention casualties but don’t give names to the dead. Just assume the two sides had several no-name extras along for the fight that can provide convenient dead bodies. If it was a duel, then have it be to first blood or to loss of consciousness. Unless of course a character’s true death was agreed upon OOC ahead of time by the character’s player, but these situations will be very rare and are solely under the purview of the player who owns the character, if it is a matter of PvP. You simply cannot dictate when another player's character is permanently dead.
Please see this link for the various secondary rules of our server. These are more targeted topics that are equally important for you to know, such as rules regarding character creation. #
