Rules

Arcovia is a high conflict political role-play sim. It is not suited for those who are looking for low conflict slice of life roleplay. The imagined character is one who is an agent in service to a chosen city-state's small council. These agents will be expected to scheme and manipulate to get valuable and necessary intelligence. With that said, please note a few basic things.

Medieval Low-Fantasy Adult Humans

Your appearance must be in line with the guidelines provided on the Human page. Staff reserve the right to ask you to leave the sim and find appropriate clothing. No children avatars, no prim/mesh children or babies.

Don't be a Dick

As so famously said by Wil Wheaten, Don't be a dick. This should be obvious by now -- no one wants to play with someone else who is being an OOC jerk. Treat all other role-players with respect and courtesy -- regardless of your personal religious, political, or role-play styles. Leave your negativity at the door.

Role-play Limits

A universal role-play limit for each player on the sim is no death, maiming, torture, or rape without OOC permission. All players reserve the right to fade to black on these four topics. You are of course welcome to have no limits or use a restricted set of these limits for yourself. This is a high conflict sim, no other limits should be necessary.

Role-Play Happens on Sim

Because one of the main goals of Arcovia is for players to gain information to use against your team or character we expect Arcovia role-play to happen on sim. There is nearly no good reasons to have an OOC private gathering -- IC private is fine, feel free to post guards to stop spies and interlopers. It is also acceptable to role-play lock the door and expect people to role-play unlock the door.

Foundlings and Slaves

While we do not encourage players to choose either foundlings or slave, we acknowledge that many people enjoy background characters and wish to participate in scenes without the added challenge of being a key player. Consequently, we ask players to give those playing foundlings or slaves a break when it comes to high conflict role-play. That is not to say anyone should be given free rein nor should they be able to avoid role-play consequences, only that those playing agents should recognize that the role is intended to be supportive.

Protect yourself from Drama

No one wants OOC Drama with their role-play. You have complete control over the amount of drama in let into your life. We strongly discourage private sim-based OOC groups as they are usually breeding grounds for OOC Drama. We encourage you to end OOC conversations with players who wish to pass on rumors, bad mouth other players and sow discontent. Don't feed the trolls.

The last to know ..

I understand that if a player is unhappy on a sim for whatever reason, the standard is simply to leave. And sometimes that is for the best, best for the player, or maybe best for the sim. I simply want to go on record with everyone to say, "I can not fix that which I do not know about" and that it is terrible to be the last to know yet the only one with the power to resolve issues. I am available to speak at any time, if there is a problem, come to me, I will handle it fairly and responsively. Branwyn.Emerald

Private Faction Groups

There are no official private faction groups in Second Life or on any Discord Server. And while I am very against anyone doing this, I have absolutely no authority or ability to enforce such a thing. All I can say to anyone who is playing on Arcovia is to join such groups with extreme caution. In all of my experience playing on high conflict political sims, such private groups are a breeding ground for OOC drama and metagaming.

What I can say is that no player should feel pressured or excluded for failing to join such a group and if they do please report it to staff.

Arcovia RPCSS Hud

One Agent per Account

The RPCSS system only allows one account per person. Players are required to wear the RPCSS Hud on sim. The RPCSS Hud allows for one main character in a faction, and a second alternate character, on the same account, which has the combat dice of a foundling.

General Role-Play Etiquette

We assume everyone is a reasonably experienced role-player and understands such terms as god-modding, power-gaming, superman role-play, metagaming, etc. If you do not know what these terms mean please contact staff for some excellent links and to have a mentor assigned to help you navigate the challenges present in Arcovia.

Conversely, because we assume that you are an experienced role-player we also assume that you understand that being role-play rule lawyer is a waste of time. If every little break in etiquette has you flying into someone's IMs to complain you are going to be unhappy here. We expect you to give people the benefit of the doubt and roll with the punches.

Protect yourself from metagaming

Metagaming will happen even if it’s accidental. We strongly suggest that you do not discuss any role play or role play plans in any out of character format. This will drastically reduce the chance of metagaming.

Expect the worst

You should be prepared for other characters to spy on your character, insult your character, use any knowledge they gain to their advantage, never to keep your character's secrets, to manipulate your character into giving them an advantage, to make up rumors about your character, to outright lie and threaten your character.

Thought Emotes

There are no hard rules on the use of thought emotes, and we recognize their narrative value in the hands of skilled writers, however we warn players that accidental metagaming can happen, and grant insulted characters the right to pick up relevant facial impressions.

Roleplaying an Accent

You are welcome to type out a regional dialect and use culturally specific words. However, we expect you to keep it as a compliment to your role-play, not a challenge. Avoid using more than one in ten cultural words or dialect spellings. If someone has to read what you wrote more then once you have failed to communicate. Staff reserve the right to advise you on this, or even restrict you. Please adjust when players ask you to, not everyone can keep up with typed accents.

If you wish to have culture specific words, we recommend sticking to variations of yes, no, hello/greetings, good-bye/farewell, please, and thank you.

Schedule Role-play Scenes

We all hope that the sim will be so busy that everyone might land on sim and immedatiatly acquire random role-play. The truth is that work schedule, time zones and all manner of real life issue cause such happy occurrences to become more and more infrequent. Do yourself a favor and ask someone for a role-play scene. Set up relationships and make time to role-play one-on-one or in small groups with others regularly. The role-play is just as good for planning as it is for random occurrences. Want more random -- ask someone you've never role played with before to meet you some place unexpected.