ATTENTION: By playing on this MUCK, you are agreeing to abide by these rules.
Hope Island is a small community run by an even smaller staff. We're close knit, everyone knows each-other, and it's a great small town vibe. That said, we're super open to newcomers, and most people who join up feel welcome right away. We're not clique-y and we're all pretty good folks that just want to have fun and roleplay.
That said, any group of people doing things in a publicly available environment need some rules and regulations. Let's try to lay them out simply:
All players (i.e. people typing at keyboards) must be 18 years old or over. No exceptions, ever.
The people who run the MUCK are listed using the 'wizzes' command. To contact an administrator, type:
wizzes
and then
p SomeName=Some Message
to communicate with them. For example:
p ari=Hi, can you help me understand the rules better?
No logs are kept by the system administrators. This is for your privacy and safety. However, some of the players on the MUCK have their own logs, and we have no control over that. So be warned that anything you do in front of someone else -may- be recorded for posterity.
As an additional note, it is MUCK policy for all administrators to separate their 'admin' account from their 'player' account so that there is no temptation to use admin powers in a casual fashion. The admins have to take the effort to log in to a special account in order to do administrative activities, and this helps keeps things honest and reminds the administrators that they have a responsibility to the privacy and safety of our player base.
Keep divisive RL stuff – politics, for instance – away from here. This is a place for roleplay, and most of us are here to escape that stuff. Please respect that nobody shares your opinions so keep them to yourself :) That's a little tongue in cheek, but it's potentially true. Keep it in character unless you're in a specifically designated out of character area.
The MUCK is largely self policing. We are all adults here, and we expect people to work out their problems between each-other. However, if you need an impartial moderator, feel free to ask one of the administrators (see the 'wizzes' command) to help you out. We are really happy to give advice and work to smooth things over.
The problem is, this is a really small place and it is hard to avoid someone you have a disagreement with. The admins, by and large, can't really do anything other than ban the 'offender'. Usually, a disagreement is not a ban-worthy offense, so the best we can do is help people work things out.
Let's all just try to be adults, and try to remember we're all here for fun. It's more fun when we make it fun for each-other :)
There's a special set of rules for child/underage characters. Those rules are located here: https://wiki.hopeisland.net/underage-character-policy
You should review those rules if you wish to play a child character or interact with one. To sum it up, public sexual activity and advances are not permitted and child characters that make the population uncomfortable for any reason will be removed. Child characters are held to a much higher standard than regular characters because they are controversial.
When it comes to your interactions with fellow players, we follow the general principle of In Character Actions = In Character Consequences. Some characters aren't going to be all that nice, I imagine. The themes in post apocalyptic settings can get pretty dark. You should do your best to resolve in-character issues in-character, and if things aren't clear, communicate with your fellow players using the OOC command. Regardless of what's happening in-character, everyone should be respectful out-of-character. And hey, while it's supposed to be free-form roleplay, there's still a 'roll' command to throw dice, sometimes that's a good way to resolve something.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, OOCly. ICly, do whatever villainy your character wishes. :)
We are trying to avoid 'technology inflation', or more specifically, turning this MUCK into a pure sci-fi MUCK or introducing elements of overpoweredness. This rule is hard to concretely quantify, but at a high level, aliens, space travel, super advanced robots, AI, and other such things should be considered “regulated” and we would like you to consult the administrators prior to making such a character. Exceptions will be made on a case by case basis, and existing characters (as of July 3rd, 2022) are 'grandfathered in'. If you have any doubt, please ask rather than assume. This rule is pretty vague, but it isn't possible to come up with every crazy scenario our player base may come up with!
The admins reserve the rights to change the rules – with notification – and also the right to treat people being jerks however they need to be treated including banning. It has, knock on wood, never come to it and we've never banned anyone. Please don't make history by being the first!
The purpose of this agreement is not to be an exhaustive list of rules, but rather to touch on the really important stuff that people care about and to set a framework for how people are expected to behave. Specifically, the players on this MUCK are expected to treat each other with respect and kindness (OOCly, anyway), because we are all neighbors and friends here (again, OOCly).
As such, if a player is behaving in a fashion that is counter to the spirit of this agreement, an admin may have a gentle and friendly conversation to try and correct the situation. This conversation may mention things not, specifically, in this set of rules and guidelines. Responding with something that contains a phrase such as “the rules don't mention…” will not be looked upon kindly.
This isn't a big place, and we don't need a whole legal library of laws. Just be decent to each other (OOCly) and keep the conflict, strife, and fighting to IC interactions. Remember, this is a game, and at the end of the day, we just all want to have fun and escape real life for a bit.