Site Rules

[Goldberry]

Below you can find the rules used at The Road Goes Ever On. By joining this site you agree to abide by these guidelines and, as boring as rules can be, we ask that you please at least skim them in order to prevent any future problems. Not that any of our great members would ever cause problems, right?

Note: By joining this site you also agree to abide by the Proboards Terms of Service which can be found here. This mainly involves keeping the site PG-13 both OOC and IC.

OOC Rules

1. Respect all members. You all know the saying: treat others the same way you want to be treated. The Road Goes Ever On is a tolerant and welcoming site for all genders, races, religions, sexual orientations, political views, etc. and we hope to create a friendly and respectful community.

2. Going off the last rule, please do not instigate fights unless they are of the War of the Ring variety. If you have a problem with another member PM a staff member, do not start a flame war in the c-box and exasperate the situation.

3. Swearing is allowed, but please keep it minimal. We know having your character stabbed by a shield maiden can cause frustration, but Proboards ToS means anyone as young as 13 can join, and dropping the F-bomb every other line in the c-box just looks unprofessional.

4. Sexual content is absolutely forbidden, whether directly posted or linked to. The same goes for depictions or glorification of illegal drug use.

5. All advertising should be done in the appropriate advertising/affiliate board. If you wish to advertise on our site you must also let us advertise on yours, and the same goes for affiliates.

6. We ask that you keep signatures at a max size of 500px in width and 300px in height. Anything smaller than this is fine, but anything larger will cause posts to be distorted and frankly make the site look ugly.

7. We ask that you use one account per character. This allows us to organize characters more efficiently and have links to applications and such in the mini profile, and honestly with the new account system in V5 it’s not that hard. We also ask that you make the display name of each account the name of the respective character.

8. You may create as many characters on this site as you want, however we ask that you remain active with all of them. Otherwise you can put them up for adoption, ask a staff member to archive them, or give them a bloody and glorious death through RP.

9. Please be as active as you can! We don’t require members to post on a set timeline, but logging in as often as possible gives the wonderful illusion of site activity and can help draw in new members. However, accounts which are inactive for longer than a month will be removed from the census and all posts will be archived, but WILL NOT be deleted and can be reclaimed at any time by PMing a staff member. To prevent this please let us know in the absence board if you’re going to leave us for a long time (we’ll still be sad but at least we’ll know what’s going on).

IC Rules

1. Please do not start roleplaying until your application is approved. We know the wait can be tough but the staff will try to review all applications as quickly as possible, and in the meantime feel free to chat in the c-box or post in OOC boards.

2. Violence is absolutely okay and moderately encouraged, but please keep it PG-13. The Road Goes Ever On is intended to be a just as gritty as the Lord of the Rings, i.e. expect a fair helping of blood and death, but we ask that you don’t go into graphic detail and describe what the insides of a fell-beast look like on the outside.

3. Swearing is completely fine in RP, but as with OOC swearing we ask that you keep it reasonable.

4. Again, sexual content is absolutely forbidden. Kissing, hugging and mild intimacy is all fine and dandy, but if your characters are about to experience the birds and the bees then end the scene with a ‘fade to black’ or an equivalent. Legal drug use is also permitted, i.e. tobacco products and alcohol, but depiction of illegal drug use is forbidden.

5. The totally unrealistic and ridiculous word count for The Road Goes Ever On is…nothing! We accept RPer’s of all skill levels, though we ask that RPing be done in the past tense and third person, and that proper English grammar is used.

6. No god-moding, power playing, meta gaming, or mary sues/gary sues. God-moding is depicting your character as unstoppable and having them repeatedly overcome impossible odds like your average anime character. Power playing is when you control another member’s character through your post or force an outcome on them, especially in battle (i.e. forcing them to take a hit from your character). Meta gaming is applying OOC knowledge in RP, for example having your character know that another member’s character is thinking about pie despite never mentioning the delicious dessert in RP. Mary sues/gary sues are unrealistic characters with no faults that are frankly horribly boring to RP with.

7. The site uses liquid time, meaning that you can be in as many threads at once with a character as you want. However please remain active with your threads, and don’t force other members to wait because you bit off more than you could chew.

Punishments

The staff members of The Road Goes Ever On are the arbiters of righteous justice, and thus reserve the right to punish members accordingly when a rule has been broken. Members will be notified through PM by a staff member when a rule has been violated and an explanation will be given as to why disciplinary action is being conducted. Punishments can range from a warning for excessive profanity to an immediate ban from posting pornographic material. If you feel a punishment is unfair or that you didn’t break a rule, please PM an admin and we’ll be more than happy to change the ruling or explain why we believe it to be fair. The same goes if you feel a rule here is unnecessary or vague, or if you believe a new rule should be added.

Additional Disclaimer About RPing

Unlike a lot of other fantasy themed sites on Proboards, The Road Goes Ever On is NOT a stat based roleplay forum. Attributes such as strength and dexterity, as well as hit points, stamina, and mana, are not used at all. Character abilities are not measured in "skills", and your character does not level up or gain numerical experience as they move through the world. What does this mean exactly? Essentially this means that The Road Goes Ever On is a blank canvas, a place where you can create a character and have your own adventures and stories which are not limited by a convoluted or arbitrary leveling system. The staff have found that stat based RP's tend to lead to competition more so than story building, and the latter is what we feel, to risk sounding condescending, is the heart of an RP forum. So members are absolutely free to make any character they can dream of, from a simple Rohan peasant to a champion of Erebor to the general of an entire Gondor army, and everything in between.

That being said, the staff ask only one thing, which you might say is the Golden Rule of the site: BE REASONABLE. The point of this forum is to create a living, breathing fantasy world full of interesting stories and characters, and having John the Destroyer annihilate Minas Tirith with the swing of his sword is neither interesting nor fun to RP with. Thus, please be reasonable when it comes to how skilled your character is, what armor or weapons they carry, etc. Take their history, occupation, and race into consideration, though by no means should this be limiting. A dwarf huntsman prowling the plains of Rohan could be incredibly interesting, but there has to be a good reason why such a race is both in a unique profession and so far from their homeland.

We want everyone on this forum to be able to be as creative as they want and have as much fun as they can, and we hope that leaving stats and levels out of the equation will encourage this. So thank you for reading and hopefully understanding this decision, and the staff of The Road Goes Ever On look forward to crossing our reasonably powerful swords with yours in our very own version of Middle Earth!