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There are some rules and suggestions that you are required to agree to when you apply to Machines of Destiny.
General rules: Machines of Destiny is a game for mature players who seek a strong focus on plot and action. While relationships may be a part of this game, if you are not interested in storyline or plot development, this is not the RPG for you. While we welcome and encourage players new to roleplaying, we ask that they be willing to be creative and look beyond romance plots to advance their characters. Creativity and imagination are valued above all.
Age Limits: There is mature content in this game and as such, all players in this game must be 18 and over with no exceptions. Additionally, all icons and pictures used in this game must be of people who are overage. Any violation of this rule will result in immediate expulsion from the game and banning from all journals. By applying, you are stating that you are over eighteen; if we find out otherwise, we will act immediately.
Sexual/Violent content: Het, slash, bi-, whatever- relationships are all encouraged. Equal encouragement is given to exploring violence; this is a dark game, and fluffy bunnies are unlikely. We expect that players of this game will be open-minded and mature when dealing with writing such material and use discretion when reading or posting it. What this means is that we expect all such material to be clearly labeled, rated and placed behind a cut-tag, with any unusual warnings noted in the header of the post. Likewise, we highly suggest that all players put a disclaimer on the info page of their journal. The suggested disclaimer is as follows: Disclaimers: The picture used for my icons is of [insert avatar name]. I am not him/her, nor do I claim to be him/her. This character has been created for the Machines of Destiny roleplaying game. I certify that I am of age in all jurisdictions. This game is rated for members 18 and over so viewing this journal means that you may be subjected to graphic or sexual content that would earn ratings of up to NC-17.
Adult Concepts: Let's be very clear on this. Machines of Destiny entirely encourages people to play their characters as homophobes, islamophobes, racists, any sort of conventionally unacceptable behaviour you would like to play - as long as it is in character. This game is not the forum for you to play out your actual islamophobia, homophobia, racism, etc. This game is not a substitute for fighting the war in Iraq. If your character is a gung-ho military person who does not see the flaws in killing civilians, that's fine. We can, and will, remove anyone from the game who chooses to use Machines of Destiny as their own personal forum to be racist, homophobic, islamophobic, and any other behaviour that we find objectionable. The mods of this game are good Northwestern liberals; assume that we seek similarly open-minded people for this game. We are not your substitute war.
Activity Requirements: Machines of Destiny requires a show of activity weekly. What we mean by this is that we want to see either a lengthy journal entry or RP every week. We require two journal posts in any one calendar month, both of which must have some public content to them. Any planned hiatuses need to be emailed to the moderators beforehand, if possible; any unplanned hiatuses must be communicated to the mods as soon as possible. If that means going to your local Kinko's and spending fifty cents to send us an email, that's what it means. Three subsequent weeks without posting or a pattern of non-posting and the character will be killed off. We do activity checks regularly.
The Boards: We ask that all posts be made to the appropriate boards. Destiny_machine is the board designated for all roleplays and narratives. Machines_ooc is the board on which important out-of-character notices (hiatuses and plot information) should go. Machines_speak is where all letters and communications should be posted. Characters' personal journal entries go in their journals. In terms of how the journals work, we are asking players to suspend their disbelief. We do not want to see players posting "Oh, look, I have a new journal and now I have to write in it". You wouldn't do it on LJ - don't do it here. We're not justifying how the journals work. They just work. End of story. We will ask you to rewrite it if your intro post (or any post at all) refers to the journal as a new object or as something you have "just found". Please also refer to our "posting conventions" rule before making entries. No memes or quizzes are to go in the regular boards. We feel that such memes are distracting and break from the world that we have created. There is a watchers' community for fun quizzes, OOC discussion and general fandom information. This is located at this time at machineschatter. It is an open community that does not require a journal to post or comment. We welcome you to invite non-players to join and discuss the game as well, provided all discussion maintains the appropriate level of respect. Moderators reserve the right to ask players to f-lock, edit or delete any post which breaks any rule listed in this game, including the conventions rule. If you do not reply promptly, we will delete it ourselves. For the convenience of other players, we ask that your character's bio (essentially, what you apped with) be posted to either their userinfo or to a post in their journal that is linked in their userinfo. It's occasionally necessary to check a small detail that a character would know during rp, and it's also nice to have a sense of what a new character is about. We also ask that your contact information (email at least) be placed on your userinfo. Far more fun than wading through pages of contact details!
Posting Conventions: To make archiving of storylines and important entries easier, we ask that players list a description of RP events in the subject line of all RPs done. Additionally, we would like to see clarifying information in the format below for roleplaying: (example)
Ratings are mandatory on all RP posts, as are cut-tags for any RP over 3 paragraphs (which should be all of them). We also ask that any out-of-character remarks be clearly designated. For this, we recommend double parenthesis as a common symbol. IE: ((OOC: Posted comment twice! Sorry!))
The Website: Our website is to be used not only for recruiting new players to the game but also as a place for archiving some stories and keeping a record of game events. It is not intended as an exhaustive record of the game (that's what the communities are for!) but we seek the freedom to post exceptional rps to the website. As such, as part of your application and to prove that you have read the rules, we require that you state either written permission to archive your stories online for the duration of the game or specifically state denial. Your response (as long as you provide one) will not affect your application - we merely ask for this in order to ensure that we are not posting RPs to the website that players would rather not have there. It also, as stated earlier, shows us that the rules have been read. We will make exceptions for individual rps, if you give consent on joining but wish to have a later rp kept off the website. This is not a claim of copyright by the moderators of Machines of Destiny.
Netspeak: ...equals death. Need we say more? We don't encourage dialect, but we tolerate it, as long as it's kept to the spoken words of a character. If your rps read like a rap song, we'll ask that you alter your style or leave the game. Standard English may or may not be au courant, but it is in our game (and bear in mind that we have no problem with players who speak English as a second language; we simply don't wish to see native speakers abuse dialect).
In-Character vs. Out-of-Character: It is to be understood that knowledge known out of character must be kept out of character if the player's character is in a situation where they would not have that information. Additionally, players need to always keep in mind that this is a game focused around conflict and as such, remember that characters hating one another does not mean that players do. In the event of any enmity or problems with fellow players, we ask that the moderators be contacted. Excessive out of character drama can and will result in the expulsion of the applicable parties.
These rules are meant to act as guidelines. We ask that all players treat one another with respect and follow common sense. While rules will be added as needed, we would prefer to keep them as minimal as possible.
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