Rules and Guidelines for RP Congress Channels

The following rules and guidelines have been put into effect for the RP Congress global channels utilized in City of Heroes/Villains. For any concerns or clarifications regarding these rules and guidelines, please send a PM to Moriyaku.

1) The RP Congress and RP Villains channel are for in-character use only. Ideally, these were designed to coordinate in-character teaming efforts or to foster roleplay between players as if the channels were hero-specific and villain-specific broadcast channels. Please use these as such; if you are working to engage in roleplay that affects a limited audience or that you would not wish to be interrupted by other in-character comments, please use another channel, such as SG chat, Coalition chat, or Team chat.

2) The RPC OOC channel is for members of the RPC to have friendly conversation, coordinate teams, or ask for assistance with gameplay as it relates to City of Heroes and City of Villains. This means that conversation in the OOC channel should be cordial and civil, and that comments should be constructive and helpful. Arguments and disagreements are perfectly appropriate for the OOC channel, as long as those conversations are done in a civil manner with respect for both the topic(s) discussed and the person(s) involved. Conversations that exist between only two people in the channel, or conversations that may be considered offensive or argumentative would be best exchanged via tells, Team chat, or SG chat rather than in the public forum that is the RPC OOC channel.

3) The RPC OOC channel is not a place for comments that are intended to aggravate, antagonize, humiliate, ridicule, or call attention to boorish and childlike behavior. Self-pitying behaviors or collective passive-aggressive statements concerning the actions of individuals during in-game or out-of-game events do not belong in the RPC OOC channels. If you take issue with the actions of an individual, then as an adult, you are expected to contact and resolve those issues on your own in private with the person(s) in question.

To clarify, 'self-pitying behavior' refers to using the OOC channel as a means to air one's public frustrations with no desire for resolution or solution. This does not refer to a general message of stating why certain events may keep one from participating in-game, but following said general statement with a stream of complaints is unfair to the rest of the community who seek to use the OOC channel in the manner originally intended. 'Collective passive-aggressive statements' refer to sweeping generalizations about the actions of a group as to how they have adversely affected one's overall gaming experience and have been used in the past by individuals as a means to voice a personal complaint to the channel rather than address the problem one-on-one with those players with whom they have the actual problem.

4) The RPC OOC channel is a public channel, due to the wishes of those who founded the RP Congress. Because it is a public channel, anyone is welcome to join and participate. If you have issue with a particular individual or group of individuals who choose to participate in the RPC channels, then you may either place them on Global Ignore or choose to speak with those individuals in private via tells.

5) All conversation in the channels (RP Congress, RP Villains, and RPC OOC) should be kept at rating approximated to PG-13. Conversation, roleplay, and commentary that breaches this rating should be kept to private tells, Team chat, or SG chat. Players who repeatedly engage in conversation, roleplay, or commentary that goes beyond a PG-13 rating will be subject to the same 'three strikes' disciplinary action as other behaviors that have been deemed not appropriate for the channels. The reference for PG-13 will be the Motion Picture Association of America, the MPAA, whose ratings system is currently found here: http://www.mpaa.org/flmrat_ratings.asp

6) There is no such thing as "kicking someone out of the RP Congress." People can elect to leave just as freely as they can elect to stay; the community has a common thread of roleplay as well as some basic conventions that have been established through more than five years of character creation, association, and recreation. The RP Congress boards and the RPC channels in-game are separate entities and are subject to different rules.

7) The moderators of the RP Congress channels are moderators because they have the capability to cross multiple groups with regard to playstyle, characters, and out-of-character concerns. They are not a panacea for interpersonal issues that result from players' difficulties with communication and decorum, and should not be expected to actively police and resolve issues within the channels. Instead, they should be expected to inform members as to the rules and conventions of the RPC, educate newcomers about the availability of the RP Congress boards, Wiki, and supergroups/villaingroups, and maintain objectivity when conflict does arise. If a person does continue to willfully go against the established guidelines in the channels and create an atmosphere that is unpleasant for the community without regard for the well-being of the group, then the moderator(s) may ask the person to leave the channel or silence the person in the channel for a period of time. It is impossible for rules to exist without consequences, and the current active moderators require some form of action in order to best meet the needs of the community as a whole.

The following sequence will govern the progression of consequences:

The first in-channel infraction, the moderator will ask the person or persons to 'take it to tells' publicly when the action takes place. Any person may do this in the channels; however, the moderators are required to take this step before subsequent actions and consequences.
The second in-channel infraction, the moderator will send a private tell to the person or persons responsible informing them to stop the behavior, with the behavior in question clearly spelled out in the private tell.
The third in-channel infraction, the person or persons in question will be silenced for a period of no more than five minutes. The moderator doing the silencing must send a tell to the person being silenced explaining the reason for the silencing.
If additional infractions occur, the moderator will petition an in-game GM and continue to silence the person in the channel.