Game Rules 1. The Golden Rule – treat others the way you want to be treated. In character hostility is fine (and expected), but keep it at that. Likewise, don't bring OOC problems into the game. 2. Be active. Post at least once every two weeks. If you know you're going to be gone for awhile (more than a week), make an announcement in the OOC journal. There will be regular (or, knowing us, occasional) activity checks to ensure that everyone's still around. 3. Keep it (relatively) clean. Overall, this game has a PG-13 rating. If your character is doing anything that exceeds that rating, then it has to be under a properly labeled cut tag. Note: This rule also applies to icons, so no nudity or suggestive scenes in icons that are not behind a properly labeled cut tag. Also, if a post starts off with a PG-13 rating, but that rating is exceeded in the comments, the post should be edited with a warning to reflect the higher rating. NOTE: Any NC-17 threads must be friends locked. If you fail to friends lock an NC-17 post, the mods reserve the right to delete the post and repost it in order to lock it. With regards to applications, bracket off the sections with a higher rating like so: [R] R-rated writing sample [/R] 4. Don't act for anyone else. In other words, you are responsible for your character(s) and your character(s) alone. Check with the other players before talking about their actions. We will be a bit more lenient on this for applications, provided you tell us that you know you need to get with Eliza Jane Bixby to discuss your characters' shared history, or you specify that the writing excerpt is from a fic that you (alone) have written. If we see god-modding in a RP sample, however, you can expect a full-out rejection. 5. Both heterosexual and homosexual relationships are allowed. In both cases, however, they must make sense. Draco and Harry aren't going to suddenly start making out for no reason. Likewise, Padma and Harry aren't going to suddenly get together without any sort of buildup. Gay bashing is allowed in character only. (This is the 70s, after all, and people are much less enlightened. Sodomy was still illegal in the Muggle world, after all.) In-character gay bashing must, however, remain within reason. If in-character gay bashing becomes excessive, or the mods suspect that it is being used as a cover for out-of-character prejudices, we will put a stop to it, up to and including banning the player, if necessary. Out-of-character bashing of het, slash, or femmeslash relationships is strictly prohibited. If you don't like it, don't read it. 6. Journals are for private entries. "Legens" are for entries that anyone can comment on. Post 3rd person RPs in the appropriate communities. See FAQs 5-7 and 9 for more information. 7. Multiple characters are allowed. You may pick up a second character after you have proven that you can be active with the first for at least three weeks (and the same goes for subsequent additional characters). We're not going to set a limit for the number of characters that you can play, but no one will be allowed to dominate the game by playing half of the major characters. By the same token, you should try to minimize the urge to have your characters play off each other too much, to the detriment of interacting with other characters (it can get really old, really fast). Also, if you do decide to play more than one character, make sure that they are all active. 8. Original characters are allowed. We would prefer to see all the important canon characters we have available cast first, but we will look at applications for OCs, as well. Applications for OCs may be subjected to a Mary Sue test at the mods' discretion, and any character that scores in the borderline range or above will be rejected. (For comparison, our highest-scoring OC currently in the game is at 23, and he is a bit player, at best.) That said, we have had more trouble with canon-Sues and canon-in-name-only-Sues than OC-Sues in the past. In our experience, players who are likely to Sue their characters will do so, regardless of the name the character has. Therefore, applications for canon and CINO characters may also be subjected to a Mary Sue test, if those applications raise the mods' collective eyebrows. 9. Write correctly. Everyone makes typos every now and then, and we're sure we've made our share of them just by typing out all of this community information. Mainly, we mean don't use "netspeak." In addition, when RPing in the third person, your character's actions should not look like: *waves to Harry*. Use common sense when it comes to this rule. Applications with excessive grammatical and spelling errors will most likely be rejected. (By excessive, we mean so pervasive that we can't really follow what the applicant is saying because of all the mistakes. One or two instances of "to" instead of "too" won't put you in the rejection pile.) 10. Stay in character. Have a good understanding of your character before you join. That's really what the application's for, in our opinion. A lot of it is to get you into the character's mind before you start playing. If you aren't sure about something, try looking it up at the HP Lexicon. 11. Check with the mods before taking any drastic actions. For the purposes of this game, we recognize two types of "drastic" actions: drastic in terms of scale and drastic in terms of scope. Drastic in scale would be something that changes your character's life forever. For example, killing your character.* Drastic in scope would be a seemingly small thing that affects many characters. For example, a botched spell causes anyone in the school to be unable to perform any spells classified as charms for a week. (As a general rule of thumb, if it affects three or more players, you should probably ask the mods first.) We're fairly easygoing (we think), but we would like to talk to you before you do anything serious with your character, or before you do anything seemingly innocuous that affects large numbers of characters. What this boils down to is, in character actions have in character consequences, and we want to make certain that you are aware of the consequences and agree to playing out those consequences before doing anything that will get your character killed, on the Death Eaters' hit list, expelled, or declared persona non grata at school, etc.
*The exception, of course, is a canon death. This is an AU game, but you don't have to justify killing off your character if they've already died in the books or before the books started. For instance, Gideon's player does not have to check with us before killing Gideon off, but s/he would probably want to check with Fabian's player, since they were supposed to die together. 12. If you are playing a canon character (this includes characters with canon names and original personalities/backstories), your journal is Operation Redo's property. If you need to leave the game, please e-mail the password(s) for your journal(s) to operation_redo@yahoo.com or PM us at mods_or. We will try to contact you if you do not send us the password(s), and if we do not hear from you, your journal(s) may be banned from the game communities.