1. This is a roleplaying shard. You must stay in character at all times. If you need to make an OOC comment, enclose it in brackets, and/or precede it with "OOC". Please do not carry on long discussions OOCly. We would prefer that you only speak out of character if you absolutely must. You may use other mediums to chat with your friends, such as party chat, the in-game teleconference, and IRC. This rule especially applies on quests.
   
   
2. Be courteous to other players and staff. This is a family-friendly shard, and we accept players of all ages. No abusive language will be accepted. Even if nobody seems to be around, your words will still be heard by staff members, and possibly hidden players. Generally, you will at first be warned, and then action may be taken against you. However, this is not always the case, depending on exactly what it is you said.
   
   
3. Looting of other players' items is not permitted. You may loot them only with the intent of giving them back to the player. Roleplaying a particular type of character is no excuse for breaking the rules.
   
   
4. Players are not to cheat or disrupt normal gameplay in any way. This includes bug exploitation, or behavior that may give one player an unfair advantage over another, such as macroing so quickly that you fail deliberately in order to gain stats. Stealing or killing healers, bankers, animal tamers, or other NPCs that serve crucial or unique functions is disruptive to gameplay, as it will cause them to wander.



5. This also includes any type of attempted network attack on the server. It's being run by professional network administrators. I am a pro as well. If we find anyone attempting to disrupt the shard's network connectivity or otherwise "hack" the server, we'll ban you AND have a "conversation" with your ISP, and I don't particularly care if it loses you a job, gets you kicked out of school, etc. Expect no mercy if you do this. Attacking servers is a criminal offense, and though it has never come to this, we can press charges if there's a persistent attack upon the server.
   
   
6. Healers will heal you on this shard. You are NOT to spar or otherwise damage yourself deliberately near a healer.
   
   
7. You are allowed four houses per character. Any additional ones will be deleted, and you will NOT receive a refund.
   
   
8. If you are found muling items over to another character, the items will be removed the first offense. The second time you do it, you will lose the value of what you muled twice, once on each character. If you do this a third time, you are subject to a variety of harsh punishments, ranging from removing all of your gold to deleting the character you are muling to. You may sell your other character items at a fair value for the item. Another player must be present in such trades. Giving your other character items for free, or for below the retail value of the items, constitutes muling.
   
   
9. Stealing from other players' locked chests are not permitted. If we catch you stealing items from other players' containers, you will be severely punished.
   
   
10. Unattended macroing is not permitted. Macroing is defined as performing a repetitive action to increase skills or stats. Unattended sparring is considered macroing. Expect a GM to check on you. If you do not respond, a GM may punish you. If you must macro, it is encouraged that you do so while you are at your computer. If you do not respond to a macro check within exactly one minute, you are not attended in our books. Third party macro programs are not permitted, even when attended. We expect a human at the keyboard, and if we see otherwise, you will be subject to a variety of punishments.
    
    
11. This is not a PvP shard. We do not restrict or ban player-versus-player combat because we believe that, if roleplayed properly, PvP can enrich the shard. However, flat-out PKing will not be tolerated. Combat should either be consensual, or provoked. A GM may ask you to explain your actions if you attack a player. The server automatically assigns penalties for having excessive murder counts (The decay time is 3 days per count):
    One count: Healers will resurrect but not heal you.
    Two or Three counts: You will become a murderer until your 2nd count decays.
    Four or more counts: You will be jailed by the server. A GM will decide what to do with you when one is on.
    
    Attacking a player's pets is looked upon as attacking the player. If you kill a player's pet for no reason, it will be looked upon as if you have just killed a player for no reason.
    
    
12. If you are sparring someone, you may use the .gray command. Using this command will toggle your criminal status. Both players should use the command before sparring to prevent a murder count. After sparring, the .gray command can be used again to remove the criminal status. Abuse of this command will result in jailing or banning.


This command cannot be used to remove criminal status after you were marked criminal for a criminal action.

It is your responsibility to make sure you are in an area where you will not be attacked by guards for being a "criminal". The Britain Barracks in East Britain is unguarded.


13. Deliberately causing two NPCs to fight each other, with the exceptions of pets and the provocation skill, is a jailable offense. A classic example of this is waiting until a dragon begins to breathe fire at you and running in front of another dragon, causing the two to fight. This happens often accidentally, and is a largely unavoidable problem, but is illegal if deliberate.
    
    
14. The staff is almost always swamped with decoration requests. Because of this, if your house has already been decorated "enough" (To the staff member's discretion), your request will be ignored. This is to allow other players to get their turn as well. Staff members will not decorate with player craftables. This means if you want a forge, anvil, spinning wheel, or most other furniture, you'll have to find a player carpenter to make it for you.
    
    
15. The staff has final word on whether something is a violation of the rules or not. No one wants to hear whining, complaining, or arguing going on, so don't do it. If you think that a GM is being unfair, you can email the admins about it.
    
    
16. If you want to contact a GM, page. Someone has been telling people the staff's AIM and ICQ names, and as a result, we have had to block people from instant messaging us. The page system is there so you can contact a GM in game. Use it. We do speak to some players via IM, but those are generally the ones who are aware of what to talk about and what not to talk about in an IM.
    
    
17. If you are banned from the forums, you will probably be banned from the shard. The reverse does not always hold true. Persistant problems even after banning (Ex: Creating new accounts on the forums to flame everyone) will result in some minor real-life consequences, generally addition to a blacklist that several other UO shards read, or, if you are abusive, possible ISP contact regarding the abuse.



18. Players are entitled to one account each. We do make exceptions for family members with multiple computers, but if you are found to be using multiple accounts to do things like mule, escape jail time, or any other behaviors seen as illegal to the staff, one or both accounts may be deleted at the staff's discretion.
    
    
19. If you are creating an account, we expect you to be serious about joining. We do not like to see people who create accounts and do not log on them once. Such people may be denied accounts in the future.
    
    
20. Quests and miniquests usually have a reward. You will get a reward based primarily on your roleplaying during the quest, and also based on the spotchecks the staff does on people's roleplaying. Do not whine if you do not like your quest reward; we will not give you a better reward for complaining.



21. Do not ask us via email, IM, or whatever else to be a staff member. If you want to be a staff member, prove to us that you've read the rules thoroughly by clicking here to apply. If you ask us via any other means, you are disqualified from holding a staff position in the future.



22. You will be held accountable for any information on the shard forums. Therefore, it is highly recommended you visit them frequently. Players are expected to read the rules and join pages thoroughly at least once.



23. Many of these rules can be applied or withheld at the staff's discretion. Unique circumstances arise that require a reinterpretation of the rules from time to time.



24. If there is anything you find wrong with the shard, please do not hesitate to page or email the staff about it. We take your suggestions very seriously, and if you don't say anything, we can't improve. Please do not hesitate to speak your mind... but remember that not every idea will be implemented, and being childish will do nothing but make you look like a fool in front of others.
    
    

Staff rules:

1. A GM may jail players, but only an admin may ban them.
2. Any staff member found giving players an unfair advantage, either in gold or skill, will face appropriate action as determined by an admin.
3. A GM's decision may be overriden by an admin's decision.
4. No more than five unapproved quests, including miniquests, will be done per week. There is no restriction on quests approved by an admin. Failure to follow this will result in banning of the staff member's account for the duration of the following week.
5. If any rares are given out on said unapproved quests, they will be confiscated and the staff member who distributed it dealt with, ranging from reprimanding to a two week ban, depending on the rare and the staff member's history of doing such things.
6. Staff members may NOT use any of the following commands on players for any IC reason (such as the classic "drink this potion, it'll make you invulnerable") whatsoever: .kill, .invis, .invul, .suicide, .control, .str, .dex, .int, .allskills, or any similar commands. Note that you may use this on players for out of character reasons.
7. Do not answer a page unless you have a relevant answer to give. Answering a page with "I don't know" helps no one. Delete all pages after resolving them, to avoid multiple answers.
8. All staff members are expected to stay active. If you are inactive for a long period of time, you will be removed from the staff to make way for more dedicated staff members. This does not apply to server administrators, who are considered to be performing their tasks as staff members as long as the server remains up.
9. Staff members are expected to be corteous to players. No offensive language from staff members will be tolerated any more than it would be from players.
10. Major changes to the storyline require prior permission by an admin or the storyline writers. Changes to game-mechanics must be approved by an admin.
11. The staff must not bear favoritism towards any one player. The exception to this is that players who have proven themselves to be better roleplayers will be rewarded with better items on quests.
12. Staff may have a player account until the staff member is found giving himself an unfair advantage. Following this, the staff member's player account will be deleted.