Southland roleplay charter

Purpose and authority

Southland is a text roleplay server. These rules set the minimum standard for playing a believable character and giving other players a fair chance to act. They apply alongside the community-safety, character-death, turf, and sanctions-and-appeals policies.

Game mechanics settle the state they own: money moved, an item changed hands, a door opened, a character was restrained, or a vehicle was damaged. They do not settle every narrative question. Written roleplay explains intent and reaction, but it cannot override a mechanical result or decide another character’s action.

Keep IC and OOC separate

In character (IC) is what a character can perceive, remember, or reasonably learn inside the fiction. Out of character (OOC) is information and coordination outside that fiction, including Discord, streams, private messages, command output meant for the player, and another character on the same account.

Do not use OOC information to choose an IC action. This includes:

• finding a person, property, vehicle, faction, item, or event from information your character did not obtain;
• warning allies through Discord or another private OOC channel during a scene;
• moving information between your own characters;
• identifying a masked character from their account, voice, player ID, writing habits, or staff/audit information; and
• using map markers, labels, logs, guides, or database-style references as IC knowledge unless the game presents them as information the character receives.

Discord voice is OOC. It may not conduct, supplement, or privately coordinate an active IC scene. All spoken IC communication uses Southland’s text channels.

Accidental knowledge is not automatically a violation. Acting on it is. If you see something your character should not know, keep it out of the character’s decisions.

Approved in-game covert devices may relay only communication the device can physically hear under its bounded rules. That relay is IC knowledge for the assigned listener; OOC, private messages, SMS, commands, and unrelated remote channels are never a covert entitlement. Device owners may use the supported search/removal mechanic. Do not use OOC suspicion, staff/audit access, or a player’s identity to claim that a hidden device or cover has been discovered.

Do not force outcomes

Powergaming means taking control of another character’s result or claiming an unsupported advantage. Do not:

• write another character’s thoughts, injuries, movement, possessions, or reaction as settled;
• describe a successful search, restraint, transfer, entry, theft, treatment, or escape before the owning mechanic or the other player resolves it;
• ignore a clear mechanical state because it is inconvenient;
• invent equipment, authority, witnesses, evidence, or environmental facts that are not present; or
• use rapid or vague text to deny another player a reasonable opportunity to understand and respond.

You may describe your own attempt and what others can observe. Leave contested results open. Use the relevant mechanic when one exists, then continue from its actual result. A command offer is not a completed action until the game confirms it.

Play a coherent character

Use a plausible Firstname_Lastname name and a character concept that fits the setting. Do not impersonate a real community member, public figure, established character, or staff identity. Deliberately disruptive joke concepts and names written to evade another character’s consequence are not permitted.

A new character does not inherit another character’s contacts, property knowledge, faction intelligence, grudges, or plans. Shared account progression is an OOC tenure display, not character experience.

Keep descriptions and /do statements observable and truthful. Do not use them to publish hidden statistics, impossible traits, or instructions that force how others must react.

Conflict, violence, and fear

Conflict is allowed. Ordinary robbery, arrest, threats, injury, and mechanical loss do not require prior OOC consent when they follow the rules and the owning system.

Violence needs a credible IC cause and enough roleplay for the other participants to understand what is happening. Deathmatching includes attacking or killing without that basis, using trivial provocation to manufacture a kill, or treating violence as the default way to end a disagreement. The availability of a weapon or combat mechanic is not permission by itself.

Escalation should fit the threat and the character’s information. This does not require both sides to agree with each other’s tactics, but each side must be able to explain the IC reason from facts available before the violence.

Fear RP means treating a credible threat to life or serious injury as real. Consider weapons, numbers, position, injuries, escape routes, and what the character knows. Fear does not require automatic surrender or ban all resistance. It does prohibit ignoring overwhelming danger without a believable reason or using game controls as if the threat did not exist.

Do not use an animation, dialog, inventory, phone, vehicle, property, or other unrelated command to escape a consequence your character is currently facing.

Stay with the scene

Do not disconnect, pause, deliberately idle, force a timeout, switch accounts, or exploit a restart to avoid roleplay, arrest, injury, loss, or staff intervention. If a genuine crash or outage removes you, return as soon as reasonably possible and contact the other participants or staff when the scene cannot resume safely.

Do not stall with repeated OOC argument. A short clarification is reasonable. If the dispute continues, preserve the relevant messages, keep the scene moving where safe, and use /report.

A bug does not authorize taking or keeping an unintended benefit. Stop repeating the action, preserve the visible result, and use the bug or support route.

Death, PK, CK, and revenge

A gameplay death is a player kill (PK) unless an approved character-kill decision says otherwise. A PK ends that immediate scene for the dead character. After recovery:

• do not return to or rejoin the scene while it is continuing;
• do not retaliate for the death or direct others to retaliate from knowledge of the death scene;
• do not use the death, corpse, hospital result, or OOC evidence to identify an attacker your character could not otherwise identify; and
• apply the memory and consequence rules in the character-death policy.

Revenge killing is returning or arranging violence to answer a PK contrary to those limits. A surviving witness or independent investigation may still create later IC consequences; the dead character’s prohibited knowledge may not.

A character kill (CK) permanently ends the character and requires the private request, review, and approval process in the character-death policy. A player cannot impose a CK by writing it into a scene, winning a fight, or obtaining another player’s casual OOC agreement.

Factions, authority, and turf

Faction membership and rank do not relax these rules. Capabilities authorize a game action; they do not make every IC action reasonable or every order valid. Faction leaders are responsible for setting expectations that match the public charter.

The website turf map defines staff-controlled roleplay boundaries. A boundary or holder label does not grant permission to attack, remove ordinary players, or claim automatic control. Only an attack approved under the turf policy can change the published holder.

Staff intervention, reports, and appeals

Staff may pause a scene, separate participants, preserve evidence, and issue instructions needed to contain a live problem. Follow those instructions at the time. Compliance does not waive the right to appeal.

Use /report for an active rules issue. Give the player, conduct, and immediate problem. Use the published private Discord route for offline or evidence-heavy reports. Do not post accusations or private evidence publicly.

Staff decisions must identify the rule and provide a reason. Challenge a sanction through the private appeal route, not by disrupting play, contacting staff repeatedly, or targeting the reporter. Reports and appeals made honestly are protected even when staff do not uphold them.

Related policies and guides

Read the community-safety policy for age, harassment, privacy, mature content, and consent. The character-death policy governs CK approval and archival. The turf policy governs faction attacks. The sanctions-and-appeals policy governs review. Task instructions remain in the player guides and generated command reference.