Rules & Regulations

Starborn operates on the assumption that players engage in meaningful, connected gaming. We provide the following set of rules and simple guidelines that have proven useful player guideposts. Please understand that players are assumed to agree to create a mutually beneficial gaming community and to have read and understand the following.

As a final note please understand that we are in no way a closed or exclusive "iron rule" community. Instead we are open and interested in individual styles of play.

General

Staff Involvement

First and foremost, the staff of Starborn have the final say on any and all circumstance. You are to respect their decisions whenever a situation calls for them to intervene. We, the staff, are here to help, to guide, and to moderate all activities on the RPG and all we ask is for your cooperation and patience. Just have a good time and be respectful to your fellow members - this doesn't mean your character has to like anyone else, but keep in mind this is only a game and actions in-character do not always reflect on the person/member.

In-Character Play

You must remain in-character in all posts on the forums clearly marked as IC (In-Character) areas. You may, however, add "short" ooc comments to the end of your roleplays if you feel clarification or emphasis on something in your RP is required or appropriate. However these "short" statements if becoming habitual should be moved into OOC areas, private messages, or third party messengers.

Multiple Characters

In the future, you will be allowed to have multiple characters on Starborn thanks to the IGD's flexibility. However the upper-limit on these characters may change with time and user-action.

Content

Profanity is allowed in any IC or OOC post, but common sense dictates that it should be used sparingly and at the appropriate times unless you want to look and sound like a moron - choice is yours. As for sex in roleplays, it is allowed as long as it is in good taste. That means try to avoid the slang, thug-like type of posting during sex scenes - at least try to be mature about it. InMyth operates as a PG-13 entity in terms of sexual content and violence. A lot can be conveyed through artful displays, so be wise in your stylings. A good rule of thumb is before getting graphic make a WARNING before that part of the thread begins. Breaking these rules, content is subject to removal and in extreme cases player banishment from the site may be necessary.

Advertising

Do not advertise your RPG or anyone else's on InMyth or Starborn without permission from the directors. InMyth.com hosted games are given free access to advertisement forums and those channels must be utilized. All things given the proper place can be addressed.

Joining

Key Readings

Key sections you should read before creating a character are the Races, Ships, and Skills sections. These provide crucial information on the options you will be given on the join form. Also equally as important is this page, Starborn's Rules. You'll be expected to abide by them during your stay here in order for everyone to enjoy the RPG more and to be as fair as possible to all. Seek out the Introduction and Starter's Guide for further information. Also of use is the Navigating the Datalink guide.

Character - Races

You can select any species you desire for your character and may select up to five skills/talents for your character (can be any possible combination between combative and non-combative skills/talents - obviously, with an odd number of skills, your character will lean towards combative or non-combative). That is set in stone regardless of how you join. What is not set in stone is the ship you may choose. Depending on what requirements you meet, if any, will decide how advanced your ship is starting off. Possible options:

Individual/Joint play

If you join Starborn alone and wish to remain alone in your roleplaying, at least initially, you may easily do so and engage yourself in as much or as little driven content as desired. We work to provide a range of opportunities for play be it individual or joint although the latter is more common.

Ships

Upon joining, whatever ship you choose will likely be unarmed and without any fighter complements a class ship "can" hold. It is strongly recommended, if you're not alone on the ship, to pool your money together and purchase some armament to outfit your ship with. Also, despite the heavy price of a fighter, if your ship is of medium class then a fighter is more important than any cannon, missile, or turret.

Forum Usage

General

Keep everything that is OOC (Out-Of-Character) on the proper forums. The Star System forums are IC (In-Character) meaning you should only post as your character on them. Snippets as noted above not withstanding.

Editing

If you're addressing one person about something, keep it all in one post/thread. If you forgot to add something to what you were talking about, simply edit the original post and add it, don't post another separate thread. There is an Edit button in the corner of every post. Click it to make any corrections to your post.

Spam

No spamming. In other words, don't post things that have no point at all. It has no place in your inbox and no place on the forum. It takes up too much space on the forums and there are too many people on Starborn that to have to wade through that stuff to get to the important information being posted.

Personal Messages

If you have personal business with someone on the RPG, either use e-mail, AIM, ICQ, etc. to talk to them about it, or simply use the PM (Private Message) system on the forum itself. On the main forum listing is an option in the top left (or the bottom left) that says Private Messages, which allows you to post a message to a member of the RPG without everyone seeing it. This is infinitely preferable to posting general messages on the main forum to one character in particular. You should also use these methods if you have a general question that you wish to put to one of our staff members.

Trolling

No trolling. In other words, don't post pointless replies to every thread that someone writes. If you don't have any serious things to contribute to the conversation, stay out of it.

Bunny & Godmodding

When you post a role-play on the boards, try to avoid bunnying and godmodding. Bunnying is taking control of characters other than your own in order to make the storyline go the way you want it to. This is not only rude, but also disrespectful to the other player(s) and against the very idea of 'role-playing' since the action is supposed to be random according to whatever the other person is thinking or feeling at the time. His or her character would react differently than you think he or she would, so don't presume to control him/her. Godmodding is similar in that it's cheating the system. When somebody godmods, he or she manipulates the situation his or her character is in at the time so that said character comes out without a scrape. For example, if your character were disarmed and facing someone with a sword and a plasma pistol, to say that your character suddenly rushes forward, knocks aside the sword, steals the pistol and shoots the enemy would be godmodding. It's up to the moderators or other agreed upon third-parties to say whether you'd succeed or not. Instead, state your intention in the role-play and begin the action and the moderator in charge will judge whether or not you succeeded. This rule is bendable ONLY when you're writing your own solo storyline and the outcome doesn't appreciably affect any other characters or the moderators' / administrator's storyline.

Be aware that the existence of these two problems is ingrained in the gameplay system. We work together to minimize the occurrence of this problems. Everyone should encourage one another to play in a responsible, respectable manner that creates an enjoyable environment. We actively seek ways and ideas to improve upon the system of play - any ideas to improve in this area or in player interaction in general are very welcome.

Ship-to-Ship Combat

Automated Systems

All ships have auto-radar tracking aboard unless a problem on the ship has led to the shutdown of the system (power failure(s), for example); therefore, it is difficult to approach a ship unnoticed - especially medium or capital ships who have much more powerful tracking systems with longer range. Even if the entire crew is asleep, most systems are configured to sound an alarm or alert members of the crew - some can even auto-activate other systems such as directional shields and/or reflector cannons.

Grapple Cables

Many ships come equipped with grappler cables. These cables "can" fire through some shields since they are not energy based or have any moving parts, but there really isn't much point to since the purpose of using a grappler is to pull a ship close to you usually. Grappler cables were not designed for combat, but have evolved in numerous systems such as the highly advanced cable systems found on many mecha models.

Hand-to-Hand Combat

NPC Relations

There are few restrictions on any combat your character may have with NPCs. You must keep things reasonable and, during most situations, follow the rules of whoever created the NPC and/or storyline you're involved in if you wish it to have any chance of impacting the larger story or being integrated in any way. Very few things are more annoying than a person taking the time and care to create a nice NPC and some crew member of theirs takes out a pistol and puts a round between his/her eyes. If you created the NPC, then you may, of course, do as you please, but you should respect others' creations.

Similarly, NO member is allowed to create an NPC that will help your character in combat with another member. This is blatant god-modding and will not be tolerated in any fashion without direct staff approval. If this rule was not present, any member could simply create a gang of NPCs to go around with them and defeat every member he/she met. When the IGD supports the feature we will be rolling out a system for cohorts and allies that will allow for the building of official NPC groups.

Bunnying Again

When in combat with another member, pay careful attention NOT to bunny (roleplay another's character). If the two of you (or more) cannot work out how a fight will go out of characters, then you are to simply roleplay your character's action or reaction in the fight. If anything becomes outlandish or unreasonable, then a staff member will step in and write the conclusion to the fight. This is done so ONLY when the members involved cannot reach a conclusion themselves or with the help of another third party. This is not something we will actively seek out.

Manners

Above all things, try not to be an ass about things in a fight. You'll quickly become very unliked in the RPG if you constantly seek to start fights with others. Starborn is more story-oriented and constant fights simply detracts for the depth of a storyline.

Space Travel

Deep Space

Traditional deep space travel is accomplished by navigating towards buoys or beacons (the two names are interchangeable in most circumstances). If your tracking systems are down or if a beacon somehow is destroyed or disabled it is still possible to navigate by mid-range sensors. Routing becomes especially easy if you have a skilled navigator onboard. Fortunately, it is very hard to put a dent in these small, heavily fortified beacons. Warning It is possible for a ship to transmit a ghost beacon sinal. These are very hard to detect and have led to many notorious ambushes in recent times.

Motion

When trying to comprehend how the physics of your character in relation to the movement of the ship it is often best to draw upon the ideas used in many popular scifi franchises such as Star Wars and Star Trek. For example, quickly maneuvering your ship with thrusters or accelerating very rapidly will not throw the crew off-balance and knock them to the floor. Ships are equipped with devices that are able to work with the artificial gravity generators in order to compensate for these rapid fluctuations. Following this same idea, however, anything striking the ship unexpectedly (such as a torpedo in Star Trek) will disturb this compensation process and you will be thrown to the ground or, at least, momentarily shook up depending on the degree of the collision.