THE RULES /last updated 4.16.10

[Singed Grim]

These are the site rules, last updated 4.16.2010. Everything here is important into understanding being a member on this site, and it is better for your experience if you read them while planning on joining. In this thread, you will find three unrelated words somewhere along the way. You will need these words included in your biography in order to have your character be accepted. Good luck.

SECTION I General Forum Rules

i. Cussing is to be kept at a minimum. I don't mind the occasional 'damn' or 'hell' in the out of character posts, but there is to be no cussing in the role-play. I don't think a leopard knows what 'hell' is anyways, or even needs to use the 'firetruck' word or any others. You may not say "well, there's a dam in the river, so they'd know what damn means". There's a difference between 'dam' and 'damn'. Look it up please.

ii. There is no post count added for OOC posts. This is to prevent new members from trying to boost their post counts with unrelated posting. You join a site to role-play, not to play games and such, right? Of course, games are always fun in between role-playing, so we have them and all that other fun stuff. It just doesn't boost your count.

iii. Please, please, please don't act as a leopard in the OOC or c-box. That's only for the role-play, people. The c-box is for your fun in talking to other people, and doing whatever you want [other than that]. OOC is known as "Out of Character" which in easy terms means, 'out of your character's world'. So you're human again in OOC and the chat box. Feel free to have those chat box role-play fights, however, to pass the time unless it bothers someone.

iv. Staff are the caretakers of the site, so what they say goes. If a staff member tells you to fix up your biography, don't complain, don't ask why, just do it. If a staff member tells you that you need to post because a character's falling inactive, do it, or have your character deleted from the site. We don't want a bunch of inactive characters here. First word is : Cloud

v. Please don't bring all your real life drama here and complain to the other members about it. If you would like to post a journal, do so, but don't start crying in the c-box about things that are beyond our control. Besides, making a journal and sharing all your anger can help you get over problems and grievances faster than if you just hold them in.

SECTION II Character Rules

i. You may create as many characters as you want, however, you must keep them all active. As above, you read, if a staff member sees one of your characters falling inactive, they will remind you to post with that character. If you do not post with that character within a week of that notice, then that character will be deleted.

ii. Your cats may not have unrealistic fur or patterns. For example, a snow leopard with red fur. Or a snow leopard with bright blue fur. The patterns cannot be stripes, but they must have patterns in order to be a snow leopard. A snow leopard's eye color is typically a pale green or gray, but there are some cases of grayish yellow eyes. Despite the image in the staff side table, snow leopard's eyes can not be blue. Third word is : sky

iii. Personality isn't too strict because we can't all imagine what a snow leopard truly thinks. But I do not want to see "he is angry and hates everyone, and will kill them as soon as he sees them. He particularly enjoys slitting cub's throats, etc". Or "she's so sad and gentle, she's scared of everything. Everyone feels bad for her because she's just so depressed." That's just total human drama right there. That is not snow leopard nature, after all.

iv No sob-stories, please. Sob stories are where you take a character and give them a really sad, unrealistic, background. Such as follows "when he was born, his mother died at birth and he was left lying on the blood-stained snowy ground beside her until an extremely kind female leopard came along and adopted him. He had a sister but she died too and he watched her stop moving around in the snow as she froze. The leopard who adopted him soon died, as did her own cubs who became his best friends. He was sad and walked around alone until he found a female leopard that he loved. She got pregnant, but had a miscarriage and died, and so did the cub. He would never love again." Honestly, that's just pathetic. Keep it realistic, people. No matter who the female is, or how 'gentle' she is, she won't adopt cubs that aren't her own.

v. No mary sues or gary stues. Those are 'perfect' leopards. "She's so amazing; she's the best hunter, and can catch everything. She could feed the entire mountain! She's also a very amazing fighter and can kill leopards over twice her size!" That's a mary sue. A gary stu is just a male that has about the same 'perfect' properties.

SECTION III Role-Playing Rules

i. The word minimum for role-play posts on this site is 200 words. If you are unsure of whether you have made the requirements or not, copy (CTRL+C) and paste (CTRL+V) the post into the word counter box [in the bottom side table, check the box to make it appear] and click the Count button. If it makes over 200 words, it is acceptable. If not, don't post it until it is.

ii. You can post with as many characters in the same thread as you would like, however, it would be greatly appreciated by staff and members role-playing with you if you told them which character you were role-playing with at whichever time. This makes it so we know who we're actually dealing with. .

iii. Format? Many people have problems with this. I don't require any particular formating options, although [*size=1] would actually be looked down upon for it can be hard to read for some people. For a requirement, we ask that you use no more than four blockquotes around the same piece of text at one time. It wouldn't look good if you did so anyways.

iv. Please post in third person point of view. It is not required that you post in third person, but it would be appreciated if you did. Unless you can tell us which character you are using in first person, don't use it. You may only use first person point of view if we can plainly see which character you are role-playing at that time; that falls under rule III. ii, as well.

v. Past tense? We would prefer that your posts looked like "he walked across the narrow cliff side, glancing at the yawning crevice below him", than, "he walks across the narrow cliff side and glances at the yawning crevice below". However, it is all up to you. Just make sure it makes sense to anyone reading it, no matter how you post.

vi. Grammar and spelling counts in role-play posts! FireFox has a brilliant addition that spell checks your words for you while you post. For all other browsers, feel free to click that "Spell Check" button at the bottom of the posting field and use it. No one minds if you abuse the spell check. Please proof-read your posts before you publish them. Second word is : covered