Everyone has more fun if everyone plays by the rules. Penalties for rulebreaking range from loss of levels, to character deletion, to banning you from the game entirely.
In our game there are three player factions at war with each other. The term "Whities" refers to the Human, Dwarf, Wood Elf, Hobbit and Beorning races. The term "Darkies" refers to the Uruk-Hai, Orc and Olog-Hai races. "Third side" refers to the Uruk-Lhuth and Haradrim races.
No multiplaying will be tolerated. You cannot have more then one MUD character on at any time. Linkless players count for multiplaying -- to enter one character you must RENT the other (if needed, reconnect and rent). You may own more than one character on the mud, but you must follow the switching character rule to change characters.
Race-war Pkilling: This involves killing players on opposite "sides" of the game as you. You will see these players' races only, for example, 'a Hobbit' or 'an Uruk'. See 'HELP RACE WAR' for details.
Whitie-whitie Pkilling: Player killing on the same side as you is another matter entirely. When you attack a player on the same side as you, you will get a flag called 'rage'. This flag prohibits you from seeing where players of your side are in your area, for five (5) minutes. If you are below level 10, and you are a Whitie, you cannot hit another Whitie, unless that Whitie has the rage flag. Attacking another character on the whitie side on purpose is disallowed.
Same side pkill for evil races: Pkilling of other characters on the same side is allowed for evil races. However, the killer is considered avenged after one kill, so repetative killing of the same character will not be tolerated, and the offender will be punished.
Anyone caught giving information to other sides of the race war, be it useful or not, will be dealt with in the strictest manner possible. This includes giving it over ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger, E-mail, phones, or paper airplanes if you feel so inclined. This includes intentionally behaving in such a way that characters of people you know OOC will not be harmed. Taunting and antagonizing the enemy is not only quite acceptable, it is the only allowable communication between sides.
Obviously, we cannot monitor your activities. We ask that you act in the best interests of the MUD and keep your information to your side.
You must wait 20 minutes before switching characters across sides. You must wait five minutes before switching characters on the same side. Keep in mind that this amount of time is time spent rented -out of the game-, NOT time spent at the rent room, NOT time spend in the starting room, and NOT linkless.
These rules also apply to characters of different people playing from the same computer. For example, if you are playing a character, and you rent so that your brother can play, he and you MUST observe the rules.
If you do not understand this, ASK AN IMMORTAL.
If you find a bug in the game, post it, or tell an immortal (see WIZLIST) right away, especially if the bug could be used to a player's advantage. If you are caught abusing a bug for your own good, you'll get in trouble, especially if you did not report it.
No reimbursements will be given out. While the game is imperfect, and your character may sometimes suffer "unfairly", there will be no compensation of any kind either for the game rough edges or for real-life problems beyond our control. Exception: when a reimbursement is declared on the news board, the post will supercede this rule.
This is especially true for deaths or losses due to network or internet "lag" or timeouts. If there is a timeout at the MUD end of things, all players will have no access to the MUD. In this case, an exception (see above) may be made. In all other cases, we can't be held responsible.
If a reimbursement posting is made and subsequently removed, the excuse "I didn't read the news" will not be acceptable.
No character trading is allowed. This includes selling characters, leaving characters with very obvious passwords, trading characters for Magic cards, and the like.
Some people like to fully act out their characters as they would be in a good story, as opposed to playing the mud as if it were a simple video game. This mud encourages such role-playing as it can be great fun. Don't wreck the game for role-players.
The rules are simple. Don't try to stretch them or find loopholes. They do not exist not to make life harder for you, but rather to keep it enjoyable for the you and other players of the game. Please help us make this a nice place to play by following the rules.