Rules digest
Every server writes its own rulebook, but almost all of them rest on the same handful of principles. Learn these and you will pass most interviews.
The one rule behind the rest
Your character is a person in a city, not a player trying to win. Every specific rule below is a consequence of that single idea.
Rules you must know
- Fear RP. When your life is threatened, your character values it. You comply; you do not reach for a weapon.
- NLR (New Life Rule). After death you forget how it happened and do not take revenge.
- No DM. No killing or attacking without an in-character reason and prior conflict.
- No MG (metagaming). No using information from Discord, streams or private messages.
- No PG (powergaming). No forcing actions on another player with no chance to respond.
- No NonRP. No behaviour impossible for a real person in that situation.
- Stay in character. Keep out-of-character talk in designated channels.
- No exploits. Bugs, macros, third-party tools and cheat menus end in a permanent ban.
What usually gets players banned
- Losing a fight and immediately returning for revenge (RK).
- Treating a police badge or a gang rank as immunity.
- Refusing to lose a scenario that has clearly ended.
- Leaking server information or recording voice chat without consent.
If you are punished
Read the reason, wait for the cooldown, then appeal in writing with facts and timestamps. Arguing in public chat rarely ends well. Full definitions are in the glossary.
Grey areas that catch people out
Most bans do not come from the obvious rules. They come from situations where a player believes they are right:
- Is my reason good enough? For a hostile action you need an in-character motive that another player could have seen coming. "He looked at me wrong" is not a motive; a debt, a rivalry or a contract is.
- Am I allowed to know that? If you learned it from Discord, a stream or a message, your character does not know it — even if they were standing nearby.
- Did they get a chance to respond? If your action left the other player no option, it is powergaming, however realistic it felt.
- Is my character behaving like a person? Standing in traffic, jumping off a roof to reach a scene faster or ignoring a gun because you are bored are all NonRP, regardless of intent.
- Would I accept this if it happened to me? This is the question staff ask, and it is a good one to ask yourself first.
Rules that are not written the same way everywhere
- Value of life. How much fear your character must show varies — some servers require near-total compliance at gunpoint.
- New Life Rule scope. Some servers reset all memory of the incident, others only the identity of who killed you.
- Permadeath. A few communities permanently kill a character after a scripted event. Check before you write a long story.
- Recording and streaming. Rules on consent, delays and publishing clips differ a lot between projects.
- Metagaming boundaries. Whether a public social media post counts as in-world knowledge is a server decision, not a universal one.
This is why the advice is always the same: read the actual rulebook of the server you are joining, not a summary — including this one.
How to appeal well
- Wait until you are calm. Appeals written in anger are read as character evidence.
- Quote the rule you were punished under and address it directly.
- Give facts: time, place, who was present, what happened before.
- Say what you would do differently. Staff are looking for whether you understand the rule, not whether you can win the argument.
- Accept the answer. A second appeal with new evidence is fine; a campaign against staff is a longer ban.