Rulebook

Sections

Disclaimers (D)

1. To play on our servers world and partake in RP, you must apply and be approved.

2. Keep in mind that as we are a Minecraft server, you must follow Minecrafts EULA, and Terms of Service while you are on our server, and on our Discord, you must follow Discords Community Guidelines, and Terms of Service. 

3. "Walking the line" between breaking the rules or not, such as talking about breaking them, joking about breaking them, or threatening to or saying you will break them will be treated as if you had broken the rule(s).  

4. Staff will try and be as lenient as possible with enforcing rules, but some situations demand action. 

5. By playing on our server you agree to these rules. Rules may be updated at any time, we will announce when changes are made on our Discord.

6. Please only speak English on our server. Not speaking it makes it difficult to determine who is or isn't breaking chat rules. 

Punishments (P)

1. Staff may punish players and members as deemed fit, an in the event of a disagreement with said decision, the player or member may make an appeal.

2. All of our bans are IP bans and circumventing them in any way will get you banned with no chance of appeal. 

3. As it stands currently, we do not have a codified list of punishments. Your punishment and duration is subject to the staffs opinion.

4. Disputing, complaining over, whining about, or otherwise debating your punishment outside of a formal appeal is grounds for an appeal to be denied.

5. Appeals that are not taken seriously or are incorrect, lying, or otherwise malicious will be thrown out with no chance to appeal again.

Respect and Harassment (RH)

1. We aim to foster a welcoming, accepting, and friendly community, stand in the way of that, and you will be removed from said community.

2. Racism, Sexism, Ageism, Ableism, Discrimination, or other forms of harassment against specific groups of people will not be tolerated. These topics should be avoided entirely in OOC, and only brought up in RP with willing parties for the sake of RP. Ensure all parties involved understand the line between RP and genuine harassment. Failing to do so will be treated as if it was OOC.

3. Treat others how you wish to be treated.

4. Any doxxing, blackmailing, or sharing of personal information, your own or others, is grounds for an immediate ban with no option of appeal. 

Advertising and Promotion (AP)

1. The advertising and promotion of other servers or things on other servers that are not approved by the owners is not tolerated and is grounds for a ban without appeal. The same applies to our players advertising us on other servers, we do not want the reputation of being a spam bot. 

2. The advertisement of Ethelia related content such as a YouTube video on the server, a Twitch stream, etc is permitted with no hassle.

3. Our players and members may promote non-Ethelia or non-MCRP content they have made in the designated channel on our Discord for self promotion.

Common Sense (C) 

1. Please use common sense when navigating the server, skirting around the rules and hanging in the "grey zone" because something isn't outright mentioned in the rules is still grounds for punishment if staff deems it to fit an existing rule. 

2. We will not tolerate the use of offensive or sexual characters, including but not limited to, username, skin, named entities or items, capes, etc. 

3. Swearing is allowed, however being overly zealous in it, or directing it at others in the form of slurs is not allowed. 

4. Griefing is not allowed on our server. You may only alter builds with the owners or staffs consent.

5. Theft is not allowed unless done via roleplay, with valid reason and notifying the owner of the item(s), and you may only steal roleplay items such as treaties, artifacts, regalia, etc. You can't steal gear, tools, resources, etc, and you can't steal from areas that would be unreasonable for you to access.

Cheating and Exploiting (CE)

1. Exploiting bugs, glitches, loopholes, or unintended game mechanics for an advantage is not permitted, and using or discovering them and not notifying staff is also grounds for punishment. 

2. You may not use macros or auto-clickers on our server. 

3. Staff may occasionally use modifications/mods approved by the owners in order to do their job, such as using a mod to easily remove lag machines, record videos, or test things. 

4. You may not circumvent server systems such as permissions, barrier blocks, anti-flying, anti-cheat, or a requirement to do something.

5. Lagging, crashing, or breaking the server is not allowed.

6. Cheating of any form is not allowed, this includes the use of any mods/modifications not listed below. Any modification/mod not listed below should be considered against our rules, you may suggest things be allowed, if your unsure ask a staff member.  

   • Optifine, Sodium or any other performance enhancement mods.

   • Resource Packs that do not highlight ores, mobs, or any other feature more than is intended by Mojang.

   • Purely QOL mods like Litematica to project schematics, mods for armor and tool durability, or metrics.

   • Shaders.

   • Cosmetic GUI and HUDs (Nothing that shows ores, mobs, game data besides surface minimaps, etc).

Building (B)

1. All buildings and decoration must be fantasy, medieval, or steampunk themed.

2. Leaves must not be left floating.

3. Settlements will be linked together via roads and signage to facilitate travel to them. Basic roads will be made by staff upon elevation of an area to a settlement, the settlement may upgrade, redirect, and maintain the road as needed from then on. Roads must be traversable (no large gaps, missing bridges, etc. Imagine a cart needing to go up and down it.).

4. Everything is subject to removal by staff if they view it as unfit. Staff will ask you to remove it and replace it, and give you time before they remove it.

5. Builds must be structurally sound, they can't float, defy gravity or other laws of physics, etc.

6. Builds must have specific purposes, no building random empty buildings for example or random nonsense.

7. When in doubt, ask staff if a build can be allowed.

8. Builds that are never finished or are left undone for unreasonably long will be removed.

9. Resource gathering must be done in a realistic, and world friendly way. Mines must be built like actual mines, forestries like actual forestries, quarries like actual quarries, farms like actual farms, etc.

Farming and Economy (FE)

1. The creation of AFK or semi-AFK farms is not allowed.

2. You may not exploit or game the economy.

3. Any farms must be active farms (you must actively interact with it for it to work), and anything unsightly must be hidden by an actual representation of the farm. For example, if you make a redstone wheat farm, build it hidden underneath an actual wheat farm. You may ask staff for ideas for what to hide farms with.

Roleplay (R)

1. You are always in character while on the server in the world.

2. Characters killed via roleplay means such as being poisoned, assassinated, etc is enforced.

3. Characters must have at least a basic, starting wiki page in order to roleplay.

4. Trolling while roleplaying or being disruptive to others who are roleplaying is punishable by staff. 

5. Local chat, emotes, yells, whispers, and birds are all considered in roleplay, using them implies you are roleplaying and they are subject to roleplay rules. 

6. When you engage in roleplay, that is you consenting to roleplay, you are then held accountable to any and all actions done or said by you or to you. If you do not wish to roleplay, do not engage to begin with. You may not leave mid roleplay and void the roleplay that has already been done unless agreed upon by the parties involved. 

7. You may edit your roleplay name to something like "Hooded man" in order to conceal your identity etc, but be careful not to troll name etc. Age set to zero is equivalent to unknown. 

8. Metagaming is an important factor when considering roleplay, and as such there are rules in place to determine what is or is not metagaming. When using information in roleplay: 

1. Any information on the wiki that your character would reasonable know can be used. 

2. You can not use global chat or ooc chats for roleplay. 

3. You can not use the server discord other than #roleplay-announcements, #nations, #bounty-board, and #player-guilds. 

4. You can not use Dynmap or anything else outside of in game for roleplay information of underground structures. 

5. You can not use DMs unless stated that they are speaking in roleplay. 

6. You can not use any Discord channel as RP unless it is used for RP related activities.

7. Discord DMs and GCs can not be used for RP.

8. You can acquire information using informats provided they gather information following the above rules and provide it to you in accordance with them as well. 

9. Be mindful of these things when creating your characters: 

   1. No player characters are to be considered gods.

   2. No player characters were alive during the Old World, and or exceed the age of 500.

   3. No unrealistic or real world names, lore, skin, or other aspect.

   4. No non-medieval, non-fantasy, or shit-post skins.

   5. No contradicting existing lore unless it is nullified by staff or its original creator.

   6. Your wiki page must be properly formatted, updated, named, and in order. Do not use your IGN to name your page for your actual character.

10. Be mindful of these things when roleplaying: 

    1. What can be said in RP is more lenient, and should not be taken personally.

    2. Wars are considered RP events.

    3. Some RP events warrant a RP interaction regardless of you wanting to or not, such as war or as a result of something you did like theft.

    4. You should not intermix RP and personal beef.

    5. You may not mix OOC and RP chats, use the proper chats for what you are doing.

11. In order to verify roleplay status you should keep tangible evidence of all roleplay interaction such as screenshots and videos in order to prove what happened should the need arise. 

Geopolitics (G)

1. An area or group of three or more buildings with a population higher then three will be considered a settlement, and added to the map.

2. Settlements will be ranked as: Homestead, Hamlet, Village, Town, and City, according to their population and size.

   1. Homestead - A small group of buildings, typically only one family, with no major production.

   2. Hamlet - Typically a two-three family area, but with very little production and infastructure.

   3. Village - A multi-family area with a decent area, production, and minor infastructure.

   4. Town - A large settlement that has developed substantial infastructre, a stable high population, basic defenses, and multiple industries.

   5. City - A town that has grown to be a center of culture, art, politics, and or commerce, as well as a higher population and stronger defenses.

3. You must not use symbolism, such as a banner, flag, motto, or architecture from a real world nation, territory, or other polity and organization. 

4. Settlements must not be named after, either exactly or clearly a parody of, real world nations, territories, or other polities and organizations. 

5. War must have valid, roleplay cassus belli, and must be overseen by staff to ensure it is done in a roleplay friendly way.

6. You may not war monger or frequently declare wars, etc. They should be limited to solving roleplay disputes when peaceful measures fail.