Welcome to Gaia! :: The Official Gaia Roleplaying Guild (100 users) | Gaia Guilds

1. Sensitivity

Generally respect people, whether it be their ethnicity, religion, political views, or especially their sexuality. There are lots of people here from different walks of life and because of that we're very gifted. This is a place for open minded, culturally sensitive people, and though we may joke around from time to time its still important that no one ever feel as if they're discriminated against. If thats the case for anyone, I'd expect them to come to me about it.

2. Political/Religious Discussion

Political discussion to be confined to specific threads about them. Feel free to make yourself a new thread whenever you like about this (or maybe even an RP, if thats your cup of tea), but try not to bring it up in unrelated threads. Always keep in mind that people can feel very strongly about their political or religious beliefs and that simply expressing your own opinion may offend them. For example, an atheist who doesn't tread lightly in explaining their perspective might offend a Christian and visa versa. Try to keep things mature and not get too carried away. A good debate is always fun, but it can go sour if people aren't careful.

3. Noobies

Alright, once again a rule along the same lines of the first one. Since we accept everyone into the guild there will be a lot of people who've been in Gaia for three or four years and those who've only been here a few days or weeks. Once again, oldies, be nice to the noobs. Noobies, try your best to act as maturely as possible. Everyone gets a little aggravated sometimes. Those of you who are new may find that older members are easily annoyed, this is because they've probably had to deal with this kind of behavior time and time again. People who are older, try and keep your aggravation under control and remember that everyone starts off this way. Newer folk, try and do your best to be mature and understand that sometimes someone might be a little rude to you simply because you're new to things.

4. Spam

A general guideline is not to do it unless its in the OOC forum (being the main forum). In the RPs try not to use OOC too much (unless the person running that RP doesn't mind) and in other forums don't get off topic if you can help it. It gets really annoying when someone spams two or three pages having a really poor quality RP fight with someone in an Art forum.

5. Grammar

There will most likely be varying stages of literacy here. There may very well be a couple of threads where people don't think that grammar is too big of an issue or they speak in l33t. Thats fine so long as the person running the thread doesn't have a problem with it, but as a general rule its probably better to try and be as literate as possible. Obviously some newer members may not be on par with the kind of people who've been RPing for years and no one expects that from them, but we should all make a conscious effort. Even the younger kids will eventually get the hang of it with enough practice.

6. Godmoding

Obviously godmoding is frowned upon and we will call you out if we feel you've been using it. Usually I would leave it up to the person running the individual RP to decide if they want to really crack down on this, but if someone gets used to godmoding that can cause problems in other RPs they may join and its better to just n** it in the bud as early as possible. If you've already established whats going to happen with the other person thats all well and good. Just say in your post that you had permission. If you've continuously refused to improve on this, the person in charge of whatever RP you're in will PM me or another mod to report you and you may be banned as a result.

7. Patience

Please be patient when waiting for another person to post, sometimes people will be MIA for long periods of time and its necessary to create an escape plan so that you don't get chained down. If things come to this though please don't be rude about it or complain. This especially applies to the artists in the art forum as well. Don't flood them with requests and then bug them constantly to finish them. Make requests understanding that they may never be completed. You just have to deal with it, and be understanding.

8. Do not bug me.

I don't want you to get the wrong impression, I love my guild members and I love to talk with them, but I'm a very busy person. Please don't pm or IM me every time I sign on just 'to talk.' There are very few people who've earned a place in my heart where I like to talk to them regularly. I don't mind if you know me pretty well, but I hate it when people I don't even know want to start small talk with me. Sometimes I'm flattered, and I'm more than happy to talk, but most of the times it just irks me. I've had several people stalk me and IM me every time I sign on and never stop bothering me. Hopefully that won't have to happen again because those people have been banned. Don't get me wrong, I'm not the grinch, its just I usually have my hands full and I don't appreciate people expecting me to give them extra attention. I'd love to talk to you guys in the forums any day, and once you get to know me pretty well, and I you, I shouldn't have a problem with talking to you from time to time.

9. Follow the individual rules of an RP

When someone creates a thread for an RP they're allowed to establish their own rules. The rules listed here are just general rules and guidelines for the entire guild, but rules may change for each individual thread or RP. Likewise though, someone may choose to just go with the general guidelines and not establish their own rules. In any case you should be sure to check to see if the RP you're planning on joining has its own set of rules and be sure to read and understand all of them. These rules are just as important as any other in the guild and if you continuously fail to uphold them the person running the RP can contact a mod and ask that you be punished.

10. Most Importantly

Have fun guys, thats what its all about. Don't just do the RPs, try and interact in the other threads too so you can get to better know the people around you. Sometimes people can get caught up in the drama of an online community (as its inevitable to happen anywhere a group of people gather), but you can't let this ruin your fun. Roleplaying can be a very rewarding creative and enlightening experience under the right conditions, but regardless of what aims you have for it you should always want for you and those playing with you to get a lot of enjoyment out of it. Always keep that in the front of your mind, and don't only try to make sure you enjoy yourself, but that everyone is able to enjoy themselves. Make each other feel welcome.

1. Rules and TOS

Always keep in mind that your RP has to follow the rules on this page as well as the Gaia TOS (so sorry to all you perverts who were looking forward to creating a hentai RP. Maybe next time). After that you can create your own set of rules that apply to your own thread. You are the king of your domain here, and though you don’t have mod powers yourself, if anyone breaks the rules you’ve set then you can contact a mod in order to have that person reprimanded.

2. Keep everything to a single thread

Many of you may have come from guilds where an RP is composed of several different threads that represent different areas. For example, a Naruto RP might have separate threads for every town or country. Likewise a city may have separate threads for each district etc. We don’t do that here. As more and more threads are created, its easy to lose the many RPs amongst each other and things can get really confusing really fast. Plus, it discourages people within that RP to really read outside of the thread they are currently roleplaying in. For that reason an entire RP is limited to a single thread (with perhaps the exception being the thread you use for people’s character profiles, but even that would probably be better suited for the first post for organizational purposes). In order to specify what world/country/city/district/building/room/whatever you are in you may want to employ the following header in the beginning of your post.

[Character – World – Specific place]

What goes in the world or specific place slots may change depending on what kind of RP you’re doing, but here are some examples.

[Obi-Wan Korriban Caves]

{Kyou .Twilight Town. Duel Square}

Aegus – Skyscraper – 29th Floor

Any of these are fine, and all of them help to specificly which character you’re writing for, where they are generally, and where they are specifically.

3. New Members

Going along with what I said in #1, you’re the one who runs your own RP. That includes deciding who gets to join it and who doesn’t. You may choose to automatically allow anyone to participate but ultimately you set the standard. How you choose to decide this is up to you, but the easiest way may be to simply PM the person wishing to join and RP with them a little to get a sense of their skill and literacy level. Some people may feel like they’ve been rejected and can’t get in anywhere because they’re abilities may not yet be on par with some of the other members or they’re being discriminated against for this. The beauty of this guild is that anyone can make their own RP and decide who gets in. As time passes by we may not ever have this kind of a problem where people are routinely unable to join storylines because they don’t meet the standard most of the RP leaders hold. If you feel like this is the case you can always create your own RP where newer RPers are welcome. This is a place for role-players of all skill and literacy levels.

4. Don’t Copy RPs

This may seem like another one of those no-brainers, but you’d be surprised by who might get rejected or banned from an RP and in retaliation may run off and create their own RP that is more or less a carbon copy. Everyone gets a little upset when they don’t get accepted or are asked to leave a roleplay, its probably happened to all of us at some point or another. You may have been really excited about what you were going to do in that storyline and wanted to recreate it, maybe you just thought you’d do a better job, or perhaps you were just being spiteful. In any case you will get called out for it here and you will be punished for it. Once a member I had banned from my guild went and tried to recreate my guild on his own, it wasn’t very successful first of all, but after mentioning it the Captains Guild he was actually banned from Gaia, so mods take this seriously too. If you ask the persons permission to make a spin off, revive and reformat a dead RP, or even make a carbon copy and they say yes then you can feel free to. Keep in mind though this may cause other members to frown on it in certain cases.

5. Check to make sure there isn't already an RP you could join

We all love to forge our own path (I mean, thats why I created this guild in the first place) instead of just being part of the pack and being a follower, but try to see if there's a similar RP you could join before creating your own. Otherwise we have a ton of people just making their own RP and not joining the ones that have already been created. Eventually no one RPs in the other threads, they become inactive, and they die. In order for this little experiment to work, everyone has to be involved in a number of RPs, and not just their own.