In this thread, you will find the rules and guidelines set forth for creating characters for use in our Board Battles. Please keep in mind that these are general rules that cover character creation for all battles. Battle Masters may have more specific guidelines that you must follow. If they do, they will be found in a separate thread found in the sub-board for that battle. When creating a character for a battle, please be sure to read ALL applicable threads. The rules will be enforced whether or not you choose to read them, and Battle Masters and the Administrator will not be held responsible for any pain or suffering you incur as a result of not reading the rules. The Administrator also reserves the right to modify these rules as deemed necessary at any time.
By posting a character, you agree to be bound by all rules governing the general creation of characters and the specific guidelines of your chosen Board Battle, and agree to follow all Administrator, Inquisitor, and Battle Master directions when using this character. Please be sure to follow all of the main forum rules at all times, including when creating a character.
BUT HOW DO I POST MY CHARACTER?That's easy! Simply navigate to the sub-board of the Battle you wish to post a character for and create a new topic with your character's name as the subject. Please follow all rules listed below as well as any additional guidelines found in the sub-board. When you post your character, you will not be able to see the post in the sub-board until it is approved (reference Rule #2 below for more information on this process.)
RULES FOR GENERAL CHARACTER CREATION: 1. FOLLOW ALL BATTLE MASTER GUIDELINES WHEN CREATING YOUR CHARACTER.It’s the Battle Master who has the final say on whether or not that character you just spent hours creating makes it into a battle or not. The easiest way to have said character not make it in is to disregard the guidelines set out by the Battle Master. Do not simply disregard or ignore these. Just don’t do it. If you want to participate in a Battle Master’s battle, you need to follow their guidelines. The guidelines for all active battles will be located in the battle's creation sub-board. Read them before you get started. (Note to Battle Masters: Your guide for posting regulations is at the bottom of this post.)
2. ALL CHARACTER THREADS MUST BE APPROVED BEFORE THEY WILL APPEAR IN THE FORUM.So you just posted your new character, right? Where is it? It’s not there. Better post again, right? Wrong. Your post will remain invisible to all users until it is approved by the Battle Master. The Battle Master will check to make sure the new character fits into its destined battle and also make sure that no rules violations have occurred. Once your character thread appears in the forum, your character has been approved and you may begin using it. DO NOT POST AS YOUR NEW CHARACTER UNTIL IT APPEARS IN THE FORUM. You will be contacted if your character is not approved for any reason. Double-posts will result in both of your posts being deleted. You will have to re-submit your character if this happens.
3. MAKE YOUR DESCRIPTION DETAILED.We don’t want a two sentence blurb about your character. That leaves things way too vague, and doesn’t show the Battle Master that you have the creativity required to post good posts in their battles. Also, vague, loosely defined characters can pull a bunch of crap out of their ass mid-battle, giving them a distinct advantage over the player who listed his character’s powers beforehand. What powers or weapons does your character have? Who are their friends? Why do they do what they do? Where did they come from? These are all things the Battle Master needs to know. The more the Battle Master knows, the more he can include your character in the story and not just leave you out on the sidelines.
4. STAY IN THE SETTING.This rule doesn’t really apply to the Epic Battle as much, because the Multiverse setting gives a large amount of flexibility when it comes to character origins. But for battles not set in the Multiverse, you need to be careful that you understand the setting before you make a character. Your Super Soldier doesn’t belong in a fantasy setting. Your lute-slinging bard won’t be making an appearance in space. Your super powered behemoth isn’t going to fly in a battle set in real-life 18th century England. These are just a few of the examples of the kinds of stupid mistakes you can expect to make if you start making a character before you find out what the setting is. Mistakes in this area can also lead to your character being denied by the Battle Master. No one wants that.
5. MAKE SURE YOUR CHARACTER IS FINISHED BEFORE YOU POST.This is more of a friendly heads up then a rule, but it deserves mentioning here. Once you post, you’ll have to wait for the Battle Master to approve the character before it will be visible. If you want to make a correction, you have to post a reply to the topic and then wait till the Battle Master approves that. It’s a pain for all involved. Please try to make sure you have everything the way you want it before you post, so that we’re not having to approve a bunch of last minute edits all the time. Also, due to the nature of the approval process, your post will be DELETED if the character is not approved. You will have to re-post it. Therefore, it is imperative that you
SAVE A BACKUP OF YOUR POST. Either type it out before hand in a word document or notepad, or post a draft of it in the Character Discussion forum first.
The Battle Master will not be held responsible for you having to retype your entire post because you submitted your only copy and it was denied. 6. ONE CHARACTER PER BOARD BATTLE. NO EXCEPTIONS.The old Administorum had a glut of alternate characters, which made it very difficult for Battle Masters to respond to posts properly. The intention of this rule is to streamline the experience and give everyone a fair shake at posting. A player with 3 characters will always have longer posts and garner more attention for themselves then a character with only one. So, one character at a time. If you have an active character in a battle and you attempt to post a new one, it will be denied. If you really wish to bring in a new character, you must first retire the old one. Simply post "Retire this character" in your character creation thread. It will be moved to the Old Characters forum, and then you will be able to make a new one. If you ever wish to bring a character back out of retirement, retire your current character and notify the admin, and the character will be moved back in. PLEASE NOTE: Any character retirement or new character creation done in the middle of a battle will require Battle Master approval. One point that should be made with this rule is that the limit is one character PER BATTLE. You can participate in as many battles at once as you feel comfortable, provided that you can keep up with all of them. (THIS RULE DOES NOT APPLY TO BATTLE MASTERS. They need NPCs, after all. However, Battle Masters should not be posting their NPCs in the character creation forum, as they do not need approval.)
7. EDITS TO YOUR CHARACTER MUST BE DOCUMENTED AND APPROVED.This was also a problem back in the old boards, so we are tightening the belt here. Once you have posted your character, that is the character you use. The powers/weapons/abilities you gave your character in this post reflect what the character will be expected to use in his/her battle. Powers/weapons/abilities you did not put in your post will not be allowed. Thus, your character that you clearly stated “can control fire” will not suddenly be able to hurl ice balls halfway through a battle. To enforce this, you will not be able to edit your character post. Any and all changes must be made as replies to your character’s thread. These will also have to be approved by the Battle Master before they appear, just like your initial character post. Once they approve the edit, your initial post will be edited to reflect the updated information. The reply you made to request the addition or modification will be left in the thread to serve as a record of when the edit was made. As long as the change isn’t too abrupt, the Master should allow it. However, the Master reserves the right to make you wait till the end of the current chapter of the Battle before the changes will be allowed to take effect. This rule does not apply if a character is given new weapons/powers/abilities by the Battle Master directly. If this happens, the Master will provide you with the opportunity to add said powers or weapons to your character sheet in your own words.
8. BE REASONABLE. NO OVERPOWERED CHARACTERS. (THE POWERGAMER/GOD MODE SUE RULE)Yes, yes. Here it is. The BIG one. This is nothing that the veteran players haven’t heard hundreds of times before, but for the sake of the newbs and in case you forgot, here it is again.
GOD MODE SUES WILL NOT BE TOLERATED. PERIOD. DON’T DO IT. The Epic Battle is the hardest battle to enforce this rule for, since characters are virtually unlimited when it comes to origins and backgrounds. Note that we are not saying your character can’t be powerful. Epic characters belong in the Epic Battle, it’s why we called it Epic for so long. Having said that, your character is not God. He/she cannot one-shot the big bad, completely overpower the other characters, invent powers on the fly, do EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE, ect. Read some of the veteran’s Epic Battle characters for an example of what to do right (But don’t plagiarize them. We’re getting to that rule in a minute). Also, be aware that an acceptable power level in the Epic Battle will more than likely be WAY too powerful for other battles. We recommend that you keep your epic characters in the Epic Battle and create new characters for other stories.
This issue will be handled on a case by case basis, and it is at the discretion of the Battle Master to come to an agreement on whether or not the character is too powerful. If the character is deemed too powerful, you WILL be asked to tone it down. If you are asked to tone it down, DO IT. You can always log a dispute with an Inquisitor, but do not refuse to tone the character down, or it will be removed until an agreement can be reached. Multiple requests to tone down a character will result in that character being removed from the battle permanently, and multiple characters with this problem will result in the PLAYER being removed permanently. If you’re having trouble determining how powerful is too powerful, seek out the Battle Master or an Inquisitor. They will help you build a character that works for everyone. Remember, this isn’t Dragonball Z. There isn’t one uber powerful main character. So don’t create Goku. Doing it wrong ruins the game for everyone and won’t be tolerated.
9. ”BORROWING” IS OKAY. PLAGARISM IS NOT.This is a tricky one. A lot of us have made characters that pull things from existing movies, TV shows, or games. We are definitely not saying that this is wrong. We will not be cracking down on people using or modifying existing settings for use with their characters. It’s one of the things that always made the Battles interesting. Having said that, there’s a huge difference between using someone else’s work as inspiration and blatantly ripping them off. Most of this will be ironed out during the character approval process, but there are two things that the Battle Master absolutely will not allow. The first is NO STEALING CANON CHARACTERS. Maybe you like Halo. Maybe you want to make a character that came from the Halo universe and uses Halo weapons and armor for the Epic Battle. That is perfectly fine, as long as the character follows the other rules. BUT, if you make your character the Master Chief or any other pre-existing character from that universe, it will be denied immediately. This board celebrates creativity. We want to see what you can do with that universe and setting, not see you use a cookie cutter character that everyone will hate you for using. The other big one here is NO STEALING OTHER PLAYER’S CHARACTERS OR IDEAS. If someone has already made a powerful vampire who uses two swords and has control over shadows, DO NOT MAKE A CHARACTER THAT IS A POWERFUL VAMPIRE WHO USES TWO SWORDS AND HAS CONTROL OVER SHADOWS. And don’t try to make it just be slightly different either. The Battle Master isn’t stupid. They WILL see it, and they will laugh at you while they delete your post. Now, this does not mean that you can’t create a vampire if someone else already has. Just make it original. If you can’t make it original, pick something else. Battle Masters do reserve the right to start blocking characters for the Epic Battle if one character concept gets overused, though. No one wants 50 vampires or 900 guys that control demons or are demons. Use your brain.
A NOTE ON SETTINGS: For the Epic Battle, we do make exceptions for two characters coming from the same setting. Two different characters can be from the same setting and still work together. If someone is already using a setting you were interested in using, either contact them directly or speak with the Battle Master or an Inquisitor for help.
10. DO NOT POST CHARACTERS IN THE WRONG SUB-BOARD.An active Board Battle will have it's own sub-board in the Character Creation section. This is where you can post your character for that Board Battle. If a battle does not have a sub-board, then the battle is not active and you should not be trying to get characters approved for it. Do not post characters for one battle in a different battle's sub-board! All this does is waste the Battle Master's time. Repeated violations of this rule will draw the unwanted attention of the Inquisition. If you are just looking to post character ideas for proposed or old battles, please use the Character Fiction sub-board.
Follow these rules, and your character will be on the road to participating in the Board Battles in no time. Please contact the Administrator or an Inquisitor with any questions.
BATTLE MASTER’S GUIDE FOR POSTING CUSTOM GUIDELINES:EPIC BATTLE MASTERS: All Epic Battle Masters must follow the general guidelines set up for the Epic Battle Character Creation. These are non-negotiable. You are taking control of a story that is 10 years in the making. We must protect the work of past Masters and players. That is why these guidelines are in effect. If you wish to ADD any guidelines specifically for your battle, let your assigned Inquisitor know and they will edit them into the Epic Battle rules thread. Please note that you do NOT have the authority to deny a previously allowed Epic Battle character from joining your chapter for any reason. If a pre-established character simply won't fit in your plot for whatever reason, notify your assigned Inquisitor so that a compromise can be worked out.
ALL OTHER BATTLE MASTERS: Your custom battle is yours to control, and your rules are law. Make a post with your guidelines in them in your battle's sub-board, and feel free to approve it to make it visible and make it sticky so that your players can see it. Your assigned Inquisitor will ensure these rules are enforced.
