No god or part-god characters; you can have a god acting but you can't play him or her as a character. Be wary of using gods at all; keep them vague and/or removed, and don't use them to tip the board too much. It isn't fair to have a deity taking control of the story.
No royalty or relatives of royalty without the express permission of the List Keepers.
By the same token, try not to make your character an obscenely powerful mage, the best swordsman in the country, the greatest thief ever to prowl the streets... give your character flaws and weak points; it makes the roleplay more interesting. Excessively talented or skilled characters tend to frustrate the other players. Also, check the cast list before making your character; if the current characters are mostly mages, consider making a char that doesn't use magic.
Don't use a character from a book or closely based off a char from a book; be original. Likewise, don't use anyone's copyrighted material, such as Anne McCaffrey's Thread or Mercedes Lackey's Companions, bondbirds, Tayledras, etc.
The List Keepers reserve the right to deny approval of characters that don't follow these guidelines, so please observe them.
Don't kill someone else's character or force actions onto someone else's character(s) in your posts without that player's permission; if you want a certain character to drop a line or action in your post, ask that player first and collaborate with them on the post. Understand that you don't know the character as well as they do, and let them dictate what the character does and does not do.
We don't discourage out-of-character exchanges and discussions, but we do request that these be separated from story-posts somehow. A bar of some sort, like these:
_____________________________________________________________
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will do the job. We don't insist that all mails sent to the list contain roleplay, but we prefer it, so if you have something to say out-of-character try to attach it to an in-character post if at all possible. If you do make a post that has no story included, be sure that the title includes NRPG (non-roleplaying game).
If you reply to a mail from the list, please try to change the subject line so that the list isn't confused by a mass of 'Re: [CoS] Such-and-such'.
We don't limit the number of characters you play, but keep in mind that too many are hard to keep track of and cause a lot of clutter; don't play any more characters than you can handle, and if you find you have too many to play comfortably, drop some. If a character isn't used for a long stretch of time, the List Keepers will mail you asking if you're going to be playing that character more in the future or if we can remove them from the cast list.
The List Keepers hope that these rules won't offend anyone but will help the list run smoothly and be a fun thing to participate in. If you strongly disagree with any of the rules, email Abby, Alexia, or Yvonne with your complaint. Many thanks to the staffs of The Mistic Circle and Dragonlance MUX for helping to inspire these rules.
