Sorry but the game was totally sandbox. They just didn't allow dicks to play.
Official Griefing Rules
I. Definition of Griefing
Grief-style playing, or grief-ing, is illegal. Grief-ing is defined by any style of play that makes the person playing a character feel legitimate and genuine distress and anger through disruption of their gaming session.
A. PvP, CvC
The primary area where the team gets griefing complaints is when one character kills another. On #, we will make an important distinction: Player versus Player (PvP) is prohibited. Character versus Character (CvC) is allowed. A "player" is defined by the person sitting behind the screen playing the game. A "character" is defined by the alternate personality you portray within the game. Characters can have disagreements and fight over them, but as soon as it becomes a personal matter between the players behind the characters, it is no longer justified.
B. What counts as griefing?
As you can see from the definition above, what counts as griefing is somewhat vague. The team will not attempt to define every conceivable instance of griefing. We can give both rules and guidelines for how to conduct yourself in CvC combat.
The most important aspect of the definition of griefing is the phrase "legitimate distress." Stress is a natural part of any game. There are always things we don't like, things that frustrate us, and things that make us angry. None of these things are "legitimate distress" and none of them are griefing. But where does it cross the line from natural stress into legitimate distress? Genuine and Legitimate Distress is generally any kind of stress that exceeds the expected IC vision of #.
Example 1: Your character is involved in a faction war and gets killed by an opposing player. The Player doesn't RP the situation great but at least made an attempt. The player took some potions and arrows from your corpse amounting to about 1000 gold. No griefing.
Example 2: Your character is a completely new level 1, unknown to anyone. A level 18 character hits you with a death spell and then loots you. Just for kicks they meet you on the way back to your corpse and kill your character again. The player sends no tells, and doesn't say a thing IC. Griefing.
Example 3: You exchange tells regularly with other players. One of the players sends numerous tells. None of them are benign or threatening but you're beginning to get annoyed with them. You ask them to stop but they continue. You send an email to the Team who politely asks them to stop as well. They continue. Guilty of both griefing and disobeying the Team, A ban is highly probable.
1. Burden of Proof
The burden of proof in any CvC encounter rests primarily upon the initiating and/or victorious character or party. It is your responsibility to take steps necessary to ensure the fun of the other person.
2. The Dislike Setting
Prior to initiating any CvC, the attacker should set his prey to hostile. The prey should not use this as an OOC warning to start buffing or run away. Setting hostile allows the defender to react properly and for spells and feats to operate properly once the battle starts. Yes, it is easy for a person to forget every once in a while, but flagrant or consistent disregard of the rule will be punished by vault jail.
3. 24 hour cooldown between fight-encounters
If two characters engage in a fight that ends in either a trip to the death-plane or a bleeding script, the two characters should not engage in another fight in the same 24 hour period. For example, the death planed character should not immediately try to kill the second character upon returning from the death plane. Both characters are free to pursue fights with different characters provided there is IC justification and both characters are free to relate the situation ICly to other characters who may take action on their own, but no two characters should engage in a multiple CvC fights in the same 24 hour period.
4. Proper IC motivation
The attacking character must show that their character had proper motivation for attacking (and presumably killing the defending character). You cannot use the excuse “because my character is evil.” Proper IC motivation means something that is deep, well-defined. If you can describe your motivation in a single sentence, then your IC-motivation is insufficiently developed. The goal of this rule is not to encourage people to develop elaborate justification, but to encourage them to immerse themselves in the world-setting and to meet many characters and develop relationships with them, some of which may be antagonistic.
5. In addition to having an IC motivation, it is the burden of the attacking-player to state the IC motivation to the opposing player. This can be done IC, through a battle-cry and conversation in the bleeding script (preferred), or by sending tells to the other player. A player who fails to make his IC motivation clear to the other player is in danger of grief style play.
6. Team Investigations of Griefing
Log files are imperative to investigations of griefing. Without any log files, the team is very limited in what they can do to follow-up griefing reports. Consequently, all players are encouraged to save log follows from CvC incidents.
7. Retribution by the victim
If the victim is able to discover through IC means the identity of their assailant, either they or their friend may retaliate against the assailant or any of their known friends. This meets the requirement for an IC justification. Any further battle is still subject to the other requirements of CvC encounters, i.e. setting hostile, providing IC justification to the opposing player. All players are strongly encouraged to avoid allowing the need for retribution to get out of hand by either widening the scope of the encounter or conducting retribution disproportionately. Remember, in CvC encounters, it is the responsibility of the players involved to look out for each other's fun.
8. Logging out to avoid consequences Any player who logs out of the server to avoid the IC consequences of their actions specifically in relation to a CvC encounter but this also applies to other situations is committing an Exploit. First offense will be a 2 week term of Vault Jail. Second offense is Banning.
II. Policy on Role-playing sexuality and Pregnancy
A. Adult Server
is considered an adult server. Players are free to explore any of a number of issues that might or might not be appropriate to children. We have seen fit however to place important restrictions on some aspects of sexuality. While some players may feel that non-consensual sexuality is a standard feature of most mythologies and many good works of literature, we have deemed it inappropriate for #.
B. Roleplaying Sex Crimes in # or any owned ## medium is expressly forbidden
1. A sex crime is defined as: a. Any non-consensual In-Character sexuality of any kind b. Any non-consensual Out-of-Character sexuality of any kind c. Any form of sexuality that involves a person under the age of eighteen whether consensual or not.
2. Roleplaying sexuality includes: a. Physically role-playing specific acts. b. Generating any story involving any such sexual acts. c. Making IC accusations or spreading IC rumors about sexual acts. d. Including Sex Crimes in your character's background.
3. Punishment: There is a zero-tolerance policy for Role-playing sex crimes. Punishment will be immediate ban from the server. Please do not look for any loopholes. If what you are caught doing is considered to be in violation of the spirit of the rule, you will be banned.
C. Roleplaying Pregnancy
1. Pregnancy will not be allowed on ## in any form. The Team recognizes that two players may have their characters get married, but the players are not to Role-play pregnancy.
2. PCs will not have any children until they are permanently retired and become NPCs, and those children are not playable as PCs.
3. After you have permanently retired your PC, Do not roll up any PC’s child as a character. PCs do not have children, either before becoming a PC, nor during their time as a PC, nor do they have playable children after retirement. This is to avoid either cheesy backgrounds or cheesy new characters.
4. Punishment for the first infraction is a simple warning, followed by vault jail and/or banning.
III. Policy on Pickpocketing
A. Do not repeatedly target the same PC, especially Newbies. This is considered unrealistic. This will be considered griefing.
B. Do not pickpocket a PC engaged in the crafting script. The menus prevent them from reacting appropriately.
C. When using pickpocket on a PC, you must set hostile before making the attempt. While this does make the attempt more difficult, the other person is forced to set you to hostile before responding appropriately.
D. Rules on Items Taken: Sometimes the engine may permit you to take items that should not be pickable. Examples include items bigger than a pocket, such as shields, armor, and most weapons, or plot items. If you receive such an item by accident, you are immediately required to return it in inconspicuous OOC way and you may not use any knowledge of the item in an IC way.
IV. You may be griefing if…
These are the most common things that are reported to the Team concerning griefing. Incidents are judged on a case by case basis, but in almost all the cases below, you will probably be considered griefing...Let the griefer beware.
A. You participate in some form of faction war (guild or other) and kill people who are not participating in the war
B. You kill an opposing faction player, and then kill them again when they retrieve their corpse and have only 5 hitpoints.
C. You kill the same person multiple times in a short span of time.
D. You kill someone in the faction war without giving any indication of which side you are on before killing them. A small battlecry would suffice. But simply walking up and killing without warning is borderline.
E. You repeatedly loot the same player in a short period of time.
F. You loot dry any player.
G. You say that any of the above mentioned cases do not apply to you because you are an "evil character".
H. You attack a PC who is defenselessly stuck in the crafting script (or any other ###### script that renders them defenseless).
I. You harass another player in tells: This includes but is not limited to sending numerous unsolicited Tells,failing to stop sending tells when instructed by another player to stop, sending tells that contain inappropriate content such as sexual or racial slurs, sending otherwise disrespectful or insulting tells to other players.
J. You threaten another player with griefing charges in order to duck out of IC responsibility for your character's actions.
K. You use racial slurs, curse excessively, use sexist language, taunt excessively or otherwise denigrate another player.