Rules

[Skibbles]

Arelith has a lot of rules. New and old players alike can easily get lost in the Byzantine maze of bannable rulings tucked away in the dark corners of an early 2000s-style forum.

I would like to see a list of the rules in a single, easily accessible and easily browsed format separate from the forum, like below, only updated.

http://nwnarelith.com/index.php/faq

First I understand that, in a vital advertising sense, having it seem like Arelith has only 5 rules is probably very appealing as a hook for new players. It isn't complicated, and people will log in instead of get bogged down.

The problem arises that it simply isn't the case, though. For example half a dozen rules, even shop mechanics, are being crammed into Be Nice. If I read only the header and thought 'Okay be nice, got it,' I would never know that it meant several other things that aren't necessarily 'mean.'

There's tons of rules: no logging in loot areas, no attacking settlements without permission, no funny business with slaves, several addendums to the 24 hour rule on pvp (did you know that in group pvp, regardless of attacker or who dies, every single person is to follow the 24 hr rule? I found that out, just now while making this post, and now I learn this rule is broken *constantly* through what I can only suspect is complete ignorance).

Those are some examples. As a long time player, and frequenter of the forum, I have still learned rules in two ways:

1) Surprise! That thing you did, that isn't a rule, is actually a rule.
2) Overhearing (overreading?) a conversation in discord about a rule I didn't know existed.

This seems like a poor way to disseminate rulings that frequently have a 'No Tolerance' or 'Punishment up to a Ban' policy.

Solution
---
Less reliance on posting rules updates in a dusty reminder thread (it bothers me that bannable rules, not included in the list of five rules, are 'reminders').

I think it would be better if a rule update, or addition, was handled similar to game updates.

Example: "Hello today we're updating our rule policy. Drow are no longer allowed to have pet cats. The team has decided that fuzzy and cute isn't part of the vision we have for drow on Arelith. Drow with cats will be warned, or banned, depending on the luxuriousness of their illegal cat's coat. Please see our Rules page (external link out of forums to Arelith page exclusively for rules) for details."

The rules page in the example would be static, and not part of the forum. It is it's own thing, and everyone knows where it is, and if anyone asks "hey can we" then there's one place they can be pointed to instead of people running forum searches for a snippet from 2018 of a quote from 2015 citing a post from 2012 (I'm exaggerating but sometimes it feels like this).

In conclusion: I'm not particularly worried about myself breaking rules, but it does bother me that everyone is held to standards and rules that are not accessible, or arguably inaccessible.

[The GrumpyCat]

Rejecting the drow-cat ownership idea. I'm sorry but a cat may own whomever it pleases.

The rest of this is actually pretty good though. At the least I think it's worthy of discussing. So putting this to 'approved' for now at least.

[Sincra]

Complete with the rules clarification post and document.