ROLEPLAY TERMS & SERIOUS RP STANDARDS CHARACTER • CONSEQUENCE • STORY

HOLLOWGROVE ROLEPLAY TERMS & SERIOUS RP STANDARDS 1 HollowGrove is a serious roleplay environment built around character, consequence, uncertainty, and story. These terms exist to establish the standard expected from every player. They are not loopholes, technicalities, or shields against staff judgment. A scene will be judged by its full context: what led to it, what each character reasonably knew, how the situation escalated, how mechanics were used, and whether the actions taken contributed to believable roleplay. If the only defense for an action is that a rule does not explicitly forbid it, you are already approaching the standard incorrectly. Story comes before victory. Character comes before mechanics. Consequences matter. GENERAL ROLEPLAY IN CHARACTER - IC Anything your character says, does, witnesses, learns, believes, remembers, or experiences inside the world. Your character exists independently from you as the player. What you know is not automatically what they know. OUT OF CHARACTER - OOC Anything involving you as the player rather than your character. Information gained outside the world must remain outside the world unless your character legitimately discovers it through roleplay. FAILRP Roleplay that is implausible, careless, mechanically abusive, deliberately immersion-breaking, or inconsistent with the seriousness of the situation. Examples include ignoring severe injuries, treating life-threatening situations as meaningless, abusing game mechanics to escape consequences, or behaving in a way that makes no believable sense for the character or scene. Not every unusual decision is FailRP. The question is whether the action can reasonably exist within the story being told. BREAKING CHARACTER Abandoning your character's established behavior, personality, knowledge, circumstances, or motivations without a believable roleplay reason. Characters can change. They should change because something happened to them, not because the player suddenly needs a different outcome.

HOLLOWGROVE ROLEPLAY TERMS & SERIOUS RP STANDARDS 2 CHARACTER BLEED Allowing feelings, conflicts, friendships, grudges, or information to improperly cross between the player and the character. An enemy in character is not automatically an enemy outside the game. An argument outside the game is not justification for revenge inside it. Keep the two worlds separate. INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE METAGAMING Using information your character did not legitimately acquire. This includes locations, identities, plans, relationships, supernatural information, criminal activity, private conversations, or any other knowledge obtained outside proper roleplay. Knowing something as a player does not grant that knowledge to your character. THIRD-PARTY COMMUNICATION Using Discord, private calls, messages, streams, or any other outside platform to communicate information that affects an active roleplay situation. If your character cannot communicate the information within the world, you may not bypass that limitation outside it. STREAM SNIPING Using a livestream, recording, broadcast, or spectator perspective to obtain information your character would not otherwise possess. This includes discovering locations, identities, plans, possessions, weaknesses, supernatural abilities, or active scenes. GHOSTING Passing information to another player through OOC means so that it can influence their actions in character. You do not need to personally benefit from the information for it to be ghosting. CONFLICT Conflict in HollowGrove should have weight. Violence should come from something. Hatred, fear, desperation, betrayal, territory, revenge, survival, politics, supernatural tension, criminal activity, or an ongoing story can all create legitimate conflict. Random violence does not. INITIATION The point at which a hostile situation has clearly begun.

HOLLOWGROVE ROLEPLAY TERMS & SERIOUS RP STANDARDS 3 Initiation may come through threats, demands, intimidation, violence, established conflict, or circumstances where danger is already obvious. There is no required magic phrase. The surrounding roleplay matters. Both sides should reasonably understand when a situation has become dangerous. ESCALATION Conflict should develop in proportion to what is happening. An insult does not normally justify execution. A fistfight does not automatically justify a massacre. A longstanding blood feud may justify reactions that a first encounter would not. History matters. Intent matters. Context matters. Escalation should feel like the natural result of the story, not an excuse to reach violence as quickly as possible. RANDOM DEATHMATCH - RDM Attacking, severely injuring, or killing another player without sufficient roleplay justification or reasonable escalation. Weapons are not substitutes for roleplay. The ability to kill someone mechanically does not create a reason to kill them narratively. VEHICLE DEATHMATCH - VDM Using horses, wagons, vehicles, or movement mechanics as weapons in an unrealistic or deliberately abusive manner. Accidents are not VDM. Using the game engine to bypass meaningful interaction is. COMBAT LOGGING Leaving the server, force-closing the game, intentionally disconnecting, or otherwise removing yourself from an active situation to avoid its consequences. A genuine crash is different. If you unexpectedly disconnect during an active scene, make a reasonable effort to return. REVENGE KILLING Returning to attack someone primarily because they previously killed or incapacitated your character when your character would not reasonably retain the knowledge, motivation, or opportunity to do so. Death is not a reset button for the player to try the same fight again. NEW LIFE RULE - NLR After death or severe incapacitation, your character may lose some or all memory surrounding the event depending on what occurred.

HOLLOWGROVE ROLEPLAY TERMS & SERIOUS RP STANDARDS 4 You may not immediately return to the scene, recover information through OOC means, or continue the conflict solely because you as the player remember what happened. The specific consequences of death may depend on the circumstances and applicable server systems. When uncertain, prioritize the story over revenge. ROLEPLAY CONDUCT POWERGAMING Using mechanics, unrealistic actions, forced assumptions, or game limitations to create an unfair outcome another player cannot reasonably respond to. Game mechanics support roleplay. They do not define every narrative outcome. GODMODDING Controlling another character's actions, thoughts, emotions, injuries, reactions, or outcome without allowing that player a meaningful chance to respond. You control your character. You do not control theirs. FORCED ROLEPLAY Creating an outcome where another player is denied meaningful participation. Restraints, injuries, imprisonment, supernatural abilities, and other mechanics may legitimately limit a character's options. They should not eliminate the player's ability to participate in the scene. There is a difference between being powerless in character and being excluded as a player. NVL / FEARRP Failing to value your character's life, safety, freedom, or survival when faced with credible danger. A character may be brave, reckless, suicidal, ancient, powerful, or fanatical. Those traits must be established and roleplayed. They do not grant immunity from fear, pain, consequences, or common sense. WIN MENTALITY Treating roleplay as a competition that must be won. Being arrested is not losing. Being injured is not losing. Being deceived is not losing. Having your plan fail is not losing. Sometimes the best scenes begin when your character loses control of the situation.

HOLLOWGROVE ROLEPLAY TERMS & SERIOUS RP STANDARDS 5 Players who constantly protect themselves from consequences usually destroy the very stories that serious roleplay is supposed to create. BAITING Deliberately provoking another player, faction, law enforcement group, or supernatural faction primarily to manufacture conflict. Conflict should emerge from character motives and existing circumstances, not from someone trying to force a reaction. COP BAITING Intentionally provoking law enforcement primarily to create a chase, arrest, gunfight, or confrontation without meaningful character motivation. Law enforcement exists as part of the world. They are not an on-demand event system. SCENE INTERFERENCE Entering, disrupting, or inserting yourself into an active scene without a believable reason for your character to become involved. Witnessing something does not automatically make you central to it. Allow other players' stories room to exist. RETCONNING Attempting to erase, reverse, rewrite, or ignore roleplay that already occurred because the outcome became inconvenient. Consequences remain part of your character's story unless staff determines that a correction is necessary. Major retcons require staff approval. SUPERNATURAL ROLEPLAY The supernatural world of HollowGrove is not ordinary knowledge. Most people do not understand what truly exists around them. Rumors may exist. Folklore may exist. Fear may exist. Certainty must be earned. The unknown is part of the setting. Protect it. SUPERNATURAL METAGAMING Using OOC knowledge to identify or understand another character's supernatural nature. You may not automatically know another person's caste, abilities, weaknesses, age, rank, bloodline, affiliations, transformations, or supernatural history because you recognize the mechanic as a player.

HOLLOWGROVE ROLEPLAY TERMS & SERIOUS RP STANDARDS 6 Your character must discover these things through the world. A strange event is evidence that something strange happened. It is not automatic proof of what caused it. SUPERNATURAL REVEAL Revealing the supernatural should matter. Displaying impossible abilities openly may create witnesses, rumors, fear, investigation, retaliation, political consequences, or attention from forces that would prefer the truth remain hidden. Do not treat supernatural abilities like emotes. Revelation is part of the story. Once something has been seen, it may become impossible to completely take back. ABILITY POWERGAMING Using a supernatural ability as an automatic narrative victory. The fact that an ability successfully activates does not mean every intended consequence automatically occurs exactly as the player wants. Powers create situations. They do not eliminate roleplay. When reasonable, other players must still be given an opportunity to react to what is happening. POWER SCALING ABUSE Claiming automatic superiority because of age, caste, rank, bloodline, title, backstory, or lore. An Ancient Vampire may be extraordinarily dangerous. An Angel may possess powers beyond a Human. A Werewolf may physically overpower someone under the right circumstances. These differences are real. They are not permission to declare yourself unbeatable. Established strengths, weaknesses, server mechanics, circumstances, preparation, numbers, surprise, injuries, environment, and roleplay all matter. No character wins simply because their biography says they should. ABILITY STACKING Combining abilities, items, transformations, buffs, mechanics, or systems in a way designed primarily to remove all reasonable counterplay. Synergy between abilities can be legitimate. Using every available mechanic simultaneously to create an unavoidable outcome is not. If another player is given no meaningful opportunity to understand, respond to, resist, escape, or roleplay through what is happening, the combination may be considered abusive. LORE BREAKING Ignoring established HollowGrove supernatural rules, world limitations, weaknesses, history, or setting lore.

HOLLOWGROVE ROLEPLAY TERMS & SERIOUS RP STANDARDS 7 Your personal character lore may add to the world. It may not overwrite the world. A backstory cannot make your character immune to established weaknesses, secretly stronger than the setting allows, royalty over an existing faction without approval, or exempt from consequences. Server canon takes priority over personal canon. CONSEQUENCES Actions in HollowGrove are expected to create consequences. Crime may bring law enforcement. Violence may create enemies. Supernatural exposure may create witnesses. Betrayal may destroy alliances. Power may attract attention. Death may change a character's story. Not every consequence will be immediate. Not every consequence will be obvious. That does not mean there is none. Do not avoid meaningful decisions because something bad might happen to your character. That uncertainty is where much of the story lives.

HOLLOWGROVE THE HOLLOWGROVE STANDARD 8 THE HOLLOWGROVE STANDARD HollowGrove is not about discovering the strongest build. It is not about collecting technical victories. It is not about finding the sentence in the rules that lets you justify something everyone knows was poor roleplay. It is about creating a world where characters remember what happened yesterday, where choices follow people, where violence means something, where supernatural power creates fear instead of entitlement, and where losing control of a situation can create a better story than winning it. Play your character. Respect the scene. Accept consequences. Let other characters matter. Keep OOC knowledge out of IC decisions. Give supernatural power weight. Do not search for loopholes. Do not confuse mechanical possibility with roleplay justification. There will be situations no written rule perfectly covers. Staff may intervene when conduct clearly violates the spirit of serious roleplay, even when that exact scenario is not described word-for-word above. The standard is simple: If everyone involved is trying to create a believable story instead of trying to defeat each other, most problems never begin.