The Pits of Evil: The Realms of Evil Community - Terms of use
The Commandments of Posting
1. Thou Shall Not Flame: Respect your fellow forum members by not putting down their beliefs, opinions, gaming style, or material and DO NOT flame (cuss) another member on these forums. Such behavior is monitored constantly by forum staff and such threads containing profanity toward another member will be promptly deleted and the participants punished accordingly. Calling someone a "munchkin" is considered a flame on these forums, as such a comment usually leads to more colorful language between two members.
Profanity is not censored on the forums unless it is directed at another member. Saying "Shit, that is cool" is acceptable. However, saying "You're fucking stupid" is not. Please use colorful language correctly. Most of us are adults on these forums or are mature enough to know when enough is enough. Those found to be using too much profanity will be notified through an instant message or e-mail and by a moderator or administrator and asked to tone down their posts. Those that refuse will eventually be banned from the forums.
2. Thou Shall Not Annoy: Do not abuse the services provided by these forums. Such abuse is noted as using large amounts of text decoration (A.K.A. screaming) etc. Also do not abuse the actual features of the forums such as the e-mail notification system, instant messaging system, search or other programs linked to the forums. Such abuse (spamming, trolling, hacking into other people's accounts, trying to gain access to the administration center without authority, or using information provided by accounts such as e-mail to be used in mass mailing, deliberately trying to kill the forums by spamming the URL, or starting pyramid schemes) is illegal and such individuals will be banned quickly and their Internet service providers notified of their harassing behavior. Do NOT create more than one account to post at the forums with. Most of the times members do this thinking they can get away with posting flames under the second account and not worry about being banned. However, IP addresses are logged with each post and the accounts can quickly be linked to one person. Do NOT create accounts containing offensive material. Additionally, you must keep your avatar at 200x250 or less and NOT any larger.
3. Thou Shall Not Fluff: Do NOT fluff in any forums at the Pits of Evil with the exception of Fluff Post Central. Fluff posting is determined by the content of a member's post and those found to be extremely off-topic to the thread or forum they are in will be moved to the correct forum or deleted from the system. Since this forum system uses a ranking system to denote "importance" of a member in the society of gamers who post here, we often have new members who will attempt to inflate their post numbers by posting one or two word replies, post off topic, or start threads that do not belong in the forum they are in or are considered pure stupidity by other forums members just to gain another skull under their forum name. Such posts will be deleted and the author punished by banishment.
4. Thou Shall Not Steal: Do NOT post gaming material from ANY official sources other than what is in the System Reference Document. This includes spells, monsters, races, or other material from any gaming book that has been published by a gaming company and was not released as OGC. Do NOT ask for copyrighted material on the forums through instant messages or forums. Regardless of the privacy of the instant messaging system, administrators CAN and WILL submit copies of messages containing illegally posted material to the authorities should we be asked. Open Gaming Content can be posted to the forums as long as the author has permission of the author.
5. Thou Shall Not Disgust: Do NOT create accounts containing offensive material. Such material includes profane user or forum names, signatures, personal titles, etc. Any member found to be using a pornographic picture as their avatar will be banned from the forums AND website.
6. Thou Shall Not Advertise: Do NOT sign up for these forums to advertise your website, product, forums, or games you are running away from the RoE server, etc. This is considered spam and will not be tolerated. When you create an account there are plenty of ways to advertise your website or game (through the website link below your forum avatar, and through your signature which allows links) without creating an entire post about it. This requires you post normally to get the "exposure" you want for your website/game and that is why it discourages such individuals from ever signing up. Also note that culling e-mail addresses from the member's list in order to redirect forum members to your website is considered breaking this rule and rule #1. If you use a e-mail harvester to steal our member e-mail address, we WILL turn you into your ISP. Forumites that have 300+ Posts are allowed to advertise games in the Games Announcement forum that do not take place at the Realms of Evil forums or chat channel.
7. Thou Shall Participate: Posting at the forums is a requirement if you wish to keep your account here. Accounts that have posts logged that are dormant for more than a month are also subject to deletion unless the owner of the account contacts one of the administrators. If you continually create an account after having former accounts deleted, but do not post, your ISP will be permanently banned from accessing this forum. You can lurk without creating an account, so do not waste our server resources if you don't plan on participating as a member of this community.
8. Thou Shall Respect the Law: If it is against the law in the United States then it is also illegal on the RoE forums. So if it can be done online or offline and is illegal in the U.S. then DO NOT post about it on the Pits of Evil. This includes filesharing when it pertains to downloading illegally copied DVDs, books, as well as drug use, soliciting prostitutes, and other illegal subjects. We do not want threads on how to get the newest piece of pirated software, books, or movies on these forums and we don't want to hear about what illegal drugs you take regularly.
9. Thou Shall Not Whine: If you're not happy with something at the Pits of Evil, then please leave without making a big fuss in the community. Doing so will see you banned permanently without reprieve or parole so you won't be able to come back even if you wanted to. If you have a problem with another member, then talk to that member about it civilly instead of blowing up and screaming about leaving the forums. Leaving in this manner is the online equivalent of suicide. Just like in real life, when you kill yourself, you won't come back. It's the same way here. If you willingly delete your own account without explanation, you will also find yourself banned from ever returning to the forums. Please keep this in mind before you hit the 'Delete user' button in your profile.
If you do not agree with these rules, then please do not post at our forums.
Results of Violation
1) Admonition. This is the catch-all term for a mod telling you to that a certain behavior is frowned on by the staff. It's not a Warning, it doesn't get recorded anywhere, and it should be seen as a friendly "heads-up."
2) Warning. A warning is a statement by a mod to a group or individual that they're breaking a Forum Rule or Guideline. They are recorded Backstage. Warnings themselves do not carry any penalty, but we do review a user's history of warnings when deciding sanctions. In practical terms, we tend to forget about warnings after a month or so when viewing a user's history, so warnings from a year ago will rarely have any effect - or even be remembered by the staff. Warnings are a luxury, and Mods are under no compulsion to hand one out before administering a more significant sanction.
3) Forum-Bans. A forum-ban is a sanction wherein a user is forbidden from posting in a particular forum anymore -- often GERL, but possibly one of our many specialty forums. We are primarily a gaming site, and if we feel that off-topic matter is causing you trouble but we value your interaction outside GERL, we'll sometimes use a forum-ban.
4) Suspension. A suspension is a prohibition from using the site for a span from one day to a year. Creating a new profile or using a second profile to post while under a suspension is grounds for automatic, permanent banning from the site. This is sometimes called a temp-ban.
5) Banning. Banning is permanent removal from the site. There are a variety of levels of banning, but they're all indistinguishable to normal users. This is sometimes called a perma-ban.
Do not expect to be able request a specific kind of sanction -- they occur at each moderator's discretion for violations of the Rules of Posting.
The appeals process has been discussed in previous posts, but appeals can be directed at one of the Administrators of the site: KingOfChaos, AriadneRaynor, and Legatus Legionis, either at their personal email addresses (listed in their signatures) or through PM if you're not banned completely from the forums.
RealmsOfEvil.Net & PitsOfEvil.Com takes no responsibility from the content of the posts created by the members of the Pits of Evil, as such we take no legal stance should a forum member get into trouble because of the content of one of their posts at the Pits of Evil. However, we will cooperate legal authorities fully should some form of action be taken against a member of the Pits of Evil.
Copyright
Realms of Evil Games, Pits of Evil.Com and the Realms of Evil Network of sites have no affiliation with material posted in the Womb of Creation forum. We do not protect copyrights of the material posted there. We are not responsible if someone posts your copyrighted work on the Womb of Creation forums and claims it is theirs. If you see this, take it up with the member in question and NOT Realms Of Evil Games or Realms of Evil.Net.
Chat Room
Respect the channel operators. Most of them are also moderators at the forums and have full authority to boot out any trouble-makers that they believe are stirring up problems in the channel. Do not go into the chat room to harass someone there and expect the administrators not to find out. We have a log bot which tells all that goes on in the main channel sooner or later. Many of the rules above for the forums also go for the chat room as well. That means no spamming, no flaming, no flooding, etc. Do not talk about piracy of any type in the chat room or anything that is remotely against the law in the United States.