All the roleplay rules and guidelines in one place.
Welcome to Urth!
Howdy! This thread will give you information and links to further resources that will help make your RP experience an amazing one.
These rules and guidelines apply to Urth Roleplay. By joining our roleplaying community, you automatically agree to these rules. Be aware that the rules may periodically change. All changes will be announced but it is ultimately your responsibility to remain aware of any changes. Thank you for reading carefully!
The Important Stuff
While you should read this whole guide, this is a summary of the most important stuff you’re agreeing to.
- You agree to respect your fellow roleplayers. Insulting, cursing, harassing, or otherwise attempting to or causing harm to another player will result in immediate and severe consequences.
- You agree and understand that any action (roleplay, war declaration, wiki, etc.) involving other nations requires the consent of all those involved. This applies both in the present day and historically.
- You agree to never partake in powerplaying, godmodding, and metagaming.
- You understand that stats on NationStates are completely unrelated to those used in Urth Roleplay.
- You agree to respect our general rating of PG-13.
- You agree to follow the TEP Community Guidelines and the terms of service and guidelines of the services we use.
Staff
The roleplay staff performs community moderation to help develop and enforce rules that will make roleplay balanced, fair, and ethical. There are also broader Community Moderators and Administrators with some roles and responsibilities in Urth RP, which will not be detailed below.
Roleplay Moderators
The Roleplay Moderators deal with disputes relating to the roleplay canon, realism, and enforce roleplay standards. They are the leaders of roleplay and the roleplay staff, including the staff on our Discord server. They also get a vote in the Cartography Department.
Cartographers
The Cartography Department is in charge of maintaining and updating the map, as well as most of the roleplay resources. The team is led by the Cartography Director and composed of Cartographers.
Cartographers vote on all changes to the map. If a cartographer does do an alteration on their own, they are expected to inform the others. They can be removed from the position if they are found to work against these standards.
Discord Staff
Staffers are responsible for the day-to-day moderation of the server and ensure the rules of conduct are followed.
Discord Administrators
The Discord Administrators are in charge of managing and maintaining the Urth RP Discord itself (channels, permissions, bots, etc.).
Rules and Guidelines
Our rules are based off of the TEP Community Guidelines with additional content relevant to Urth RP. When using our Discord server, you must also abide by their Terms of Service and Community Guidelines.
If you are ever unsure, have questions, or have concerns, you can reach out to any member of the Administrative Team, Roleplay Team, or Discord Staff.
Content Restrictions
Violence
Violent content must follow the PG-13 standard. Gore and excessive descriptions of physical or psychological violence are not allowed. You may hint at it, but cannot describe it directly to the reader.
Sexual Content
Sexual content must follow the PG-13 standard. You may hint at sexual content, relationships, or nudity without going into detail. You may not, however, describe a sexual scene to a reader.
As an example, you can start a roleplay post with two characters waking up after a night together. This implies they slept together without actually describing it to the reader.
Forum Usage
Thread Ownership
You may not post in a “private” thread without the original poster’s permission. However, these “private” threads may not have overarching effects on the world stage. Those kinds of events require the consent of other affected roleplayers and threads about them should be open to those affected. Never dictate what is happening in a nation you don’t control.
Public Threads
When participating in a large public thread, stay on topic.
Gravedigging
Do not resurrect old threads. Those old projects are either complete or abandoned, and if you’re not their creator, you should not interact with them.
Nations
Population, Economy, and Military Sizes
These will be discussed with Cartographers when you are making your claim. After it is approved, any further changes must also be discussed with them. Everyone is entitled to a yearly adjustment in population and GDP, but this should also be discussed with the Cartographers. Stats are completely unrelated to NationStates. Do not use those stats here.
Wars and Diplomacy
You are never allowed to start a war or invade another nation without that roleplayer’s explicit permission. Any form of diplomacy requires consent from all involved parties.
If you want to, your nation can be isolationist. Other nations cannot force you to interact with them. Do be reasonable though, Urth RP is a very social experience.
You also cannot not bribe other roleplayers to get your desired outcome.
Making Changes (AKA Retcons)
You can make changes to your nation’s history and information (excluding the stats mentioned above) as you please provided it does not affect others. If you would like to make major changes to events previously discussed with someone else (e.g. a war that happened historically between your nations), you will have to discuss those changes together.
These kinds of retroactive changes, also known as retcons (short for “retroactive continuity”) can be complex affairs and may require lots of discussion and compromise. In case of difficulties or conflict during this process, please contact the roleplay staff.
Technology
Urth uses modern-day technology (and older), as it is a modern-day roleplay environment. These rules may differ in Alternate Universe RPs.
Realism
Urth is a relatively realistic roleplay setting, but there are exceptions. For instance, there are several sapient species for you to choose from. Ultimately, our stance is that you can have some things that do not exist in real life, but they must be done in a realistic way.
Multiple Nations
You are allowed to own multiple nations, provided you’ve maintained a certain level of activity. You will have to make new claims for them. If you are new, you should wait before claiming additional nations. Get settled in first, then we’ll talk.
Removal
The Cartography Department reserves the right to remove your nation from the map if you’ve been inactive for a while. More information can be found in the Nation Registration Guide.
Roleplaying Etiquette
Behaviour to Avoid
Never partake in any of the following:
- Metagaming: Giving your character information that you know out-of-character that they did not logically discover in-character.
- Trolling: Posting disparaging remarks about other players. Constructive criticism is welcomed but talking shit about them is not allowed.
- Flamebaiting: Taking action to deliberately cause another player to get upset.
- Godmodding: Giving your character unrealistic skills or an illogical and sudden fix to their problems. Likewise, you cannot make your country a rich, powerful and perfect place.
Out-of-Character and In-Character
It is important in roleplay to keep in mind when you should be out-of-character (OOC) and in-character (IC). For example, when interacting in roleplay threads or in Discord channels marked as such, you should be in-character. While you’re interacting with staff or going about your daily affairs on Discord, you should be out-of-character.
Using Real-Life People
We often use images of real people on the wiki and in roleplays. This is okay, but generally, it’s best to avoid very famous people and you may not use the likeness of any current leader. Do not use images of private individuals.
Plagiarism, Licensing, and Copyright
Proper Attribution
Do not copy/plagiarise other people’s work. Give proper credit if you quote someone’s work (and ask for permission).
Artificial Intelligence
The use of AI-generated text in roleplays (forum, wiki, etc.) is forbidden. We are a very writing-focused community, so we expect people to do that themselves. Having a computer generate the text for you defeats the purpose of this hobby.
The use of AI-generated images is permitted provided you give proper disclosure. For the wiki, this means using the relevant template when uploading the image. Elsewhere, you must mention that the image is AI-generated. While you are allowed to use them, we strongly encourage people to seek other sources first, such as Wikimedia, openly licensed (free) image sites, or even commissioning artists, if you can afford to do so.
This section was written following a community consultation in January 2025.
Licensing
All content on TEPwiki is under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. Hence, any content you publish there is under that same license.
Any documentation, maps, and images in the Urth Cartography GitHub repository, as well as any text on the website are released under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Website code (excluding any text content within those files) is released under a GNU AGPLv3 license.
All content on the forums is published under these terms. Hence, any content you publish there is under those same terms.
Copyright
Never use any copyrighted works in your roleplays or claims. This includes, for example, taking names for cities from media properties or fantasy book series.
Moderation
The moderation team reserves the right to take action against any violation of these rules on any related platforms. If you get caught behaving badly off-site, you can also be punished (context dependent).
Punishments
Some punitive actions we take include bans, suspensions, and removal of nations. Depending on the context, your punishment might be limited to a certain service or extend to the whole community.
Decision-Making
When we make decisions, we look at the frequency and context of the violation, as well as your past history. In short, we work on a case-by-case basis. The same action on different threads can elicit a different response. The same action by two different players can get a different response.
Appeals
There is no official appeal process. You may ask the moderation team to reconsider, but they are under no obligation to do so.
If you feel unjust offences have been committed against you by the Roleplay Team, you may contact the Community Administrators.
Zero Tolerance Subject Matter
We have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to bigotry and discrimination, which includes but is not limited to: homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, racism, sexism, and ableism. If you’re the type of person who engages in such behaviour, you’re unwelcome in this community.
As usual, context matters. Some may wish to explore such topics within their nations. It is possible (and in fact very easy) to describe your nation passing a homophobic policy or discussing your nation’s racist past without being homophobic or racist. Though, if we notice that, for example, you’re a bit too excited about your leader passing bigoted policy, that might warrant an intervention.
Rewritten by turtle in January 2025, based on the original by hobbes, Emjay, and various other contributors.