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Site Rules

Site Rules
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Code of Conduct
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1. Be respectful and kind to all players. Bear in mind that tone can easily be misconstrued over text and adjust accordingly. We maintain a zero-tolerance policy regarding harassment and take abuse very seriously. Harassment includes nagging people about posting; criticising the way they choose to write their characters; and interacting with players in a rude, aggressive, or passive-aggressive manner. If you feel that another player is not adhering to this community standard, please contact an administrator immediately.

If, for whatever reason, you have an issue you would like to discuss/resolve with another player, please do so politely and respectfully. You can ask questions, set boundaries, and give your opinion on a situation without being rude or unkind. If you cannot engage politely and respectfully, step away from the conversation until you feel able to do so.

Please note that every member of this site has a personal responsibility to ensure that they are managing their own feelings and relationships with other members. As long as you're polite and respectful to your fellow members, you can choose how to engage and who to engage with on this site. In cases where you are genuinely concerned that someone has broken our rules or rating, or in cases where players are not adhering to our community standards, please contact an administrator for further advice. See this thread for more details.

2. You must adhere to the site rating at all times.

3. Administrator decisions are final. Please do not attempt to bypass the decision of one administrator by asking another. If you believe that a decision we have made is unfair, you are welcome to challenge it in a constructive and courteous manner. We will review our decision and your comments, but whether we change our decision will depend on the issue. 

4. No plagiarism. No content from our rules, graphics, plots, or any other material from our site may be copied without permission from the administrators.

All the branding images, graphics, and codes on this site—including the background, badges, and icons—are private property, and should not be reappropriated for any personal use without explicit permission from the administrators. This includes use of branding logos and designs from the site in character avatars, plot pages, etc.

Using codes created by other players without their explicit permission is plagiarism. Please note that 'using codes' can mean looking at another player's code with the intention of copying their code/the visual effect created or taking another player's code and modifying it in some way. If you like another player's use or style of coding, always ask their permission before attempting to recreate a similar design.

5. Do not give anyone else access to your account(s). This is a severe breach of security, and you will be held accountable for all activity on your account(s). Lying to any administrator or moderator about the activity on your account (e.g. the player behind the account) may result in you being permanently banned from our site.

6. Do not lie or withhold the truth about your identity to administrators. There may be some circumstances where current or returning players wish to conceal their identity when creating new characters. This is permitted with the following caveats:
  • The player must inform the administrators via PM that they are a returning player and must list all of their previous accounts in their PM.
  • The player must not pretend to be a brand new player on their new account. However, they can refuse to answer questions around their previous account(s). If you choose to conceal your identity, please be aware that this may make other players feel uncomfortable and that they may choose not to engage with you as a result.
The administrators will not share concealed identities with any other site members. We request this information for safety and security purposes only. Failure to inform an administrator that you are returning under a new account with a concealed identity may result in you being permanently banned from our site.

7. To ensure your privacy, please refrain from discussing personal issues extensively on the boards, private messages, and our Discord server. If you give anyone here your personal contact information, the administrators are no longer responsible for what happens afterwards, including any interactions that happen off-site and outside our Discord server.

8. Do not solicit or advertise for other sites, groups, or individual entities anywhere on our site (including our Discord server and private messaging system), except for in the Advertisements forum.

9. The administrators are open to receiving suggestions, feedback, concerns, complaints, and/or solutions to potential issues. However, all comments should be presented in a courteous and constructive manner.

10. Do not voice support for movements, groups, or policies that seek to hurt, silence, or otherwise oppress women, people of color, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, or any other minorities.

11. If you become aware of any player failing to adhere to any of the rules on this page, please contact an administrator so that we can resolve the issue as soon as possible. Help us to maintain a safe, secure, and inclusive site by letting us know when rules have been broken.


Character Rules
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Hogwarts Characters

1. All players are initially permitted one student character at any given time.

2. A second student character slot may be purchased for 750 Gringotts points.

3. As a result of site transitions, players who were active members on this site prior to October 2013 may have a second student at no charge to their Gringotts' accounts.

4. If you are selected to teach, you may have one professor character in addition to your student(s).



Elsewhere Characters

1. There is no limit to the number of characters you can play in Elsewhere or in our played institutions (Ministry of Magic and St. Mungo's).

2. The administrators encourage players to only create as many characters as they can actively play.



Creating a Character

1. Don't create a superhero. Roleplaying is community-driven, and therefore there is no main protagonist on this site. We encourage our players to create balanced characters who have both strengths and weaknesses, as this will ultimately lead to stronger writing and character arcs. If you would like your character to have a special power, you will need to submit a special request.

2. Maintain a sense of realism in your writing. Whilst this is a 'magical' universe, your character may not morph into an elf or suddenly be teleported into a different world, etc. However, if you do have an interesting idea that lies outside established Harry Potter canon, you may submit a special request for an unusual plot.

3. Create original characters. Do not use names from or apply as characters from the Harry Potter series, or from other books, series, or films. Do not apply as relatives of existing characters within the Harry Potter series or another series. Do not apply as a celebrity or real person. We are interested in your original characters, not reinterpretations of pre-existing and copyrighted ones.

4. All characters should be human in race, and should possess character features (e.g. hair color, eye color) typically found in nature. However, if you wish for your character to have unusual physical characteristics (including non-human heritage, extensive/magical scarring, or extensive/magical tattoos), you may submit a special request for unusual physical characteristics.

5. All biographies and roleplay responses must be original and written entirely by the player. This means that characters with shared histories (e.g. siblings, childhood friends) cannot use the same biography/roleplay response or parts of the same biography/roleplay responses. Applications can follow similar formats or sequencing of events, but the actual content must be unique to the character.



Reapplying as an Existing Character

1. If you have an accepted Elsewhere or Student application, you do not need to reapply for Elsewhere access, no matter how long you have been absent. You can simply begin roleplaying again on the Elsewhere board.

2. If you wish to return as a student after an extended absence (i.e. you have missed the end-of-term check-in for students and are therefore no longer enrolled as a student on the Castle board), then you will need to reapply as a student.

3. Regardless of how long you have been gone, your character’s timeline is still aligned with the site’s timeline. This means that you cannot simply pick up where you left off with a character; they will have aged however many IC years have passed since you last played them. This is to ensure that our site canon remains consistent and that we do not create loopholes in our timeline. It is your responsibility as a player to manage your own characters and ensure that their timelines align with the site timeline and site canon.

4. You may not reapply as a character that has previously been played by another player, even if that player is no longer active. This includes characters from your own original families that have been adopted by other players. Do not give away characters from your original families unless you are willing to accept the risk that the player may become inactive or choose to retire the character.



Deleting a Character

1. Deleting a character is referred to as 'retiring' a character on our site. A retired character is a character that has been played previously on this site, but will no longer be played. They may be referenced in posts and included as general characters in larger plots, but the player has no intention of utilising their account again; it can therefore be deleted.

2. Only an administrator can delete a character’s account.

3. Once a character has been retired, there is no way to un-retire them or bring their account back. Character retirement is final, so be sure of your decision before submitting a retirement request.

4. If you wish to retire a character, they must meet the following requirements:
  • The character must have been played for at least one term (4 months). 'Played' in this context means that the character has an accepted application; it is not defined by the number of posts you have made with that character since being accepted.
  • The character must have a complete wiki page. See here for more information on how to create a wiki page.
  • The character must be one that you will not be playing again in future.
5. Please see here for a step-by-step guide on how to retire a character.


Posting Rules
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General Posting Rules

1. Keep out-of-character (OOC) conversations in the General OOC forum on each board. Do not write OOC posts in in-character (IC) IC forums; these will be removed.

2. Write in English. Do not use d00dsp34k, internet speak (U NO WHO U R) or L33+ 5P34| on our site. If you are writing specific words, dialogue, or phrases in another language, you must include a translation at the bottom of your post.

3. For safety reasons, do not post any personal information on the general boards or in our Discord server. If you wish to share this information with another player, please private message (PM) them on site or send them a Direct Message (DM) on Discord. Please be aware that conversations not occurring on the site or on our Discord server are not within the administrators' jurisdiction.



Avatar and Signature Rules

1. Avatars representing the appearance of your characters are permitted and encouraged as long as they adhere to the site rules and site rating.

2. Nudity and/or explicit images are not permitted in avatars.

3. Shirtless avatars are not permitted, regardless of gender. Similarly, avatars in which the FC is only wearing underwear (or the equivalent, e.g. a bikini) are not permitted.

4. If you are unsure about whether or not an avatar will be permitted, please ask an administrator before using the image.

5. The best size for avatars is 200px in width and 300px in height. Avatars which diverge from these specifications are likely to look stretched or squashed.

6. Links and images in signatures are not permitted. This includes images that are coded as backgrounds, as well as images coded within the [img] [ /img] tags.


Roleplaying Rules
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General Roleplaying Rules

1. Please write in third person past tense (e.g. 'she walked in'). You may write in a different person or tense for the biography section of applications, plot pages, IC journals, IC letter threads, and summer workshops

2. No powerplaying without permission. Powerplaying is when you control the actions of characters which are not your own. This includes impersonating another character or determining whether a spell your character casts affects another character. For example:
  • Correct: John asked Helen to come along, hoping that she would follow him to see the Giant Squid.

  • Incorrect: John asked Helen to come along. Helen replied with a yes.
If you wish to powerplay another character, you must receive explicit permission to do so and this must be noted in an OOC note at the end of your post (e.g. 'permission to powerplay X granted by player').

3. Exceptional levels, unusual physical characteristics, unusual/dark plots, special powers, unusual pets, unusual occupations, magical artefacts, original or powerful potions, original or powerful spells, or any other unusual request require a special request. Do not roleplay any of the above without explicit permission from administrators. If you are unsure whether your idea requires a special request, always err on the side of caution and ask an administrator.

4. Our site is currently set in the 1960s. Technological and historical references in your writing should fit the current era. It is your responsibility to ensure that your writing aligns with the current year on the site.



Hogwarts Roleplaying Rules

1. Hogwarts permits every student to bring one pet. This pet may be a cat, frog, mouse, owl, rat, or toad. However, if you wish to bring a different type of pet, you may submit a special request for an unusual pet.

2. You may not take the same class at the same level with two student characters. This means that you may only take the same class with two characters if the class is split into lower years (1-4) and upper years (5-7), and you have one lower year character and one upper year character. If a class is not split into separate lower/upper year lessons, you may not take it with two characters. This is to ensure that classes remain balanced.

3. You may participate in Hospital Wing, Quidditch, and Spellbound with two student characters. You may only participate in Duelling with one student character.

4. All parties and events (regardless of the number of participants) must be approved by an administrator.

5. All gangs or clubs must be approved by an administrator.

6. All IC fights, duels, pranks, or other disruptions must be approved by an administrator.

7. If you wish for your character to leave the castle grounds for any length of time during the term (e.g. for an internship, a family event like a wedding or a funeral, etc.), you must request permission from your head of house. IC, permission would come from the headmistress (either directly or via your head of house). The exceptions to this rule are school holidays, where you can choose what your character does and where they go, and Hogsmeade trips, where your character is permitted to visit Hogsmeade. The dates for holidays and Hogsmeade trips are outlined in the relevant term's calendar (available here).

8. If you wish to roleplay or reference any student characters entering other houses' common rooms, you must submit a special request for an unusual plot to the relevant head of house for approval first. Please note that these requests will only be approved if they are one-off instances that serve a specific plot purpose which cannot be achieved in a different environment. Requests for students to frequently or regularly enter other common rooms with no specific underlying reason or plot will not be approved.



Elsewhere Roleplaying Rules

1. All characters should have realistic occupations. For example, one character cannot have two full-time jobs (without the use of a Time Turner), but they may have one full/part-time job and a second part-time job. Players are expected to manage their own characters' occupations sensibly and realistically, but administrators may intervene if a player is unable to do this.

2. All parties and events (regardless of the number of participants) must be approved by an administrator.

3. All gangs or clubs must be approved by an administrator.

4. All IC fights, duels, pranks, or other disruptions must be approved by an administrator.

5. Student characters played only in Elsewhere must still adhere to the rules outlined for Hogwarts students above.



Camp Loki Roleplaying Rules

1. Campers are not permitted to use magic at any time. Campers who participate in summer duelling programmes are exempt from this rule for the duration of the duels only. If you wish to use magic in a thread that is not a set summer duel, please PM Clinton Litchfield, the camp director, to request permission.

2. All counsellors are permitted to use magic.

3. Guests are not allowed to visit Camp Loki.

4. Campers are permitted to leave for emergencies or family matters, if they have written permission from their parent or legal guardian.

5. Campers are permitted to leave Camp Loki for day trips, if they have written permission from their parent or legal guardian. They must sign out and in again with their counsellor or the camp director.