Board rules

Welcome to Seinvocc! Before registering, you should gain a fundamental understanding of this website and its gameplay. Please read all the info below and agree to get started. You can always click on the Rules button in the site's header to review this.

  1. Seinvocc is a role-playing (RP) forum website. If that is new to you, you should read this first: How to Use/Play #
  2. Content and Censorship

    1. This game is directed toward a mature audience. You may consider it to be along the ratings of PG-13 for movies or T for video games. There is no sexual content, though some content may be suggestive. There is "explicit language," if you can stomach the term. There is blood and gore, sometimes with visual aides, oftentimes with descriptions. There is drug and alcohol usage. Above all, remember that this is fiction and set in a high fantasy setting; no game content should be taken as glorification, encouragement, suggestion, or the inverse to any real-life behavior. All players are encouraged to act within morality and according to applicable legislation in real life without regard for in-game content. #
    2. We do not censor language of any kind, but this is an English board. All forms of communication outside of PMs (private messages) should be performed in English for the sake of clarity across a worldwide player base.
      If a player places "[No Cussing]" in their thread title or requests it out-of-character in their initial post of a thread, please be respectful toward that player's wishes in that thread. If it betrays your character's identity to augment its speech to a great degree, it may be better for you to just refrain from participating in the thread in question. To those that would implement such restrictions, remember that you may be denying others' ability to play with you because of your sensitivities. Just try to get along. #
    3. Absolutely no pornography or sexually explicit descriptions are allowed. Violations of this rule that involve an underage individual, be that in-game or out-of-character, will receive immediate bans with no warnings. You may convey that some manner of lewd behavior has occurred in-game via non-descriptive mention. "She was sexually active in that period of her life" and "His mother was raped, abandoned, and died in childbirth, so he's an orphan" are acceptable, albeit cliché, elements of backstories, for instance. "He brought her to his room, whereupon lewd behavior ensued" is also an acceptable manner in which we may be informed that non-specific NSFW connotation is intended, but there is nothing that would be cause for serious concern.
      This brings up the question of what qualifies as porn and sexual and what qualifies as normal. We do not subscribe to the puritanical sentiment that female nipples are sexual. Neither do we take issue with thighs, hips, buttocks, or pelvic skin. Genitals should not be shown. Via text descriptions, it is acceptable to denote that a character is naked (though in-game culture stipulates that they will not go uncovered for long if they are near others), but do not get into explicit details.
      Put briefly, the standard is "ecchi, not hentai," or else "questionable is fine, explicit is not." We should all be a mature audience that can handle seeing and imagining some basic anatomy that has no business being shamed by puritanical values, and we are not a porn site. It is not a hard balance to keep. You can PM an admin if you are still unsure of something. #
    4. Out-of-character, drunkenness or intoxication is never an excuse for poor behavior or writing of any kind. Seinvocc is an intellectually involved, multiplayer game that requires lucidity and respect for fellows.
      In-game, alcohol consumption is not restricted by age due to the variety of physical compositions, magical effects, and cultural differences between many characters. It is, however, subject to the same in-game standards as food and drugs, which are as follows:
      Anyone that sells or serves food, drink, or drugs of any kind is required to have and use a scanning ability for the product and the customer in order to determine what negative effects may occur. The provider is required to relay this information so that every customer makes an informed decision. Selling a substance with a lasting (greater than ten seconds), negative effect or lasting effect that is harmless, but may be personally undesirable and difficult to reverse, to a minor is strictly illegal. What constitutes a minor is detailed in some very thorough documents to account for the fantastic racial diversity among characters. #
    5. Failure to comply with laws in real life is not something that we can punish here under most circumstances, but we certainly will not cover for you. Failure to comply with site rules (e.g. posting sexually explicit content or encouraging minors to take illegal drugs in real life) will result in punishments depending on the severity and frequency of violations. From moderators and administrators, warnings will be given, directives to edit messages will be given, messages will be edited for you (and we have no qualms about any collateral damage that doing so may incur in your gameplay), messages will be deleted, your account will be suspended for varying lengths of time, your account will be deleted, and you will be banned.
      On the other hand, violations of in-game laws incur consequences in-game only; there are no out-of-game consequences for your characters' choices. #
  3. Character Types

    1. Your account name should match your in-game character ("char" for short) name for the Universe of Houcm. You can use the same account to participate as other chars in Other Universes role-plays, but there should be one Houcm char per account. This is true of all accounts, regardless of character type. If you wish to join Seinvocc solely for Other Universes, it is still recommended that you create a char name to use when you do come to your senses and join the wonders of the Houcm Universe, but a generic account name is acceptable if you are absolutely sure that you don't want to decide on such a name yet. #
    2. Most accounts are simply adventurers. The morality, motivations, and methods of your chars are totally under your purview, but they should not be explicitly evil; that's what the villains are for.
      All adventurers must create a bio, ability list, inventory, and starting funds, as described later, and have each element approved by a mod or admin before gameplay. If any allies are included in your character, also explained later, they must also be submitted for approval before gameplay. #
    3. Civilians, a.k.a. civvies, are like adventurers, but weaker. These are the chars for which players do not bother to create expansive, viable, powerful abilities and inventories because these characters lack adventurous ambitions. They exist more for what I call the "playing house" type of RP, that which focuses on relationships, careers, and other life issues. It is possible for a civvy to work its way up to being capable of Lv1 and become an adventurer or a villain upon completing a Levelling Challenge, but there is no pressing expectation to do so. As long as you are RPing, you're contributing to the game.
      You do not simultaneously hold membership in the civilians and adventurers or villains groups. You are considered to be too weak for your dastardly intentions to be significant enough to qualify you as a villain. However, if these intentions become clear to others in-game, their treatment of you may not follow the same reasoning.
      To help them get along nicely in the fantasy setting of Houcm, civilians are granted some extra liberties in their inventories and allies, which still must be submitted for approval before gameplay begins.
      Tycoon Mode: Some civvies are extra-civvy. They start with even harsher regulations on their battle capabilities, but gain extra liberties in their starting inventories, allies, and funds. Click on "Tycoon Mode" to be linked to the thread with a thorough explanation. #
    4. A grigori (ɡɻɪ-ɡəʊ-ɻi) is a guild leader, the bearer of an in-game governmental position. The plural is also grigori. They are still adventurers, but they get an extra group to give them a royal color as long as they are serving in office. #
    5. Villains are adventurers with explicitly evil alignments. Whether or not they acknowledge their morality to be deviant or not is irrelevant, as is whether or not their end goals are noble, as long as their methods are ignoble, though they usually are forced to acknowledge something to be awry when they are rejected and hunted by guilds and must beseech the Archvillains in order to take Levelling Challenges. Because of the following differences, we maintain as a rule of thumb that players should create regular adventurers and get into the game for a while before creating a villain:
      - Word will spread that you are villainous. You will be targeted, hunted, ganged up on, refused service, and otherwise treated as a villain ought to be. Since you start at Lv1 like everyone else, but there are noble folks that would make an enemy of you and are not at Lv1, you are constantly in peril, even with other high-level villains sometimes helping you to get on your feet. It is a very high-pressure playstyle in which what seems to be a minor miscalculation or just ill luck can be fatal or otherwise career-ending.
      - To partially compensate, you are given some leniency in the balance of your abilities and inventory in the fields of disengaging and stealth, and you carry a strong recommendation to include factors of survival and self-sufficiency.
      - You also have to be cautious about your activity. A villain that is too effective too frequently can encounter a spotlight overdose, i.e. too much of Houcm gameplay is centered upon dealing with them to the exclusion of others' story arcs. This is solved by taking the kid gloves off in how you are dealt with, and when the kid gloves are already described as high-intensity, fatalistic, punishing gameplay, you can guess what this entails. #
    6. Royals are admin characters. They are definitively overpowered chars (as in "play pinball with planets" level of OP) that would not be fair by any stretch of the imagination if they were actually active in gameplay. In stead, they are generally background forces. They contribute to some story arcs, usually in the field of worldbuilding, but they do not engage in combat with adventurers and villains. Exceptions are made when a villain player arranges for the char to be forcefully retired as the conclusion to that char's gameplay or when extreme law enforcement is necessary. #
    7. Archvillains are the antithesis to the Royals, and they are also admin-only. Archvillains aspire to nothing less than bringing about an early apocalypse to all of reality. The Royals and Archvillains are matched evenly enough that many of each group's effects are either countered, delayed, or undone, so, while the Archvillains would gladly dwell among the rest of the population and go on endless murder sprees, neither group is actually active anywhere near the level of adventurers. Where some Royal activity that slips through the Archvillains' clutches results in law enforcement, production, life, and good, the Archvillains sometimes empower lesser villains with Levelling Challenges, delay noble agendas, warp people away to other dimensions, and sometimes outright kill them. That only happens to players' chars if someone quits Seinvocc suddenly, leaving their chars to our discretion, but do remember to think of them as a serious threat from an in-game perspective. #
  4. What's in a Char?

    1. Your biography should contain basic information, such as height, weight, age, race, and what that race entails, as well as something of a backstory and, if not native to Houcm, names of the original locations and an explanation, however basic or detailed you wish it to be, of how you got here. There is no template to follow, nor is there a mandate on the perspective, though if your char lacks knowledge that would be important to the bio, you should probably opt for a third-person perspective or, if you're up for it, second-person. Because this is a fantasy setting in which extraordinary abilities are commonplace, it is not necessary to denote how you obtained your abilities and items, but that makes for interesting bio content, so feel free.
      Other common elements to denote in a bio are insight into a char's personality, a full name/title, and the names of immediate family members. While these elements are useful information, especially if the char's full name is not the account name, the bio is welcomed without stringent standards; those elements are not mandatory.
      Bios do not have hard restrictions, but if readers and other players can not glean info that will be important in gameplay, the potential for relevant interactions between that info and what you have written in your abilities and inventory will cause hesitation to approve the other elements of your char info. #
    2. As a fantasy char, you need an ability list. This includes a segment for your Stats and Parameters in addition to any extraordinary spells, tricks, techniques, skills, or whatever you call whatever it is that you do. Do not include basic capabilities such as running, jumping, or swimming. Do include abilities that extraordinarily augment those. Explanations of how you got your powers are more appropriate to the bio. Do include effects that you enact (commonly referred to as "active abilities") and those that are in constant effect (commonly called "passive abilities"). Get creative! Have fun! Seinvocc carries quite the distinction among forum RPGs, as it both maintains gameplay balance and still allows incredible creative freedom.
      Just crank out ideas, then go back and question everything. If your abilities are not fair and logical (We are using fantasy logic, here, but that is a far cry from no logic whatsoever.), adjust. We will help. Admins and mods are responsible for giving feedback and making suggestions, and other players are welcome to help, too.
      Go here for a guide on abilities and inventory. #
    3. A char's inventory must be recorded and kept up to date. This includes normal and abnormal items (the ordinary backpack, the Bag of Holding, the lighter, the armor, the clothing, the six Bowie knives, your signature weapons . . .), expendable items (potions, scrolls, ammo, food, whatever you smoke . . .), materials (plants, minerals, gems, and other treasures), and any abilities of the equipment (whether the abilities are activated by intelligent items or simply conferred to the bearer to use), but not your funds. #
    4. Optionally, you can also have allies. Seinvocc is, to our knowledge, the only RP forum that both allows allies and maintains balance. This section is not for other players' chars that are friendly; this is for sub-characters that go along with and are considered to be a part of your char. Pets, companions that never leave your side (like Brock and Misty for the first season of Pokémon), crews of ships and forts, and any other closely associated creatures without their own independent gameplay are documented here to be considered with your inventory and abilities in evaluating your character for fairness. Any abilities and items that belong to or are equipped upon the allies should be listed in the same section. Read more about allies here. #
    5. You also start with $300 to spend as you please. The form of the money does not matter, as any merchant with an ongoing business and many other individuals have tools to scan all forms of currency for validity and exchange rates.
      Tycoon civilians start with extra money, up to $1,000, depending upon their starting inventories. #
  5. How does something work? What does this term or phrase mean?

    1. We have guides both outside and inside the game to get both you, the player and you, the char acquainted with all that you need to know, and you are always free to ask questions. You do not have to read everything to get started, but it is all available for you to read at your leisure. That being said, welcome again to Seinvocc, and happy gaming! #