RULES – EPSILON RP

All community members must abide by the rules below, even if they are not active roleplayers. Important rules are in bold and
italic text.

General rules
• Do not bring a toxic and shitty attitude to this community. If you don’t like it, there’s the door.
• Harassment and abuse of other community members are NOT allowed. Any harassment or abuse of community
members, or endorsement of such, within this community or in relation to Starbound roleplay falls under the purview of
this rule. Violators may be permabanned without appeal or even preemptively banned before joining. If you are being
harassed or abused over Starbound roleplay, feel free to privately report it to staff.
• No spamming or botting.
• Profanity and swearing are allowed. Just don’t overdo it.
• Use brackets for out-of-character chat in in-character areas (e.g., #ic-comms, #space-rp and SB server
hubs). Like this:
(( This is OOC chat. ))
• Keep in-character shitposting to a minimum.
• Keep out-of-character chat to a minimum in in-character areas.
• Playing the rules game, making frivolous reports to staff and other abusive behaviour are not tolerated.
• If staff say there’s an issue, there’s an issue. Don’t play games over this.
• Try to use good spelling and grammar on the Discord and server. In-character affectations, such as accents, lisps and writing
styles, are perfectly fine and even encouraged, as long as they aren’t intentionally obnoxious in an out-of-character manner.
• It is recommended that you use SI/metric units here. Imperial/customary measurements (e.g., feet, inches, pounds) in
roleplay sheets will be converted to metric by staff.

Starbound server rules

• Do NOT hack, grief or intentionally lag the server.
• No griefing or raiding players’ bases, ships and hubs.
• Mods and modded items are allowed, but don’t connect with multiplayer-incompatible mods (e.g., race
mods and Frackin’ Universe). Repeated attempts to connect with incompatible mods will result in a ban
from the server.
• Do not teleport to other player’s ships without their permission or invitation at all. Period.
• Theft of items and sprites is NOT tolerated. Do not dupe or steal others’ modded items or sprites without
permission.
• Avoid using laggy or spammy items and mods in roleplay areas. Obnoxious, flagrant or excessive demon-
strations or use of laggy or spammy items will result in a kick or ban.
• Do not place unbreakable objects for any reason. Unbreakables will be removed as soon as they’re seen
by admins. Spammers of unbreakable objects will be banned from the server.
• Do not play instruments near other people who are playing instruments and do not switch instruments while playing music;
the former is rude and the latter is laggy.
• If people ask you to stop playing instruments, be polite and do it.
• Avoid spamming in-game party invites.
• Please use local chat at all times within the server (in-character radio or comms broadcasts are an exception).
• If you have any issues with the server, please ping staff in #reports-and-requests on Discord.

Discord server rules

• Discord’s guidelines are enforced in this community. This link explains Discord’s stance on acceptable and
unacceptable behaviour. These rules will be enforced by staff on a case-by-case basis. E.g., immediate
permabans if lolicon, shotacon, cub porn or similar content is posted.
• Any content in violation of the above guidelines will be removed. No exceptions.
• Please do not post NSFW content of any kind. Keep it to DMs.
• ERP is NOT allowed on the Discord server. Again, keep it to DMs.
• No political or religious discussion outside of #political and religious discussion. These topics are very
touchy and tend to lead to arguments and name-calling. Ask staff to give you permission to chat in the
channel if you want to discuss this kind of stuff.
• Spam is NOT allowed, no matter what kind of content it is.
• Excessive shitposting is NOT allowed – this includes nicknames, avatars and the like. The Discord server
is NOT your personal dumpster. You can post memes and reaction images, but don’t overdo it. Violation of this rule
 may result in immediate temporary revocation of image posting permissions, a mute or even a ban.
• Memes and reaction images should not greatly interfere with ongoing discussion. Again, exercise restraint –
staff are not your babysitters.
• Avoid out-of-character racist, homophobic, bigoted or otherwise discriminatory commentary. There’s no
reason to post it.
• Avoid name-calling and shouting matches.
• Please do not derail discussions in ROLEPLAY DISCUSSION.
• Observe basic netiquette in general.

Applications, appeals and approval

• In order to be able to roleplay on Epsilon RP, you must submit an application in #applications on the
Discord server. The application template is pinned in that channel. Those who do not apply to become community
members will be kicked after two weeks, no questions asked.
• You have two weeks to appeal a rejected application before you are kicked from the community.
• Appeal bans, mutes and other staff punishments by DMing any moderator or admin. You must submit your
appeal within two weeks of being banned; otherwise, it will not be accepted and your ban becomes permanent. There is no
time limit when appealing mutes and other punishments.

Application template
• Age: Your age (in years) here. Required.
• How did you come to us? Please tell us how you came to us. Optional.
• Why have you come? Tell us why you’re here. Did you come to roleplay? To contribute art? Modding skills? Required.
• Do you have any previous roleplay experience? Also tell us if you have any previous moderation or building
experience. Required.
• What is metagaming? Explain what metagaming is, in your own words. Required.
• What is powergaming? Same as the last question. Required.
• Do you agree to the rules? Yes/no. Required.

Appeal template
• What violation are you appealing? What it says on the tin. Required.
• Why are you appealing? Ditto. Required.
• Will you follow the rules next time? Ditto again. Required.
• Do you know anyone who can vouch for you? They don’t need to be on Epsilon RP. Required.

Roleplay rules
Read these before roleplaying on Epsilon RP. IC stands for in-character and OOC stands for out-of-character. ERP stands for
erotic roleplay and CRP stands for combat roleplay.

Definitions
• RP: Roleplay.
• Combat roleplay (CRP): Roleplay in which a character attempts to fight another character or defend against a fight.
Attempts to harm a character without engaging in combat do not count, though they do count for consent purposes.
• Erotic roleplay (ERP): Roleplay in which a character performs actions that are sexual or erotic in nature. Romantic
roleplay does not always fall under this term.
• In character (IC): Whenever you are roleplaying as a character. This includes actions taken by characters or stuff
happening in the background.
• Out of character (OOC): Whenever you are not roleplaying as any character. This includes any chat directly to other
roleplayers outside of roleplay itself.
• Metagaming: Any use of out-of-character knowledge in an in-character manner. Examples of this include “reading
minds” when your character is not telepathic, acting as if your character knows anything they wouldn’t know under the
circumstances, and spite RP (defined below).
 • Godmodding: Roleplay in which one character forces actions on another without OOC consent or against OOC refusal or
in which a character swoops in and does everything with the snap of a finger, or similar roleplay.
• Powergaming: Roleplay involving any abilities, weapons or other items not listed on a combat sheet, if they don’t fall
under the exceptions list, or involving twinking, defined below. This typically merits a discussion with staff and character
balancing. This is not to be confused with godmodding, defined above.
• Twinking: Roleplay involving grossly overpowered characters with few or no weaknesses. Such characters are called twinks.
• Munchkin: A roleplayer who engages in CRP to win rather than to have fun, tell stories and interact with other characters.
• Spite RP: Adjusting a character’s behaviour or actions based on OOC relationships and vendettas. Sometimes, spite RP
goes to the point of outright harassment.
• Forced RP: Abuse or bending of the rules in order to force an RP action on someone else’s character.
• Non-player character (NPC): Any character not directly RPed by any player.
• Multi-clienting: Connecting to the server with multiple SB clients to be able to RP multiple characters.

Important stuff
• Use common sense. There’s no telling how many problems could be resolved or avoided by following this one simple rule.
• If a staff member tells you there’s a problem, there’s a problem. Do not ignore staff just because your
violation is not explicitly listed or referenced in the rules. Staff will try to work with you to correct the problem
without resorting to staff action.
• Ignorance is no excuse or “get out of jail free” card. Please read the rules.
• Forced RP or other abuse or manipulation of the rules to one’s own benefit (e.g., harassing a roleplayer
into death consent) will lead to staff action. Don’t play the rules game. Victims of forced RP or rule abuse
should immediately privately report it to the staff via Discord DMs.
• Powergaming, godmodding and metagaming are NOT allowed.
• Original characters please. References to other franchises are fine, but they are generally fictional in the
in-character universe. If you want to roleplay an existing franchise character, staff permission and an ironclad IC
justification are required.
• Staff permission is required to roleplay certain important lore characters, e.g., Clipped Council members.
• Magic and psionics are NOT allowed. All character abilities and items should have some sort of reasonably realistic
explanation behind them (within the realm of hard sci-fi). If you intend to roleplay existing characters with magical or
psionic abilities, either retcon out the abilities or don’t play the characters at all.
• Character abilities, equipment and resources should be ICly justified and preferably balanced, with sensible
weaknesses. Don’t just make a billionaire character willy-nilly. Roleplayers who make overpowered or “gamey” characters
will have a chat with staff first.
• If you are violating rules, staff may require your character to “take an L”, force CRP consent, allow
others to void you without consequence or permakill your character, etc., depending on the severity of the
violation. If violations are bad enough, you may be banned from RP. Rule violations done out of OOC
spite will receive more stringent punishment. IC explanation for punishment consequences is generally left to the
punished roleplayer, if staff do not provide it.

General rules
• All roleplayers MUST be mature. However, underage/immature characters are permitted. You must be
18+ to see NSFW content though.
• Metagaming, powergaming and godmodding are not allowed. Please report such incidents to staff or RP monitors.
• ERP is NOT ALLOWED on the server, in the wiki, or in the RP channels. If you want to ERP, do it in Discord
DMs.
• Underage ERP, regardless of whether it’s the roleplayers or characters, or both, that are underage, even
if implied, will be swiftly and immediately met with a permanent ban. No excuses or appeals.
• Keep ERP to private Discord DMs. Public ERP on the server á la maniére de Stallion will be met with
a swift ban, and private ERP on the server will lead to staff action.
• Keep OOC chat to a minimum on roleplay hubs and IC channels.
• Avoid IC references to OOC pop culture and memes unless it makes sense for your character to make such
references. After all, it’s ICly the year 3219.
• This is a serious roleplay community. Avoid shitpost/joke characters and gamey fourth-wall-breaking RP.
Excessive or obnoxious fourth-wall breaking or overuse of shitpost/joke characters may lead to restrictions
from roleplay.
• Please refrain from excessive and gratuitous IC insults or disparagement if OOCly requested. Not everyone
can handle this stuff or keep OOC and IC emotions separated. Consistent and callous disregard for or insensitivity to such
OOC requests will lead to staff action.
• Cross-server roleplay is encouraged! Bring in all the existing characters you want.
• Server lore takes precedence over vanilla lore on Epsilon RP.
 • Roleplayers should try to resolve conflicts regarding roleplay rules before going to staff. This should hopefully
save everyone a lot of grief.
• Some combat-related rules may be ignored if consent from all parties is given and staff give the okay to it. Abuse of this
stipulation is, however, not tolerated.
• In-game day/night cycles and weather are to be taken as in-roleplay conditions (they have been modified on the server to be
more realistic).

Sheets, pages and lore

Check the requirements below to see if you need sheets or pages for your characters, equipment, factions or
whatever. If in doubt as to whether you need sheets, write and post them. You may post sheets on Discord in the SHEETS AND
LORE channels (the latter option is recommended for newcomers). Character sheets should come with a picture of the associated
character. Sheets/pages and approval are always required whenever staff say so, and staff may rework sheets and pages if they
see issues with them. You will be notified if this kind of situation should come up. If you have any special requirements, such as
keeping sheet-requiring stuff out of OOC knowledge to prevent metagaming, feel free to ask staff.

Stuff that DOES NOT require sheets/pages

• Ordinary civilian equipment, such as tasers, bear/pepper spray, crowbars and baseball bats.
• Conventional civilian firearms (handguns, hunting rifles, etc.).
• Combat knives.
• Ordinary civilian characters.
• Membership in factions.
• Mercenaries and bounty hunters with ordinary equipment and abilities – sheets are still recommended for those.
• Sub-races of vanilla races, as long as they don’t have advantages or significant disadvantages.
• Civilian-grade prosthetics with no special advantages. Exoskeletons with no special advantages, designed to mitigate
disabilities.

Stuff that DOES require sheets/pages

• Highly armed characters in general.
• Non-civilian firearms (assault rifles, sniper rifles, plasma weapons, etc.).
• Custom-made or tinkered items.
• Any kind of armour beyond bulletproof vests, combat helmets and sports equipment.
• Any item made of materials or alloys beyond the durasteel tier.
• Generally, anything you wouldn’t expect an ordinary civilian to possess.
• Leadership of factions.
• Any character with 500,000 or more pixels in the bank, or with more than 1,500,000 pixels in assets (land, equipment, etc.).
• Any character with non-combat NPC servants or slaves.
• Any augments, genemods, cybernetics or medical conditions that provide advantages or significant disadvantages.
• Non-vanilla races or sub-races.
• Combat-grade prosthetics.
• Light combat exoskeletons.

Stuff that requires staff approval

The stuff below requires staff approval. If in doubt as to whether you need items, characters, factions or whatever approved, ask
staff.
• Non-small arms and sniper rifles.
• Anything made of impervium, black diamonds or diamondoid.
• Power armour.
• Mechs and mechsuits.
• Characters with access to NPC combat assistance or NPC combatants under their control or leadership.
• Very powerful factions with more than a hundred or so NPC members.
• Any character with more than 10 million pixels in assets.
• Synthetic or robotic characters, if they have any kind of backups.
• Any kind of neural backup or cloning/revival/uploading tech. All backups and revival tech must be documented on the
character’s sheet, and a character can only have limited backups.
• Hive-minded characters, characters controlled by parasites or anything in that vein.
Consent rules
This section explains the rules dealing with consent to harming other characters.

Definitions
• Consent: Expressly or implicitly given OOC permission to roleplay a permanent, impactful or long-lasting IC action (e.g.,
maiming or death) towards another roleplayer’s character or characters.
• Consent refusal: Express or implicit OOC refusal of permission for the above.
• Encounter: Any situation in which there is a fight or any attempt to harm a character.
• Death: Any state in which is a character is dead and unable to come back at all. Reviving dead characters requires staff
approval, which is highly unlikely to be given.
• KO: Knock-out. Any state in which a character is unable to be RPed at all for a while (at least 24 hours) due to being
comatose, highly drugged, in a stupor or in a similar state. Shorter periods of time in such a state are considered to be
incap. Death of a synthetic/robotic character typically counts as a KO, unless all backups are destroyed.
• Incapacitation (incap): Any state in which a character is ICly unable to engage in a combat encounter in any real
capacity for at least 24 hours (usually due to severe traumatic injuries) and may be unable to be RPed for up to 24 hours,
but may otherwise be roleplayed (though is likely stuck in an ICU or similar until they recover). Such a character is
incapacitated, or ‘’incapped’ for short.
• Maiming: Any injury that a character cannot easily recover from, even with medical care (e.g. loss of a limb or important
ability).
• Instigation: Provoking another character (via insults, name-calling, etc.) into starting a fight or otherwise attempting to
injure, maim, incap or kill you.
• Aggression: Attempting to start a fight with another character. This is different from instigation in that your character
themselves, the aggressor, is starting the fight.
• Injury: Any state in which a character is injured, maimed or loses abilities in CRP that cause them to be at a disadvantage
in subsequent encounters until healed.
• Implicit consent: Consent given implicitly by roleplaying as if an action requiring consent succeeded.
• Explicit consent: Consent given directly by outright telling the other party or parties that it is given.
• Auto-consent: Automatic consent. This may be applied as a punishment for RP rule violations, or may optionally be
enforced on oneself.

How consent works

Consent is normally required to harm another roleplayer’s character. Abuse of the consent system will result
in staff voids and/or restrictions from roleplay. Here is how the consent system works:
• If your character did not instigate or otherwise start the fight, you have the full right to consent against death, KO, incap,
maiming and even injury, unless your character falls under any exceptions below.
• If your character instigated the encounter but isn’t the aggressor, you lose consent against injury for that encounter.
• If your character is the aggressor in the encounter, you lose consent against incap for that encounter.
• If your character attempts to maim another character (regardless of success), you lose consent against maiming for that
encounter.
• If your character attempts to KO or kill another character (regardless of success), you lose consent against KO for that
encounter.
• If your character has killed, KOed or maimed multiple other characters (as decided by staff, but most cases are obvious),
your character may lose consent against KO indefinitely.
• Any insta-kill attempt (i.e., any attack that unavoidably leads to a character’s death) requires full death consent.
• Consent against death can only ever be lost in cases of severe rule violations. In all other cases, it is fully voluntary.
Lack of consent means that an attempt to injure, maim, incap, KO or kill a character failed; the person who RPed the attempt is
responsible for explaining the failure if staff don’t supply an explanation.
You may revoke consent as long as the action consented to hasn’t already been RPed out and you haven’t lost it due to the above
rules. You’re allowed to have auto-consenting characters; it’s recommended to list what your character auto-consents to on their
sheet. You can also have characters that automatically refuse consent, but only if they strictly do not participate in CRP at all.
(However, characters that automatically refuse death consent can participate in CRP as much as they want.)
Staff can apply automatic consent to any or all of your characters as punishment for rule violations; e.g., your characters may be
required to consent to incap, KO or even death as punishment for repeated munchkin behaviour. Staff may also override consent
rules for events and other reasons; e.g., characters that KO or kill multiple characters during an event may be allowed to keep
consent against KO and not have the KOs and deaths count against them.
Note: Unlike ILB, there is no such thing as “CRP consent” on Epsilon RP.
Consent for special abilities
Separate consent is required for any staff-approved character ability marked as requiring such from targets. This is separate from
regular consent. This kind of consent is automatically given if the target RPs that his character has been affected by the ability
in question, so there’s no need to give it explicitly. Revocation rules for this kind of consent are the same as for regular consent.

Voiding and retconning RP

• Voiding: Rescinding an RP plot, situation or encounter and RPing as if it never happened.
• Retconning: Altering a past RP plot, situation and encounter, usually with an attempt to avoid plot holes that might
result from a void, and RPing as if it happened that way.
• Staff-voiding: Voiding by staff.
• Staff-retconning: Retconning by staff.
You may void or retcon any RP situation, as long as you’re not doing it to avoid IC consequences (or OOC punishments applied
to characters), and all RPers (excluding those with invalidated votes) involved in the RP or staff not involved in the RP agree to
the void or retcon. Retconning is generally preferred over voiding for obvious reasons – outright voiding creates plot holes that
need to be resolved. If for any reason you want or need to void or retcon IC consequences, or wish to appeal an OOC punishment,
talk to staff.
If an RPer refuses to void or retcon an RP out of OOC spite or with the intention to OOCly force RP on you, discuss it with
staff. Such force-RPers will have disciplinary action taken against them; this usually includes staff-voiding or -retconning the RP
and may even include invalidating the force-RPer’s future void/retcon votes so it doesn’t happen again.
Staff may decide to staff-void or staff-retcon RP, usually to remove a permabanned RPer’s IC actions from lore; staff will notify
anyone involved in the RP of the void or retcon and why it needed to be voided or retconned, and will try to work out an
agreement with involved RPers. RP involving a character’s death, as defined by consent rules, needs staff permission to void.

Character revival
You must apply with staff to revive dead characters (as defined above in the consent section) in any way. Character revival is
highly unlikely, and staff will almost always enforce temporary or permanent disadvantages, disabilities or other effects on revived
characters depending on the method and circumstances of revival.

Revival application template

When submitting revival applications, use the following template:
• Which character are you requesting revival for?
• How is your character being brought back? (Include whether or not it is another player character, an event, or a self-revival
via background methods; this includes being dragged to a cloning vat or neural scanner by allies or cronies.)
• How long has your character been dead? How much damage has there been to the body, and especially to the brain or
equivalent?
• How was your character killed, and who or what killed them?
• Is your character of a common race or an uncommon race? Which race is it?
• Do your character’s race or traits make revival/cloning/uploading difficult?
• Has your character been revived previously? (Please include all instances of revival/cloning/uploading that affect the
version of your character seen on-server, including off-server background.)
• What were the circumstances of their most recent death?
• Do you consent to staff-decided penalties and side effects from cloning/revival?
• If “yes” to the above, do you have any suggestions? (This is to provide staff with an idea of what you want; there’s no
guarantee that this will affect the final result.)

Reviving KOed characters

Reviving a KOed character does not require staff permission, but there will be staff action if a KOed character is revived within
an unreasonably short period of time when injuries are taken into consideration (usually less than 48 hours). You’re responsible
for handling KOs reasonably.

Multi-clienting, reinforcements and NPC characters

Multi-clienting
Multi-clienting requires either explicit consent from everyone involved, or staff approval. Abuse of multi-clienting will result in
staff action. Please keep it reasonable, folks! You may void unconsented multi-clienting at any time without consequence. The
voided multi-clienter is responsible for IC explanation of voids and retcons, if one is not provided by staff.

NPC characters
NPC characters may be used for non-combat stuff like menial labour, clerical work or scientific research, but again, please keep
it reasonable! Staff approval is required for non-combatant NPC characters that have unusual abilities or equipment, such as
Miniknog mind transfer tech. Powergaming, metagaming and godmodding rules will be strictly enforced whenever NPC characters
with unusual abilities or equipment are involved.
NPC combatants are allowed in restricted situations if permission is given by staff, but any other use of NPC combatants is
strictly not allowed. Staff reserve discretion in this matter – consult staff about NPC combatants if you intend to use them. Any
powergaming, metagaming, forced RP or other abuse of NPC combatants will result in denial or revocation of NPC combat
permission. Feel free to report any abuse of NPCs you see to staff. The OOC controller of the combatants is responsible for IC
explanation of voids and retcons, if one is not provided by staff.

Combat reinforcements
Reinforcements need to be called in ICly and usually take several turns to arrive (at least two), depending on the distance they
need to travel. If there is no IC way to call in reinforcements or it is being blocked (e.g., a phone is knocked out of one’s hand or
there’s an EMP), reinforcements cannot be called in until that is addressed (e.g., by picking up the radio or waiting until the
EMP expires and using equipment that’s not fried). Characters called as reinforcements must either have only civilian equipment
or have a combat sheet already existing at the time reinforcements are called. Otherwise, only non-combat characters with basic
equipment can be called in. Creating reinforcement character sheets “on demand” is powergaming/twinking and therefore not
allowed, and NPCs cannot be called in as reinforcements without staff permission; staff action, which may include prohibiting
characters from calling in reinforcements, will be taken if these rules are violated.

Buildings and claims

Buildings, claims and plots may NOT be ICly attacked or destroyed without the consent of their OOC owner (or the OOC hub
owner, or staff, if no owner is listed). Character backups may be destroyed without consent, unless consent is required to enter
and destroy the building they are located in.

Combat and ability rules and guidelines

• Try to roleplay combat and abilities sensibly. The most important rule of all in this section.
• No ship combat in planetary atmospheres or within 100 km (ICly) of hubs or planetary surfaces. By the way, space RP is
generally done in #space on the Discord server, not on the SB server, although you may RP radio transmissions from space
and effects on planetary surfaces below on the SB server.
• Mechs and mechsuits require special ability consent (as listed above) to use.
• Ships, mechs and mechsuits should require six to eight turns to summon and two or three turns to get in when in CRP.
Hoverbikes, motorbikes and the like should require one or two turns to get in.
• Mind your weapon drawing and reloading. Unless you have very fast reflexes, you cannot draw a two-handed gun and fire it
in the same turn. Firing a handgun as you draw it results in poor accuracy. It takes one or two turns to reload a gun. It
takes two or three turns to draw a bow before releasing an arrow, or it won’t get very far. You usually need a whole turn to
draw a sword (but a knife can be used in the same turn it’s drawn, usually). As far as drawing other weapons goes, balance
them sensibly.
• Disguises and makeup are allowed without consent, but surgery, DNA modification and detailed shapeshifting require consent
from the RPer whose character is used as the disguise. (No consent is required if the disguise character is RPed or was
created by the same RPer, obviously.)