Roleplaying
1. Be realistic! SOTF places emphasis on realism within its setting, and the characters in this roleplay are ordinary human beings, the vast majority of them being high school students. Characters will be injured, and characters WILL die. Handlers are expected to write a character's condition, abilities and injuries within the constraints of reality (for instance, not just shrugging off that broken ankle in order to jump from one rooftop to another, then keep running).
2. Characters must be a high school student of the proper grade and school (the specific school changing with each new version). Neither underclassmen nor students currently attending other schools are allowed to participate in the game.
3. Character deaths are final; this roleplay setting does not have means of resurrecting dead characters. Character deaths are dictated by random rolls conducted regularly throughout the game (see more information on rolls
here). A handler may choose to kill off their own character at will; the death must follow all the usual conventions of realism, so they cannot just drop dead without actual cause. Suicide, accident, or even being killed by another handler's character are all acceptable ways of dying unrolled. When your character dies, you are required to either post in the thread that they were rolled in to confirm the death, or (if they died unrolled) message a member of staff to confirm the death and the cause. It is encouraged (but not required) to place "death tags" at the end of a post in which a character dies, generally denoted in bold, red lettering.
4. God-modding, power-playing, calling hits, or any variation thereof are all disallowed. You can't automatically shoot someone with your gun, or cut them with your knife, no matter how positive you are that your hit will connect. Forcing somebody into a situation where they must take a hit, or otherwise dictating their actions in a way that forces them to act in one way and not another (ex. John backed May into a corner and shot at her chest-and-neck region seven times at point blank), is also considered god-modding and is not allowed. Handlers are suggested to converse with their writing partners in order to work out a scene; other people are usually willing to cooperate and collaborate. Unless otherwise stated, this rule also applies to staff-controlled NPCs.
5. Metagaming is also prohibited. Metagaming is using information obtained out-of-character to your advantage in-character. For example, if John has killed Bob's friend May, but Bob doesn't know that, it would be metagaming from Bob's handler to have Bob react to John as a murderer. Another example would be 'mind-reading', where a character reacts to another character's thoughts. In this case, John wants to kill Bob, but is pretending to be friendly - it would be metagaming for Bob to suddenly realize that John is going to try and kill him.
6. Survival of the Fittest contains adult themes and as such, handlers are required to be at least 13 years of age in order to participate. Please be mature enough to handle these themes and know that some threads may be sexual, gory, or ultra-violent in nature. Please label your thread with content warnings accordingly for the benefit of those that may be made uncomfortable with the themes contained within it. If you're unable to label your thread, contact a staffer and we'll take care of it for you!
7. If you are not the first person to post in the thread and you plan on entering it with one of your characters, you should take the time to read said thread beforehand to avoid misunderstandings. It wouldn't be good if your character walks peacefully into a gunfight and acts oblivious to it all. If you are unsure that your character's presence in the thread would be disruptive, it never hurts to ask the handlers already in the thread.
8. Please insert links to a character's previous thread whenever that character enters another thread. Conversely, when your character leaves a thread (without dying), you must explicitly note this in some way at the end of the exit post (normally referred to as an "exit tag") and add a link to that character's next thread (you may have to go back and edit the post when they join the next thread). If you are posting to exit a thread with more characters than just your own, you must explicitly specify which characters are leaving by name in the exit tag. This helps to establish continuity, and aids people in following along with a character from thread to thread without manually searching for their next appearance.
9. Unless otherwise noted, the limit for active threads within a given sub-area of the island is
one. As such, it is required to check other threads in that sub-area to determine if there is an opening before creating a new thread.
10. The exception to the above rule is what we refer to as a "one-shot". This is a thread made up of one single, uninterrupted post by a single character and can be posted outside of the active thread limits. A thread consisting of a single character, but made up of multiple posts, is NOT considered to be a one-shot for activity or area thread limits.
11. Handlers are encouraged to play multiple characters. Unlike many other roleplaying forums, all characters are played under the same handler username rather than creating a separate account for each character. There is a cap to how many characters may be played by a handler at any one time. In Pregame, this limit is
six. In the game proper, this limit is
four. To better understand this cap and how it is affected by adopting characters, see our rules on
character adoption.
12. Staff may, at their discretion, enforce in-character consequences in response to in-character actions, based on the stated in-character rules of the game. It is the handler's responsibility to contact the staff team in advance if they want to tamper with the game in any way, and if no attempted contact is made, staff may act any way deemed appropriate to enforce the in-character rules. For example, if your character goes around breaking cameras, even if it is not part of an escape attempt, staff may rule that the character's collar is detonated by the AT.
13. Each version will have a "Pregame" that details the mundane lives of the characters prior to the beginning of the game. Characters can be in one normal Pregame thread at a time, along with additional threads in certain subsections, such as the school's dance and the "Memories from the Past" section. Unless otherwise noted, there are no per-area thread limits in pregame.
14. The "Memories from the Past" section in each version's Pregame remains open to posting from all characters (even dead characters) even after the conclusion of the rest of Pregame. This section remains open until one week after the start of that version's Endgame, or the end of the version, whichever comes first.
15. If your character makes changes to an area (such as destroying furniture, marking the area with graffiti, or leaving a new corpse behind), please post a description of the changes (and a link to the thread they occurred in) in the area's description thread, found pinned in each area subforum. Please keep these posts concise and limit them to relevant information exclusively.
16. In-character posts describing an in-game area should match the staff-provided description of the area and any changes that have been noted in that area's description thread. If you're ever unsure of the details, please ask a member of staff for clarification.
17. The staff team may contact handlers and request them to change the content of posts that markedly violate the above rules. Except in cases of staff error, this request must be complied with, and the offending post content must be edited and/or removed (it cannot be preserved within the post itself or linked to an unedited version off-site). Failure to edit or remove the content to staff's satisfaction may result in staff editing the post on your behalf and/or locking the thread.
