¶ Haze Community Standards
Welcome to the Haze Community!
Our community is a diverse, inclusive, and creative space where players from around the world come together to share in a mutual adventure.
To ensure that everyone has an enjoyable, safe, and respectful experience, we've established the following community standards. Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with them.
¶ Our Standards
¶ 1. Respect
- Treat all players, DMs, and community members with respect. Personal attacks, harassment, and hate speech are not tolerated!
- Inclusive Language: Use language that is inclusive and welcoming. Avoid language that is discriminatory or offensive.
¶ 2. Content
- Appropriate Content: Keep all in-game roleplay and out-of-game discussion appropriate. Explicit content, including but not limited to sexual, abusive, or graphic themes, is strictly prohibited.
- Mindfulness: Be mindful of topics that may be triggering or deeply unsettling. When in doubt, avoid potentially harmful subjects or seek consent from all involved parties before proceeding.
¶ 3. Gameplay Integrity
- Fair Play: Cheating, exploiting bugs, or using third-party software to gain an unfair advantage is prohibited.
- Conflict Resolution: Resolve in-game conflicts within the game's roleplay context. Avoid bringing in-game disputes into out-of-game contexts.
¶ 4. Communication
- Constructive Feedback: Provide feedback in a constructive manner. Criticism should be aimed at ideas, not individuals.
- Reporting Issues: Report any issues, breaches of community standards, or suspicious behavior to the team promptly.
¶ 5. Privacy and Security
- Personal Information: Do not share others' personal information without consent. Protect your own personal information.
- Impersonation: Impersonating other players, DMs, or officials is not allowed.
¶ 6. Community Engagement
- Active Participation: We encourage active participation and engagement in community activities, discussions, and events.
- Supporting Others: Support new and existing members, offer help, and be welcoming to all.
¶ 7. Enforcement and Consequences
- Rule Enforcement: The DM team and community leaders will enforce these standards fairly and consistently.
- Consequences: Violations of community standards may result in warnings, mutes, EP Loss, temporary bans, or permanent bans, depending on the severity of the incident.
¶ Best Practices
¶ Character vs. Character Conflict
Conflict between characters, especially on a permadeath server, can be intense. Players should always:
1. Consider Consequences: Recognize that conflicts may escalate, potentially leading to permanent death for involved characters.
2. Prioritize Enjoyment: Focus on the roleplay’s evolving story and the enjoyment of all participants.
Avoid blurring in-character (IC) actions with out-of-character (OOC) feelings, ensuring conflicts remain part of the narrative rather than personal grievances.
Additionally, make sure to thoroughly acquaint yourself with the rules regarding character conflict. It is your obligation to do so.
¶ Fair Play
Avoid a “play-to-win” mentality, which prioritizes personal gain over organic storytelling. Examples of unacceptable behavior include:
- Godmodding: Controlling others’ actions without consent.
- Metagaming: Using OOC knowledge IC.
- Powergaming: Exploiting game mechanics to force outcomes.
- Abusing Glitches: Leveraging technical issues to gain unfair advantages.
If emergencies force you to log out during gameplay (e.g., while being pursued), communicate with other players to ensure fairness.
¶ Respect and Collaboration
Haze values dynamic, organic roleplay. While players can create IC factions and pursue goals, they must avoid forming OOC cliques that exclude or manipulate the broader player base. All groups should operate transparently, keeping the roleplay collaborative.
¶ Conflict Resolution
The DM team will help you resolve disputes fairly! If issues arise, whether regarding meta-gaming or perceived rule violations, players should bring them to the DM team rather than confronting others directly.
¶ Metagaming
Players who violate community trust, use guilty knowledge, constitute out-of-character knowledge for in-character understanding, exploit known bugs and server-, module-, or game-related errors, which is overall inconsistent with the spirit of our Philosophy are metagaming.
Metagaming - to a degree - is going to happen. As a healthy human being, you simply cannot forget what your previous character knew, or what other characters have told you, where resource locations are at, and what monsters are tough. It becomes a problem when you explicitly exploit this information in a manner that is detrimental to roleplay.
For example:
- Recreating a character with the same name (aka, doppelganger), implying your character never died; or...
- Informing another player that a monster has a specific kind of damage resistance without having their new character encounter the creature yet; or...
- Discarding your gear with the intent of retrieving it after !suicide; etc.
- Logging off when in combat, is strictly frowned upon.
- Kiting mobs, see Mechanical Changes
Doing any of the above, or any other form of metagaming at the discretion of a DM, may result in loss of EP, retirement of character, and/or banning.
Players caught metagaming may be Warned by Dungeon Masters. This serves as a friendly reminder. Players should explain their circumstances to Dungeon Masters if they feel as though they were not metagaming. Players are also encouraged to report others’ metagaming to Dungeon Masters via the forums, Discord or in-game TELL.
🔥 A player fearing retribution may always report their concerns to the DM Lead.
Players may be Reinstated. Reinstatement includes actions by a Dungeon Master to "roll-back" a character if there was evidence of a player misusing a feature or exploiting a bug or error. For example, a player character has fifteen linen hoods by exploiting a crafting bug that required no ingredients to craft.
Death. In some circumstances, characters may be "killed-off" if any evidence is discovered of players exploiting a known bug, or OOC game mechanic (such as logging off just before an enemy can kill you.) that would have otherwise led to the character's Permadeath.
Finally, the player may be temporarily or permanently banned. Reoccurring and habitual violations of integrity and trust may result in a player being banned from the server.
¶ Final Word
We are all here to enjoy the immersive world of Haze and to be part of a community that values storytelling, creativity, and camaraderie. By adhering to these community standards, we can ensure that Haze remains an enjoyable, safe, and welcoming space for everyone.
Thank you for being part of our community!