Terms and rules

Mission Statement

It is the intention of AllianceLARP Forums to be a place where the community of AllianceLARP can communicate in a safe and positive environment. Under this intention, the following rules are now in effect, and must be adhered to by all players and staff. The National Organization reserves the right to make decisions and take actions deemed appropriate for situations not covered by these rules. Please remember that the use of this Forum is a privilege; not a right.

Forum Rules

1) All participants will show respect at all times to everyone on the Forums. No exceptions. Disciplinary action will occur for any disrespectful behavior.

Disrespectful Behavior Includes (but is not limited to):
- Bashing: defined by profanity, insults/slurs relating to a player's race, religion, age, gender, handicap, sexual orientation, or country of origin.
- ASCII characters or symbols to try and avoid the Profanity ban.
- Spamming: Excessive posting in a manner meant to be of annoyance or posting threads repeatedly inside one or multiple Topics.
- Not following all board specific guidelines as listed in the description within each Forum Board.
- Inflammatory posting. Inflammatory posts may include violence, threats or personal attacks to another player.
- Calling out specific individuals for cheating, metagaming or any similar action publicly, or privately to the player. Please use the correct chain of command if you feel that this is occurring.
- Calling out/being disrespectful to Board Moderators or other Staff members. Please use the correct chain of command to report concerns about the Moderators or Staff.
- Publicly posting another user’s personal information, situation or ideas without their permission.
- Publicly or privately insulting any user, chapter, or the Alliance LARP Organization as a whole.

All of these are violations of our “Good Sportsmanship” rule, which is in effect on the boards, as well as during our events. Violation of the Good Sportsmanship rule is subject to disciplinary action outlined in the banning section of these rules.

2) Board content should be structured around AllianceLARP, with the mindset of the types of individuals who may read its content. In a similar vein, please adhere to the following restrictions:

- Advertising Non-Alliance Related Services/Products is only allowed in the National Marketplace and Off-Topic Boards.
- Do not post links to external (Non-Alliance) sites which are sexual in nature or which would violate the first rule of the boards (Respect).
- Do not discuss illegal activities, including crime, drug use, etc.
- Discussions of Political Views, Religious Content, or any non-LARP related content should only be posted in the Off-Topic Board. Please be advised that malicious or disruptive posts in the Off Topic thread will be deleted, and their posters will be subject to disciplinary action. These are sensitive issues; please use common sense and empathy if you must post about them.
- Posts are considered the ideas, views and words of the posting user. Users are held accountable to the forum rules for the content of their posts.
- When quoting another user’s post, do not edit what was said beyond removing non-quoted content. You may delete content from the quoted post to focus on the section you are addressing, but do not change the wording, order, or any other parameter of the quoted text. Doing so will be considered misrepresentation of another users' idea and may be subject to disciplinary action.
- Please avoid posting in all caps. Caps denotes emphasis or ‘shouting’ and many users find it disruptive to read.
- The primary language of the Alliance Forums is English. Out of Game posts should be made in English, or if in another language, a translation should be supplied. This restriction does not extend to In Game posts where foreign languages may be used to represent Alliance-Character languages. Further, translations do not have to be made available for In Game posts.

3) Thread creation, editing, and responses should be maintained under the following guidelines:

- Threads should be created under the appropriate topic section of the Forum Boards.
- Please be clear and informative when naming a thread topic. This should make identifying the thread’s subject easy to understand.
- Before creating, please make sure there is not already an active topic dealing with the subject you wish to address.
- Please ensure when posting, that you meet the criteria of the posting area. For example, some areas may require you to be a Marshal of that chapter, and clearly identify yourself as such.
- Please do not post simply to pad your post count. This will be considered spamming, and will be deleted and subject to disciplinary action.

When posting replies, please adhere to the following:
- Please ensure that your reply is pertinent to the discussion. Please make use of the ‘Like’ feature of our boards if you wish to just agree without adding further content.
- Please do not split posts. If you have a follow-up or additional question, please start a new discussion thread in order to allow the current to remain on track.

4) As a user of the forums, you are held to the following standards:

- Do not misrepresent yourself on the Alliance Forums either as a Moderator, Marshal or Staff position to which you are not entitled.
- Comply immediately with any action requested by an Owner, a Moderator or other relevant staff position on the Alliance Forum. (For example: requests for information about a reported post, or to identify yourself.)
- Ignorance of the Forum Rules is not an excuse, and violations of these rules will be handled accordingly, regardless of prior knowledge. Upon creation of a user account, it is expected of you to have read these forum rules.

New Forum Structure

Please note that the Rules Theory board has now been removed. National has deemed this board no longer beneficial for the purposes of the Forum, given how often inflammatory discussions occurred. Should you wish to continue to have rules theory discussions, please feel free to do so on your own Facebook pages, or other social media outlets other than this Forum. Any user found attempting to use the General Discussion or other forums for Rules Theory topics will be subject to disciplinary action.


Rules Discussions may now be answered by asking the Marshal Boards. There, you may speak with any of our approved marshals, with the understanding that local rulings may be chapter-specific if not covered exclusively within the rulebook. Should your question require further clarification, you may request the marshals to bring your question to the ARC forum. As a note, you may not answer on this board unless you are on the approved Marshal User Group. Should a discrepancy arise, please inform your marshals, and they will bring it to ARC.

Disciplinary Actions

AllianceLARP will now be adhering to a 3 Strike Rule Policy when it comes to the Alliance Forum. Should a verbal warning in the thread by a moderator not be enough to return the topic to its appropriate direction, the following steps will be taken. Please note that any use of discriminatory speech based on race, religion, age, gender, handicap, sexual orientation, or country of origin will immediately send you past strike 3, with immediate Alliance GM and CS involvement.

Strike 1: A PM from a moderator informing the user that they have violated the Forum Rules. This post will include a link to these rules for review. This first time offense will be tracked for the 3 strike rule purpose.

Strike 2: An email from the boards informing the user that they have violated the Forum Rules for a second time. This post will include a link to these rules for review. Further, it will include 24 hour ban from the boards, with the time set in the email. This secondary ban will be recorded by the moderators for tracking purposes.

Strike 3: An email from the boards informing the user that they have violated the Forum Rules for a third time. This post will include a link to these rules for review. As the final strike, this will include a ban at the discretion of the moderator committee, along with the approval of the Alliance GM and an inquiry by National Customer Service. This tertiary ban will be recorded by the moderators for tracking purposes. Disciplinary action by the moderator committee will be a minimum of one week to a maximum of three months.

Please note: Anything past a third strike will be subject to the discretion of both the Moderator Chair and the Alliance Chairman. This can include a minimum ban of one month, up to and including a permanent ban from the boards, as well as your primary chapter owner involvement. Given that these boards are an extension of our game, AllianceLARP reserves the right to take disciplinary action with owner involvement should all other actions fail.

Please also be aware that any attempt to circumvent your ban will result in further disciplinary action at the discretion of the Moderator Chair, the Alliance Chairman, and Customer Service.

Should you feel that you have been wrongly banned or otherwise treated unfairly, please send an email with “Board Banning Appeal” to the Alliance Chair (alteredd@gmail.com) and Customer Service (shduetzmann@gmail.com)

While we are not attempting to be overly harsh, it is the expectation of National Staff that all users will take disciplinary action seriously. It is also the committee, customer service, and chairman’s mission to treat everyone as neutrally and fairly as possible during any disciplinary action proceeding.

NOTE: Alliance LARP National Staff reserves the right to circumvent the 3 Strike rule should any form of disrespectful behavior be deemed warranted for disciplinary action. (An example of this would be serious slurs or publicly cursing out staff.) Circumventing the 3 strike rule is at the Moderator Chair and Alliance Chairman’s discretion only.

If you do not agree with these terms, please do not register or use this Service. If you wish to close your account, please contact us.

Change log:

10/5/2015|15:48 EDT -- Proofreading edits