Rules

[faderifting]

↞NAVIGATION—

RULES

↠ General
↠ Applications
↠ Hiatuses & Drops
↠ Activity

GENERAL

1. Don't be a dick. Behaving inappropriately on the comms or Discord server, deliberately using plot or game mechanics to bully or systematically exclude other players, harassing people who have asked not to have contact with you, or otherwise being a jackass may be grounds for removal from the game.

2. Don't infomod. There is a lot of info out there about Thedas, and while much of it can be common knowledge, some of what's available to players is not necessarily available to characters. Additionally, Fade Rift's AU plot has now substantially diverged from the video game's timeline and established lore, so assuming plot outcomes based on your knowledge of the games might just make your character look stupid.

3. For those with powers or skill sets that impact the autonomy or privacy of other characters, you must have OOC permission to use those abilities on other players' characters. Permissions posts are advised.

4. Players must be 18+.

APPLICATIONS

Appable Characters

Currently we allow two types of characters: characters born in Thedas ("natives"), and characters arriving through a rift ("rifters").

The following types of characters can be apped as natives:

• Dragon Age canon characters.
  
• Adapted/AU'd characters from other canons
  
• OCs

The following types of characters can be apped as rifters:

• Canon characters from non-Dragon Age canons
  
• OCs from non-DA canons without any direct ties to the canon characters (e.g., your X-Men OC who does not know and is not related to any of the canon X-Men)
  
• OCs from original settings
  
• CRAU OCs or canon characters, other than Dragon Age characters

The following types of characters are not appable:

• Characters under the age of 16
  
• Native characters more than 150 years old
  
• Fandom/non-canon AUs of canon characters
  
• Dragon Age game protagonists (but turning your protag into an OC is fine)
  
• The current ruler of an in-game country, e.g. Empress Celene
  
• Any recognizable depictions of prophets or deities from modern mainstream religions (e.g., Jesus) or historical figures who would be in poor taste (e.g., Hitler)
  
• Characters who are or have ever been cats (including but not limited to any characters from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats or T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats), and characters (canon or OC) from the Cats/Practical Cats universe whether or not they are themselves cats. (Not-cat characters who can shapeshift into cats are permitted, unless they shapeshift into cats from Cats.)

For plot reasons (most of them are dead (⸷) in Fade Rift's timeline), the following specific Dragon Age characters cannot be apped:

• Solas
  
• Alistair ⸷
  
• Anders ⸷
  
• Cassandra Pentaghast ⸷
  
• Cullen Rutherford ⸷
  
• Fiona ⸷
  
• Nathaniel Howe ⸷
  
• Oghren ⸷
  
• Sebastian Vael ⸷
  
• Acting Viscount of Kirkwall Varric Tethras ♚
  
• Morrigan with Mythal's soul fragment. Morrigan without Mythal is appable.
  

On a related note, players interested in apping one of DAI's remaining canon advisors/leaders should be aware that in order to be playable here, the characters would have to leave the Inquisition and join the smaller Riftwatch as normal members, without any official authority. Any app must take this into account and explain the character's choice without compromising characterization.

VEILGUARD NOTE: We're accepting Veilguard characters or OCs based on Veilguard lore at this time! See this post for some guidelines about making specific characters and factions, general lore, etc., work with Fade Rift's alternate timeline.

Game Caps

We have a cast cap for rifters and native AUs. The cast cap is currently six total characters per canon/franchise.

Additionally, for the sake of balancing and/or attempting to maintain some diversity in the game, we currently do not allow the following types of characters:

• None

New caps may be announced as needed if the game skews in a way that necessitates it. We evaluate all of our caps periodically to decide whether they could be raised or lifted entirely, so please don't ask us when a given cap will be removed—we haven't just forgotten it exists, and it will be removed as soon as we think the game doesn't need it anymore!

Per-Player Caps

In addition to general limits on appability, Fade Rift has per-player caps for total characters and certain rare character types. All rules are subject to change based on the size and composition of the player/character base.

At present, each player is allowed six characters total. Each player may only submit one application per month This is rolling, not calendar months, meaning you can't submit one app on June 30 and another on July 1.

Each player can only have one of the following:

• Rifters

Each player can only have two of any of the following:

• Canon Dragon Age companion or advisor characters
  
• Native mages
  
• Grey Wardens

This means two of each, not two total. For example, you could have two mages and two non-mage Wardens, but you can't have two mages AND two mage Wardens. You can play two companion/advisor characters, but they must be from different games.

CRAUs

CRAU apps are permitted for characters with prior history in one previous DWRP (or similar) game, subject to the following rules:

• No CRAUs from sex games, defined as any game that requires sex threads for AC or where sex is a fundamental aspect of the game's premise (e.g., "the city is powered by sex").
  
• No CRAUs from locked games. Invite-only games will be considered on a case by case basis—the closer to being public they are, the more likely they'll be acceptable. If you want a verdict on a specific game before you app, drop by the Mod Contact page!
  
• Characters from games that grant new or additional superpowers/magic can opt to arrive in Thedas with either their new powers, their canon powers, or neither. Any abilities they choose to keep will be subject to nerfing as usual.
  
• Dragon Age canon characters cannot be apped as rifters or CRAUs, and other CRAU characters cannot remember CR with DA canon characters from previous games. If a relationship with a DA character was fundamental to a CRAU character's development, you can give it the Lizard Time treatment and rename them/obscure world details/etc. to maintain the development while shedding any specific knowledge of Thedas.
  
• Players of CRAUs have to provide an opt-in post for other canon characters to opt in to having the CRAU character remember them from previous games. This will allow existing players of canon characters to choose whether they want characters to know them and how much knowledge they're comfortable with. (For example, someone may be fine with your character remembering theirs in general but not want your character to already know their Deep Dark Secret that they haven't yet revealed to anyone else in Fade Rift.) To the extent that people don't opt in to prior knowledge, CRAU players can say that the process of traveling through the rift erased that part of their memory.

Other App Notes

AGE: Characters must be at least 16 years old, the age we've determined Thedas will largely treat as adults and not as children who it's immoral/reckless of other PCs to send into dangerous situations. If the character's age is unknown/immortal/etc. but they will be generally perceived as a child under 16, thus making it irresponsible of other characters to permit your character to participate in dangerous work, that character is not appable. If a character's age is not stated in canon you should make your best guess, but we will review this to make sure it's reasonable. Apping a character of ambiguous age who you say appears 16 but then writing and portraying them as someone perceived as a child will result in us asking you to either cut it out or the character being removed from the game, depending on how egregious it is.

Our minimum character age doesn't apply to beings who come into existence fully grown, such as androids, as long as they both look and think like adults. For characters who are in some way 'ageless' or whose physical and mental ages are different (thousand-year-old vampires who appear younger, or children in adult bodies, etc.) we require both their mental and physical age to be over 16.

"THEDOSIANIZATION": All characters, both native and rifter, must belong to one of the four main sentient races of Thedas: human, elf, dwarf, or qunari. If a rifter character is not already one of these races, they must be converted into one of them during passage through the Fade. They can be of unusual size for one of those races—a very tall elf, a very thin Qunari, etc.—but will otherwise lose any physical traits inconsistent with the Thedas race you've chosen, including any unusual internal organs, extra appendages, scales or unnatural-to-Thedas eye or hair colors (such as all-red eyes or bright pink hair), etc. Temporary changes to their appearance based on use of special abilities might be permitted, such as eyes glowing during use of a spell, but their "default" form will look like a Thedosian native.

Rifters who are synthetic in their original forms may also be converted into golems.

DUPLICATES: No more than one AU version and one canon version of a character will be allowed in-game at a time. In the game these characters are not perfect doubles or "face twins" even if they both use the same PB. Characters are allowed to notice similarities between AU and OU versions of characters and draw whatever conclusions they like, but they'll still only be similar, not identical.

OVERLAP: While overlapping CR is inevitable and acceptable, please do not app two characters who are very closely related from the outset (e.g.: Iron Bull and Krem, Rhys and Cole). If you're unsure about your particular situation please ask on the FAQ.

SLAVERY AND EXPERIMENTATION: To make sure slavery and involuntary magical experimentation are handled respectfully, we have some specific requirements for characters with those elements in their histories.

To include enslavement or being the subject of involuntary experimentation in an AU'd character's background, slavery or experimentation must have been part of their original canon. For these characters we we will ask that you track their canon histories closely and do not expand or sensationalize those aspects in the AU. E.g., if you're AUing a character who was a slave in canon, but was not canonically sexually abused, you can't add sexual abuse to the AU.

If you have a concept for an OC that involves slavery or involuntary experimentation, please contact us with a brief summary of your character before applying so we can tell you whether or not the basic concept is permissible. (Note that this isn't a guarantee that we'll accept the application—we just want to let you know in advance if it’s fundamentally unworkable.) If you app an OC with a slavery/experimentation background without contacting us for preapproval, the application will be automatically rejected.

You do not need to ask in advance about a Tevinter character who was around slaves or belongs to a family who owns slaves, as long as that's more or less the extent of their involvement. But you do need to ask us if, for example, they fell in love with a slave, or were once a slave themselves, or anything else more involved.

Be aware that we will heavily scrutinize the necessity of including slavery, especially sexual slavery, in a character’s history. We don't want to sweep this part of Tevinter culture under the rug and deny players the opportunity to explore it, but these are sensitive subjects, and we want to make sure they're handled appropriately and in particular to ensure they aren't fetishized.

HIATUSES & DROPS

We don't do formal hiatuses, since our AC is very flexible (see below) and we allow a strike for a quarter before requiring a drop. If you have circumstances that will prevent you from doing three threads in two consecutive three-month periods, you can let us know and we'll discuss options, but in all likelihood our recommendation will be to drop for the time being and reapply when you have more availability!

To drop, please post the relevant form to this page. Generally, dropped native characters can leave to quit Riftwatch, for whatever reason, or to go on vague long-term assignments elsewhere in Thedas. Rifters will vanish back into the Fade. Native OCs, native AUs, and rifters can all also be killed in the game if that is their player's choice! However, canon Dragon Age characters may not be killed in-game without mod permission, since that would mean no one else could ever app them.

Dropped characters are available for immediate reapplication by both new players and their previous players, unless they were dropped due to strikes or idling out. If that's the case, they may not be re-apped by the same player for at least 30 days.

ACTIVITY

We do activity checks on a quarterly basis, with the checks covering the periods of January–March, April–June, July–September, and October–December. Activity checks require brief recaps of what your character has been up to and three links to posts or threads from the given period. For newly apped characters, the requirement is instead one link for each full month they have been in the game. You can read more about the requirements and exceptions by checking the activity check tag on the OOC comm.

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