1. ONE "open" RP per member. This means that if you have an RP with open applications for whoever to join up, you can only have one. Existing members with multiple RPs can keep whatever they have open but need to finish their existing ones before starting a new one. If one is kind of fizzling you are encouraged to wrap it up so those players can devote themselves to other RPs if they so choose.
However, should an ongoing roleplay for some reason happen to be abandoned by it's creator, another member is allowed to step in and take over, regardless of whether he or she already has an ongoing "open" RP, as long as he/she has the support of the other players, and has run it by the mods (in this case AtropaMandragora) first. That said, do not abuse this rule by taking on an RP only to leave it a few weeks later. It will do neither the RP nor the players any favors, and is likely to end up being detrimental to the RP's survival. (Revised 29th Mars 2010.)

2. You -may- have multiple "closed" RPs - that is, RPs you have going with friends that are not open for anyone to join up, or solo/two person RPs. You are strongly encouraged to try to do more RPs like this - these tend to be more fun and more successful as you can plan where things are going a bit more with friends in PM before writing your posts. This makes it more like a cooperatively-written story more than a bit of the "wait who's doing what now?" shuffling about, and tends to encourage longer, more descriptive posts that get deeper into the characters.

3. --- This rule has been removed, for now. To post a new "open" RP, you do no longer have to have participated in a previous RP. This said, however, any new "open" RP will still have to be well thought through and fleshed out, as stated below. (Revised 29th Mars 2010.)

4. You are encouraged to post any "open" roleplays with an eye toward doing smaller RPs - you don't need 20 people for everything, and indeed, an RP with fewer people can often be more fun and easier to manage. You or your players can always play multiple characters if you need an NPC or two to show up in the course of play.

5. The Roleplay forum will not be put on new thread moderation at this time. This is, as all rules are, subject to change in future, but we're hoping that the above guidelines will prevent this from becoming a necessity. However, new RPs will be closely watched, to make sure that the ideas are fully fleshed out, intelligent, and original. We do not need several of basically the same type of RP, especially when players are in short supply. You are strongly encouraged to PM AtropaMandragora before posting a new RP with your idea. RPs will not be outright deleted unless the creator is clearly making copycat RPs or ignoring directions. We know how much work you put into your posts, but we can and will lock RPs that are too similar to existing ones or are not well-thought-out (or otherwise do not follow the above guidelines) so running it past AtropaMandragora to get an "Okay, that sounds good, go ahead and post it!" is a very good idea.

6. RP runners: Please make a new thread for your RP when your thread has reached 1000+ posts. This is simply for technical reasons - it makes it very very hard to do basic maintenance type stuff when threads get too long. You can link to the new thread at the end of the old one, and link any old threads on the new one as well. If your existing RP already has over 1000 posts please do this ASAP.

7. --- This rule has been removed due to being outdated. (Revised 29th Mars 2010.)

8. --- This rule has been merged with rule #1. (Revised 29th Mars 2010.)

9. I have created a #roleplay chat on the MTS2/S2C IRC chat server. This is for brainstorming, planning, as well as actual RP - if you're going back and forth with two characters as part of a larger RP and don't want to be spammy in a thread, this is a great way to do it... Someone can always copy-paste the log of the RP in chat to the actual thread (after cleaning it up a bit of course). Remember, OOC needs to be denoted with ((double parentheses)) unless -everyone- in chat right then is not actively playing. To join, go to http://chat.modthesims2.com and join either of the #social or #create chats (if you're wanting to copy-paste things you should get a real client - there's instructions at the bottom of the page there), and then in the message entry blank type:
/join #roleplay

10. This forum has been around for a while, and thus contains both active and inactive roleplays. Therefore, when interested in joining a roleplay, we ask that you please look at the posting dates in the thread, especially the posting date of the last entry in the thread. If the post was made over two months ago, chances are the roleplay has been ended, or died. If unsure, please ask in the Roleplay Brainstorming/Planning Thread, rather than bumping a dead roleplay. (Added 7th June 2010.)

We are not adding any of these guidelines to the main rules post at the moment because they are sort of tentative - it's things we're going to try now to see if it makes a difference. They are the rules as it stands right now so they won't be changed immediately as there is always a "does this work" trial period, but you are welcome to let me or AtropaMandragora know what you think (politely, please - mods have feelings too and we're just trying to do our best here) in Private Message if you think there's a better/different way to do things that may work better. We will be watching to see how well these changes work and may make other changes accordingly in future depending on that, and your suggestions.