Minus points are cumulative, with a refreshment period of 6 months, and should include a warning. This means if player A is noted to be hitting too hard on a game, he should be taken to one side, and told he is receiving an official warning for heavy hits.

If this player does it again, he receives a -1 on the debrief, irrelevant of any other considerations. If he does it a second time - on the same game, or another one - he receives a -2.

If the player reaches -3, the ref team have a responsibility to sit the player down, and talk through why they are continuing to gain minus points. It's possible they may not understand the criteria for their mistakes, or may require harsher admonishment to actually pay attention to the minuses they are being given.

Possible suggestions for further admonishments may be:

• Hitting too hard; ban them from playing a character or monster that uses a weapon for the next 'x' weeks.
• Metagaming; ban them from accessing any OOC chat areas of the boards where they may be getting the information from.
• Consistent ignoring of IC restrictions: forcibly restat the character so they no longer have the restrictions. This will nearly always be detrimental to the character's abilities.

If a player continues to have/be a problem, even harsher penalties may be invoked, including not being allowed to play for a number of weeks, not being allowed to attend for a number of weeks, or exponential gain of minus points, so any further incidents will end up in their character gaining no experience, or even decreasing in rank.

Minus points will be reset if a player does not 'reoffend' within a 6 month period. That means if player A has gained a -2 on the 13th of January for heavy hitting, but makes it to July without it happening again, his minuses are said to be 'reset'.

Minuses are not cumulative with each other; if a player metagames, and hits too hard, they will gain two warnings, one for metagaming and one for heavy hits, not a warning and a -1. A player may gain more than one minus point on a game.

OOC warnings may be given for:

• Heavy hitting.
• Shield barging or other unsafe fighting methods such as hitting too fast.
• Metagaming.
• Misplaying hits.
• Cheating, or excessive whining at the GM in case of character death.
• Ignoring IC restrictions.
• Lack of required IC props i.e no elf ears, spell book or face makeup.
• Behaviour issues such as shouting insults at monsters OOC or anything else the ref team deems inappropriate.

Note that gross unsafe fighting methods - such as stabbing with a weapon - do not need any warnings or minus points; the ref team is free to suspend or ban the player on the spot.

It should always be stressed to the player that IC penalties are not always a bad thing. Certain classes actually require IC penalties for game balance.

An example of this would be Barbarians; in a combat heavy system, their superior physical stats will mean that their bigoted restrictions with regards to their roleplay will not only be tolerated by other characters, they may very well be accepted - the IC penalties for their behaviour are present to counteract this.

The point of IC penalties is to encourage characters to set aside their differences and work together while on a mission. This means a Defender that goes running to their superior officer over every incident, no matter how tiny, should be admonished as frequently as a disruptive priest.

It should be noted that penalties on characters that are members of a guild should be less that penalties put on unaligned characters, and those should be less than penalties put on non-Kingdom citizens, as it is assumed that guilds will intervene on behalf of their members (assuming they haven't done something to disgrace the guild), and that non-Kingdom citizens will be slapped down to the full extent of the law.

There are two types of IC penalties that can be used - those that have solely IC consequences and are generally roleplay based, and those that also effect a character's stats.

In an ideal world, all penalties would be solely RP based, as this is the fairer approach, but unfortunately, not every character (and not every player) responds to this.

Solely IC:

• Private bollocking by a superior - either of the mission briefing guild or the character's own.
• Public bollocking.
• Banning from certain areas - if the character is a defender, they may be banned from using their own training ground for a week.
• 'Training session' with a higher level guard or gladiator. Essentially, a legal beating.

The above penalties are relatively minor, and should be used for things such a low-level insubordination, disobeying orders on a small scale, etc.

Stats effecting: Note that some of these only apply to guild members; a character that is not a guild member will received a harsher punishment in its place.

• fine
• 'make busy work' (prevents character from training and thus gaining any new skills during this time period)
• banning from certain guild's ground, thus preventing them from receiving training from that guild
• demotion
• execution
• jail time (banning from mission)
• exile

IC consequences are different to IC penalties; whereas IC penalties are handed out by in-game organisations, consequences are often the result of the refs acting on behalf of a deity or path; these entities are all-seeing and all-knowing, so do not need anything to report to them. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT ANY DODGY ACTIONS SHOULD BE HIDDEN FROM THE REF TEAM. If someone does this, the entities may well have a bit of a wibble, and the character in question may loose at least one DT (or for serious taking the piss, all BUT one DT), even if this is massively out of proportion with the IC action.

PvP occurs when one character attacks another with the intention of actually doing them harm, and/or killing them. Under normal circumstances this is not allowed, and if another player character attacks yours you should bring it to the attention of the GM and/or Ref immediately.

However, there are certain circumstances where it is allowed. These are:

• when it has been agreed upon by those involved, and the GM/Ref has been told about it.
• when the attacking character 'cannot help it', i.e they are possessed or under the influence of a barbarian rage, although there may be an IC penalty for the latter if the character has attacked a party mage or elf.
• if the attacked character is the subject of a PvP Writ.

The PvP Writ is a measure that is in place specifically for those characters who are 'dodgy'. It is required that you sign the writ if your character:

• belongs to a proscribed guild (The Brethren, or The Dark Blades, for example.)
• belongs to a proscribed temple (Chaos, Death or Anarchy)
• casts from a proscribed spell or miracle list (necromancy, demonology, black flame, dark druid or anarchy)
• follows a proscribed or 'suspected' alignment (anarchy, and to a lesser extent chaos and death)
• has something else about their person/in their backstory that is sufficiently dodgy that the ref team deems that you need it.

The writ specifies that PVP is allowed in the case of the characters, and should they be killed by another character due to the above, it also prevents complaints about it.

Here is an example of a filled out and signed PvP writ.