Welcome to Gaia! ::

The Rules

Thou shalt not attempt to RP without having first submitted your RP form.
Please, follow the directions in this thread and wait for the form to be approved before you play. You don't have to have a Sentinel, but your form DOES have to be approved whether you have one or not.

Thou shalt not god-mode.
Or twink, or call shots, or power-game, or metagame. If you need to ask what any of these things mean, then you've obviously been very lucky in the places you've RPed. You should also look up what it means before you RP before you accidentally do it. Read the roleplay guide if you are not sure.

Thou shalt keep it PG-13, and minimize profanity unless it is necessary in-character.
While Slander may be a bit of a potty-mouth offline, he tries to keep that sort of language out of Gaia. It's only fair that everyone else make the same effort!

Thou shalt minimize OOC comments in IC areas, and use (( )) to separate them.
A glut of OOCness in the middle of an RP is annoying. A post where your OOC comment takes up more space than the actual RP post might be removed.

Thou shalt use proper english at all times.
Use of chat-speak in RP is absolutely not permitted, in any circumstances. Ever. It does not take that long to type out 'are' compared to 'r', or 'you' compared to 'u'. We're not grammar nazis, but we do expect that people will make an effort with their RP. Please be literate. Spell-check is your friend. It's Sentinel, NOT Sentinal etc., etc.
Seriously, it's really not fun to RP with someone who can't even be bothered to re-read their post before submitting it. We don't expect masterful writing skills and perfectly-crafted posts every time, but we'd like to at least see an effort made.

Thou shalt make an effort to include everyone, regardless of RP ability.
We will not ask you to force you character to act in a manner that is out-of-character for them, but we do ask that you make an effort to be nice to and include everyone as much as possible.

If you're part of a planned RP event, don't leave us hanging!
If you're going to disappear for a while, let everyone in your RP know. When you sign up for an RP event there are clear requirements set out at the beginning, so make sure that you can fulfill them! If you're gone for too long (time period is specified in the RP event) without explanation then the RP may be altered to remove your character.


The Guidelines

Be as natural as possible.
Sentinels, although they dislike the comparison, are pretty much giant sentient two-toed owls. Like owls, they have silent flight. Like owls, they don’t have hands. WINGS ARE NOT HANDS. A Sentinel will not smoke a cigarette, give someone a high-five, or pick something up with their wing. Sentinels do not like being on the ground or over tree-top level. To learn about owl behaviour and proper terminology, take a look at the Owl Pages.

Write in the third person, not the first.
This means “he said”, not “I said”. Present or past tense is acceptable, depending on the preference of the roleplayer, but it'd be super-duper dandy if people could be consistent with the tense throughout one RP.

For the most part, we will not allow characters with profound mental, behavioural, or emotional disorders.
We have both in-character and out-of-character reasons to discourage this. ICly, the Sentinels are very practical by nature and any young Sentinel who exhibits symptoms of a disorder that will affect his/her ability to function as a normal part of society will not be permitted to become a part of the clan. OOCly, we want to limit these type of characters to minimize potential upset and drama that could occur if the disorder is not handled with appropriate consideration of those who may be affected by such an unfortunate circumstance in their offline life. If and when we do approve any characters with such a disorder they'll have to be based on actual psychoses/neuroses/personality disorders/etc. and will be subject to strict requirements.

In event RPs, you must follow post order. In other RPs, it's polite to do so anyways.
Following post order is pretty easy if the RP involves only two people, but once the RP gets a bit more involved it can get tricky to keep track of! If three people are RPing together, then you need to wait for BOTH of the other people you are playing with to post before you can post again (unless one of the players says to go ahead and skip their post). Post order for three people should look like this: A-B-C-A-B-C. If person C is a bit too impatient and jumps ahead of B, then person B doesn't get a fair chance to respond. Excessive post order jumping may result in a warning!

Want to make a group? Maybe an organized pack of Hunters, or a guild of Crafters, or a coven of Mystics.. or a travelling troupe of Bards. Whatever your fancy, we'd like to know more about it so we can officially approve of the group's activities and allow it to make a group territory within the sub-forum.

If you're interested in forming a group of like-minded Sentinels, please fill out this form: