[ SITE RULES ]

If you ever have any SUGGESTIONS or COMPLAINTS please PM me and we can work through your ideas and thoughts!!

RATED M FOR MATURE
MDA is not your G-rated Disney fantasy land. This site contains violence, vulgarity, and other content not suitable for younger audiences. Mild sexual themes are allowed here, but keep any graphic sexual content away from the boards.

BEHAVIOR
Be respectful of everyone on this site whether it be another member, a staff member, or a guest. You do not have to like everyone here, but you do have to show common courtesy. Insults, biases, and just plain rude remarks are not tolerated from anyone.

DISCREPANCIES
When discrepancies arise, and they always do, the best thing one can do is REREAD the post where the discrepancy lies. Make sure you aren't tired, pissed, emotional, stressed, or otherwise in an emotional state that may carry dramatic baggage. This is to prevent unwanted and unneeded fights over something that is as simple as editing a post. Editing a post is a pain in the ass and can really piss people off sometimes, so you have to be prepared to occasionally get a negative reaction, which is why you should make sure that you can handle something like that with a clear head. If you feel that by not editing their app that person is breaking the rules or going against something that had been decided beforehand and they refuse to edit their post or cooperate with you, that is when you go to a staff member for help. Be prepared for them to talk to both you and the person whose post is in question to get both sides before making a judgement. Remember that staff don't see sides as 'sides'. If they do, then their judgement is compromised and they need to immediately back off the entire matter altogether. Staff make judgement and whether that judgement leans one way or the other, it cannot be seen as either UNLESS that staff member is being biased. If you are in suspicion of a staff member being biased, then take it directly to me (Jay). Keep in mind that it is always best to go to whoever posted and ask them what's up first before even going to a staff member. Only go to them if it can't be resolved between the two of you and only pass it along to another staff member if you think the one helping you initially is being biased.. KEEP DRAMA OUT OF THE CHATBOX. PM them, Skype them, etc. instead, please.

YOUR FIRST POST
Until your character has been accepted, you should only be posting in the Creation board. I'll make exceptions for OOC posting like introductions or hiatuses, games, and the like; but any in-character posts should not be made until your character is accepted. Also, before you even consider posting or making your character's history, it would be of your best interest to read (link to [ TIMELINE ] )

DEATH
If you want death to be allowed in your topic, then have '[Death Allowed]' in your topic title. All mission topics must have this as they're supposed to be a risk to your character. Also, non-consensual deaths must be logical and there must be no way out, I'll also look over these deaths (or one of the other staff will) and see if it is viable, otherwise I'll discount it. If 'DEATH ALLOWED' is in any title of a thread and if your character gets in a fight and is cornered with no plausible escape, and without breaking any other rules, then your character is capable of dying. So make sure that you do not get into a situation like that! And if your character does happen to get killed, relax; don't cause a big scene. Just ask the other person not to kill your character; it's not too hard of a concept.


USERNAMES
Your username must be your character's name and should not contain any symbols or foreign characters, unless that is part of the name. "Jane Doe" is a-okay. "sparkle pony" and "jane {doe}" are not acceptable. Your names should also not be stupid. I'm not going to like you if you name your character Maya Normusbutt.

ACCOUNT PER CHARACTER
Each of your characters should be on their own, separate account, not grouped together under the same one. There are no exceptions. You can also have one OOC account, separate from your characters,

ACTIVITY
We're not too harsh on activity here, but we would prefer that you finish your apps in a timely manner, and post at least once or twice a week. If you play a canon character, the policy is stricter, and if you don't post regularly with that character, you WILL lose the privilege to play said character.



CHARACTER LIMIT
We don't have an official character limit, but please stick to an amount that you can actively maintain; over fifteen characters is excessive for most, so if you want that many, that's cool, but you better be more active than most, to earn your spot.

MARY SUE & GARY STU
I do not want to see characters whose faults are either minimal or non-existent compared to their strengths, and I do not want to see perfection personified. Give your characters depth and don't be afraid to make a Hephaestus instead of an Adonis.

CARBON COPIES
Please don't make Edward Elric, Elron Elric, or Edward Elroy, have him be a super-duper great alchemist who got into the military at a younger age than most, as a State Alchemist, because his mom died and his brother is armor. Just don't do it. Please. Same goes for any other explicitly obvious carbon copy character.

HOMONCULI
Insanity is not a sin. Despair is not a sin. There are exactly seven Homonculi, unless something comes up, plot-wise, so no, you can't make Supergreedenvy. That is also stupid, and if you make that as a character, we will all laugh at you, and you will become a meme. Don't become a meme. Don't be stupid. Don't make the Sin of Insanity.



FACE CLAIM
Only artwork is acceptable, not real people. You may use anime/manga characters, images you have drawn yourself, or artwork done by another with the artist's permission. You may not use celebrities, models, etc unless there is a drawn version of said person.

MINIPROFILE & SIGS
Okay, so there have been a LOT of questions about this already, so let's clear this up now. Your avatar isn't really your avatar; you can set that to whatever you want, really, it's your account icon, basically. The miniprofile avatars are MUCH more important; if you go to Profile, click Edit Profile, and then the Personal tab, you SHOULD see four slots for images. One is your 250 x 400 avatar; this is what people see on the first tab of your miniprofile when you post. You then have two 200 x 150 avatars, which fit on the second and third slots of the miniprofile. And lastly, there is a slot for a 200 x 200 image, the fourth, and final, tab's avatar. All in all, you should have 4-5 avatars, assuming you use the actual avatar feature as well (which you should, it helps me identify who's online or not, and makes life slightly easier, but it's not necessary, I guess.) If you need help with making an image set to use, just get either the pictures you want or the FC, and send them to Jay, I can pretty easily make you a nice image set. Alternatively, you could probably make one yourself if you're handy enough with image editing. As well, Signatures must not stretch the board or be obnoxiously tall (Preferably 500x150, lengthwise). Avatar and signature content must abide by the ToS of the site. If your character has a faceclaim, their avatar(s) must be said faceclaim.

GRAPHICS HELP?
Sometimes it can be a little difficult finding a face to match your character, or finding/making graphics. As noted above, I can help you with this, and if you ask in the chatbox, you'll probably get a lot of responses for help. Unless nobody's around. I also recommend ERIS for Faceclaim help, if you're into lolis, and also Kojewki if you need custom artwork, though keep in mind that custom art is a favor, not a right; don't abuse it, we only have one site artist.


WORD LIMIT
All members are expected to type posts of AT LEAST 150 words long. You can copypasta your post into a word document or something similar, and find the 'word count' option in the tool menu to check. If you don't follow this rule, we won't kill you, but we will chop off a finger for every fifteen words you could have written but didn't.

SPELLING & GRAMMAR
Basically, if it's really hard to read, when I'm tired, I'm going to assume it's really hard to read in general; try not to make too many spelling or grammar errors, because they make me sad, and also really angry, but mostly, I will just laugh at you for using "their" instead of "they're" or "prolific politician" instead of "Satan."

DECORATION
Posting templates are fine, and you can find them all over the internet, and they make your posts look really nice and fancy. Real pretty stuff, they. Any other form of decorum is generally acceptable, provided your post is easily legible; if you type all your posts in vibrantly bolded hot pink, I swear, I will show up on your porch and kick you in the face. I will seriously spend 6-8 months training as a gymnast until I can kick that high, then I will spend 6-8 more months mastering kung-fu, and I will kick you. In the face. Don't do it.

Also, it's required that all dialogue is colored (any color) to match the language your character speaks, which should be in your signature at all times. Example signature: Fluent in Amestrian, Xingese, and Aerugese.

Example: "Hey Frank!" Frank raised an eyebrow in response to Joe's loud greeting.
"Yo what's up, Joe?"

THREADS
You can be in multiple threads at the same time, but I ask that you please be wary of your character's timeline, hence the character logs mentioned above.



POWER-PLAYING
The act of controlling another person's character or NPC they've created without the player's permission. Some people are more lenient than others about this roleplay foul, and some people plan ahead of time to have certain actions take place, in which case it is alright for a character to momentarily take the wheel. However, unless a player has deemed it okay for you to do so, I don't want to see this happening.

GOD-MODDING
The act of making your character unstoppable and/or ridiculously powerful. This, in my experience, tends to be the most often roleplaying sin committed. People don't want their characters to lose, and so pull ridiculous material out of thin air to keep them on top. This isn't fair. Your character, just like everyone else's characters, is capable of losing and failing. They are not all-powerful. They are not The One. They are mortal and have their own strengths and weaknesses, which should affect them and not just be tossed aside during a time when such weakness will actually hinder them.

METAGAMING
The act of using knowledge that is not available to your character in order to change the way you play him or her. Just because the information is there (character profiles, for example), doesn't make it okay for your character to know all of it. That information is for the players, not the characters. Knowing a character's name the first time your character sees them is not good role playing. You can't know a character without meeting a character. Yes, sometimes players create relationships between characters before ever actually roleplaying, and that is perfectly fine... as long as both parties agree to it.

COUNTRY-SPECIFIED AND CUSTOM WEAPONRY

If you want to incorporate your character or the soldiers under your character's command, etc. using any large, country-based hardware, I ask that you first ask the country's leader of which that item is from/based/made by. If you think about it logically during a war, if the Cretans are fighting the Drachmans, how and why would a Drachman get access to a Cretan artillery, aircrafts, gunships, tanks, etc.? It wouldn't necessarily be possible unless some things happened behind the scenes. While this site promotes creativity, some things like presupposing your character somehow got access to another countries tanks, can easy piss someone off (specifically the country's leader whom you presumably duped without permission). An example of such is this: You're a Drachman Militant and you want a replica of a Lockheed AC-130U, which is a Cretan gunship to attack Xing with. This isn't just possible automatically because it implies that multiple Cretan AC-130Us were obtained intact by Drachman Militants in order to remake it into a usable device, and that's not possible unless they were specifically used in one of the MDA Missions, (which they were not). Therefore, this rule states that you must talk to that country's leader (in this case Rachel I) and ask for permission to use that. In some cases, you will have to work out a deal, possibly also contacting your country's leader so they can trade blueprints or something of the sort. We're all friends here. If the Xingese can carry around AK-47s then there's always a way to make things work. Just be wary and take caution with assuming your character has access to everything. And know, that it's a lot easier in some instances to just invent your own weapon like in Custom Weaponry. But please note that this rule doesn't apply to small weapons that can be obtained underhandedly; it more so stands for larger equipment that people actually care about. All in all, it doesn't really hurt to ask nicely. =3

plot is heavily inspired by fullmetal alchemist and credit goes to hiromu arakawa for that series.
rules largely paraphrased from MDA2's rules and info; credit goes to Aki and whoever else helped write them.