Roleplay Rules

As Wolvden itself is lush with opportunities for you to roleplay your pack how you see fit, we're very open and welcoming of any players that wish to roleplay on our site.  That being said, we have certain rules that should be followed, in addition to what is laid out in our Terms of Service and Code of Conduct.  These rules must be followed, whether you are doing a public forum roleplay, a private group/1x1 forum roleplay, or roleplaying through the private messaging system.  By creating a Wolvden account, you automatically agree to the following rules.

1. Seeking and Advertising Roleplays

1. Any roleplay advertisements (whether advertising your own roleplay or seeking one out) must be done through the chat room's "Role Play" channel or by posting a topic in the "Role Playing", "1x1", or "Out of Character" forums.
2. Your advertisement must be in relation to Wolvden forums.  Posting an advertisement in the chat room's "Role Play" channel for an off-site roleplay is not allowed.  If your roleplay is located off-site, such as a roleplaying forum or a Discord server, you must create a topic on our "Role Playing" forum in order to advertise it.  You can link to your topic within the chat room's "Role Play" channel, provided you include a disclaimer on your topic that players will be redirected off-site, and to continue at their own risk.
   1. Any off-site roleplays that you advertise must fall within our site's rules.  You cannot post advertisements to NSFW/18+ roleplaying forums or Discord servers.  You also cannot post advertisements stating you are seeking these types of off-site roleplays.
3. When advertising your roleplays, "mature themes" and "struggles" are allowed, but must be kept safe for a 16+ audience.  This means that there must not be any illegal or sexual themes, and explicit scenes are required to "fade-to-black".

2. Roleplay Content

1. Wolvden is a 16+ site.  This means that we have 16 and 17-year-old players ("minors") that consider Wolvden to be a safe space.  All content published on Wolvden must be age appropriate for minor audiences, including roleplays.
   1. We do not allow sex, mating, breeding, or heats to be central topics for roleplays, whether consensual or "forced".  If consensual sex, mating, or breeding comes up within a roleplay, you are required to either give a very vague mention that it happened or (preferably) include a "fade-to-black" scene to skip describing the act itself.
   2. Attempting to get around this rule by searching for Wolvden players to participate in NSFW, adult, or 18+ roleplays off-site is not allowed and can get you permanently suspended from Wolvden.
   3. We forbid using our private messaging system to conduct NSFW, adult, or 18+ roleplays.  If we discover that you are conducting NSFW roleplays through PMs, you risk being permanently suspended from Wolvden.
   4. Under no circumstances are you allowed to request proof or verification of age in order to roleplay these topics on Wolvden.  Not only is this a privacy violation, but proof can always be faked.  Do not seek out sexual roleplays on Wolvden, point blank.  You do not know who is and who is not underage.
   5. Omegaverse ("A/B/O") roleplays are forbidden from Wolvden completely.
2. Touchy, problematic, illegal, or disturbing subjects are not allowed to be central topics for roleplays.  Certain subjects are okay if they are briefly mentioned, but they cannot be the focal point for your roleplay.
   1. On the other hand, there are topics that are outright never okay to be mentioned, alluded to, or hinted at—even briefly.  This includes, but is not limited to: child abuse, physical/sexual abuse, rape (or "forced breeding"), suicide, public/school shootings, overdosing, heavy/glorified substance abuse, and self-harm.  Do not bring these up as active topics within roleplays, even if they only play a minor role.
   2. Dog fighting roleplays are not allowed.  This is specifically in reference to the illegal kind of dog fighting that involves humans betting on the survivability of their dogs.
   3. Certain illegal topics (drug cartels, murder, slavery, etc.) can only be brought up as brief situations within a roleplay.  If your roleplay contains any of these as central topics, it will be shut down.
3. Roleplaying as a child is not allowed.  This is specifically in regards to human (or humanoid) characters.  We would very much like to avoid any situations that can lead to a roleplay describing the abuse of children or minors in any way, shape, or form.  Children are allowed to be supporting characters, but cannot be playable—essentially acting as NPCs ("Non-Playable Characters").  As Wolvden is a 16+ site, we consider any person that is 16 or older to no longer be a child.  Your human(oid) characters cannot be any younger than 16 years of age.
   1. The one exception to this rule is when you are roleplaying as an animal (cub, kit, pup, etc.) that would be part of a family, pride, pack, and so on.  These animal characters must age up as the roleplay progresses.  In reference to bullet points 2.1 and 2.2 of this forum topic, do not abuse your young animal characters and do not involve them in "early heats".
4. Describing murder or physical harm within a roleplay is fine, so long as you take care to avoid being overly graphic or offensive.
5. We allow a character's history/backstory to contain certain problematic topics (such as substance abuse or rape); however, you cannot describe their past situations in detail, in order to comply with our content rules.  Only brief mentions are allowed.  These past situations must stay in the past and cannot continue on as an active, ongoing situation within a roleplay.

3. Art, Characters, and Photos

1. If you do not have permission from an artist to use their artwork as your roleplay character, don't use it.
2. If you do not have permission from the owner of a character to use their character as your roleplay character, don't use it.
3. Photos are allowed, but only if the photo is free-to-use or you have explicit permission to use the photo.  All photos must be properly credited and linked to their original owner's source.
4. For your roleplay character images, you can:
   1. Use a free-to-use base or lineart, as long as the artist allows it to be used.  The artist must be properly credited and linked back to.
   2. Use doll creators, as long as the artist or website allows it to be used.  The artist and/or website must be properly credited and linked back to.
   3. Use art that you have fully created on your own for your own use.  To avoid confusion among Wolvden's staff team, please make sure to clearly state that you have drawn a piece of art for yourself to use as your roleplay character.
   4. Use art that you have commissioned from another artist for your own use.  The artist must be properly credited and linked back to.  To avoid confusion among Wolvden's staff team, please make sure to clearly state that you commissioned the piece of art.
   5. Use images or photos with "Some Rights Reserved" licenses if the license allows for redistributing the material.  These images/photos still need to be attributed (credited and linked back) to their original source.
   6. Use public domain images or photos.  These images/photos still need to be attributed (credited and linked back) to their original source.
5. For your roleplay character images, you cannot:
   1. Source to an image "collection" website, such as Pinterest.  Unless the original photographer has uploaded their photo specifically to Pinterest, this is more than likely not the original source of the photo; it has been reposted.
   2. Save the image and re-upload it yourself to Imgur, Tinypic, Photobucket, or similar websites.  This does not make it your image.
   3. Use an image or photo where its copyright clearly states "All Rights Reserved".  This cannot be used even if you properly attribute (credit and link back) to the original source—you do not have the rights to redistribute or use it.
   4. Post "all rights belong to the author/creator/owner, not me" or any variation of this without properly linking back to the original source of the image you're using.  This is not a sufficient way to source an image.
   5. Use art that does not belong to you unless its copyright allows it and it is clearly credited and linked back to.
6. Any attempts to circumvent posting in the official "Character Sheets" forum (by hosting your own character sheets thread in the "Out of Character" forum, hosting your character sheet off-site, flagging your Character Sheets topic for deletion, etc.) are not allowed.  Anyone who is found to be doing this will have their topic locked and posted on by a staff member, or will be privately contacted by a staff member informing them to use the official "Character Sheets" forum so that we may properly track players who are using photos for their characters.
7. Any posts made in a Character Sheets topic that do not contain a character sheet are considered to be spam, and will be deleted and handled accordingly by our staff team.  If you want to let a player know that their character is accepted in your roleplay, please PM them.
8. In regards to "placeholders" or "work-in-progress" character sheets, you have one week after creating the post to edit the character sheet with a proper form.  If your post is still empty or looks like it is in progress after one week, you will be approached by a staff member to see if you will be updating the post.  If a few days pass since you were contacted by our staff team, and your post is still empty or a work-in-progress, your post will be deleted.

Disclaimer: These rules may be added to, changed, or outright removed in the future.  When a change is made to this topic, it will be announced within the Recent Game Updates area as well as in a future news post.  We cannot predict every situation or topic before it occurs.