1. Basic Rules

[Ethereal]

General Rules

• Show Respect
  Whether staff, member, or guest, please treat everyone with respect. Use courtesy and have patience when dealing with people, and do not flame or bash anyone. This means tolerance, too. Everyone has a right to their own opinions and beliefs. Any positive ("__ is great!") or neutral ("I think __.") opinions including religion and politics may be mentioned and discussed, but should not be debated; should an argument break out, try to agree to disagree or take it to private chat. We understand conflicts do still happen, but if you do clash with someone, keep it out of public eye. If it becomes too great a problem or is something that really needs to be decided one way or another, try asking a staff member to be a mediator.
  
  
• Content Guidelines
  Vicious Circle is rated PG-13. This means both that you are not to post anything exceeding that rating and that you should not join if you are offended by mildly mature content. "Swearing" is fine so long as you aren't just making a point to abuse that right. If someone has a good reason to dislike (a) specific word(s), we ask you respect it, and in private chat we ask you to cater to your conversation partner's wishes. In public, however, "zomg bad words D:" is not a good reason and so long as someone isn't making a point to "swear" for the SAKE of doing so we endorse full freedom of expression.
  
  Vulgar subjects (dead baby jokes/making light of tragedies/etc) should be avoided however. Please do not spam. Advertising should only be done in the advertising board, though we don't care if you mention another board in chat. ("Yeah I came from there" or "Once on this one board I had this character do this" are cool. If someone ASKS FOR a link you may oblige as well. "Hey join my site!!" will not be permitted, though. Offenders will be warned twice before being banned from the box temporarily.) Naturally, no illegal content is permitted (pornography, ROMs, hacks, etc).
  
  
• One Account
  Only one account per member, please. It just makes it easier to keep track of who is who if all the characters are listed under one name. Also, we don't like the idea of falsely inflating our member count. ;P If you'd like to use your character's name, you may, but it is neither required nor too common here.
  
  (Also, don't be confused if at any point you've noticed a major pattern in names among members. xP This is in no way due to any requirements; we sometimes just do things for a while for lulz. You can always use whatever account or display name you want, assuming it's not inappropriate.)
  
  
• Activity Policy
  As stated in our welcome box, we are both highly active and very casual. Mod replies are quick, but we still understand people have lives. As such, we will never have activity checks or delete inactive accounts; why would we discourage you from deciding to come back some day, after all? All we ask is you do post occasionally, and let us know if you'll be on hiatus for a while. :3
  
  
• Show Effort
  Whether it's roleplaying, making a character, or just chatting in the box, be sure to put a little effort into everything you do. We are intermediate-advanced, so please do your best to use proper spelling and grammar; this goes double for characters and RP. Casual grammar (like starting sentences with and) is one thing, and completely fine; a total disregard is another. Wondering how something works? Look around! Our staff are very friendly and always more than happy to answer your questions, but often the answer is right there if you'll take the time to look~ ^^
  
  
• Have Fun!
  Most importantly, have fun! Roleplaying should never be stressful or feel like a chore. If you start to feel like it is, feel free to take some time to relax. Maybe chill in the chatbox for a while or even take a break for a few days and let your muse build back up. :3 We care a lot more about member happiness than our total post count, and we'll still be here when you're feeling back up to par~

[Admiral Striker General]

Signature Rules

• RP Content
  Whatever else you decide to have, your signature must link to your character bio(s). Whether you would like to do this via image, tables, or just plain text of each character's name is completely up to you so long as all links are there. If you run out of room or just prefer to do this to start, you may place all of your characters' bios in a topic in the Profile Storage board and link instead to that topic.
  
  
• Other Content
  Anything else you'd like to have in your signature- such as images, quotes, or information- is fine, so long as all preceding rules are followed and the content is not overly large. Advertising in signatures is also allowed with the same conditions. Anything stretching the page is strictly forbidden; we'll call it 550px in width to be safe. Height is more flexible, but anything that seems too overdone will cause an admin to either PM you asking for a change or remove it themselves, depending on the severity. As a guideline, 300px or less should be acceptable, though again this is a little more flexible than width.

[Admiral Striker General]

Chatbox Rules

• Content Guidelines
  For the most part, just follow all the general rules and you'll be good. The only real addition to the rules should be to please be courteous regarding subject. If many people are online and only you and one other person seem to be interested in and/or know anything about a subject, why not take it to private chat? If someone let's you know something offends them, try not to discuss it around them. :3
  _{(Also, a reminder as people don't always seem to realize this: remember that hacks, ROMs and emulators all count as illegal content and should not be discussed anywhere, especially not the box.)}
  
  
• Font Color
  Vicious Circle has a lot of skins ranging dozens of colors and shades. Through the magic of Chatango and hours of tweaking, our chatbox will blend right into any one of them while remaining legible.... if

[/b] the font you write with is dark enough. In order to look good on all skins, we as you please keep a very dark font color. However, your name color doesn't need to be legible so long as it isn't outright painful (see: cyan, etc), so feel free to make that whatever. :3[/li][/ul][/blockquote]

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Chatbox Information

• Account
  One of the only major downsides of Chatango is that it can be pretty annoying to those using a Temporary Name. If you just need to ask some questions and don't want to be Anon7149 it's fine, but if you change pages it will make you change the temp name, too. The easiest solution for this is just to sign up. :3 It's quick and easy and will give you more options anyway, like Private Chat. ^^ To do so, just hit the Set Your Name button in the bottom right corner, and under the login section hit Sign Up.
  
  
• Private Chat
  To start private chat with someone, simply click on their name or picture to open their Chatango profile in a new tab, then click the "Chat with Membername" button you'll find there. If someone tries to start Private Chat with you and you are not logged into full Chatango, you will receive notification in the chatbox with options to Reply or Ignore. If you Ignore them for the moment, you can always check it later by hitting the little dialogue bubble, which will be yellow and have a number other than 0 if you have new messages as a reminder.
  
  
• Spam-Blocking
  Sometimes random Chatango users will try to start Private Chat. Some people take it as an opportunity to troll don't mind, and others just don't seem to run into it, but if you want to ensure random people don't IM you, just go to Account in the top right corner and hit Settings, then uncheck the boxes next to "Allow anons to message me" and "Show my profile in Meet People".
  
  Regarding a more legitimate message that can seem spammy, Chatango will ask if it can save your chats to your computer. If you say yes, you're good. If you don't want it to, though, it will keep asking. To stop this, follow the steps above and uncheck the save messages option. :3
  
  
• Name Display
  Your name will show up the way you typed it when you logged in. For example, my normal account name is tehsgness, which kind of looks like random garbled letters. However, in logging in I type it TehSGness, which is much more clearly "teh SG-ness". ^^ We ask you please don't aBuSe ThIs, but it could be useful info for some names.
  
  
• Name Color
  To change your name color, hit the little button that says "bg". It will be the first field in the box that pops up. :3
  
  
• Font Color
  If you uncheck the "Web Colors Only" box in the font color menu, you can select a custom shade of your preferred color. It's also worth noting that it seems blue can be a bit lighter than other colors and still be legible. It still needs to be moderately dark, but not to as great a degree. Just random tidbits.
  
  
• Member Details
  In addition to looking at another member's full chatango profile, you can see any info they've entered by just hovering over their picture. :3 This can often be useful in being able to avoid the ever-embarrassing question "are you a guy or girl?" as well as seeing age and sometimes more. Not everyone will have this information set, but it's worth checking.