Common Rules of Roleplay

The common rules of roleplay are the essential rules that all public roleplaying groups employ to keep things in order. These include things like godmodding, metagaming, and autohitting. One of the fundamental skills that every good roleplayer has is the ability to follow and abide by these rules. Even though everybody has the occasional slip-up, disregarding for these common rules is frowned upon amongst the community.

List of Rules
To follow is the list of common roleplay rules that every roleplayer should understand and follow.

Godmodding
Godmodding is when a character features god-like abilities, such as invincibility or mind control, or other unrealistic powers that don't fit with lore. It's also considered godmodding to refuse death in fights or ignore roleplayers in scenarios in which said roleplayers are attempting to attack you. Nobody's good at everything; try and keep yourself in check.

ex. "I can kill you with a single touch. *she would touch his skin, and if it succeeds, it will melt his arm off"

Metagaming
Metagaming is when a player applies OOC-retrieved information to their IC character, such as participating in a war that you only saw was stated to be happening on a clan's thread on the forums, or hearing whispering because you saw the text, and knowing a character's name because you saw their username. This is the most commonly broken rule of roleplay and most infuriating for many.

Autoing (Autohitting, Autowalking, etc)
Autohitting is when a player performs an action without giving the affected players a chance to respond. For example, running up to somebody and saying *Stabs in the heart* then running off would be autohitting. Auto also applies to non-combative actions to which another player might have a reaction. Saying, "The black knight slips past the guards and into the castle," while white knights are guarding the entrance to the white knight's castle would be autowalking on the premise that, in all likelihood, those knights would stop you before you got past them. This can easily be fixed with a simple rewording. Add "tries to" or "attempts to" to clarify that your character intends to perform said action, but his success depends on the responses of those around him. More advanced roleplayers will go into detail with their actions and emphasize their attempts. This is a frequently broken rule by newer roleplayers.

Lorebreaking
Lorebreaking is when a character breaks lore, which is anything that likely affects a character or scenario. The basis for these commonalities is origin, culture, and known historical events. For example, a vampyre that is unaffected when crossing the holy salve barrier is a lorebreak because vampyres are weakened outside of Morytania where the sun shines. Lorebending, a similar term, is when existing lore is lightly modified (Hence the term lorebending), but not significantly or in a way that detracts from the roleplaying experience. Often this has to do with ideas that are neither supported nor contradicted by existing lore; for example, one never comes across a person who is a crossbreed between humanoid races in-game (e.g. a half-elf) but it is never explicitly stated that this can't be done - only that you rarely come across it.

Powerplaying
Powerplaying occurs when a player operates someone else's character without the other player's consent. The most blatant example of this would be a player writing, "Your character falls off the cliff when he walks up to it." As you can see, you take active control of what the other character does. Not only is this not fair to the other player, but it's also discouraged because often players will misconstrue the behaviors and personalities of characters they didn't design. Powerplaying goes into more subtle situations, however. Saying, "Sally charges Jack so fast that he wouldn't be able to react enough to avoid it," can also be considered a violation of this rule since Sally's player has controlled Jack's abilities, possibly in a way that doesn't accurately represent his character. The appropriate way to word Sally's attack would be, "Sally charges Jack so fast that it's unlikely he could totally dodge it without equally inhuman speed." This leaves it up to Jack's player whether or not Jack is actually capable of avoiding Sally.

Exceptions
Roleplay is about creativity and while these rules are not just needed they can at times during very deep and important roleplay points be a bit constricting. That being said, like many things in life the rules of roleplay are not the be-all and end-all. It takes skill and knowledge to know when one can bend one of the above rules to affect a roleplay in a positive manner, this is usually done in small groups where the people involved know what they are getting into and are okay with it. This takes a long time to understand and should only be attempted by adavanced roleplayers.