Exodus Project Chat Policies and Disclaimers
These policies, use terms and disclaimers extend to all of the official chats administered by The Exodus Project, and the authorized moderator-volunteers thereof. By participating in these chats, or by voluntarily submitting material or ideas to them, you agree that you understand and are bound by all of these policies, disclaimers and use terms. You also agree to release Exodus Project and its employees from any liability for any situation which arises from the chats, except as prohibited by law.
First off, the games here at the Exodus Project are in fact games. No joke, they aren't real. No matter how much you think they might be, they just aren't. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you are not a great warrior from a far off kingdom, a mighty arch-mage, shape shifting demon, vampire, werewolf, or any other kind of undead or fantasy creature. You are only these things in your imagination, please be mature enough to realize this, and don't create problems for other players, dungeon masters or storytellers. It is not our intention to create, or to let you create any kind of real world problem or conflict, please don't try. It'll more than likely just result in your characters being grabbed, and you getting booted from the site. For the rest of you, who didn't need to read this, and have just had ten seconds stolen from your life, please go play and have fun.
The Exodus Project is primarily posting these terms in order to protect itself from individuals who might attempt to use our free service or actions occurring because of it as a means to damage us, or our volunteers. We will never use your characters or ideas in a book, or any other way, except as described herein, or with your permission to do so. Honestly, if someone here wants to write a book, I bet they've already got better ideas in mind that your character, so don't kid yourself. What material we do put up is free, and in no way meant to challenge the copyright or ownership of said material, whoever it may belong to, so please don't take it as such. None of us here want your character, it's yours, keep it. We just want to give you a fun place to play, and protect ourselves from those who can't have fun if they aren't creating a problem. . To do that, we need to be able to make people do what "in-game" circumstances dictate and we need to be able to protect ourselves legally. This is just legal speak to cover our asses and protect us from the aforementioned bad people who want to ruin our and your fun by not playing the game as it was intended.
By using these Chats you are agreeing that The Exodus Project makes no claims to the accuracy of information provided by other users or its designated volunteers, and has no liability for situations that may arise from the actions of those individuals. You are furthermore agreeing that you are liable for any situations that may arise from your own actions.
The Exodus Project's RPG chats are free, however free does not mean unrestricted. The RPG chats are provided as a free place for you to play our games and share ideas and stories related to the Exodus Projects' online chats, games, and fiction. Free means that Exodus Project is not charging you anything to use the chats, it doesn't mean you can do whatever you want. There are rules, please follow them.
The Exodus Project reserves the right to delete offensive material, and, in cases where a person insists upon being offensive, to ban that person from the chats or potentially even our entire website. Offensive material isn't a set thing we can define, but use your own common sense. If you probably wouldn't get away with doing it in real life without causing a huge mess, it's probably not a good idea here either. So while it is impossible to list every example that might be considered offensive enough to remove, here is a partial list, drawn from other chats and our own personal views.
Things that may result in deleted characters or material, or banning, include, but are not limited to:
The Exodus Project recognizes that in a role-playing game there will be actions which appear to violate these use terms because they are done "in character". We do not allow any real illegal activities in our games, or on the Myrmid servers. We do allow the in-character fictional portrayal of actions of a questionable nature, but you should exercise common sense, ethics, morality and restraint when considering how you behave even in the game. While your fictional character in the game may antagonize another fictional character in the game, you may not antagonize real people. Whether or not an in-character activity violates the use terms shall be decided solely at the discretion of the Exodus Project and its volunteers.
We do not allow any depictions of child pornography on our servers, nor any depictions of children in sexual situations, not even in a fictional sense. We do not allow any use of our servers to link to child pornography or to facilitate child pornography in any way, real or fictional. Depictions, for the purposes of this rule, include text based descriptions, written portrayals and any visual representation. Nor do we allow rape, or other sexual violence to be portrayed. This is not a joke. If you're caught doing any of this, or accused and any kind of proof can be brought against you, you will be banned from the site, and your characters removed. It's bad enough in real life, don't bring it to our games. There is no second chance with this rule.
We reserve the right to share any and all information transmitted to us or our servers with legal authorities or law enforcement officials, as well as with an offender's internet service provider. You agree that we have permission to share information in this manner.
Information, characters or access may be removed without any prior notice if deemed offensive, solely at the discretion of the Exodus Project or its legal representatives. The privilege of posting information to Myrmid servers and Exodus Project chat sites may also be restricted solely at the discretion of the Exodus Project or its legal representatives.
By submitting your material, character record or ideas to Exodus Project's or Exodus Project's chat game you agree that Exodus Project is free to electronically store, copy, retrieve, delete, restrict, alter, record, distribute, process, manipulate, or use the information you submit for your material, character record or chat idea in any way deemed necessary, at the sole discretion of the Exodus Project, to maintain the operation of the Exodus Project's online chats. By submitting your character record or role-playing game or chat related idea to the Exodus Project's chats you assign full control and rights of it to the Exodus Project and its designated volunteer Storytellers and Dungeon Masters for all purposes deemed, at the sole discretion of the Exodus Project, related in any way to the operation of the Exodus Project's online chats.
If you have a character record which you would like removed from our servers, you may log the character in with your correct password and use the Delete Character function, but you acknowledge that Exodus Project may retain archives of any information you have submitted, for the purposes of legal protection and the operation of the chats. Submitting or using your character record, information or ideas to our servers indicates you are agreeing that you assign us all copyrights deemed necessary, at the sole discretion of the Exodus Project, to maintain the operation of the Exodus Project's online chats.
Information, material, character records or ideas shall be considered "submitted" to the Exodus Project chats if they are submitted to any server, archive, storage medium or person on the RPG chats. If you submit an idea or use one in such a way that it becomes a feature of the chat, it becomes ours. This is to prevent people from creating ideas or concepts, implementing them, and then trying to remove them at a later date. This is done fro the stability of our chat, to keep the online environment from fluctuating because a player wrote an idea and submitted it to us, and then later decided they didn't want us to use it, or didn't like the way we used it. If you don't want to lose control of something, don't use it on our chats and servers.
During creation of your character sheet on our Java-based chats, you are given an option to hide your email address from other players. This does not include the ability to hide your email address from Storytellers, Dungeon Masters, or the Exodus Project and its volunteers. They will be able to view it through their administrative pages. Storytellers or Dungeon Masters may use your email address to contact you in reference to the chat game. By using the chats and listing your email address you agree that they may do so. Character records whose email addresses are determined to be false or invalid will be removed from the database without warning upon discovery. The Exodus Project will not distribute these email addresses to anyone in any way except as deemed necessary to ensure the continued operation of the chats or to cooperate with legal authorities.
Chat participants may not advertise or solicit on our servers. This prohibition includes, but is not limited to, promotion of or recruiting for alternative chats or internet sites or services which might be construed as competing with Exodus Project; and promotion of any peer-to-peer file exchange service or software. If you wish to advertise on the site, please contact the administration, and discuss purchasing space for an ad banner.
These use terms do not apply equally to the Exodus Project administration. It is our chat, and these use terms are designed to protect us, not hinder us. These use terms do, however, apply to any and all volunteers, players or participants.
Once again, we're here for you to have fun. We didn't have to create this site, we wanted to. We want to enjoy the games, and we want you to enjoy the games. These terms are just the legal vehicle necessary to protect ourselves so that we can continue to do so. So go, play, have fun, and don't cause problems.