I was wondering, cause my new charries an angel (gone bad, of course) and is it okay if I talk about God and that stuff.

We'd rather keep religious stuff to a minimum here. They can LOOK like one though.

Hmmm... *goes to rethink characters' past* Like, just that she was "Welcomed" by heaven, and she got as pissed she was supposed to convert people, and was taken from her former life...So she goes to Sir Beezlebub, and makes a deal with him that she doesn't have to as long as she hangs out here, which she readily agreed to cause she wanted to. Short version, and sounds much shittier than it did in my head. But I'll change it... any ideas how I can make a better past? Please bestow your amazing past-making skills upon my terrible character.

We've had this stuff before fairly regularly. We've turned down such characters fairly regularly. So I'm afraid I don't see how any tweaking is going to help you. Using religious themes in a sexual roleplay is contentious and likely to offend, so you'll need to find a completely new background all on your own and without our 'amazing past-making skills'

Hmmm...It seems to work ok for my succubus character and Linnis' angel...Why not Random's?

They were established before the rule was enabled there Sondra.

A succubus is a mythical demonic character. A lot of people believe angels to exist literally. You want to make anything like an angel, I'm an equal opportunity bastard.

Ok, I'm just curious, and I'm not going to try to press the issue too much. Why was the rule put in place when it wasn't there before?

The rule has always been understood to exist by everyone who used to play here. Now we get players who don't believe in either the tooth fairy or unwritten rules so we have to spell everything out for them.

Of course the more that happens, the more restrictive the roleplay becomes for everyone else. Take that to its logical conclusion and we'll end up having to define what IS allowed. WHich will take us back to basic human students with no magic, no psychic powers, no martial arts mega-skills, and a short list of allowed monster types. Because we are spending more and more time having to battle players who want to push things further and further away from the theme here.

I think I can see the dilemma, trying to keep the setting cohesive without strangling it.

I am not sure you are dealing with new players trying to push thing further away from the theme, at least not knowingly. SHS has been around in various incarnations for almost 11 years.
But the current board is only from 2007, and most active players here (myself included) have been around for considerably shorter. So many of us were never part of the old SHS, and might not always know about the unwritten codes that people earlier took for granted.

So I don't think any here are deliberately trying to mess things up, if that is any consolation

This is probably the wrong place to suggest this, but if keeping things together is taking up more and more time, have you considered expanding the moderator staff? It just occurred to me that there is you and Madison as admins, and only one moderator who is currently active (I think..). Even if SHS is pretty well functioning, compared to lots of sites, maybe it would help?

That was my perspective on things, at least. Bear in mind I am still relatively new, so I might be missing the mark

Might not be a bad idea. The more moderators there are the better, I'm guessing.

I'd offer my services in that area...but personally, and despite the fact that I've been here on and off (more off than on, I'll grant you) for the last several years now, I'm not so sure that I'd make the best forum mod.

With school and many active threads awaiting my response, I've been a bit busy to check profiles (that and Fallout New Vegas has consumed my life).

But not only that, I find it difficult to actually judge some of the profiles when it involves things like magic or anything one would consider fantasy. I generally compare them to past profiles that have passed before (which was how I based making Kanoe in the first place to ensure I was at least within some boundary of the rules) only to find out that some rule was changed somewhere without any mention of it anywhere. I feel bad when someone PMs me asking if this is allowed and say yes only to have it shot down after they put forth the effort to make the profile with it in mind.

All I know is that I shiver every time the rules constrict a bit more and worry that someday I will be told that I can't have my little witch anymore T.T. I do appreciate how active in moderating Stormy and Madison have been and feel bad for not being as helpful as I should. But, I really have no idea what passes anymore as far as slightly above normal characters go.

I was thinking pretty much the same thing.

This is why I always ask a million questions (ok, that might be a slight exaggeration) before I try to do anything especially 'creative' with my characters, and why, until I came up with the idea for my latest char. (bio still being worked on), I haven't attempted to create a student with magic abilities.

I'm always afraid that if I try something that I think might be kinda cool, it would get shot down because of some new rule/restriction that had been put in place that I didn't know about at the time, and all my effort and hard work that I had been put into it would all be for naught.

I do understand, however, that there are certain times when it is necessary for new rules and restrictions to be put place. Like if there are too many forum members who ignore/break the rules already put in place, or stray too far from the main theme of the site...I'm sure there are more legitimate reasons than I can name at one time without going on and on.

What we are tending to find is four things:

1. A few players who continually try to build mega-characters that cover every possible way to subdue a girl ready for raping

2. A few players who continually try to invent new ways to use characters beyond the actual channel theme and to circumvent the basic rules, especially but not limited to attempts to take long-term control of students instead of the intended casual fuck and wander off looking for the next victim.

3. Players who try to import characters from other games which have no basic empathy with the actual theme of this game.

4. A natural tendency with quite a few players to consider existing characters as a baseline rather than as exceptions, and to go a small way beyond that assumed baseline in creating their own characters.

The first three are annoying but can be managed by simply kicking those few players out if they don't take a hint after the fifth or sixth time of getting knocked back. The last one is more difficult because each little increase is harmless in itself, but over time those cumulative increases reach a point where they are getting too much and we have to say NO.

I've said it elsewhere but students are basically human girls who may have some minor unusual abilities, which are further curtailed by the island's technology. Monsters are basically simple beings who are focused on having sex with human girls. They have an ability through physical, mental or technological means to fairly easily subdue a human girl, along with the physical equipment to show her a good time. They are not galaxy crushing super beings who wiped out entire civilizations with a wave of their hands before somehow being reduced in stature to lurking in the woods of a small and fairly insignificant island with their trans-dimensional star-gobbling monster's powers somehow compressed down into an ability to rip the clothes off a single weak female.

For those who find the simple monster / simple human girl / simple rape and move on scenario too repetitive or limiting, we have opened up the space forums and the ADD forums. They offer a lot more opportunity for future tech fighting more involved monsters as well as the potential for longer term BDSM based games. But even there the advance is relative, not open-ended and the theme is still alien rape not intergalactic warfare.

I can't cover every eventuality and I can't blame players for wanting to create unique characters who stand out and so attract roleplay but I also won't see SHS changed into something it isn't and was never intended to be.