'Souls RPG @ Tumblr

From Official Drop List:

No. It's not uncommon for players who are leaders to achieve high ranks in other packs, but regardless of IC rank, players are not leaders of a pack unless they have formal OOC authority in the pack, and leaders in one pack cannot have this in another pack.

Yes, to a degree. Markings can shift slightly/somewhat between forms, but there shouldn't be any dramatic differences. All colors and patterns should appear in all forms. Characters cannot have completely different markings between forms. Every marking that appears in Lupus form should have a counterpart in Optime form, but the exact size/proportion of the marking can vary slightly. For example, if a character is all white but has black hair in Optime form, they should absolutely have a patch of black on their head in Lupus form too -- but it's fine for that patch of black to be somewhat smaller in Lupus form than Optime form (e.g., say it covers 25% of their head in Lupus form but 50% of their head in Optime). This degree of creative allowance is permissible. If you have a specific design you want to discuss, please feel free to PM us.

There could be. Unsure if there needs to be?

It's fine for pronouns to be edited into nicknames, or included in your Discord profile. Roles are not visible until you click into a user's profile anyway, so including pronouns in your profile has the same effect.

Ideally, if implemented, pronoun roles would be self-assigned rather than staff-assigned. Usually this is via a specific role-assignment channel, but we generally try to keep things simple on the server by limiting the number of channels. If there's big demand for this, we can consider it, but this can be handled via existing functionality.

he/they.

It is a mystery.

Also, possibly,

No, canon-timeline humans would've recognised dogs and other canines as threats a long time ago and would have eliminated them accordingly within their enclaves. In the early years of the apocalypse though (pre-90's), that threat may not have been clear, so pet dogs living among human survivors may have triggered scares among humans during their first shift, interalised the fear humans had for them and shifted their allegiance away from humans, and become more direct threats. Canines among human survivors are likely to also pass around continued variants of the virus (effects to canines could be the same while becoming more/differently dangerous to humans), threatening whatever fragile immunity they achieve. And so, alt-timeline humans would probably need to eliminate canines among them much earlier in order to prevent virus variants from spreading and to gain a better foothold on otherwise dog-dominant territories in order to establish broader control. We have no plans to allow for playable characters to have had direct contact with humans at any point within the last 20 years. At this point, even the characters that came into direct contact with humans during the Gamma 7 plot are long gone and their stories have mostly not survived.

Canonically, the immune human populations have been in steady decline for some years. Their isolated enclaves are generally poorly suited for ongoing survival due to limited, polluted, and contaminated resources. By now, numerous natural disasters, equipment meltdowns, energy depletion, etc, would've also taken its toll. Ventures outside their contained areas invariably end in disaster, and it's likely the canon human population will become extinct soon. All that said, sure, it's possible that in an alternate timeline, humans could challenge local Luperci populations and reclaim land outside of their enclaves. In the US, at least, it's not unlikely for there to be insane stockpiles of weapons and munitions available for use so that even a tiny human population could defeat large numbers of Luperci, who might quickly learn to fear and avoid them. Realistically, the best time for humans to have pushed for this would've been early on, while Luperci populations were less organised and adapted -- if immune humans in the early and mid-90's had pushed out and eliminated nearby canine populations (they'd need to murder all their doggos though), they might've had a better chance establishing larger human territories. But this would've also been the time when they're least sure of what's happening, whether they're still at risk of the virus, etc. Also, while munitions might take a while to go through, resources like gasoline, electricity, etc, would deplete fairly quickly. Diseases and virus' that are treatable with modern human medicine would no longer be available. The AIDS epidemic was still ongoing in 1988, and influenza and other contagious diseases would rapidly spread throughout the populous. Birth mortality rates would increase, and even for infants that did survive, a large portion would not live to see their fifth birthday. (Immunity is also not guaranteed to be inherited.) Humans are prone to in-fighting, and dwindling resources may strain already tenuous group relations.

Incestuous relationships of any nature are allowed and have occurred in the past. There are no moral guardrails on what is acceptable in-game. It's not possible for Luperci to really understand the genetic implications of incest, though communities or individuals can certainly have their own opinions about it. Some might be able to note a higher rate of birth defects in incestuous relationships, but this would typically be anecdotal. Family records in general tend to be poorly kept (if at all), so it may just be that communities develop other reasons and biases for or against it. While ill effects are not mandated, players are encouraged to consider how inbreeding might affect resulting offspring, which include a higher rate of genetic diseases and recessive traits.

This would be determined on a case by case basis. Simply being exposed to many languages does not necessarily mean a character would automatically become fluent in them, but "being able to speak" a language can mean a lot of different things, too. There are a lot of nuances to language-learning that players should consider before slapping a polyglot label onto a character. It's possible that a character exposed to a lot of languages could come quickly understand a few common words or phrases in those languages, but that doesn't make them "fluent" and they may be mystified when taken out of the common contexts of the languages they were exposed to. For example, if the multilingual area is a trading hub, they might only understand a language insofar as using it for trade of specific goods, but they wouldn't know where to start in that language if it's used for something else, like discussing history or family or hunting. Aside from one, or perhaps two, mother tongues, a character would need to spend deliberate time learning a language to become fluent, and this often requires extended and immersive exposure to the language. Luperci don't have language books, training apps, or other resources that can be used to shortcut language learning. They don't have research on the techniques human polyglots use to learn many languages quickly. And not all languages are created equal. A Spanish speaker may be able to more quickly pick up Portuguese, French, or Italian, compared to Chinese or Japanese. Languages also tend to be forgotten quickly if unused, so a Luperci moving away from an area may mean they no longer have anyone to speak a certain language to, which can lead to loss of proficiency, etc. There are a lot of factors at play here. As always, if you have a specific scenario in mind, please PM us directly.

Short answer: no. Long answer: It's not possible to unilaterally prevent the indexing and listing of images from a site -- we'd need to (request) delisting of the entire website, which is also difficult, if not impossible for long established sites. Google generally only honors delistment requests for pages that no longer exist, information that's incorrect, or abusive materials. (Reference, reference.) Art theft has been a problem long before NFTs were a thing. There's no guarantee that preventing search engine indexing would prevent theft, either. It sucks, but the only way to 100% prevent it is to keep your images off the Internet entirely. As always, artists should take care to watermark work in difficult-to-remove areas and make it clear to their followerbase that no NFT with their art is legitimate.

From the RP Guide>Luperci>Physiology:

"Fairly unusual" doesn't mean "no."

You can do what you like between characters. The main thing is to be consistent with regard to individuals, and that consistency should also remain across players. For example, if Wolf is always described as being flat-chested by their player Bob, other players describing Wolf should stay true to that. If Bob's other character Coyote is well-endowed, other players should stick with that interpretation where relevant. That said, if player Anne's personal preference is to interpret all Luperci as minimally-humanised and with flat chests, then they can simply refrain from making direct references to Coyote's breasts. They can also choose to interpret what big breasts are intended to "mean," which may be femininity, attractiveness, sexuality, or desirability, and make references based off that. E.g. "Coyote was exquisitely attractive, but Dog resisted staring." Hopefully, this sort of protocol allows all players to have their own interpretations while still respecting others', sometimes differing, interpretations. :>

Kiri: We had a previous question about what we'd change about game setting/canon, but things like rules and procedures have actually gone through many iterations over the years -- and those things are still mutable. What we have right now has been refined over 20 years, so we think they work pretty well for the most part, but that isn't to say there still can't be change in the future. :o As for resurrecting past plots... most of the best ones feel like "one and done" deals, and it'd cheapen the past plot to bring them back in too similar of a fashion. The 2008 fire and the 2016 meteor were two big standouts, and while it's not unlikely there might be some other catastrophic disaster in the future, they probably won't play out like those previous ones. There are still plenty of plots that we haven't done, too, so it's probably more interesting to try new things than revisit old ones. ;) Mel: I believe characters exist best "in their time", and within the plots that help define them. All of the major war plots have been a lot of fun, but they require a lot of planning behind the scenes and can become less fun from a managerial point of view when things don't happen as quickly as planned. Natural disaster plots are also high up there for me. The drought plot of 2005 was a good example of one that presented a lot of cool plot opportunities, but would realistically have far more consequences in-game.

We're not aware of any examples of 'Souls players stealing exact character concepts from other 'Souls players. :o We don't typically consider minor idea/design inspiration to be theft -- many character designs are similar, even if palettes or markings are not exact. There have probably been several dozen black canines with red eyes and white canines with blue or gold eyes over the years. No one owns the right to a merle pattern or heterochromia or whatever else. Similarly, many characters have similar thematic origins, go through similar trials, or come from similar backgrounds. We've had many orphans, abandoned whelps, brainwashed cultists, shunned idealists, corrupted innocents, serial criminals, etc, etc. There are lots and lots of character tropes, but an infinite number of ways to develop those tropes. Visual designs and origin stories are only a small part of characters who will always develop differently in active roleplay, and in general, we think players prefer to have their own take on a common theme, rather than lifting directly from others wholesale. A case of a clear, direct copy where a one player takes a non-coincidental number of elements from another player's character would be considered theft though, yes. Any character that existed first would have priority, regardless of whether they only existed on the Wiki, on another board entirely, or in someone's personal story or whatever. It doesn't matter if the character existed at 'Souls or not -- theft is theft -- though a 'Souls character is likely to have more similarities to another 'Souls character, given the nature of the setting. But plagiarism isn't tolerated here, regardless of where the source material came from. (Also see: "Can a character be a carbon copy of or entirely based off of a character or concept from popular media like TV, movies, anime, etc?") A "clear, direct copy" and a "non-coincidental number of elements" can be difficult to define and judge. We're glad to have not needed to make a call on this, and we'd really like to keep it that way! We think it's fine for players to take inspiration from each other, but it's always better to "steal" from many than to steal from one.