Rules

Two lists, because they are two different jobs. The first is about being decent to each other. The second is about playing here.

Last changed: 26 October 2026.

Thornswood is in alpha, and the world is open by application. The application in the Discord asks whether you accept these rules, and your answer is kept against your Discord account.

Before either of them, one condition.

Eighteen and over

Thornswood is an eighteen and over server. Applying, being in the Discord, or connecting to the game is you stating that you are eighteen or older.

Confirming on the download or join page, and the checkbox in the installer, are kept as a record of a statement somebody made, not as verification of age.

It contains sexual content between adult characters, violence, and language that is not written for children. It is not moderated to be suitable for them and it is not going to be.

If you are under eighteen, do not apply. Anybody found to be under eighteen is removed. That is not a punishment and it is not an argument, it is the one thing here that nobody has any flexibility about.

Anything involving a character written as a minor is a permanent ban on sight, whatever the age of the person writing it.

In the Discord

1. Be decent to each other. No harassment, no slurs, no personal attacks, and no hate of any kind: racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, religious bigotry, or anything else aimed at what a person is. That covers voice, text, names and pictures. Arguments about the game are fine. Arguments about each other are not.

2. Keep it appropriate for everyone here. No sexual content involving minors, ever, and nothing graphic in the public channels.

3. Do not wreck other people's game. No cheating, no exploiting the server, no griefing. If you find something that lets you break the world, report it instead of using it.

4. Link the download, do not repackage it. The installer is a public download on the downloads page, so send people there rather than passing round your own copy: no rehosting it, no rebranding it, and never selling it. Getting into the world is still decided in the Discord, so do not promise anybody you can get them in.

5. Push to talk. Open microphones with a fan in the background ruin it for everybody.

6. Bugs and ideas have their own channels. Not general, where they get lost. Check the known issues first.

7. Staff decide. If a Moderator or a Gamemaster asks you to stop, stop first and argue after.

8. Eighteen and over. Being here means you are eighteen or older. See the condition at the top of this page.

Breaking these gets a word, then a mute, then a removal, depending on what it was. Rules 2, 3 and 8 skip straight to the end when they are bad enough, and so does hate under rule 1.

In the World

The Discord rules are about being decent to each other. These are about playing here. They are different jobs, so they are different lists.

Thornswood is looser than the big roleplay servers on purpose. You do not need a character sheet approved by three people to walk into a tavern. What you do need is to not ruin somebody else's evening.

1. Your character knows what your character knows

You read in Discord that somebody got robbed on the Whiterun road. Your character did not. Acting on it is metagaming and it is the fastest way to make a world feel fake.

This cuts both ways and the good half is better: ask. "Has word got round about the road?" is a fun question. Somebody will tell you in character and now it is real.

2. Nobody dies without agreeing to

Your character can be beaten, robbed, broken, humiliated and left in a ditch, and none of that needs anybody's permission. The other way round too: your character can run, hide, lie, talk their way out or win, and nobody has to stand there and take it.

Death does. If a scene is heading somewhere final, say so out of character and make sure everyone wants it. A death somebody agreed to is the best thing that happens on a server like this. A death somebody did not is how you lose a person for good.

If you go down in the world and nobody agreed to anything, you woke up in a temple. That happened. Move on.

Staff can end a character for good. They do it for serious rule breaking, or in an event its owner agreed to. That character cannot be played again, and you can make a new one. Nobody else is told.

3. Fights start freely. What they cost does not

Combat against the world is what the game is for. Go and get killed by a draugr.

Combat against another character does not need asking first. Ambush them on the road, rob them, corner them in an alley, start it badly and on purpose. A bandit who has to ask is not a bandit, and an ambush somebody agreed to in advance is not an ambush.

What needs agreeing is where it ends up. Out of character, in plain words, before it happens. None of these without it:

Death. Rule 2, and it is the one that matters.
Permanent harm. An eye, a hand, a scar they did not choose.
Infection. Vampirism and lycanthropy rewrite somebody's character for good, so they sit with death rather than with a beating.
Being cleaned out. Take something. Take a good thing. Rule 4.
Being held. Cuffs and a cell for a scene is a scene. Three hours of it is somebody's evening.

Everything under that ceiling is yours without asking. Beaten, robbed, threatened, humiliated, chased through a wood, left in a ditch. That is not a grey area, it is the game.

A demand is not an outcome. "Your coin or your legs" takes nothing from anybody, it hands them a choice with two bad halves.

Read the room, though. Ambushing somebody riding the road alone is a good scene. Ambushing two people mid-conversation about cheese is interrupting.

Rule 9 sits above every word of this. /ooc can we not ends a scene instantly, from anybody in it, at any point, with no reason owed. That applies to the best villain on the server exactly as much as to everybody else.

It ends the scene rather than undoing it, though. Read rule 9 before you reach for it to get out of a mugging.

4. Theft and property

You can pick a lock. You can lift a key. You can talk your way in.

You cannot empty someone's house because you found it unlocked while they were offline. Take something. Take a good thing. Leave the rest, leave a trace, and make it a story they get to have when they log in, rather than a spreadsheet they have to rebuild.

If you were robbed and it went too far, say so. It gets put back. Nobody is going to defend a bad night out.

5. Play a person, not a legend

You can be extraordinary. You cannot be the Dragonborn, the Listener, the Archmage, the Harbinger, or the last of anything important.

A very good smith with a bad temper will get you more scenes in a month than a demigod will in a year, because people can stand next to a smith.

6. Titles are given, or taken properly

Jarl, steward, housecarl, thane, captain, priest of a named temple.

Most of them are sitting empty. A Jarl's seat is asked for on the Jarl application in Discord, which lists only the holds that have no Jarl, and a Jarl names their hold's steward, court and guards. How any other title comes free, and who hands it over, is something you find out in character rather than something you get told here.

Claiming an empty title is fine within reason. Nobody will stop you calling yourself captain of a guard nobody else has claimed, or priest of a temple with nobody in it. High King is within reason, and so is a hold with a Jarl already in the chair. Those two are taken rather than claimed.

Want one that somebody already holds? Take it. Scheme, challenge them, put a knife somewhere useful, turn their court against them. That is the best story on the server and nobody is going to stop you having it.

Take it in the world, with them in it, though. Announcing that you are the Jarl of Riften while the Jarl of Riften is asleep is not taking a title, it is editing your own name. Rules 2 and 3 still apply: nobody dies without agreeing to, and you swing while they decide whether it lands.

Staff roles are not in this. Moderator and Gamemaster are jobs, not titles, and you cannot depose one in character.

7. Use `/ooc` in the world

There is a command for it. /ooc brb, dog.

It reaches whoever is standing near you and nobody else, and it comes out in brackets with your name on it, so there is never a question about whether your character said it.

Nobody minds a quick one. Everybody minds a fight scene with three lines about Discord notifications in the middle of it, so keep the long ones for the out of character channels.

8. If it would not be fun to be on the other end of it, then do not do it

This is the rule the other seven are made of.

Slavery, torture as a hobby, tormenting a character whose owner has gone quiet, following somebody who is clearly trying to leave. If you are about to do a thing and the other person has not indicated they want it, they do not want it.

Bigotry

Skyrim has its own prejudices and they are part of the world. A Nord who distrusts elves, a Dunmer kept to the Gray Quarter, a priest who spits at Talos worshippers, a guard who calls an Argonian a lizard: that is Tamriel, and a character can carry it as long as it is the character talking and it fits the story you are both in.

The real world's hate is not in the world. Racism against real peoples, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, religious hatred, real world slurs: none of it has an in character version, and "my character would say it" is not a reason. If it would land on the person and not only on their character, it is out of character no matter whose mouth it came out of.

Out of character it is not allowed at all, anywhere: voice, text, names, /ooc, the Discord. This one does not start with a word. It is a removal.

Sexual content

Allowed, between adult characters, when both people agreed to it before the scene started. Agreed out of character, in plain words, in advance. Not assumed, not steered into, not decided halfway through because it seemed to be going that way.

Keep it out of the public channels and out of a street with people standing in it. /ooc can we not ends it the same as it ends anything else, at any point, and nobody owes a reason for using it.

Anything involving a character written as a minor is a permanent ban on sight. That one is not a conversation.

9. Break character to fix things

If a scene is going somewhere you do not like, stop it. /ooc can we not ends anything, immediately, with no explanation owed and no argument permitted.

Anybody who ignores that is done here. That is the one rule with no second chance.

It protects you, not your character

That is the whole distinction, and it is what stops this being a get out of jail card.

It ends the scene. It does not rewind it and it does not mean you won. Nothing that already happened unhappens, and you do not walk away from a robbery with your coin because you ended the scene while the knife was out.

So your character leaves the scene the way the scene was going. Cornered by four bandits and you stop it, your character is found later, lighter and bruised, and you did not have to sit through it. Ask a Gamemaster if the ending is not obvious and they will pick something small and sensible. What you do not get is to stay standing in the situation and be untouchable inside it.

Nobody owes a reason, ever, and nobody is asked for one. Using it once is nobody's business. Somebody using it every single time a scene turns against them is not in trouble, but a Moderator will have a quiet word, because that is a person who would rather not be in this kind of scene at all and there are better ways to arrange that than ending somebody else's every time.

What we are not going to be strict about

Because the point of this server is that it should be worth logging into.

Accents, dialect and prose. Write how you like. Nobody is grading you.
Lore trivia. If you have your Second Era dynasties slightly wrong, so does Bethesda.
Being in character every second. You can stand in a field and mess about.
Your character sheet. There is not one. Introduce yourself in #character-introductions in a paragraph and that is enough.
Being available. Nobody owes anybody scheduled roleplay.
Playing a race, faction or profession. Anyone can play anything, except the things rules 5 and 6 cover.

How this is enforced

Somebody talks to you first. Almost every problem on a server this size is a misunderstanding and ends there.

After that, a Gamemaster or a Moderator times you out in the Discord. After that, a Moderator removes you from it, and with it the world, because getting in is decided in the Discord. Nothing inside the game does either.

Rules 8 and 9 skip to the end.

The console is switched off

Pressing the console key opens it for a moment and it closes again. That is us, it is the same for everybody including the people who run the server, and it is not your game going wrong.

The console is how a game you play alone is edited. On a server where what you own, what you have made and what rank you hold are all real to other people, one person typing a command is everybody else's evening rewritten. So it is shut.

Nothing else on your machine is touched or read. If you think you need the console for something, ask in the Discord: it is usually something the server should be doing for you anyway, and that is worth knowing about.

Chat is written down

Text chat is kept, with the name and the time. Nothing else is: voice is not recorded, and nothing reads your machine.

It is there so that when somebody reports what was said to them, it can be answered by reading it rather than by asking both people and believing whichever of them is more convincing. That protects you as much as it protects anybody: if you did not say the thing you are accused of, the log is what shows it.

Only the Owner, the Co-Owner and the Dev rank can read it. It is kept for 365 days, then dropped.

Something happened and you would rather not post it in public: open a ticket in the Discord. It goes to the moderators and nobody else.