ThornswoodTerms
The agreement between you and Thornswood, in the shortest form that is still honest.
Last changed: 26 October 2026.
Thornswood is a free fan project run by a small team in their own time. Using the site, the launcher, the Discord or the server means you accept what is below. If you do not, do not use them, and nothing else happens.
The short version
- Eighteen and over.
- Play by the rules; staff decide, and the decision stands.
- Your account is yours and is not to be shared or sold.
- Nothing here is promised to stay running, and there is no refund because there is no charge.
- Nothing here belongs to Bethesda, and Thornswood does not speak for them.
Who can be here
You must be eighteen or over. There is no way for this project to safely run an eighteen and over roleplay space with minors in it, so an account found to belong to somebody under eighteen is removed rather than warned.
Thornswood contains sexual content between adult characters, violence, and language that is not written for children. 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.
You also need to own Skyrim Special Edition on Steam. Thornswood ships no game
files. Three files it uses are made on your own computer from your own copy of
the game: the main menu's interface file, Data\Interface\startmenu.swf,
which is the game's own with its Bethesda logo and button list taken out, and
the notice board (noticeboard01.nif) and drop box (dropbox01.nif) meshes,
put together from pieces of Skyrim's own. The launcher makes them from the
game's archives before you play, and none of them is sent to you. Everything
Thornswood ships is its own, or other people's work that the
credits page names, and none of it can be played without the game.
The rules of the world are part of this
The rules are the substance of this agreement, not an appendix. The short ones that matter here: nobody's character dies without that person agreeing, except that staff can end a character for good for serious rule breaking or in an event its owner agreed to; play a person rather than a legend, keep what happens in character in character, and staff decide.
Thornswood is in alpha, and the world is open by application. The application in the Discord asks whether you accept the rules, and your answer is kept against your Discord account. Applying means accepting them.
Staff can remove access from anybody, at any time, for breaking those or for making the place worse. You will be told why. There is no separate appeal body, because the team is small. A ban is a decision, not a punishment we enjoy handing out, and asking about it calmly in the Discord is always allowed.
Your account
Your account is your Discord account. Do not share it, sell it, rent it, or let somebody else play your character. A sold or shared account is removed, and so is the character, because a roleplay server where a name might be anybody is not a roleplay server.
Do not try to get around a ban with another account.
What you may not do
- Cheating: modifying the client to do what the server did not allow, exploiting a bug for advantage instead of reporting it, or automating play.
- Attacking the service: the server, the site, the voice service or anybody's connection to them.
- Harassing anybody, in or out of character. Out of character is never excused by in character.
- Anything illegal where you are, or anything that makes Thornswood a party to it.
Finding a bug and telling us is the opposite of this and is always welcome. A security one goes to the owner as a Discord direct message, never in a channel.
What you make here
Your character, what you write in chat and the pictures you take remain yours. By putting them in Thornswood you let us keep them on the server, show them to the people you are playing with, and put a picture in the gallery on the site if you send it for that. Say so and a picture comes down.
Anything said or written on the server may be read by staff when something is reported. The privacy page says what is kept and how to have it deleted.
What Thornswood is built on
Thornswood runs on Skyrim Special Edition, SkyMP, Skyrim Platform and a collection of mods made by other people, and it is built on their work. Credits names them.
It is a fan project. It is not made by, endorsed by or affiliated with Bethesda Softworks, ZeniMax or any mod author. It costs nothing to play and nothing on it is sold.
Bethesda's terms for mods say a mod is free and only for people who own the game, and Thornswood is both. They ask every mod to say this, in their words: THIS MOD IS NOT MADE, GUARANTEED OR SUPPORTED BY ZENIMAX OR ITS AFFILIATES.
Supporting it
The Patreon pays for the server, the domain and the other expenses of keeping Thornswood running, and nothing else. It is not payment for anybody's time making mods, which Bethesda's terms for mods do not allow. It buys nothing in the world: no items, no ranks, no advantage, no priority. If that ever changes it will be announced before it does, not discovered. Patreon handles the payment and Thornswood never sees a card. Cancelling is done at Patreon.
No promises about it working
This is said plainly rather than in capital letters: Thornswood is provided as it is. It is in alpha. The server goes down, characters can be lost, a wipe may be needed, and the whole thing may stop one day. Nothing here is guaranteed to be available, correct, or to keep your character safe, and neither the project nor the people running it owe you anything if it is not.
You install a large collection of mods on your own machine to play. That is your machine and your decision, and the launcher tells you what it is doing before it does it.
Changes to this page
This page lives in the repository with the site, so every change has a date and an author in the history. A change that matters is said in the Discord.
Questions
The Discord, linked on every page.