There isn't enough room in a blog post or an afternoon to outline all the ins and outs of the issues about making rules for your RPG and forum in general. There are a lot of pitfalls so I'll break it down and discuss one facet of it now.
More freedom isn't always better.
Now this might seem strange coming from me since those of you who know me know I'm always looking at the rules of ourWarriors RPG with a critical eye as to whether it is necessary and doing trial runs, that usually succeed, without that rule. But where you sacrifice simplicity to make exemptions to the rules, you can actually make the whole thing less appealing to your members.
Consider this: We discussed altering the rule we have against any member enforcing rules on another player--we instead require them to report them in the reports board for staff to handle. We considered allowing it in some cases, but ultimately for now that has been put on hold because the exemptions would have had to have been listed and taught to the members. It would have complicated the system and ultimately, a happy member is one who easily understands the limitations of the game or forum. A lot of complex exemptions confuses people and causes them to be unclear on what they can and can't do and that is far worse than just having a rule that says, "You can't do this" and understanding it.
So, this is something for you to keep in mind. Less is more, but not always in the way you might think.
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