Equinox Rules

The rules have one purpose: protect fair play and create roleplay worth continuing. You are responsible for the current rules, official announcements, and staff directions. A loophole in the wording does not override the clear intent of a rule.

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Before you submit a report

Do not turn an active scene into a rule argument when it can reasonably continue.

1. Stay in character and finish the scene when possible.
2. Save your own recording, the player ID, and enough context to show what happened.
3. Submit one ticket with a clear explanation.
4. Do not threaten a report, retaliate, post callouts, or rally others against a player.

Immediate staff help is appropriate for serious exploits, harassment, or an urgent community-safety concern.

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1. General and community conduct

In short: Act in good faith, respect the people behind the characters, and keep community spaces usable.

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1.1 — Follow the rules and their intent

Stay current with the User Guide, official announcements, and staff directions. Do not encourage others to break rules or use technicalities, unclear wording, or unintended mechanics to avoid a rule’s reasonable purpose.

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1.2 — Respect the community

Harassment, bullying, discrimination, hate speech, targeted abuse, repeated unwanted contact, or conduct intended to make someone feel unwelcome is prohibited across Equinox spaces. Character conflict never excuses hostility toward the player.

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1.3 — Keep content appropriate

Names, messages, images, audio, and roleplay must be appropriate for the community. Sexually explicit content, gore, shock content, and deliberately offensive names or material are prohibited.

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1.4 — Do not disrupt community spaces

Do not spam, troll, mic-spam, advertise unrelated communities or services, misuse channels, or create scenes whose main purpose is disruption. Humor and unusual characters are welcome when they give others something to participate in. Discord members must also follow Discord’s Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. Keep political, religious, and similarly divisive real-world debates outside the Equinox Discord. By participating, you understand that gameplay may be recorded, streamed, clipped, or published by other players. Recording or creating content does not create an exception to any Equinox rule.

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1.5 — Keep IC and OOC conflict separate

Do not continue an in-character dispute through Discord, direct messages, streams, tickets, or other out-of-character spaces. Compete and disagree through roleplay; use the support process for rule concerns.

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2. Accounts and characters

In short: Your account is your responsibility. Keep characters independent and believable.

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2.1 — Account responsibility

You are responsible for activity on your account. Alternate accounts may not be used to evade discipline, restrictions, or consequences; protect or transfer assets improperly; manipulate storylines; or obtain information unavailable to your main account.

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2.2 — No real-money trading

Do not exchange real-world money, goods, services, gifts, or favors for in-game money, items, vehicles, property, businesses, access, or any other benefit. Approved Equinox store purchases are separate from player-to-player real-money trading.

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2.3 — Keep characters separate

Each character has independent knowledge, relationships, assets, and affiliations. Do not pass information or resources between your characters unless an approved game system and legitimate roleplay support it.

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2.4 — Use believable character concepts

Your character, name, and behavior must fit a serious roleplay environment. Unusual concepts are allowed when they remain grounded, do not force supernatural or immersion-breaking outcomes on others, and adapt to the people involved.

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2.5 — Respect restricted roles

Whitelisted and government roles must follow their department’s corruption rules and approval process. Do not misuse protected equipment, information, permissions, or authority for unauthorized personal or criminal benefit.

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3. Fair play

In short: No cheats, exploits, metagaming, or mechanics abuse.

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3.1 — No unfair advantages

Do not use cheats, macros, modified files, third-party software, exploits, unintended mechanics, or other methods that provide an unfair gameplay advantage. Visual modifications, accessibility tools, and keybinds are allowed only when they do not create an advantage.

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3.2 — Report bugs; do not abuse them

Stop using a system if it appears broken or unusually profitable and report it. Benefits gained through exploit abuse may be removed in addition to disciplinary action. Make a reasonable effort to play through minor bugs or synchronization issues, then report them after the scene.

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3.3 — No metagaming

Your character may use only information learned through roleplay. Do not use livestreams, Discord, another character, external calls, direct messages, spectators, or any other OOC source to guide in-character decisions. In-character coordination must use approved in-game systems. Stream sniping is a serious form of metagaming.

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3.4 — Use mechanics realistically

Do not abuse animations, camera angles, movement, vehicles, inventory systems, protected menus, or other mechanics to bypass roleplay, reach impossible locations, force an outcome, or gain an advantage.

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4. Roleplay standards

In short: Story over winning. Engage in good faith, value your life, and leave room for a response.

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4.1 — Create counterplay

Give others a reasonable opportunity to react, respond, negotiate, investigate, resist, or escape when the situation allows. Counterplay does not guarantee equal odds or a way to win; it means the outcome is not unfairly forced.

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4.2 — Story comes before winning

Do not rush every scene toward the fastest escape, largest payout, or most favorable mechanical outcome. Arrests, injuries, failed crimes, financial losses, and other setbacks can become part of your story.

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4.3 — Engage in good faith

Participate in reasonable roleplay instead of intentionally ignoring it, shutting it down, or inserting yourself without a believable reason. Third-party involvement should add to a scene, not derail it. Keep OOC communication to what is reasonably necessary for a technical problem or player boundary. Never use OOC comments, coded language, or rule arguments to influence an active scene. Mute characters may communicate through /me, emotes, writing, and supported in-game systems, but may not use the concept to avoid roleplay or gain an advantage.

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4.4 — Value your life and act believably

React reasonably to firearms, severe injuries, hostage situations, dangerous crashes, overwhelming numbers, and other serious threats. Your character may take risks or fight back, but must acknowledge the danger and cannot behave as invincible.

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4.5 — Roleplay injuries and treatment

Reflect serious injuries through voice, /me, animations, or another appropriate method. Give medical personnel enough information to create treatment roleplay, and do not immediately act as if major injuries never happened.

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4.6 — Use /me and emotes for observable actions

Describe actions, reactions, injuries, or physical details that others could reasonably observe. Do not use /me or an emote for internal thoughts, OOC commentary, false established facts, forced outcomes, or actions that remove another player’s chance to respond.

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4.7 — Drive for the vehicle and conditions

Drive in a way that reasonably fits the vehicle, terrain, damage, speed, and surroundings. Curb boosting, brake boosting, extreme jumps, unrealistic off-roading, and ignoring severe collisions to gain an advantage are prohibited.

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4.8 — Identification must be reasonable

A familiar voice may create suspicion, but cannot be the only basis for a definitive identification. Consider appearance, clothing, vehicle, associates, location, behavior, and information learned through roleplay. Once law enforcement takes you into custody, provide your character’s legitimate identity when requested. You may use a false identity only when that identity is properly embedded in the police database through the supported system.

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5. Combat and conflict

In short: Violence should follow believable escalation. Fight fairly and face the result.

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5.1 — Escalate before using violence

Violence must have believable in-character reasoning and reasonable buildup. Random Deathmatch (RDM), Vehicle Deathmatch (VDM), and unsupported Kill on Sight (KOS) are prohibited. A violent character concept or previous unrelated conflict does not replace fresh, reasonable context.

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5.2 — Fight realistically

Do not use vehicles, weapons, explosives, animations, camera systems, or game mechanics unrealistically to win a fight or bypass roleplay. Equipment should support the scene, not become a shortcut to grief others.

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5.3 — No combat logging

Do not disconnect, respawn, or otherwise leave to avoid an active scene or its consequences. If you crash, make a reasonable effort to reconnect, notify the involved party when possible, and resume the scene.

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5.4 — Do not bait conflict

Do not manufacture situations solely to force a fight, shootout, pursuit, or police response. Provocation and rivalry are allowed when supported by a real storyline; repeatedly committing minor acts only to trigger a chase or confrontation is not.

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5.5 — Respect player boundaries

Do not force degrading roleplay involving bodily fluids, extreme humiliation, or similarly uncomfortable conduct on another player. If a player communicates a boundary, stop that part of the scene and move the roleplay forward another way.

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5.6 — Follow the New Life Rule

After your character fully dies and respawns, forget the circumstances immediately leading to the death. Do not return to the same scene, recover equipment, gather information, or rejoin the same conflict. Do not use forgotten information for revenge. Continuing storylines may resume later through information your character still knows or learns again in roleplay.

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6. Criminal roleplay

In short: Build stories instead of grinding conflict. Follow the specific activity and organization rules.

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6.1 — Create more than a payout

Criminal roleplay should create negotiation, investigation, escape, betrayal, consequence, and future interaction. Repetitive, low-effort activity or nonstop PvP may be treated as low-quality roleplay.

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6.2 — Follow activity-specific restrictions

Robberies, heists, missions, and criminal systems may set their own police minimums, participant limits, equipment, cooldowns, and location rules. The more restrictive requirement controls. General solo crime may continue when no law enforcement officers are on duty unless the activity itself requires otherwise.

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6.3 — Let major conflicts breathe

Do not repeatedly move from one large hostile scene into another. A conflict involving five or more players should have meaningful downtime for medical care, investigation, arrest, negotiation, planning, and character consequences before another major engagement. As a general expectation, do not join more than one major conflict within only a few hours without meaningful roleplay and reasonable downtime between them.

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6.4 — Follow organized-crime limits

Outside an approved gang war, organized criminal scenarios are limited to five participating players per side. Lookouts, communications, reinforcements, and anyone otherwise assisting the active scene count toward the limit. Review the Organization handbook before participating in group conflict, spray contests, gang wars, extortion, or an organized criminal enterprise.

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7. Discord, reports, and enforcement

In short: Keep OOC information out of roleplay, use one proper support channel, and cooperate with staff.

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7.1 — Discord information is OOC by default

Treat Discord information as out of character unless a channel is clearly designated as an in-character resource. An IC channel makes only the information allowed by that channel available to your character. Equinox-associated business, gang, and organization servers remain subject to applicable community rules and staff review.

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7.2 — Submit useful evidence

Reports should include your own perspective whenever reasonably available, the relevant player ID, a clear description, and enough time before and after the incident to show context. Third-party footage may add context but should not replace your own evidence when you could reasonably record it.

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7.3 — Use tickets properly

Use tickets for reports, appeals, technical problems, account matters, rule questions, and other private support. Include the relevant information in the first message. Do not open duplicates, repeatedly ping staff, or turn the issue into public drama. Cooperate honestly with staff investigations. Intentionally obstructing an investigation or acting in bad faith may result in discipline.

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7.4 — Staff review the full situation

Staff may consider context, intent, severity, impact, repetition, history, unfair advantage, and cooperation. Possible outcomes include warnings, restrictions, privilege removal, organizational action, temporary bans, permanent bans, or a community blacklist. Serious violations do not need to pass through every lower consequence first. Staff retain final discretion when behavior clearly violates the purpose of the rules, even when the exact method is not listed.

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Quick definitions