Mini Other Roleplaying Rules

[MurderWeasel]

Welcome to the Mini Other Roleplaying board. This board exists to allow handlers to RP outside the typical constraints of the actual Mini games, but in a way still closely tied to Mini as a site. The rules are few, but we take them seriously:

• Threads can range widely in their focus/purpose, but any RP exclusively dedicated to Main or Main versions shouldn't be here. Some measure of cross-pollination is fine, but if you're, for example, bringing V4 characters over, it needs to be in a Mini-centric premise or wide-scale crossover of some sort. A thread in which characters from a range of universes are interviewed as winners by the SOTF-TV crew would be fine, even if Adam Dodd was one of them. But if you're just doing a V8 Afterlife thread, or a story in which the V0 students awake from cryogenic slumber to fight off an invasion of mutant armadillos, it should go on the appropriate board!
  
  While previously we asked for everything here to explicitly relate to Mini, in practice this subforum has never been glutted with unrelated topics or caused notable problems. We do reserve the right to tighten this if issues arise, though.
• All threads must be participation-friendly. That is to say, this section is for Roleplaying, not just sharing writings, and so there should be some opportunity for other handlers and characters to join in. A thread where handlers RP as bored soldiers guarding the perimeter of the Alpine Valley in PV2, or one where handlers write their characters waking up after Virtua and chatting about their experiences would be fine. Fanfics of these same things would not. If you want to post non-interactive writings, the place for that is the Art Showcase, where the previous examples of inappropriate threads would be at home.
• All threads in this section are explicitly non-canon to the core Mini universes/AUs. This rule exists to prevent some of the issues that have cropped up regarding very old uses of Other RPing on Main (such as the attempted quasi-canonization of the Afterlife thread in V1). A thread where handlers RP a bunch of past Program winners on a special ops mission would be totally fine, but referencing it in-game would not. Staff are not going to carefully vet everything on this board to make sure it's canon-friendly, and it is not a way to smuggle things into continuity. This board is not a substitute or proxy for Meanwhile...
  
  Any cases of elements from this board sneaking into canon without direct staff approval will be met with, at a minimum, the excision of the offending elements, and potentially more serious repercussions as fits the situation. If your personal headcanon is that Brigadier General Adams has a robotic monkey as a pet because he does in a thread here, that's fine. But you can't reference it in PV3, because that's not the continuity everyone else is playing in. The canon of Mini is what's RPed in the games and what's explicitly stated or approved by staff, and that's it.

With that out of the way, this board is open for use. Have fun!

[MurderWeasel]

Updated these for the first time since 2017!

What changed? Basically nothing, but the quick run-down is:

• Revised the statement that games should be explicitly Mini-focused to a requirement that games not be explicitly focused on Main versions without Mini elements ('cause there's a different Other RPing board for that!).
  
  The original rule was... I think intended to prevent some sort of Other RPing avalanche, but that has never been a problem anywhere and it was also never enforced. I was pretty surprised when I realized it was technically on the books!
  
  The new revision instead prohibits people using this board to backdoor stuff, which isn't its purpose. But if you desperately want to do a Gundam RP here, now you can. That said if it does somehow become a problem it'll be revisited.
• Adjusted some links. We didn't have an Art subforum when the rules were made, but now we do! Certainly more useful than posting Mini stuff to the archive.
• Changed general phrasing for clarity in a few places.

For the sake of transparency, the old rules follow:

[+] Old Rules

Welcome to the Mini Other Roleplaying board. This board exists to allow handlers to RP outside the typical constraints of the actual Mini games, but in a way still closely tied to Mini as a site. The rules are few, but we take them seriously:

• All threads must in some way explicitly relate to Mini as a whole or to a given Mini. An overall afterlife thread, a cross-universe football match between Virtua and BR AU characters, or a thread where SOTF-TV characters are actual characters played in a TV show and you're RPing as the actors would all be appropriate. A thread where a cast of original characters teams up to fend off a robot invasion would not, as it has nothing to do with Mini. Threads unrelated to Mini should go in the Main branch of Other Roleplaying.
• All threads must be participation-friendly. That is to say, this section is for Roleplaying, not just sharing writings, and so there should be some opportunity for other handlers and characters to join in. A thread where handlers RP as bored soldiers guarding the perimeter of the Alpine Valley in PV2, or one where handlers write their characters waking up after Virtua and chatting about their experiences would be fine. Fanfics of these same things would not. If you want to post non-interactive writings, the place for that is Artist's Alley on Main.
• All threads in this section are explicitly non-canon. This rule exists to prevent some of the issues that have cropped up regarding old uses of Other RPing on Main (such as the attempted quasi-canonization of the Afterlife thread in V1). A thread where handlers RP a bunch of past Program winners on a special ops mission would be totally fine, but referencing it in-game would not. Staff are not going to police this board, and it is not a way to smuggle things into continuity. This board is not a substitute or proxy for the Meanwhile... board on Main. Any cases of elements from this board sneaking into canon without direct staff approval will be met with, at a minimum, the excision of the offending elements, and potentially more serious repercussions as fits the situation. If your personal headcanon is that Brigadier General Adams has a robotic monkey as a pet because he does in a thread here, that's fine. But you can't reference it in PV3, because that's not the continuity everyone else is playing in. The canon of Mini is what's RPed in the games and what's explicitly stated or approved by staff, and that's it.

With that out of the way, this board is open for use. Have fun!