Briarmont Community Covenant
Briarmont is a community centered on shared storytelling, everyday town life, and respectful interaction between community members. Our goal is to create a welcoming environment where people can live, develop characters, and explore stories together without the pressures of heavy mechanical roleplay.
This covenant outlines the community standards for participation in Briarmont and establishes the expectations used to maintain a healthy, collaborative, and stable environment.
Participation in Briarmont indicates agreement to follow these principles both in character and out of character in any Briarmont spaces, activities, or roleplay conducted under the Briarmont setting.
1. Respect for Others
All community members are expected to treat one another with respect and basic courtesy.
Harassment, bullying, intimidation, personal attacks, griefing, or any repeated behavior intended to distress, pressure, or wear down another community member are not permitted. This includes hostile persistence after a boundary has been set, continuing contact after a clear request to stop, attempts to provoke conflict, and behavior that creates an unsafe or hostile environment for others.
Disagreements may happen, but they must be handled without abuse, hostility, or retaliation.
2. Consent and Boundaries
Roleplay in Briarmont is collaborative. Community members are expected to respect the boundaries, comfort, and agency of others.
Explicit consent must be obtained before engaging in sexual content, extreme violence, sensitive personal themes, or long-term or character-altering consequences.
Consent may be withdrawn at any time. When consent is withdrawn, the interaction must de-escalate, redirect, or end respectfully.
Unwanted roleplay, stalking behavior, persistent unsolicited contact, or attempts to pressure someone into a scene or storyline are not permitted.
Intimate roleplay should generally emerge from established in-character relationships rather than unsolicited approaches. This includes sending unsolicited messages seeking sexual or romantic roleplay without prior in-character interaction or clear invitation from the other community member.
Community members who approach others primarily through private messages to solicit sexual scenarios rather than participating in the community may be subject to moderation.
3. Harassment, Discrimination, and Abuse
Storytelling involves conflict. Characters in Briarmont may be antagonistic, flawed, prejudiced, petty, or cruel. That is part of telling grounded stories in a setting like this, and the community supports it. Players who engage in in-character conflict should be prepared to accept the in-character consequences that follow.
What the community does not support is using roleplay as cover for targeting another player. The line is between a character who creates conflict within a story and a player who uses their character to harass, demean, or abuse the person on the other side of the screen.
Hate speech, discriminatory harassment, or degrading treatment directed at another community member based on race, ethnicity, nationality, sex, gender, sexuality, disability, religion, or other protected characteristics is prohibited. This applies both in character and out of character when it crosses from storytelling into genuine hostility or targeting.
Roleplay or out-of-character conduct that targets real-world marginalized groups in a harmful, demeaning, or abusive way is not allowed.
Storylines that involve sensitive themes, including prejudice, abuse, or interpersonal cruelty, should be approached with the same care expected under Section 2: with consent, awareness of who is present, and a willingness to adjust if the scene is landing poorly. Not every space or moment is appropriate for every story.
Threats, coercion, intimidation, and emotional manipulation directed at other community members are prohibited.
Briarmont’s moderation staff are experienced managing community conflicts and are skilled with distinguishing between storytelling and targeting. If a situation is ambiguous, our talented staff will evaluate it based on context, intent, and impact.
When conflict between characters escalates into conflict between players, Section 6 applies.
4. Community Standards
Briarmont is intended to maintain a grounded and welcoming environment suitable for a broad community, including community members who participate in family-oriented roleplay. All player-operated characters must be 18 years of age or older, as outlined in the Community Standards Guide.
Sexual age-play of any kind is strictly prohibited anywhere within the Briarmont community, including any Briarmont spaces, activities, or roleplay conducted under the Briarmont setting.
Explicit sexual acts or graphic sexual content are not permitted in public-facing community spaces. Romantic and intimate storylines between adult characters are acceptable, but explicit scenes should occur privately.
Private contexts refer to situations where participants have a reasonable expectation that the interaction is not visible to or imposed upon the broader community. Examples include inside private homes, enclosed rooms, private parcels, or direct/private conversations between participants. The determination of whether a scene is sufficiently private depends on its visibility and accessibility to others; spaces that are openly accessible, commonly shared, or part of public roleplay areas should be treated as public-facing for the purposes of this covenant.
Graphic or gratuitous violence is not permitted. This includes explicit gore, mutilation, sexualized violence, prolonged cruelty, or the glorification or trivialization of real-world atrocities or hate crimes.
Public depiction or promotion of illicit drug use is not permitted in public-facing community spaces. Storylines involving drugs may still be referenced or implied where appropriate to the setting, but should not be graphically or openly depicted in shared community areas.
Public community spaces should remain appropriate for a general audience. Community members are expected to use reasonable judgment when portraying sensitive themes in shared areas of the town.
5. Privacy and Personal Boundaries
Community members must respect the privacy and personal boundaries of others.
Sharing another community member’s personal information or real-life details without their consent is prohibited.
Private spaces, homes, or areas clearly understood to be personal should not be entered, accessed, or disrupted without permission.
Community members are expected to respect reasonable requests for distance, disengagement, or no further contact.
6. Conflict Resolution
Community members are encouraged to resolve minor misunderstandings through calm and respectful communication when it is safe and appropriate to do so. This may include clarifying intent, discussing boundaries, or mutually agreeing to step away from a scene or interaction. If direct communication is not resolving the situation, community members may use Second Life’s block features to end the interaction and create distance.
Community members are not required to contact or confront someone who has harmed or harassed them before seeking assistance. Situations involving harassment, coercion, stalking behavior, discrimination, or other serious concerns should be reported to staff directly.
If a situation cannot be resolved informally, or if blocking does not end the unwanted behavior, community members should contact staff for assistance. Staff will review the situation and determine an appropriate response based on the available information.
Reports should be made in good faith and include relevant information whenever possible. For the purposes of this covenant, good faith means the reporting community member sincerely believes a rule violation or harmful behavior has occurred, even if the report is ultimately not substantiated.
False, malicious, or retaliatory reports — such as knowingly fabricating incidents or attempting to weaponize the reporting process against another community member — are not permitted.
Staff will make reasonable efforts to review reports and respond within an appropriate timeframe, though response times may vary depending on staff availability and the complexity of the situation.
Community members may request that a moderation decision be reviewed if they believe it was made in error or based on incomplete information. Requests for review will be evaluated by staff, and decisions may be reconsidered when appropriate.
7. Staff Authority and Moderation
Briarmont is a privately operated community. Staff may intervene whenever behavior disrupts the community, harms other community members, or violates this covenant.
Moderation actions may include warnings, temporary restrictions, removal from specific groups or activities, suspension, or permanent removal from the community. These actions are not required to follow a fixed sequence and may be applied based on the severity, pattern, or impact of the behavior involved.
Repeated disruptive behavior may be treated as a violation even when individual incidents appear minor in isolation.
Continued contact after being told to stop, harassment of community members, ban evasion, impersonation, or the use of alternate accounts to evade moderation may result in immediate escalation, including permanent removal.
Staff decisions are made in the interest of protecting the health, safety, and stability of the community.
8. Final Authority
This covenant establishes the standards for participation in Briarmont, but it cannot anticipate every possible situation.
The Briarmont administration reserves the right to interpret, apply, and enforce this covenant, including in situations not explicitly described here, as necessary to protect the integrity, safety, and well-being of the community.
Participation in Briarmont indicates agreement to follow these standards and to contribute to a respectful, collaborative, and welcoming environment for all community members.