When your character's story is over, or you're ready to play someone else.

💀 Permanent Character Death (Graveyarding)

❔ What happens when I die?

• If your character died from zombies:
  You can choose whether to accept the death as permanent or respawn.
  Many people play an injury and consider it a close call, which you can do as long as you don't play that your character has received a zombie bite -unless you want the character to die permanently in the next few days.

• If your character died from PvP/hostile action:
  Respawn and make a ticket to discuss next steps -do not quit without respawning. If you need to log out for an urgent reason, respawn first and then log out and make the ticket.

If you want your character's story to be over or they have died permanently from a PvP situation, make a ticket to "Graveyard" your character. The following will happen:

• Staff will offer you the chance to write a post about your character's death in the graveyard channel as long as it does not reveal information about your killers or information about where your home/possessions are.
• Your Approved Character role is removed.
• Your public Approved Character thread gets a "Dead" tag, but you're allowed to make a few final posts there (like extended graveyard posts, stories, photos, memorials, etc.).
• You are not allowed to log back into that character and they will be removed from the whitelist.
• Any remaining safehouse or vehicle claims stay in effect until they fall off naturally. They are not removed automatically and knowledge of your death OOC is not a justification for others to raid your home or vehicle.
• You must follow New Character, New Experience rules.

🗄️ Shelving‎

❔ What happens when I shelve?

• Your Approved Character thread gets a "Shelved" tag.
• You are not allowed to log back into that character without approval from staff, which means that you cannot send IC messages on the discord or have any continuing IC interactions.
• You are allowed to post on your public thread about the character, but it may not be considered in character content for others.
• Any remaining safehouse or vehicle claims stay in effect until they fall off naturally.
• If you are the sole owner of your safehouse and the safehouse lapses, your belongings are subject to people taking them without a raid ticket.
• If your vehicle claim lapses, your vehicle and any items inside are subject to people taking them without a raid ticket.
• You must follow all New Character, New Experience Rules

❔ What happens when I want to unshelve my character?

Open a ticket and talk to the staff. We do not allow people to quickly swap between characters at a whim or to avoid consequences (if you're shelving another character). If approved, we will remove the "Shelved" tag on your Approved Character thread and you can play them again as long as they are your only active character.

Be sure to read New Character, New Experience Rules because you must actively avoid your previous character's storyline (regardless of whether they died or not), group, and belongings. An active character should be a departure from any dead or shelved character you may have.

❔ Why can't I have more than one character?

Deadline is about stories -when people have more than one character, that's double the stories that you, your friends, and staff are involved in. We find that, frequently, one of the characters' story suffers, which causes a domino effect where plots are lost, lose momentum, or get diluted when folks have more than one character.

When your character's story is over, or you're ready to play someone else.

Shelving, Retiring, and Graveyarding

Deadline's Story First focus means that we see each character's life as a story and not just a bundle of pixels and code. The end, or pause, of a journey is also part of their story. The number of characters per players are limited so that there is a fair focus on each individual story.

Each public character bio will have a tag to reflect their current status, except for active. It is assumed that all characters are active unless tagged otherwise.

Character Status Definitions

🎭 Active

This is a current active character who can log into the game and RP as normal.

🗃️ Shelved

Shelving a character means that you can play it later. This is like putting a book on the shelf to come back later. They will be considered away and detached from the current story on Deadline until you unshelf them to play again.

⛱️ Retired

Retiring a character is a way to end their story but not their life. Once a character is retired, they can never be played again. They can still exist out in the world, but not be played in Deadline.

💀 Dead

Graveyarding a character is when your character dies. Players can choose to graveyard their own characters if they want, but there may be limitations to prevent constant cycling through characters.

Limitations

There are several limitations to know for character statuses.

• Players can only have one active character and one shelved character.
• All characters, be they active, shelved, retired, or dead, must follow NLR (New Life Rules).
• Once a character is shelved, they cannot be unshelved until two weeks of real time has passed.
• If an active character dies (or is retired) within the two week restriction for unshelving, then one character will need to be graveyarded or retired to make room.
• You cannot unshelve to engage in or join conflict against other characters.

The processes for Shelving, Retiring and Graveyarding will be updated in future.