TOS

= Terms of Service = This Agreement (the "Agreement") governs your access and use of all Age of Intrigue facilities ("AoI"). This ToS covers all resources affiliated with ageofintrigue.com, including but not limited to the websites, the forums and the chatroom. In consideration for your right to access and use AoI, you and we agree as follows:

1. ACCEPTANCE OF TERMS
By creating an account, creating a character and/or posting on our boards and/or using our chatchannel, you agree to be bound by the terms of this Agreement and any modifications made to it in accordance with Section 10 below.

2. AGE OF INTRIGUE (AOI)
AoI is an online play-by-post AU historical role-playing game with a dice-less but moderated game-system.

Age Intrigue.com resides in Leiden, the Netherlands, and is therefore subject to Dutch and European Union Law. Any issues of law need to be brought to the Leiden Court.

Age of Intrigue, AoI, ageofintrigue.com and all its subsidiaries are owned by Brian Lane.

AoI is privately owned. The owners are represented by the Privy Council, who are the ultimate authority everywhere in AoI. At all times the spirit of the rules will take precedence to its actual wording, subject to the review of the Privy Council, provided it is not in contradiction to these Terms of Service.

The owners of AoI do not receive profits of any kind from this site, but reserve the right to collect voluntary donations from users to be able to reduce the costs of the server, domainname and other game expenses. The proceeds of the merchandise go in full towards this goal as well. AoI staff receive no compensation of any kind for their time. A full financial accounting can be requested by users at (admin@ageofintrigue.com).

AoI is staffed by volunteers and these volunteers are to be treated with respect at all times. AoI staff follows the guidelines in the wiki to ensure that you are treated correctly.

4. CONTENT ACCESSIBLE ON AGE OF INTRIGUE
AoI contains a huge variety of settings within which many phases of the human (and not always humane) condition are explored within a historical flavour (the "Content"). Please use caution and common sense when viewing the various forums.

This site is not for you if you are younger than 18 or of a strong conviction that might make you object to our content. Profanity may be used IC with moderation. Descriptions of violence and sex may be explicit as long as they are in good taste and used with moderation, according to our rules of realism. In principle no topic is off limit as long as it doesn't glorify certain crimes. AoI management will exercise its own discretion to moderate all topics, including editing or deleting topics. However, we do not take any responsibility for players that are confronted with material they are not comfortable with. You are advised to follow our system of comfortzones to avoid such situations.

Concerning out of character debates we ask that you use common sense, do not post bigotry and other hate crimes, be tolerant of other convictions and be mindful of the fact we have an international audience that might view local concerns differently. All OOC political, religious and philosophical statements made by the Privy Council members, are personal views and do not represent the views of AoI unless specifically stated as the official view.

5. PLAYER CONDUCT
The law is the law, and it applies universally even if we don't acknowledge it right here in in our Terms of Service. In addition to existing laws you are not allowed to use AoI's resources to:

(a) forward concepts of racism, discrimination, or (sexual) harassment;

(b) begin, participate in or otherwise engage in flame wars, cyberpolitics, trolling or immature behaviour;

(c) impersonate any person or entity, including, but not limited to,Privy Councillor, supporter, assistant, chat room op, administration, owner, or any other official;

(d) disseminate off-topic messages on boards or in chat promoting any product, service, web site, board or venture, or promote boards on AoI through unsolicited electronic mail messages to third parties.

(e) advertise, promote or otherwise display the URL's or names of any current PBP, or online game, outside the advertisement forum. By that same note, do not use the Ageofintrigue.com resources to bash, blacklist or otherwise negatively impact other PBP's or online games of the RP genre.

6. COPYRIGHTS
In addition to what is described in section 5 please take note of the following:

We will give credit where credit is due, but all copyrights on "Age of Intrigue", its world and the names of characters therein are reserved by the original creators, and owners, of this game.

By submitting skills, equipment etc. as well as background material, including all material created in your role as staffmember, you give AoI and Ageofintrigue.com first rights to this material which means that although the material remains your intellectual property (and you can reproduce it elsewhere) it can and will be reproduced in other games of the same owners, and any publications concerning AoI, both electronic and on paper as well as any other medium that is available, without any monetary compensation, now or in the future.

Please note that in the same vein your contributions as your player character become part of AoI, and thus fall under the same first right rules. This does not limit your use of your PC outside AoI in your own creative endeavours. However you cannot "erase" a PC from AoI's history. In other words you cannot withdraw your PC, and if for whatever reason you are unable to continue your PC it will be taken over as NPC.

All material on this site is for personal use only and may not be published, altered, redistributed or posted on Mailing Lists, Web Pages, News Groups, FTP Sites or Bulletin Boards without the express permission of AoI and AgeofIntrigue.com or the respective author/artist.

7. FAIR USE POLICY
We consider derivative work about AoI, including but not limited to art, stories and poetry, both on and offline, a compliment, but require that you:

a) notify us that you have created derivative material about AoI available to others, including a link.

b) give credit to AoI by linking back to us online, and providing information on how to contact us offline

c) give us, AoI, permission to (re)publish your material both on and offline on our own sites and publications with proper credits.

d) do not use any original material from AoI as copyrighted by us. This includes the word "AoI" or "Age of Intrigue". Do not use other derivative work from AoI that does not belong to you.

e) do not use your derivative work for any commercial venture

If you want to use (part of) the AoI system to create your own game, permission may be granted on a case to case basis. Please contact the owners via admin@ageofintrigue.com. We appreciate a note from fellow games that use concepts even if they neatly avoid the clauses in these Terms of Services as allowed under US and EU law. Do the ethical thing! Please note that AoI uses in part the TGS, an open source game system which can be found at http://www.creativelizard.nl/TGSwiki.

8. PRIVACY POLICY
AoI recognizes that our users have legitimate concerns about privacy. This privacy policy, which is part of our User Agreement, sets forth our practices regarding the collection and use of "personal information". "Personal information" is information that personally identifies you, including, for example, your name, address, and email address.

You provide certain personal information to us when you: (a) register for AoI, (b) enter contests sponsored by us, (c) send email messages, submit forms or send other information to us. We may collect personal information from you at other points on our site that state that personal information is being collected. Our servers automatically collect information about which pages are viewed within AgeofIntrigue.com. We use a feature of your browser called a "cookie" to assign a User ID that automatically identifies your computer when you visit the site.

We use personal information, among other things, to anticipate and resolve problems with your service, to personalize your service and to investigate activity that may violate our user agreement. You should note that personal information that you voluntarily disclose in forums or in chat rooms may be used by third parties.

We do not disclose your personal information to third parties with the following exceptions. We may be forced to disclose information to the government under certain circumstances, or third parties may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private communications. Additionally, we can (and you authorize us to) disclose your personal information to law enforcement or other government officials as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate.

9. DISPUTES
We prefer you do not post private issues on the public boards of AgeofIntrigue.com, and ask that you do not involve us with issues that have nothing to do with AoI.

You are solely responsible for your interactions with other users of AoI on AoI resources. However, if there is a dispute that can not be settled without mediation send proof of the conversation(s) and your general views to the Privy Council at (admin@ageofintrigue.com and mediation will be taken care of within a period of 2 weeks. Abuse of this mediation privileged is taken very seriously and may lead to disciplinary measures.

Note that the staffmembers are held to higher standards and keep logs at all times by requirement, including PM's. AoI does not monitor behaviour outside AoI resources unless it has a direct and major impact on AoI itself.

Complaints Procedure
If you want to report a violation of the rules & regulations of AoI or the Terms of Service please send your motivated letter to the Privy Council, either in your compendium, in PM or at admin@ageofintrigue.com. The complaint will be reviewed within 2 weeks. Abuse of this complaint procedure is taken very seriously and may lead to disciplinary measures. Disciplinary measures include formal and informal warnings, temporary and permanent bans on the forums and/or in our chatchannels and anything else that the Privy Council think is warranted.

When considering disciplinary measures the Privy Council uses logs, email, testimony etc. Decisions are based on the spirit or intention of the rules and the general good of the whole of AoI. The Privy Council ensures that it is convinced beyond reasonable doubt that its decision is necessary, without allowing any form of rules lawyering. Please remember that AoI is a private organisation and not a court of law.

10. MODIFICATION
We may amend this Agreement at any time by posting the amended terms on our site at wiki.ageofintrigue.com. All amendments shall automatically be effective 10 days after they are initially posted on our site. Your use of AoI following the effective date of any modifications shall constitute your binding acceptance of those modifications.

11. OFFICIAL LANGUAGE - ENGLISH
While we do not demand you are a native English speaker, or spell picture perfect, a firm grasp of English is necessary to be able to play this game. You are asked to use a spelling checker before posting. While our focus is on creative originality, rather than quantity or an "advanced level of English" a continued display of a lack of understanding of English may be reason to ask you to leave the game or to not accept your application.