The Law and some general etiquette

Liking one's head where it is

The Law is not something you toy with, unless you have special abilities, eg. being able to survive being skinned and hanged upside down at a village gate. There are a lot of things you don't do, and some things you can do if you don't get caught. The Rules and Codified Law of Ancient Anguish (mortals) is a good document to read through. Should you be interested in the subject, continue with the wizard rules. The up-to-datedness of the files is not guaranteed, so it's good to read "help rules" and "help wizrules" if you want to be certain about something.

The "external" offenses are multiplaying (several characters of yours in the game at the same time as well as aiding another character of yours with another), character sharing (with other players - keep your password to yourself and things like that), abusing bugs in the game for your own profit and using scripts/triggers/etc. (ANSI/VTxx and high-ASCII ring your bell? Makes me feel kind of ignorant.) outside the MUD's or client's (simple) alias system. Internal offenses would be player* harassment, excessive profanity in all ways of communication, player* killing (also known as pk(illing) - MUD slang, the definite sign of having spent too much time discussing the subject), although there are some exceptions and, finally, sharing quest information (don't spoil the fun and the Only True Meaning of the other's lives when they're level 19 =)).

*) I'd like to point out that even if the rules use the phrase "player", I prefer referring to the actual person playing as player and calling the creature played "character". You don't have to go and annihilate the other person at the computer to get bountied, sending his/her character to a trip to see Death (this one being at least a close relative of the one described in Terry Pratchett's books...) is quite enough.

Getting caught means someone has to turn you in. Should someone steal from you and you noticed, it is your desicion whether to react by filling out a Law form or seeing to the thief making amends some other way. Since I play an apprentice thief myself, occasionally, I would be more than happy to grovel for my life immediately rather than just bounce into a "Wanted" poster with my face on it in the next town I visit. Getting killed in the hands of a Nethacker ("Role playing? That something edible?" and general kill-kill-kill-loot-loot-loot attitude, no offense, just nagging ;-)) is more than humiliating when you have prepared a 50-page plea of mercy for the occasion.

Behaving?

AA has a nice system of Cat (and Dog) Boards for feedback as well as *chuckle* entertainment. When you post something on them, there are a few ways of making it more pleasant for all of us to read it.

Welcome a-board - 10 things you should think about

The post you write will (at the least) be shown to anyone who has access to that room. You have an audience. Spend, if possible, some time thinking what you want to leave for them to read. If it is about opinions and you are parttaking on a debate, you will be much more credible if you pay attention to your use of language - pay it a thought. "The contents matter, not the way you put it" isn't the absolute truth, and it's good to keep in mind what a skilled speaker can do in/to the crowds.
Should your post be informative (and even if not), try to choose the title so that the person looking at the board can rather easily determine the nature of the post.
With the first few lines, try to say what you have to say in a nutshell - the reasoning comes after. Give the reader again a chance to see if they have the time for the post as soon as possible. Make your point in the beginning, if you can.
If you have some time on you, find out if the question you want to ask is answered just a couple of posts before. If you can't find the answer and it's too big and important to send a tell to a wizard (or ask about it on the guild line or in one of those really loud shouts), see above.
Do NOT get your fingers ready for a furious reply to another post before you have read it at least twice, made sure you understand what is said and, if at all possible, given it a thought for a moment - go kill a fuzzy creature or two and return when you are calm.
If you know in advance the post'll be hostile and mostly about grumpy opinions (Opinions? What're those? Something to do with onions?), do use the flame board and just let the person/people know the post awaits them elsewhere. No thing like an overgrown flame to eat a reader's attention span.
Try to keep class discussion on class boards and guild debate on guild boards. (Usually, the latter seems to be a lot easier.) Even if it is interesting to find comparison between the classes allowed in the guild and similar, sometime after the 10th post in the row the "my class is the worst since the rebalancing and I'd like to tell you that I hate you all, especially the wizards who do nothing but make our lives a living hell" on a guild board may get a bit annoying.
Please, remove posts you want to rewrite anyway or that aren't actually worth saving. Look at the board to see how this is done. Keep the amount of "trash" at minimum - social, uh, comments excluded. They're even sometimes a part of the role playing and that is not something we want to leave out, right?) I am referring to eg. negative statements that don't have anything new or interesting on them. See constant nagging about rebalancing. =)
The coders, the Senate, Quality Control and other immortals are humans (IRL - possibly - and if the intelligence department is right, most of them are mortal as well). They are just working like a machine that takes input, chews on it and then probably works its spinal cord off to turn the good ideas into a set of code. They are people, not less than you are. And whatever you do, don't flame a wizard who has just explained some why's and what's unless you really have a good reason to do it! Maybe you didn't know that there are people, more than you could count with your toes if I'm not mistaken, who have been anxious to interact with mortals as much as possible (even after wizardhood, that is) and served the world well. And guess what has happened? One bitchy response too many - and the result: Less immortals who feel all that much like reporting to you. The war between the wizards and the mortals has been long enough. Let's end it.
And you immortal people, I really want to believe that I don't have to hear news of any of you making my peacemaking more difficult. I am not praying that everyone would agree with everyone. I pray that it wouldn't be like this, the loudest mortals hating the wizard guts for changing the MUD so that they believe to have lost something important (not saying that wouldn't be true sometimes, I'm not omniscient, yet) - and some wizards, it seems, who hate mortal guts for being an ungrateful lot of whiners who just can't or won't see the whole picture.

There are more than a few ways to spoil someone's day, as we all know. Don't join the ranks of the Fools (too bad we don't have a guild for them(/us) yet) if you haven't the wit to do it: shout harassment, for example, usually just makes the one shouting insults (hope that doesn't mean you) look retarded if it isn't plain that it's an example of a friendly witticism. And I do mean off-character insulting now.