Guidelines & Rules

1. Be kind and mindful of your words. Do not bring transphobia, homophobia, racism, sexism, or ableism into this space. If you are given a warning, it will be privately. In most cases, we give folks two warnings, unless the transgression is particularly severe. The community guidelines that apply to the LARP also apply here. 
2. The horse breeds here vary between Closed breeds and Open breeds. All breeds will state if they are open or closed on their respective breed pages. Open breeds are free to create and anyone is welcome to create their own, so long as it suits the breed standard. Closed breeds cannot be created freely and must be obtained via an auction house, trade, or event. 
3. The roleplay here should remain centered around horses, riding, and stay fairly low-key. No serious combat should occur between characters, and nothing that heavily impacts main plot should take place here. Please save that for at games!
4. There are no activity requirements or reclaim process for horses which are not used. If you would like to surrender a horse and bow out of this roleplay space, feel free to message CirclingBirds and we can place your horse up for adoption for you. Otherwise you are welcome to trade or giveaway your horses however you like. 
5. If you would like to play a character besides your current LARP characters, you can create riders just for the purposes of this HARPG space. However, they should still be able to fit into the world of Solarean Adventures.
6. Tracing and referencing stock photos with permission is okay, but please don't steal art or designs from other artists on the internet without permission. Please credit all references you use when you submit art.
7. No AI art or AI-generated literature may be used. Traditional and digital art forms and literature made by you are allowed.
8. A gentle reminder: this site is privately maintained, which comes with an element of risk. The hosting server may go down, the admin may accidentally nuke the database, etc. While we do everything to avoid these issues, we aren't a big site with infinite hosting capabilities, high-paid developers, or data backups, so please keep this in mind. Anything stored here is not guaranteed for life- please backup your personal art and stories on your personal devices so they aren't lost forever if the worst were to happen to our site. ♥

Art Guidelines

• Artists may utilize digital art, traditional art, animation, sculpture, etc. to portray their horses. If your art form isn't listed in the EXP Guidelines, that doesn't mean it won't be accepted! Experience points will still be awarded based on the effort put in, on a case by case basis. 
• Please no AI art. 
• Tracing is allowed! Just please credit the photograph you traced when submitting the art on the Discord server. Please don't trace images off of Google- try to find images where the creator or photographer has indicated it is free to use. DeviantArt is a great place to find stock images and our Discord also has links to personal photos available for use. Unsplash also has many free-to-use photos.
• Art for shows and training should be unique and created for that purpose. Please don't reuse lineart of horses or riders in order to mass-produce training art. However, backgrounds can be reused, but won't earn experience points past its first use.
• Collaborations are allowed and encouraged! You can depict your character riding another player’s horse or you can feature their character in your story or art piece. Just be sure to work together, ask permission, and maybe have the other person approve your entry before you submit it please!

Literature Guidelines

• Writing entries should be a minimum of 500 words and uploaded to a site like Google Docs, or anywhere else you can provide a link to. 
• If submitting more than 5000 words, please break your submission up into entries that are no more than 5000 words each. 
• No plagarism or AI generated writing please! 
• Writing should generally convey the "who, where, why, what, and when" of a situation or scene. 
• Roleplay can be entered as writing, in transcript form! When submitting, please list all horses and riders involved and once verified, everyone will get the associated EXP. 

F.A.Q.

If I have horses from another HARPG group, can I bring them into this group for roleplay? 

This is mostly handled on a case by case basis, but if the breed group they originate from states that they can be used in other groups, and the breed is not already on the "Approved HARPG Breeds" list below, then please post a link to the breed group in the #harpg-help channel and admins can review the breed. If we feel the breed suits our gameplay, we'll add them to the approved list!
Please keep in mind that if you use a horse of an outside breed, you will be responsible for following that group's procedures for registration, breeding, and gaining EXP and review and observe their group rules for art and literature standards. Horses from an external breed group will not be eligible for breeding in the Sun & Mane system, but they can still gain experience points and rank up alongside their riders. These horses will not be given Official Import Art in the Sun & Mane system, as they will already have import art from the group of their origin and be tracked in that group's registry.

Currently approved breeds: 

Beaurevers (sometimes referred to as Dream Breathers) - these are horses with a very magical theme and bright coat colors. They bond with a rider and have breath that smells like something they or their rider enjoys.
Loshenkas - non-magical, cold-weather horses with long tails and plush coats. 

Can I use P2U (pay-to-use) or F2U (free to use) linearts or pay another artist to draw my horse for my horse's art submissions?

Yes, but linearts can only be used to accrue EXP for one of your horses one time. In other words, you can not reuse free or purchased lines over and over to gain EXP, even if the horse being depicted changes each time. (This is why the official import art images done by CirclingBirds does not go towards EXP- the linearts are reused and recolored repeatedly.)
You can ask another artist to draw your horse, or you can purchase YHHs (your-horse-here) offerings from other artists, and those art pieces will go towards that horse's EXP, but the same rule above applies: the artist should not be hired to do multiple horses in the same pose, using the same repeated greyscale or lineart, without the understanding that those pieces will not be eligible to earn EXP.

My horse has super complicated white patterns, dapples, or other features on their import art! Do I have to match these perfectly?

Nope! The import art is thoroughly detailed because the admin has an unhealthy addiction to detail so that artists or writers who love detail can take on the challenge of depicting them, but this is optional! Coat elements like these can be simplified in art, and in the case of dapples, can nearly be left out. As long as the horse's most key identifiable features are generally represented and recognizeable, you are good! 

The import art only features one side of the horse- how do I know what the other side looks like? 

The other side of the horse is totally up to you, though it should follow the same general features as the side depicted in the import art. Base coat colors, dilutions, and other whole-coat modifers will generally look the same on both sides of the horse. While white patterns such as tobiano, overo, leopard spots, etc. aren't perfectly mirrored, so you can get creative with the side not defined in the import art.