[Mari]

Yo! For forever now, we've had a pretty hostile opinion toward guns. We banned series like Call of Duty specifically because we didn't want Soap running around shooting people. That sort of thing would do serious damage to the atmosphere for the site and ruin people's time here. It would also be extremely rude. The site's general aesthetic is supposed to be Subspace Emissary. And there's always been an unwritten understanding that if someone apps an OC that is just an mundane person with a bunch of guns, that has the same potential for harm and we'd have to do something about it. We've never really gone into it because it didn't really come up? But recently it almost became a thing, so we thought it might be a good idea to be a bit more transparent about our concerns so that we aren't just taking people by surprise.

So here's the deal. Fantasy Guns have no restrictions on them, but Realistic Guns do.

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Here are the rules for what constitutes a fantasy gun, subject to staff discretion as to where the line is crossed.

1. It cannot look like a real gun. See: Extremely similar to actual, real world gun models.
2. It cannot behave like a real gun. See: Firing conventional penetrating bullets

Take note, here are examples of "guns" which do not violate these rules: The Ray Gun, the Super Scope, the Steel Driver. These are "Fantasy Guns" with designs that do not remind us of the guns we see in real life, and they do not fire conventional rounds.

Things that are technically "guns" but are not considered guns for the purposes of this policy:

Cannons
Explosive launchers

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If a gun doesn't qualify as a fantasy gun, it will be subject to some arbitrary penalties to its effectiveness. This means that so-called 'realistic guns' will be required to be meaningfully weaker than the balancing standard.