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The Rules

Like any game, Battlemaster has a few rules to it, mostly to keep the community from killing each other.

How it works:

There is the Social contract, and Government Rules. The Social contract is a summary of all of rules players follow, detailing acceptable behavior for a good game play envierment. It is broken into a few parts, each of which are discussed at length below the summary of each concept. The Government rules are meant for those that take a Council position (Ruler, General, Judge, Banker) in the game, and are related to certain buttons associated with those positions.

When someone breaks the rules, the Titans are called, to discuss guilt, and pass punishment on the player in question. To report potential violations, go to Messages, and on the far right there is a link to "Contact the Titans." Should you have any questions about a rule, please bring it up politely on the forum (Case Archives > Questions and Answers), on Discord (!titans <message>), or in an email to admins (mailto:community@battlemaster.org).

The Social contract

There are five tenets of the Social contract. Each point is laid out in detail below.

Activity is the #1 right of every player. All players have an absolute right to log in as frequently or as rarely as suits them, and stay online as little or as much as they wish.

• Players have an absolute right to pause their characters, temporarily or permanently.

• Note that this does not exempt characters from expectations to fulfill basic duties when the player is still active, nor does it protect players who log in only enough to avoid auto-pausing or auto-abdication, and do not actually interact or play, from the consequences of not interacting. The auto-abdication limit is 5 days for council positions, 7 dukedoms and lordships. Auto-pausing is set to 14 days.

Play as with friends Treat everyone here as you would expect someone you are friendly with, would want to be treated.

• Treat other players personally with respect, and treat their fun as being as important as your own. Under this idea, there are a few specifically called out rules:
  • Choosing which type of unit to command: It is important to us that players be given the freedom to develop their characters in the ways that they see fit. This often means specializing in particular unit types. Any 'request' of unit type is a violation of the rules.
  • Going to tournaments: It is important to us that players be given the opportunity to interact in-character with characters outside their realms, and tournaments are one of the few places where that is commonly possible. No, it does not matter if Evilstan is knocking on your capitals front door.
  • Choosing your class: It is important to us that players be given the freedom to develop their characters in the ways that they see fit. Choosing your character’s class is a very important part of that, as it determines the mechanical actions available to them and defines their place in the social structure. No one can tell you, or even request that you change class, for any reason.

• Battlemaster is an exceptionally difficult game to learn, so always give newcomers the benefit of the doubt. This covers everything from wrong line settings, to accidentally looting a region. New players are to be welcomed, not treated as suspicious or stupid.

• Base your opinions and decisions about characters on their actions, not previous allegiances: Having, or having had, a character in an enemy realm is *never*, on its own, sufficient grounds for a ban.

• Do not threaten Titan reports. If you have reason to believe another player has broken or may be breaking one or more of the rules, it is fine to inform them of this, referencing the rule(s) in question. However, never say that you will report someone to the Titans if they do or do not do something. If you feel that they deserve to be reported, just report them and let the Titans determine if they deserve punishment.

• Do not publicly accuse anyone of rulebreaking. In the same vein as the above, if you believe someone has broken a rule, do not make a public accusation of such, either in-game or in any other medium. Report them to the Titans and let them make the determination—and remember, you do not always have the whole story. It is permissible to reference past publicly-stated Titan verdicts against a player, but please only do so if it is directly relevant to a current conversation.
  • Allowing public accusations, even with what you believe to be evidence, can all too easily lead to other players falsely shunning or turning against another player. The Admins and Titans have information at their disposal that no player does, and are well-equipped to find out the truth of any such accusations.
  • The restriction on expressing these frustrations in-game is due to the inability of those being complained about to present their side of the story there. There has been an unfortunate history of a player or small group of players misinterpreting an event, getting angry about it, discussing it amongst themselves, making conclusions and becoming more angry, and then spreading their anger at the volunteers to other players, all without there ever being an opportunity to explain that what they were angry about in the first place was based on incorrect or incomplete information. It's not a fair, or productive, discussion that does not involve key stakeholders. We are interested in your concerns, but they need to be given via an appropriate venue. Furthermore, Titans are anonymous fellow players and have much more limited options to respond, thus more limited options to appropriately address concerns.

• Do not insult or complain about the volunteers running this game (Devs, Admins, GMs, Forum Mods, Discord Mods, or any other volunteer team) in any in-game messages. If you object to any of their decisions, please bring it up politely on the forum, on Discord, or in an email to admins (mailto:community@battlemaster.org). Constructive criticism is welcome, but thoughtlessly spreading negative attitudes toward those who volunteer their time for the game will not be tolerated. If your complaint is regarding the Titans, see below.

Don't cheat. Play through bugs that effect you, report bugs you can cause. One account per person.

• When you encounter behavior in the game that seems likely to be unintended, please report it at https://bugs.battlemaster.org at your earliest opportunity.

• If it is something transitory and out of your control, but not massively game-breaking, like a turn script failure or a combat that didn’t run, play through the bugs—that is, don’t worry about trying to pretend that the bug didn’t happen or avoiding actions that you couldn’t have taken under normal circumstances.

• If it is something more long-lasting, or something you can deliberately trigger, taking advantage of it is absolutely forbidden. Those found deliberately exploiting bugs will receive very little mercy.

• No player is permitted more than a single account. This is called 'muliting' and always has resulted in permeant locks to all accounts involved.
  • This includes an absolute prohibition on "account babysitting" or "co-playing". If your child/sibling/friend/etc is not old enough, or not interested enough, to play their own account entirely on their own, then they are not ready for BattleMaster yet.
  • While you can make a fresh account, you must delete the previous account first.

Do not intentionally 'skirt' or 'go around' mechanical limitations. This includes 'clanning,' 'placeholders,' 'strategic capital moves,' and 'gold trading,' to name a few examples.

• Strategic capital moves are prohibited. This means moving one's capital for the purpose of closer refitting times in a war. Moving a capital to a central region of the realm or for roleplay reasons (historical, realm named based on capital name, removing a rival duke's power base, keeping a rival duke close by to be watched etc.) are acceptable.
  • This includes strategic secession. Creating a new realm, through secession, in order to circumvent recruiting-in-capital-only restriction is prohibited. Friendly secessions are okay.

• Transfers of gold (not bonds) outside of cities, guildhouses, or temples is prohibited, as it would upset the balance of the game, allowing long-distance wars due to providing gold in the field. There's a reason there's a difference between gold and bonds. This includes trading unique items *specifically* to transfer gold.

• Trading items from your advy to your noble is also prohibited. The game stops you from doing it yourself for a reason. This includes passing an item to a different character as a mule between your noble character and advy character.

• No placeholders. Lordships, Dukeships, and government positions are all positions of the utmost importance and not mere jobs to be shuffled around. If someone holds one of these positions, they are to be considered its rightful holder. Never appoint or elect someone purely to hold the position until "the real holder" returns. This also helps to ensure that new people get a chance to hold these positions more than once in a blue moon.

• Exclusive OOC clans are forbidden. The word “clan” has a very fraught history in BattleMaster. Many groups over the years have joined with different intentions, and it is important to be able to distinguish a harmful OOC clan from a group of players that happen to know each other from outside the game.
  • If a group is based entirely on IC criteria, and anyone can create a character and join, it is fine.
  • If it is based on OOC criteria, and excludes those not in your OOC circle, that is not fine. This is true whether it is powerful enough to control a realm, religion, or other in-game structure, and exclude other players from agency within that structure, or not.
  • There is no problem with “playing with friends”, whether those friends were made in the game or outside, but you must not deliberately attempt to play with only those friends, especially in ways that exclude others or ruin others' fun.

Be polite with personal information Don't share other players personal information to other's without their consent

• Keep other peoples' personal information personal: If you learn private information about another player—such as their name, location, or even age—in a non-public way, that is expected to be kept confidential unless they have explicitly consented to have it shared, or they have done so themselves. Battlemaster is played over years, and people tend to make friends with each other over time. As such, some more personal information is occasionally shared to small groups. Don't share any of this sensitive information.

Roleplay within the setting. Battlemaster is a medieval low fantasy game. Every player character is human. No, there are not guns.

• Game mechanics define reality: Anything that is stated in game is truth. If there is a battle between Kelperstan and Evilstan, and Evilstan wins, that is no amount of roleplay that changes that. There are many things that the game does not model that you can roleplay about your character, for instance: chronological age, physical description, personality, cooking proficiency, etc.

• Humans only: All player characters and player-controlled NPCs in BattleMaster are humans.
  • No wizards: Player characters and player-controlled NPCs cannot use innate magic.

• Character, unit, realm, etc names should be something that could believably be a name in that context. No numbers or special characters in character names, nothing unpronounceable in unit names, etc. L33tsk33t is not appropriate.

• Atheism, while not unknown during the Middle Ages, was not accepted, and would in many times and places have been considered a capital crime. Because the cultural bias against it necessary to maintain such a view is not present among any but the most dedicated modern roleplayers, explicit atheism is not permitted for any character in BattleMaster.

• Duels are serious affairs meant to be used to defend one's honor, and may result in character death. They are not for sport or fun. As such, dueling guilds are prohibited if they use game-mechanic duels. Dueling guilds using the Training Match feature available at an academy, or roleplayed duels are acceptable.

• Nobles are expected to treat commoners as their social inferiors, and vice versa. Treating commoners with abject disgust or abuse is certainly not necessary, but deference to a commoner is absolutely inappropriate. Each realm culture handles this differently, from treating them to all but cattle, to treating them like useful pets. Just remember, as a noble, you are better then them, and as an adventurer, the nobles are better then you.