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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 Dukeship, or 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). More information on the Titans can be found here: Titans_and_Magistrates.

The Social contract

There are six tenets of the Social contract. These rules have been put in place as OOC fun preserving tools, and they serve to ensure that everyone can play the game the way they like without having to worry about things that are OOC fun destructive. 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.
  • Being able to be inactive at any time, for reasons he doesn't have to disclose, with no prior warning or excuse, is the one holy right of every BattleMaster player. Anyone so much as touching it will feel my unrestrained wrath. --Tom 20:46, 15 May 2006 (CEST)

• This does not exempt characters from expectations to fulfill basic duties when the player is still active: It does not protect players who do not actually interact or play, and only log in enough to avoid auto-pausing/auto-abdication. There are still many in-game 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.
  • Any time limits imposed on characters should keep this in mind. For example, if a knight has not responded to a letter threatening to be kicked from their estate for a week, the Lord must wait at least 7 more days to be sure the knight has logged in before acting on the knight's inaction.

• This rule applies across all platforms that are Battlemaster related: In everything from Facebook to Discord, 'badgering' people or expecting 'activity' either in the game or on the platform is still considered a violation of these rules. While 'pinging' someone is not an issue, expecting someone to instantly reply to that notification is just as bad as assuming they will do so in the Battlemaster interface itself. Any issues on other platforms between players that are related to the game can be screenshot and reported to the titans via a link pasted in the titan message interface (uploading directly is not currently possible), privately via email(mailto:community@battlemaster.org) or sending a private message to either admin on Discord.

Play as with friends Treat as you would want to be treated. The general idea is act like you are sitting a a table with your friends for DnD or a board game night.

• Treat other players personally with respect: 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.
  • Choosing 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.
  • 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.

• Always give newcomers the benefit of the doubt: Battlemaster is an exceptionally difficult game to learn, and 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.

• Don't take conflicts personally: Please remember that all roleplays are entirely about the characters, not the players behind them. That means you should try not to feel upset if someone's character is attacking your character, because it's not about you, the player—and it means that you should never take out your frustration with an in-character conflict on a player.

• Accurately tag all graphic roleplays: Please remember that BattleMaster is a community that includes people of all ages, and from countries and cultures around the world, and what is fun and thrilling to you may be gruesome and horrific to someone else. Thus, BattleMaster now includes a system for tagging of roleplays of a graphic nature. If you include any sort of explicit violence, sexual scenes, or other disturbing content in your roleplay, you must use the appropriate tags to mark it. This allows people who do not wish to read such roleplays to have them automatically hidden from their messages.

• 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, the only place they should be directed to is the Admins, via either a private message on discord, or an email (mailto:community@battlemaster.org).

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

• Report bugs: When you encounter behavior in the game that seems 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. Don’t worry about trying to pretend that the bug didn’t happen, or concern yourself with trying to 'fix' the bug by avoiding actions that you could take 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 'multi-cheating' 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: It upsets 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 adventurer to your noble is also prohibited. The game stops you from doing it yourself, so do not try to "go around" this mechanic. This includes passing an item to a different player character as a mule between your noble character and adventurer 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 if it is not. Either way, there is an exclusion. BattleMaster is meant to be a game you play with everyone, not stay in the corner with just your little group and shut out everyone else.
  • 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 without their consent

• Keep other peoples' personal information to yourself: 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 each other, or over small groups. If you learn private information about another player such as their name, location, or age, that is expected to be kept confidential unless they have explicitly consented to have it shared, or they have done so publicly themselves.

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

• While repeated violations of the roleplaying rules are a violation of the social contract, making mistakes in roleplay is common. Honest mistakes, and learning (or re-learning!) the game are not something we plan to punish anyone for.

• Game mechanics define reality: Anything that is stated in game is truth. If there is a battle between Kelperstan and Evilstan, and Evilstan wins, there is no amount of roleplay that changes that. While you can certainly play a character that thinks Kelperstan won that battle, you must make it clear in your roleplay that that is not the case. This includes being factual in OOC conversations.
  • There are many things that the game does not model that you can roleplay about your character and have it be truth. Some examples are: chronological age, physical description, personality, cooking proficiency, etc.

• Never play other people's characters: Just as you cannot control my thoughts and actions, neither you nor your character can control the thoughts and actions of other players' characters. This doesn't mean you can never include their thoughts or actions in your roleplays, it just means that anything you roleplay them as doing must be with their consent. This also extends, though to a lesser extent, to NPCs created by other players—you can roleplay their basic actions and words when they're present for a roleplay of yours, but they must always act in accordance to what has been established by the player that created them. In particular, they must not be roleplayed to act against that player's characters' interests unless they have already been established doing so.
  • Major changes to other people's characters require consent: Similarly to the above, anything that would be a major change to another player's character—such as losing an eye or limb, and certainly entering into any kind of agreement, as that would require their character's action to consent—must not be done without the player's prior agreement.
  • Don't "god mode" in roleplays: Like in regular gameplay, your character is not omnipotent or omniscient in roleplays. If you and another player are roleplaying an in-character conflict of any sort, please remember that you do not get to just decide that you win, regardless of their roleplay. Naturally, this is a bit subjective, but please remember that you are expected to treat other players like friends.

• 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.

• Use appropriate names for the setting: Character, unit, realm, etc names should be something that could believably be a name in that context.
  • No numbers or special characters:
  • No designations: Your characters must earn their titles in game, by the game. Unacceptable name examples include: "King Delvin," "Duke Delvin," "Delvin the Great," "Delvin the Mountain," etc.
  • CamelCase and 1337-sp34k: L33tsk33t is not appropriate, nor is DelVin.
  • English words: Can only be used if they make sense. "Miller" and "Smith" are fine, but "BloodyKnuckles" is not.

• Explicit Atheism is not permitted for any character in BattleMaster: While not unknown during the Middle Ages, Atheism was not accepted, and would in many times and places have been considered a capital crime. Because the cultural bias against it is not present among any but the most dedicated modern roleplayers, we explicitly include it here to protect those that wish to play the priest game, and to maintain a proper milieu.

• Treat duels with the grave seriousness they deserve: 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.
  • Dueling guilds: While dueling guilds are perfectly fine, they can not use the game-mechanic duels. They must use the Training Match feature available at an academy, or roleplayed duels.

• Treat adventurers as peasants: 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 noble from an adventurer is required. 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.

Government Rules

Furthermore, after the Social Contract, there are several rules that really only apply to those that have the buttons to break them. While we recommend all players read these rules, they are only relevant to those that hold the associated buttons. Dukes need to read this section as well as council members, as they have buttons that are referenced in this section.

• Realm mergers are illegal. Realms may surrender to another, including annihilation of their lands, but they may not merge as equal entities on friendly terms. Realms that are too small to exist (under 20 nobles) are excepted from this rule, and may merge into another realm with prior Admin approval.

• Strategic capital moves are prohibited: While this section is in the Social Contract, it bears repeating. 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.

• Fun is Your Responsibility: As leaders of the realm, it is your responsibility to look out for the fun of all members of your realm. Even in internal conflict, it is your responsibility to ensure that all parts of the realm are enjoying themselves. Do not actively suppress player attempts to engage one another in the interests of asserting your dominance over the realm.

• Try to Guide, Not Order: This is a game, not the military, even if it simulates a martial society. Try to guide people. Do not micromanage. Work with suggestions and help and leave people their autonomy. A strict hierarchy of orders and blind followers is more efficient, yes. It also causes people to lose the fun and leave the game.

• Play Within the Game Background: You are playing a noble in a medieval feudal society. Your conduct and behaviour should fit to that background, and as a leader you should very much encourage others to follow. Most importantly, the world of BattleMaster is not a militaristic one, and blindly following orders does not befit a noble. Engage the other players instead of just passing out orders.

• Avoid Cheaters and Abusers: Do not encourage or tolerate cheating and abuses of the game rules in your realm. If you learn of any cheating going on, immediately inform us privately. If you are certain, then report to the Titans. Dealing with cheaters and abusers is one of your responsibilities as a government member.