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Thread: Guidance on Registering Characters, Conducting Finance, Sportsmanship and Some Military Things

  1. #1
    Poach's Avatar Civitate
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    Default Guidance on Registering Characters, Conducting Finance, Sportsmanship and Some Military Things

    I'm writing this due to the apparently poor understanding of the rules in general. This outlines some basic game concepts and areas we've experienced rule breaches in, with the hope of highlighting this to the community so they don't do it.

    1. Your Characters

    Your characters are the people ingame that you play. You may control up to six, but for the sake of game balance there are a number of restrictions that are in place to prevent exploits:

    - If you are making a Lordly family (eg a landed House that has an income from their land), only the Lord himself can draw an income. Any sons or daughters cannot, under normal circumstances, have an income. If you have an RP idea that might break this rule but you feel is justified, ask a moderator first before claiming incomes. In addition, no player can have more than two noble Houses under their control at one time.

    - You may only have one Lordly family per region (eg 1 Westerlander family only, 1 Stormlander family only, and so on).

    - If you are making Sellsword or Merchant characters they may not work together and claim incomes. If you have multiple Sellsword or Merchant characters in the same group (eg two Merchant brothers with a shared company) only one may claim incomes.

    - You may control only eight main characters ( of which six may come from a Lordly House) at any one time, "main" characters being characters with skill points and/or incomes. Any additional characters are called "aux"s, which may not have skills or incomes under any circumstances.

    - You may not claim a relationship to any other player controlled characters without their player's permission (eg you can't make a character and say he's another player's character's brother without that player's say so.)

    - The greatest rulebreaking that comes from this section is in people unfairly using characters to cooperate in ways not really justifiable ingame.

    2. Your Finances


    The greatest pitfall in the game is finances: many players have demonstrated a poor understanding of this mechanism and, intentionally or otherwise, conducted serious and extensive breaches of the rules in their finances. Some guidelines, therefore:

    - Each character maintains their own finances. You will never pool incomes.

    - Any money changing hands must have a fully explained and justifiable ingame reason. For example, giving large sums of money to another player's character simply because you like the player will not be tolerated.
    -- This is a source of great potential abuse. Moderation will not show any leniency in these matters. Unless you're handing over money to someone else for a rock solid reason (eg paying another player's character for services rendered), seek permission. If you're at all unsure, seek guidance. The amount of money will also be taken into account: no one pays 50,000 Dragons to be escorted by some sellswords through fairly safe land.
    -- You are warned here and now that we have, in the past, reset player's finances to 0 because of the scale of their mismanagement. We will not hesitate to do it again under similar circumstances. If you are unsure, seek guidance.

    - In your vault thread, it must be clearly labelled where all incomes are coming from and were all expenses are going to. Unlabelled or poorly explained figures are liable to be deemed fraudulent.


    3. Sportsmanship

    Above all else, this is a game of sportsmanship. If you're playing it as a contest to win, you're playing it wrong: most of our problems stem from people with an overly competitive attitude trying to cut corners or gain advantages on poorly justified grounds. There is no winner in an RP, play fairly or don't sign up.

    - Use of OOC information is forbidden. Has your character heard of something from an ingame source? If not, he doesn't know it, even if you or your other characters do.
    -- Keep in mind character abuse. If you're using your characters as a personal social group it'll be stopped.

    - Metagaming and Powergaming is forbidden. You don't stab someone, you attempt to stab someone. You don't barge past the guard and jump through a window, you attempt to. You can't use information your own character doesn't know: he can't predict that ambush the person posted about 3 posts up. He can't guess his enemies have fled west because he has keen huntsman skills, which really is just you reading the player's post saying he went west.

    - In order to preserve the ingame timeline in a game where individual events or conversations can span more than one RL day, it is extremely important that you PM an uninvolved game moderator your general plan. No one else knows your plan, no one else can guess that you wanted your RP to last only a day ingame. Moderators need to know in advance or you will be at risk of being put onto the timeline other players think they're playing to. This is vital during wars, so moderators know where your armies are moving and what you want them to do, otherwise they'll go with what they think and you may find your armies in positions you didn't want them to be in because you did not make clear your overall plan to the neutral moderator.

    4. Additional Misc

    Military

    - Militia take 12 real-life hours to mobilise, starting from when you post in the Positions of the Great Hosts thread saying you called them up. This cannot be made any faster.

    - Any soldiers you hire (from the soldier hire thread) take 3 real-life days to mobilise, starting from when you order them in the thread. This cannot be made any faster.

    - Raiding of NPC lords will not be allowed in an unlimited manner. Good RP reasons should be presented: they're not cash farms.

    Treaties for taking land off of players

    The mods will ask these general questions before agreeing to mediate or enforce any treaty between players.

    1. Does the player still have an army that could feasibly defeat the invading foe? If yes, the Mods will be reluctant to begin any mod-imposed settlements, even if the army is avoiding battle. This will be at mod discretion, and players evidently trying to avoid battle indefinitely will lose the protection of this clause.

    2. Is the player's home castle occupied? If no, the Mods will be reluctant to mediate or impose settlements.

    3. Does the player have allies that have yet to arrive that could tip the scales? This will be at mod discretion, and players utterly defeated cannot refuse to surrender based on only an ally that may save them: clauses 1 and 2 are by far the most important factors in this. This clause could be use to justify avoiding battle until said allies arrive, for example.

    4. Does the player have any plan or scheme that could tip the scales in their favour? As with clause 3, this will apply as a subordinate to 1 and 2 and only if 1 and 2 are met will an ongoing plot/scheme be allowed to play out to see if it aids the player. Mod discretion will be used to determine if this scheme will have any appreciable impact on the war.

    5. Excel Calculators

    - In order to help players calculate their finances and other important things, a series of Excel calculators have been created. They can be found in the link below.

    Income: Calculates your yearly income (Lord only)
    Movement: Calculates the movement time of your army on the hex map, including all movement bonuses.
    Recruitment: Calculates cost of hiring professional soldiers as well as their upkeep, with factoring in discounts from buildings/trade resources included.
    Levy: Calculates the size of your levy and automatically determines their composition in terms light inf, heavy inf, etc.

    https://www.dropbox.com/sh/dd1nuhcoobeez9w/SHiEkO9Ycb
    Last edited by Gandalfus; January 05, 2019 at 08:08 AM.

  2. #2
    Poach's Avatar Civitate
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    Default Re: A Brief Guide to the Game

    This post includes all information previously held in the FAQ, and has been arranged by topic for easier digestion. It also includes information on recent problems. If anyone feels anything needs further clarification please post as such, I'm keen to make this comprehensive and am sure I'll have overlooked things.

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