Introduction
I've finally gotten around to making the promised rules thread. Please note: This thread is for official announcements, rules, session recaps, and other stuff that should be easy to find; so please do not post in it unless you have something of that nature to say. For general discussion, please use the other thread. Also, if something changes, for example an IP for TeamSpeak, edit your original post rather than making a new one. We want this thread as uncluttered as humanly possible.
Time and place
There Will Be War occurs at 1000 (10 am) Eastern Standard Time; 1500 (3 pm) Greenwich Mean Time; 1600 (4pm) Central European Time; on Saturdays. We meet up in Vnet, preferably five minutes before the appointed time. There is a small ingame reward, currently 50 gold, for being on time. Five minutes after the hour, the game begins regardless of who is present; anyone not there by that time must wait for the first rehost.
Because of the somewhat unstable nature of DV, we have a twelve-player maximum for each session. If more players than this show up, the last to arrive will unfortunately not be able to play. Twelve, at that, may be slightly optimistic; it is possible that we will be forced to reduce the maximum to eleven or ten in the future.
House rules
All rules will be enforced by the iron hand of the GM. Sanctions available to the GM include, but are not limited to: verbal warnings, editing out the results of forbidden actions, editing in bad traits for the offender's ruler, and outright bans from the game. We all hope that we will reach 1453 without any of these sanctions having to be used; please do your part to make this possible.
The most important rule is to be polite, gentle of speech, and positively courteous at all times. Even when you are slipping the dagger into unmentionable places, or someone is doing the same to you. In particular, do not swear at people. This applies both to the game and the forum thread. Calling someone an 'inveterate backstabber' is allowed, however, especially if done in-character in an AAR.
Stability and bug avoidance
Game balance, playability, and edits.
I've finally gotten around to making the promised rules thread. Please note: This thread is for official announcements, rules, session recaps, and other stuff that should be easy to find; so please do not post in it unless you have something of that nature to say. For general discussion, please use the other thread. Also, if something changes, for example an IP for TeamSpeak, edit your original post rather than making a new one. We want this thread as uncluttered as humanly possible.
Time and place
There Will Be War occurs at 1000 (10 am) Eastern Standard Time; 1500 (3 pm) Greenwich Mean Time; 1600 (4pm) Central European Time; on Saturdays. We meet up in Vnet, preferably five minutes before the appointed time. There is a small ingame reward, currently 50 gold, for being on time. Five minutes after the hour, the game begins regardless of who is present; anyone not there by that time must wait for the first rehost.
Because of the somewhat unstable nature of DV, we have a twelve-player maximum for each session. If more players than this show up, the last to arrive will unfortunately not be able to play. Twelve, at that, may be slightly optimistic; it is possible that we will be forced to reduce the maximum to eleven or ten in the future.
House rules
All rules will be enforced by the iron hand of the GM. Sanctions available to the GM include, but are not limited to: verbal warnings, editing out the results of forbidden actions, editing in bad traits for the offender's ruler, and outright bans from the game. We all hope that we will reach 1453 without any of these sanctions having to be used; please do your part to make this possible.
The most important rule is to be polite, gentle of speech, and positively courteous at all times. Even when you are slipping the dagger into unmentionable places, or someone is doing the same to you. In particular, do not swear at people. This applies both to the game and the forum thread. Calling someone an 'inveterate backstabber' is allowed, however, especially if done in-character in an AAR.
Stability and bug avoidance
- No pausing except by the host. If the AI sneaks in and gets a peace treaty before you can do so, that's too bad.
- If you offer a peace with vassalisation to a human player, say so in chat, otherwise he will not be aware that the peace includes vassalisation.
- If you are tabbed in the lobby when the rest of us are ready to go, you will be kicked and will have to wait for rehost.
- If your 'has left the game' joke causes a rehost, you will be banned for that week.
- If only one player crashes, we will not rehost for a few months unless he is at war with something that has a reasonable chance of crushing him in that time. If you are at war with a single count, you'll just have to live with re-sieging.
- Upon rehosting, Anders will upload the game save to here. Get it from there, people, don't make us sit around waiting for your horribly slow CK connection to do its job. Anyone who does not download from that forum will have to wait for the next rehost unless they have a very good excuse.
- Do not tab while we are in the loading screen. It causes no end of problems. If you really need to mess around with some other program, do it the day before.
Game balance, playability, and edits.
- The current GM is Lurken. His word is law when he posts in orange. Because of his unfortunate absence, deputy GM King of Men is standing in for him as temporary GM, and Sterkarm is promoted to deputy GM. The deputy GM acts as a check on the GM, and makes rulings in his absence; he also has permission to blow his nose without filling in Form BN-1066, which ordinary players are required to do before any nose-blowing occurs.
- You may declare war upon the Crusade target, heathens you have a claim upon, and heathens within a King title bordering on a King title you own or (for Dukes) belong to. Any and all Christians are fair game. For this purpose, you may consider that you border upon titles across a small body of water; for example, England borders on France for purposes of attacking heathens.
- You may accept offers of vassalisation from the AI only if one of the following is true:
- The AI is within a King or Duke title that you own (you are its natural overlord.)
- The AI is a Duke, and its natural overlord is a King title which borders on a King title you possess.
- The AI is a Count, and its natural overlord is a Duke title which borders on a Duke title you, or your vassal, possesses; or it is within the same Kingdom as your main title.
- It is forbidden to annex or vassalise another player's vassal unless one of the following is true:
- The player gives you permission to do so by agreeing to a peace treaty which includes that annexation.
- The player implicitly gives you permission by not DOWing when you attack his vassal.
- You have been at war with the player for at least three years. This gives a bit of incentive to settle wars one is plainly losing.
- If two nations (say Norway and Sweden) are at war with the same AI nation (say Mecklemburg), and are each occupying parts of that nation (Norway occupies Lubeck, Sweden occupies Rugen), and one nation vassalises the AI nation (Norway peaces out Mecklemburg for vassalisation), then the other nation may peace for whatever it held at the time of vassalisation even without permission of the overlord (Sweden can peace for Rugen, but is not allowed to take Lubeck in the peace.) However, the preferred solution is for Norway and Sweden to reach some mutually agreeable accommodation. In these cases, nothing should be done hastily; neither Norway nor Sweden should try to vassalise before the other can do so, instead they should negotiate, and alert the GM to the situation. However, if they are unable to agree, then the one who holds the AI's capital has the right to vassalise.
- It is forbidden to attack a player who is currently AI. If attacked, you should not take more than one or two provinces in the peace treaty. You also may not assassinate anyone in that player's court. A player who has been away for three consecutive weeks is fair game, however.
- Do not ask another player to assassinate your ruler. Suicide is not painless.
- There is a reward for writing an AAR of at least 500 words, posted at least 24 hours before game time; choose one of the following:
- One woman (single or married) in your own court becomes pregnant by the character of your choice, also in your own court. If she is not married to the father, the offspring will have the Bastard trait.
- Remove a disease from one province. This includes the plague, but if you remove the plague this way you won't get the immunity trait for the province, so it's a bit pointless.
- Increase the wealth level of a province.
- Remove a Serious Wound or Illness trait from one character.
- Two characters who are not rivals become friends.
- One rival of your ruler gives up the enmity.
- Increase the relation of your court to another court by 50 points.
- Increase the loyalty of one of your vassals by 20 percent.
- Gain 500 gold, 250 prestige, or 100 piety.
- Reasonable edit requests, made 24 hours before game time, will be listened to. In general, 'reasonable' includes purely cosmetic changes like altering DNA or names, but nothing with game effects.
- You may not assassinate your own spymaster.
- If at least two players show, one of whom has a computer capable of hosting, there will be a session that week. This is to ensure steady progress. Confucius he say, man who not show up for war, get peace treaty he deserve.
- If a human player force-vassalises you, you are obliged to remain his vassal at least for the lifetime of your current ruler.
- If you are at war with nation X, and that nation has no unoccupied provinces left, you may not force-peace (except for WP) unless you occupy at least one province of nation X. Further, in the peace, you may not ask for a province occupied by someone else, unless you have that player's permission. Example: Norway consists of Viken and Akershus. It is at war with Sweden, Denmark, and Germany. Sweden occupies Viken; Denmark occupies Akershus. Therefore, any peace offered to Norway will be auto-accepted. Germany may not use this situation to force any peace other than a WP. Denmark may not ask for Viken without Sweden's permission. This applies even if the occupying powers are AI.
- Field of the Cloth of Gold rule: Titles may be transferred by edit, but to avoid this happening too much, there are some restrictions. First, the transfer must be described formally in the AAR thread, in in-character terms as a treaty. (This cannot count for the AAR reward for that week.) Second, an amount of gold equivalent to one AAR reward must be paid, by any combination of players - usually, but not necessarily, the ones benefiting from the treaty. Where a treaty describes a future action, or is otherwise not done instantly, eg "In exchange for these good and valuable considerations, the Kingdom of Georgia undertakes to declare war upon the most foul Kingdom of Ireland before the end of the year 1420, and take the field with at least 5000 men", non-compliance with the terms is punishable by excommunication unless the other parties to the treaty agree that the violation was justified. (In this case, if Georgia didn't DOW Ireland, or didn't send 5000 men to fight there, they'd be excommed.) Judgement of whether treaty conditions have been met is in the hands of the GMs. In view of the sometimes acrimonious debates that have flared up over quite unimportant issues, it is suggested that such terms are kept to a minimum. Any number of titles may be transferred in a single treaty.
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