Rules

[Victarus]

Getting Started
After choosing a character and being approved by a moderator, you can create a thread to serve as your Court, something like "Court of the Duke of Saxony". Your court is a place for you to present your characters to others as well as a place for others to communicate with you: Others will send diplomats or letters to your court and you can respond in kind.

Once a week, a new turn begins. There are two regular turns and a winter turn, making three turns per in-game year. The current date is shown in the History & Current Affairs thread along with a brief history, a map, and a list of current affairs and factions.

Most of the information are presented in the sticky threads are fairly intuitive and self-explanatory. As a new player, you can probably skip reading the rules below until you feel up to it.

Posting
1) Keep it simple. The nature of the game requires a long-term commitment and steady activity, and forcing someone to read twenty pages to keep up makes that difficult for most players to do. You can have lengthy posts, but if it's something you expect someone to respond to, keep it to-the-point so they can respond quickly.
2) Keep your hands to yourself. If you want to throw someone in the dungeon, duel, etc., either have the other player on-board for the outcome or get mod approval first.
3) Ask before opening new threads. To avoid having a million stagnant threads open, new threads are generally allowed only if there are multiple players RPing in an event with a definite end point, such as the election of a king, negotiation of a treaty, or two characters trying to win the affections of a third; a player's court is the preferred place to post most dialog. If you want a thread opened, PM a moderator and give a good reason why it can't just go in a player's court and be ready to tell the moderators when the thread can be locked to avoid clutter.  

[Victarus]

Characters, Titles, and Holdings
Every player has a main character that their RP is based around. Unless the moderators or their original player approves of otherwise, they also "own" that character's children as well as any secondary or characters they might create as well as the servants, etc. of their realms.

To discourage players from filling titles with puppet characters, only one of their owned characters can "count" for any given purpose and their characters' realms are treated as if they were ruled by a single character. For example, a player couldn't rule several duchies without penalties, even if each duke is a different character.

Factions
Factions are formed by players to deal with any potential conflicts. In game terms, a faction is a group of characters united for a common goal: Examples might include electing the next king, fighting a common foe on the battlefield, or showing support for a pretender to the throne. Even if there won't be any battles, factions still arise as characters throw their lot in with others, perhaps hoping to avoid warfare through a show of solidarity.

Factions are made up of Members and Supporters. While supporters offer moral support, members have thrown their lot in with a faction fully. The major difference between the two is that members are involved in warfare while supporters are mostly for show (at least until they actually join, that is).

A character be in a faction with only some of his titles. For example, a character with several count titles might only join with one title to support its liege, keeping the rest safe from any war that might occur. A character can also be forced into a faction by the opposing side: "No thank you" isn't an option if your opponent declares war.

Holdings
Most characters will have significant holdings of land to their name. All holdings have a numeric Value stat representing the wealth of a holding as well as an Authority stat ranging from '--' to '++', with 'o' as a midpoint.

The Value stat represents the wealth of a holding, while the Authority stat represents a ruler's hold over his realm. However, authority over a large area can be hard to maintain: If a ruler doesn't visit his holding once per year, his authority goes down by one point, setting an effective limit of 3 major holdings per character without penalties. Annual visits to holdings are automatically assumed most of the time, the major exception being during war: If a character is serving as a general, it's assumed his time is occupied by the war and he is unable to personally rule his territories that turn.

Vassals and Privilege
Similar to a realm's holdings, vassals have a Privilege stat representing the freedom and authority of the vassal with respect to their lord: '--' would represent an easily replaceable administrator, while '++' would represent a vassal in name only. This is the de-facto independence of the vassal: Although set by the lord in theory, changing the privilege against the vassal's will requires the ability to enforce the new authority.


Events and Die Rolls
Events take place to reflect the consequences of RP actions, such as the effects of a monarch's reforms or a broken alliance. This often has a die roll attached to determine exactly what happens.

Any sort of chance in the game is represented by rolling a 6-sided die where lower rolls are negative results and higher rolls are positive ones. Various modifiers may be applied to the roll to represent factors that would go into the real-world situation the roll represents -- for example, a larger army has a better chance of winning a battle than a smaller one -- but almost all rolls will start at with 50/50 chance of good versus bad.

Here's an example Roll-Chart:

Quote:

Jousting Tournament
[Opposing Roll]
Modifiers
+1 Per Vassal
Results
+3 Victory!
+2 Advantage [Roll Jousting Tournament: +1]
+1 Equal Footing [Re-Roll]
-x [Reversed]

After the event's name is a list of modifiers applied to the die roll as well as any special rules. In this example, the chart is for an Opposing Roll, meaning that one side uses the chart as-written and the other swaps negative for positive and vice-versa. Also, a +1 modifier is applied per vassal.

After special rules and modifiers come the results. The results are compared to the "middle" value, with a roll of 1 being -3 and a roll of 6 being +3: In other words, it's just as likely to roll a positive value as a negative one. However, many charts will have a larger range than this to account for modifiers that are applied and some, such as the example, will have a smaller one; if a value outside the chart is still rolled, the closest value is used in its place.

Each roll has a short description of what occurs and then, in braces, the effects that happen as a result. A pair of quotes means that the same result as above are applied.

A common situation is an Opposing Roll, where one roll affects two sides. In this case, one of the sides is the "negative" side; any positives for them become a negative on the die roll and vice versa. For this kind of roll, often just half the chart will be given with negative values being marked as [Reversed], such as our example.


To use the chart above in an example, France and England are holding a tournament, France taking the positive side and England taking the negative. The first roll is a 2 = -2, resulting in an Advantage for the English: [Roll Jousting Tournament: -1]. The second roll is another 2 = -2, modified to a -3 resulting in Victory! in favor of the English.


Warfare
Wars are declared between two or more factions with differing goals. For warfare to take place, a faction's leader must declare war on another faction: No sneak attacks are allowed. Once war has been declared, faction members on both sides are at war and able to be attacked.
On non-winter turns, faction members can "spend" their holdings' Value by sending a PM to the moderator with the amount to spend and any other orders (attack this country, don't send the monarch, etc.); this additional information is to help determine the exact outcome of the battle, but isn't strictly necessary. Value spent on battles generally regenerates to its full value after the winter turn.

If diplomacy fails, a country can be forced to capitulate. If a country suffers a defeat and is unable to fight with at least 1/3 its Value, it suffers Defeat: Its cities and castles are occupied, its armies are in ruin, and it's at the mercy of its enemies. Players are encouraged to reach a settlement before this point as warfare takes it tolls on both sides.


Battle
[Opposing Roll]
[Special: Each supporter has a 50% chance of adding 1 Spent Value to its faction per title.]
[Special: If it spent less than half of what it could have, a member's available Value is worth 1/2 as much.]
[Special: If a member's dynasty member isn't in the battle as a general, its spent Value is worth 3/4 as much.]
Modifiers
+1 Members have more available Value prior to battle spending.
+1 Members spent more Value than opponents.
+1 Members spent more than twice as much as opponents.
Results
+3 Victory! [Roll Battle Victory / Battle Defeat]
+2 Narrow Victory! [Roll Battle Victory: -1 / Battle Defeat]
+1 [Roll Again: -1]
-x [Reversed]

Battle Victory
[Special: Roll for each title.]
[If no Value was spent, 1/4 of a realm's available Value is considered spent for the below effects. In addition, the time to regenerate is reduced by 1 winter (i.e., a roll of +1 would have no effect, -1 would cause 1/4 of the available Value to regenerate next winter, etc.).]
[1/2 of spent value regained for use in battles next turn. The other half is lost until winter, barring increased losses below.]
Results
+1 [No Effect]
-1 [1/4 of spent Value takes 2 winters to regenerate.]
-2 [Above & 1/4 of spent Value takes 3 winters to regenerate.]
-3 [Above & 50% chance General killed, if applicable]

Battle Defeat
[Special: Roll for each title.]
[1/3 of a realm's maximum Value or the amount used by the opposing faction is automatically spent before rolling, whichever is less. The amount ordered to be spent is included in this amount. If there isn't enough free Value, the country is defeated.]
[All spent value is lost until winter.]
Results
+3 [No Effect]
+2 [1/4 of spent Value takes 2 winters to regenerate.]
+1 ""
-1 [Above & 1/4 of spent Value takes 3 winters to regenerate.]
-2 [Above & 1/4 of spent Value takes 4 winters to regenerate.]
-3 [Above & 50% chance General killed, if applicable]