Something doesn't seem right about warranting rules
Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2023 9:54 pm
I feel like there's something wrong with the warranting rules. However, I will acknowledge I still don't understand a portion of the rules.
The International Waters of Wotmud
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Historic territorial claims and regulation of hunting by justice clans produced a game where no one could be hunted anywhere. Meanwhile, current warranting rules are fixated on "deregulation" and have essentially produced a world in which nothing is a crime/can be punished as long as its outside of a borderstone.
---
The new warranting rules have been very good in a number of ways.
1. Historic warrants were often trivial and focused on trash talking from far away cities. There was nothing face to face about it.
2. Clans seem to be slightly more open to removing warrants - this may be a cultural change rather than due to the rules but historic warrants were eternal.
3. Anyone who got warranted anywhere could be warranted everywhere.
4. Every clan historically forbade hunting in their territory and virtually all territory was claimed. The end result was that justice clans couldn't pursue their core function without always running aground of another clan's rules.
5. There was somewhat constantly the feeling that everyone was a lawyer.
What inspired this post.
1. Lancers receive mail (regularly) describing an "event" - usually violence in some sort of Borderland/contested territory. Can't call it a crime because there are no rules outside border stones.
2. The events often have a question of whether they were intermixed with light-dark-PK. They range from accidental to purposeful stabs, misplaced quakes, whatever.
3. Lancers inevitably warrant someone. Or think someone deserves to be warranted but we reread the rules, post passive aggressively and then do nothing.
4. The word "darkfriend" inevitably gets bandied about because calling someone a darkfriend is theoretically a loophole to get around the warranting rules. There's no real definition of a darkfriend given but they can be blanket warranted.
5. Optional: Elysia makes herself the clan Immortal to more easily pardon people we wrongly warranted.
Now I ask you - are the Lancers truly at fault if we are contacted by a person who themself clearly didn't understand the rules.
I feel like we've produced a problem that didn't previously exist.
That said - I want to come back around to the thing I don't understand.
Whenever it comes up that we can't warrant - we're often told we can do some sort of other RP punishment. Banishing. Fining. "Consequences". None of this makes any sense to me. I'm pretty sure that in several of the instances where we wanted to warrant someone we were told we could banish them instead. This may be before the 2nd rule update below, but the rules clearly state we can't banish as a way to circumvent warranting rules and we can't banish for activities outside of our borders. I've seen people fined but again - they were fined for a crime that happened outside of the borders so how were they fined. Do the Lancers owe Fermin 1000 crowns (cause I already spent it)? And how would we even be entitled to the Fermin fining money when it was Deimon who was attacked. Where I'm going with this is - some of these punishments were clearly proposed as solutions for "out of border crimes" when in fact the rules suggest nothing can be done for these actions? That would be a violation of of 7b below.
I've started and stopped writing this post a few times but its hard reducing it down to its key elements or figuring out what the solution is when so many organizations may have different perspectives. What I wondered is - have we stripped clans of their agency by reducing their territories to be too small?
I've wondered about bizarre scenarios - what if Warder Pairs started hunting CoL in the Borderlands outside the stones. What's to stop them? The Peace of the Borderlands? I tried looking that up on Google. Who do I a Shienaran Lancer assist if this happens?
Or how about - what if at the end of a PK in a door I killed all of my team mates in a door. Let's say I did it today on Eol and tomorrow on an unclanned. What if all the people I kill are unclanned so no one can warrant me. What if the Lancers refuse to punish me (..like *cough* Civil Watch *cough* though think we know the Imms would). Can an unclanned character have a roleplay violation? If the unclanned character doesn't intend to be a darkfriend then should they have the right to pursue such an activity ie. they are conducting themselves like a darkfriend but they are not a darkfriend? Should clanned characters who do bad activities simply be punished by the Imms/their clan if the activity is a violation of their core roleplay - even if no warrant is given for it? I'm aware that for some of these there are straight forward answers but it seems like there are people at present who can be killed in the "in between" places and nothing will be done for them and that seems wrong.
Historically Regret (an Accepted) stole a heron from PK at camp. Ran up DF, down gap, Wastelands etc. Tower would still punish this, but today no warrant could be forthcoming from Fal Dara even though she robbed a group camp with a Lancer in it.
I really think we've created something that overly resembles the wild west. I don't have a true solution. In some of these situations it seems like the clanned people are theoretically supposed to get as wild as the people committing the crimes. Historically clanned people were supposedly not supposed to attack people unless they had a warrant but in this new world we could brawl it out in the Blight with a wilder who attacked members of our party for using earth quake.
I've tried coming with a "the perfect idea" - but I don't have one. The problem is awful crimes are still awful crimes even when they are outside border stones. One of my ideas was that warrants given for crimes outside border stones can only be temporary ie. they must be removed at 7 days from the crime. The other solution was to define "darkfriend" behavior - which is problematic. I wrote the below - but its still awful and doesn't fit with the rest. I tried to tie the idea of "direct negative effect" - ie. you had to be there for it though that doesn't protect others adequately. And what would a "Cause of the Light" be - I think we have an idea of what they would represent but defining it would be very annoying. Lancers would likely settle for our territory having no northern border - just a southern border, but this was already rejected.
--------
When an event occurs in which (a) you or a groupmember are personally negatively affected through violence or theft (b) OR the "Cause of the Light" is directly negatively affected by a human players actions (c) BUT the activity occurs in neutral territory (d) and it doesn't fit the main passage warranting rules then an applied warrant is removed at 7 days from the "event" unless an Immortal agrees it should be retained.
--------
Anyway - can anyone think of a way fix the wild west side of the warranting rules?
------
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=300
1. You can warrant for any attack on your person anywhere in the mud, provided this doesn't breach any of the following rules.
2. You can warrant for any breaking of your nation's laws, provided these are in line with these rules.
3. You can not warrant people for being grouped with a wanted, unless that wanted is a known male channeler or dark friend, or in the case of *oL, someone grouping with a Tower channeler in Amador.
4. You can not warrant people for serving warrants on their wanteds in neutral or treatied lands, including for attacking you due to face-off mechanics; not including targeted stab or charge.
5.(a) You MAY attack and pursue any person attempting to serve a warrant on a group member without being warranted in return, provided that such pursuit does not enter the homeland of the person who attempted to serve the warrant.
5(b)To avoid doubt, if any member of your group has been attacked by someone, you may pursue that person unto their death, so long as you do not enter that person's homeland. Similarly, if you pursue an attacker, that attacker is then free to retaliate against you, unto your own death. Neither side of such conflict is entitled to lay any warrants if the actions did not take place in their respective homelands.
6. Subject to your clan's policies (as approved by your Watcher), blanket warrants ARE permitted. See the section on blanket warrants below. Male channelers and Darkfriends can and should be warranted at will.
7.(a) You may not attempt to make a rule for any area outside of your nation's control, which borders are marked by border stones.
7(b) You may not make a rule that refers to actions outside of your nation's borders.
7(c) Narrates and IC chats are taken to have occurred in all homelands simultaneously.
8. If someone fulfills the pre-set conditions for a pardon, you must pardon.
9. Banishments cannot be used to circumvent warranting rules.
10. Banishments must be proportionate in relation to the issue at hand.
E.g. banishing an entire clan for 6 months because someone made a comment on narrates is not ok, but banishing an entire clan over repeat law breakings within your nation and an unwillingness of that clan's council to punish their clanmates can be appropriate.
*Note - there are more rules at the above link but the heart of the rules are captured in the above.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11527
WARRANTING
The recent thread regarding the Sal Cav laws has led to various policies being clarified at Watcher level.
At the outset, it must be noted that Sal Cav did follow correct procedure in this matter. The below is simply a result of subsequent discussions.
Henceforth, the very clear intention behind all warranting rules is this:
With the exception of warranting rule 1 - attacks on your own person - see viewtopic.php?f=3&t=300, you may only enforce your nation's laws for actions that occur WITHIN your own borders, which borders are marked by borderstones. Let us know if you can't find or don't have borderstones for your nation.
You may only BANISH someone for law-breaking actions that occur WITHIN your own borders and which banishments are to be commensurate with the incident.
You may not rely on treaties to cross-warrant people.
You may choose to blanket warrant/banish certain clans - if you're not sure if this one applies to you, please post in your forums or mail the Immortals.
It is fully intended that much more of the map be contested lands, not subject to any rule.
It is intended that a player, no matter how notorious, cannot suffer warrants or banishments from lands in which he or she does not commit any crimes.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11527
The International Waters of Wotmud
---
Historic territorial claims and regulation of hunting by justice clans produced a game where no one could be hunted anywhere. Meanwhile, current warranting rules are fixated on "deregulation" and have essentially produced a world in which nothing is a crime/can be punished as long as its outside of a borderstone.
---
The new warranting rules have been very good in a number of ways.
1. Historic warrants were often trivial and focused on trash talking from far away cities. There was nothing face to face about it.
2. Clans seem to be slightly more open to removing warrants - this may be a cultural change rather than due to the rules but historic warrants were eternal.
3. Anyone who got warranted anywhere could be warranted everywhere.
4. Every clan historically forbade hunting in their territory and virtually all territory was claimed. The end result was that justice clans couldn't pursue their core function without always running aground of another clan's rules.
5. There was somewhat constantly the feeling that everyone was a lawyer.
What inspired this post.
1. Lancers receive mail (regularly) describing an "event" - usually violence in some sort of Borderland/contested territory. Can't call it a crime because there are no rules outside border stones.
2. The events often have a question of whether they were intermixed with light-dark-PK. They range from accidental to purposeful stabs, misplaced quakes, whatever.
3. Lancers inevitably warrant someone. Or think someone deserves to be warranted but we reread the rules, post passive aggressively and then do nothing.
4. The word "darkfriend" inevitably gets bandied about because calling someone a darkfriend is theoretically a loophole to get around the warranting rules. There's no real definition of a darkfriend given but they can be blanket warranted.
5. Optional: Elysia makes herself the clan Immortal to more easily pardon people we wrongly warranted.
Now I ask you - are the Lancers truly at fault if we are contacted by a person who themself clearly didn't understand the rules.
I feel like we've produced a problem that didn't previously exist.
That said - I want to come back around to the thing I don't understand.
Whenever it comes up that we can't warrant - we're often told we can do some sort of other RP punishment. Banishing. Fining. "Consequences". None of this makes any sense to me. I'm pretty sure that in several of the instances where we wanted to warrant someone we were told we could banish them instead. This may be before the 2nd rule update below, but the rules clearly state we can't banish as a way to circumvent warranting rules and we can't banish for activities outside of our borders. I've seen people fined but again - they were fined for a crime that happened outside of the borders so how were they fined. Do the Lancers owe Fermin 1000 crowns (cause I already spent it)? And how would we even be entitled to the Fermin fining money when it was Deimon who was attacked. Where I'm going with this is - some of these punishments were clearly proposed as solutions for "out of border crimes" when in fact the rules suggest nothing can be done for these actions? That would be a violation of of 7b below.
I've started and stopped writing this post a few times but its hard reducing it down to its key elements or figuring out what the solution is when so many organizations may have different perspectives. What I wondered is - have we stripped clans of their agency by reducing their territories to be too small?
I've wondered about bizarre scenarios - what if Warder Pairs started hunting CoL in the Borderlands outside the stones. What's to stop them? The Peace of the Borderlands? I tried looking that up on Google. Who do I a Shienaran Lancer assist if this happens?
Or how about - what if at the end of a PK in a door I killed all of my team mates in a door. Let's say I did it today on Eol and tomorrow on an unclanned. What if all the people I kill are unclanned so no one can warrant me. What if the Lancers refuse to punish me (..like *cough* Civil Watch *cough* though think we know the Imms would). Can an unclanned character have a roleplay violation? If the unclanned character doesn't intend to be a darkfriend then should they have the right to pursue such an activity ie. they are conducting themselves like a darkfriend but they are not a darkfriend? Should clanned characters who do bad activities simply be punished by the Imms/their clan if the activity is a violation of their core roleplay - even if no warrant is given for it? I'm aware that for some of these there are straight forward answers but it seems like there are people at present who can be killed in the "in between" places and nothing will be done for them and that seems wrong.
Historically Regret (an Accepted) stole a heron from PK at camp. Ran up DF, down gap, Wastelands etc. Tower would still punish this, but today no warrant could be forthcoming from Fal Dara even though she robbed a group camp with a Lancer in it.
I really think we've created something that overly resembles the wild west. I don't have a true solution. In some of these situations it seems like the clanned people are theoretically supposed to get as wild as the people committing the crimes. Historically clanned people were supposedly not supposed to attack people unless they had a warrant but in this new world we could brawl it out in the Blight with a wilder who attacked members of our party for using earth quake.
I've tried coming with a "the perfect idea" - but I don't have one. The problem is awful crimes are still awful crimes even when they are outside border stones. One of my ideas was that warrants given for crimes outside border stones can only be temporary ie. they must be removed at 7 days from the crime. The other solution was to define "darkfriend" behavior - which is problematic. I wrote the below - but its still awful and doesn't fit with the rest. I tried to tie the idea of "direct negative effect" - ie. you had to be there for it though that doesn't protect others adequately. And what would a "Cause of the Light" be - I think we have an idea of what they would represent but defining it would be very annoying. Lancers would likely settle for our territory having no northern border - just a southern border, but this was already rejected.
--------
When an event occurs in which (a) you or a groupmember are personally negatively affected through violence or theft (b) OR the "Cause of the Light" is directly negatively affected by a human players actions (c) BUT the activity occurs in neutral territory (d) and it doesn't fit the main passage warranting rules then an applied warrant is removed at 7 days from the "event" unless an Immortal agrees it should be retained.
--------
Anyway - can anyone think of a way fix the wild west side of the warranting rules?
------
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=300
1. You can warrant for any attack on your person anywhere in the mud, provided this doesn't breach any of the following rules.
2. You can warrant for any breaking of your nation's laws, provided these are in line with these rules.
3. You can not warrant people for being grouped with a wanted, unless that wanted is a known male channeler or dark friend, or in the case of *oL, someone grouping with a Tower channeler in Amador.
4. You can not warrant people for serving warrants on their wanteds in neutral or treatied lands, including for attacking you due to face-off mechanics; not including targeted stab or charge.
5.(a) You MAY attack and pursue any person attempting to serve a warrant on a group member without being warranted in return, provided that such pursuit does not enter the homeland of the person who attempted to serve the warrant.
5(b)To avoid doubt, if any member of your group has been attacked by someone, you may pursue that person unto their death, so long as you do not enter that person's homeland. Similarly, if you pursue an attacker, that attacker is then free to retaliate against you, unto your own death. Neither side of such conflict is entitled to lay any warrants if the actions did not take place in their respective homelands.
6. Subject to your clan's policies (as approved by your Watcher), blanket warrants ARE permitted. See the section on blanket warrants below. Male channelers and Darkfriends can and should be warranted at will.
7.(a) You may not attempt to make a rule for any area outside of your nation's control, which borders are marked by border stones.
7(b) You may not make a rule that refers to actions outside of your nation's borders.
7(c) Narrates and IC chats are taken to have occurred in all homelands simultaneously.
8. If someone fulfills the pre-set conditions for a pardon, you must pardon.
9. Banishments cannot be used to circumvent warranting rules.
10. Banishments must be proportionate in relation to the issue at hand.
E.g. banishing an entire clan for 6 months because someone made a comment on narrates is not ok, but banishing an entire clan over repeat law breakings within your nation and an unwillingness of that clan's council to punish their clanmates can be appropriate.
*Note - there are more rules at the above link but the heart of the rules are captured in the above.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11527
WARRANTING
The recent thread regarding the Sal Cav laws has led to various policies being clarified at Watcher level.
At the outset, it must be noted that Sal Cav did follow correct procedure in this matter. The below is simply a result of subsequent discussions.
Henceforth, the very clear intention behind all warranting rules is this:
With the exception of warranting rule 1 - attacks on your own person - see viewtopic.php?f=3&t=300, you may only enforce your nation's laws for actions that occur WITHIN your own borders, which borders are marked by borderstones. Let us know if you can't find or don't have borderstones for your nation.
You may only BANISH someone for law-breaking actions that occur WITHIN your own borders and which banishments are to be commensurate with the incident.
You may not rely on treaties to cross-warrant people.
You may choose to blanket warrant/banish certain clans - if you're not sure if this one applies to you, please post in your forums or mail the Immortals.
It is fully intended that much more of the map be contested lands, not subject to any rule.
It is intended that a player, no matter how notorious, cannot suffer warrants or banishments from lands in which he or she does not commit any crimes.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11527