Official Rules: GENERAL

All rules are to be moderated to the discretion of the staff team. Staff have the right to discern what is *reasonable* and what is not. Official war rules are written separately.

## OOC and Discord Rules

1. No toxicity. Your character might be an asshole, but you are not your character OOC. Respect others. Debate is okay, but don’t let it turn into a toxic argument.
	* You may be warned or banned depending on severity / frequency.
2. Try to keep to the Discord channel topics; especially for memes / debates.
	* Your off-topic posts may be deleted and you’ll be asked to move to another channel
3. Don’t spam channels.
	* You may be warned or banned depending on severity / frequency.

## Minecraft Server Rules

1. No client hacks / game mechanic or bug abuse of any kind: X-Ray, autominer, item duplication etc. - no client modification that may give you an edge over other players *within reason*
	* Immediate, permanent ban.
	* *Reasonable* client mod for edge over other players examples: optifine (please ask if you are unsure if your client mods count as being an unfair advantage)
2. Do not steal, grief, trap or kill other players outside of a roleplay context.
	* You may be warned or banned depending on severity / frequency.
	* Consider the following scenarios:
		+ You enter a town unannounced as a new player, you start murdering people for no reason, mining through random houses and stealing things. *You are immediately banned.*
		+ You are a known bandit. You carefully plan a bandit raid on a town. The town resists your raid so you kill some of the defenders, break through the doors and obtain some good loot. You then burn down the house of the man in the town that killed your father, in vengeance. *You are now a revered bandit and people fear you. The town folk will tell this story to their children as a lesson to fear bandits.*
3. No automated farms / AFK farms / XP farms / mob towers. All farms must be actively operated and maintained by a player.
	* You will be warned and your farm will be removed.
4. No combat logging
	* You will be banned.
5. Don't grief the world. This includes excessive pillars, huge single block bridges across oceans / moutains, burning forests en masse outside of RP context, leveling ruins, etc. Use common sense.
6. Ships using the ship plugin must be properly built vessels (not just random blocks). They must also not be large enough to lag the server when they move.

## Roleplay Guidelines

1. Try to keep your roleplay chat and OOC chat clear. (In Minecraft use /g and /l for OOC, /rp for roleplay. They can be toggled or put at the front of a message.)
2. Creativity and extension to existing lore is great, but try to keep things consistent with existing lore. It's your responsibility to make sure you don't affect someone else's lore when writing in a way that may affect other parts of the world without asking and getting permission.
3. You should distinguish yourself from your in-game character. Breaking character and metagaming (using knowledge that your character would not know) is strongly discouraged
4. The server is set in the post-hellenistic era. You may have a little more advanced or behind technology, and you may have cultures not unique to the post-hellenistic era, even custom ones, but you must make sure you comply with rule 2 and have an explanation to why, if need arises. Totally modern-era cultural styles are not allowed.
5. No supernatural. Mythologies and religions may be written, and your characters may *claim* to be the descendant of a god. However, you may not have any actual canonical supernatural properties, both in your OCs and worldbuilding.
6. Collaborate. Worldbuilding might be one of the many aspects of Ironforge, but it's one of the most collaborative sides of it. This is a group world-building project, and please act responsibly to be part of this group and get help, and help people.
7. We want to minimize admin intervention. As much as possible, we want RP mistakes or misdeeds to face RP consequences rather than an admin's punishment - so long as players are not being toxic.
8. Remember, your character should be driven by purpose, fear, ambition, and other human traits. For example, you may not fear death by sword in-game, but consider what your character would fear.
9. Character death is optional - it is your choice whether in-game death is the end of your character, or your character has just been wounded.

## Settlements

1. A new tier 2 settlement can be established *after* a settlement has been built and has at least three players. It is unlikely that you will be considered as a *nation / empire / kingdom* unless you control multiple settlements.
2. A new settlement requires: a banner / flag, and a wiki page containing basic lore, laws, etc. An admin must approve the wiki page for your settlement.
3. Settlements will require **weekly** food upkeep. Each **week** a settlement must pay either 64 plant-based food items per player population, or 32 animal-based food items per player population.
	* If a settlement cannot pay its food upkeep for 2 consecutive weeks, it will be disbanded. A disbanded settlement can easily be re-established, but it is vulnerable to bandits while it is tier 1.
	* Bread can also be paid as 32 items per player population. Cookies, cake, stews, sweet berries, rotten flesh and non-edible items will not be counted as payable upkeep foods
4. A player who is inactive for more than a week is considered to be away from town.
	* If a settlement has less than 3 active occupants, it becomes vulnerable to looting by bandits.
5. The Settlements shall show the container dedicated to upkeep when registering their towns.
	* The Settlement shall notify the staff when changing the location of their upkeep container. If not notified of the change, it will be assumed that the settlement has chosen to not pay upkeep.
	* The container must be at a reasonable spot within the settlement.
6. The settlement is to keep a list of their members in a book of quill. It must either be placed on a lectern adjacent to the upkeep container, or placed within the container itself.
	* The book must contain the full username of every member of the settlement, whether or not they are active.
	* Over- and under-reporting is cause for losing tier 2 status.

### Settlement Tiers

* Tier 3: City
	+ Requires: minimum 10 active players, paying upkeep, one building per active player, has wiki page.
	+ Protection: full claim protection for town, bandits can only raid if 3 members are within the town (as per bandit rules).
	+ Marker: A six-windowed building.
* Tier 2: Settlement / Town
	+ Requires: minimum 3 active players, paying upkeep, one building per active player, has wiki page.
	+ Protection: full claim protection for town, bandits can only raid if 3 members are within the town (as per bandit rules).
	+ Marker: A two-windowed building.
* Tier 1: Lone bases, disbanded settlements, unofficial settlements
	+ Requires: minimum 1 active player, no upkeep, no other requirements.
	+ Protection: Bandit raids can occur if one player is present in the base (as per bandit rules).
	+ Marker: Either a one-windowed building, or else unmarked.
* Tier 0: Abandoned base
	+ Has no active players. (A player must have logged on within the last 14 days to be considered active in this case.)
	+ Protection: No protection whatsoever, looting and damages allowed.
	+ Marker: Either a skull, or else unmarked.
		- It is the player's responsibility to ask after something's status if it is not obvious. There is low tolerance for negligence.

#### Settlement Crops / Pasture / Infrastructure Protection

The protections listed above only apply immediately inside settlements, and not to the surrounding lands, which are always considered to have tier 1 protections. A settlement is likely to build farms, pastures, roads, etc. outside of the actual town. For cities, settlements, and lone bases, sabotage is allowed (e.g. you may break crops, kill animals, break bridges, etc). However, **this can only occur if there is at least one player online from the base, settlement or city**. Doing this is a serious RP action. If you destroy people's farmlands or kill animals, they have a strong RP reason to declare war or put a bounty on your head.