Rules and Procedures for PBEM Games

Meta-Game Procedures

Some aspects of running the PBEM game are external to the game itself.

Official, All-Inclusive, Divine Disclaimer

In all things, the judge's (i.e., Ralph's) decision is final.

I try to be a reasonable person, and will try not to screw anybody. But there is no recourse other than convincing me to change my mind.

Anonymization and Mailing Addresses

To increase the paranoia (and to make things more convenient for me), I'm planning to make this an anonymous game--players will not know each other's real identities. I'll run a littleproxy e-mailer that will let players send messages to each other, and take care of things like Cc'ing me and logging the interactions.

To send game-related e-mail to me as the game moderator, address your mail to ralph=game-gm@cs.cmu.edu.

To send mail to everyone on the list, send mail to ralph=game@cs.cmu.edu.

To send mail to a specific player or spectator, send mail to ralph=game-@cs.cmu.edu. You do not need to send a Cc to me; a copy will be automatically generated.

The remailer will make some attempt to catch common blunders-- for example, if you have signed your real name to the message, it will bounce the message to you (and send a copy to me.)

If something goes wonky with the above, send me mail at ralph@cs.cmu.edu telling me about it. In particular, if you get a message with a subject of 'Waiting Mail' saying this:

After 2 days (26 hours), your message has not yet been fully delivered. Attempts to deliver the message will continue for 4 more days. No further action is required by you.

That message means 'Ralph has broken the remailer. You should send e-mail to him at ralph@cs.cmu.edu (not ralph=game-gm@cs.cmu.edu, because the remailer is broken at the moment) alerting him to the problem.'

(N.B. I read e-mail on a Unix system, using a tty interface that's 80 columns wide. It's a hassle for me to use MIME and MIME-encoded stuff. Please only give me raw ASCII text unless there's an extraordinary reason not to.)

One further note: Most of the spectators on the ralph=game@cs.cmu.edu mailing list are people who would like to play in a PBEM game. Therefore, I declare that people who are running PBEM games of INWO may use the ralph=game@cs.cmu.edu mailing list to find interested players, and I will help by passing messages to the game mailing list.

Names

For choosing names for the anonymous game:

Each player will pick an adjective or other descriptive word when they submit the deck. If there are collisions, I'll have people pick again, as with picking lead puppets. If we run out of adjectives, I'll let people pick from adjectives that have already been tried. (Not that I expect this to happen, but isn't it nice to know that I have a plan for this?)

I'll think about whether confusion is likely when I'm judging whether there's a 'collision', so y'all won't have to deal with remembering to distinguish the 'Taupe Bavarians' from the 'Ecru Bavarians'.

This adjective will be permanent for the game, persisting across Unmasked and everything else. So if the Taupe Bavarians Unmask as the UFOs, they will then be the Taupe UFOs.

The 'full name' of a player will be their descriptive word combined with the name of their Illuminati.

If a player is the only player playing their Illuminati, the name of their Illuminati will also be a valid name for them.

Spectators may choose arbitrary names for themselves, as long as those names are not likely to conflict with the names of players.

Absence

If someone can't participate temporarily, they should tell me. It will be handled in the following way: The player can define a set of events that they want to be waited for. (By default, this will include events like someone attacking them, or someone wanting to wait for a response from them.) I will allow things to proceed and pause the game to wait for the absent player as necessary.

If a player has to drop out for a longer period, or drops out without warning for a somewhat long period, a substitute will be found to play their deck.

Representation of Power Structures

Power Structures will be represented textually, as a tree of masters and puppets, like this:

Society of Assassins ( ) [Power 7/7]
        1: N.S.A. ( ) [Power 5/2, Res 4, Grc]
                1: 
                2:
                3:
        2: Nephews of God (*) [Power 3/3, Res 4, CF]
        3: Fiendish Fluoridators (*) [Power 5/5, Res 5, Friu]
                1: W.I.T.C.H. (*) [Power 7/7, Res 6, WVFm]
                        {New Blood}
			1:
                        2:
        4: Libertarians ( ) [Power 6/6, Res 4, F]
                1:  Germany (*) [Power 4, Res 3, CGhon]
                        1:
                        2:
                        3:

The direction of control arrows does not matter; it does not matter whether groups would overlap if the power structure were laid out on a table with real cards. The reason is that it's too much of a hassle to figure out when things overlap. (This means that the special ability of the Dallas Catacombs is useless. Oh well.)

Actions

Players should send their intended actions to me. I will then process the actions and send the result to the whole list.

I will handle speed-play issues. In general, you don't have to read your e-mail constantly; if you respond to an action promptly (within 12 hours or so, depending on when I announce it), then that's good enough--if there are conflicts, I'll do a roll-off to see who goes first.

It may occur that two people declare redundant but not conflicting actions. (For example, when the current roll for an attack is seven or less, and two people decide to chip in power-3 actions.) I will attempt to follow the intent of the players, so in the situation described, I would treat the two power-3 actions as "conflicting", and have only one of them act. (The more detail you provide about your intentions, the more likely it is that I'll correctly play according to your intentions.)

Game Rulings

In a game of this length, the official rulings on INWO cards may change during the course of the game. It can suck to get shafted by finding out that a combination you thought was great is dead in the water.

Therefore, I offer this: If you need a ruling on something, you can ask me. (Even before submitting decks). If you've gotten a ruling from me on a topic, we'll play by that ruling, even if that's later contradicted by a later official ruling. (Unless I do something boneheaded like giving contradictory rulings to different players.)

Rules of Game Play

Rules

Deck-building

Any cards that are legal for use in US tournaments may be used (including German uniques, Assassins, and SubGenius cards.) German-only cards will be handled according to INWO Spricht Deutsch, since I don't speak German. Basic set cards will be handled according to the Unlimited Edition card text.

There is no obligation to own the cards that constitute your deck. After all, there is no way for me to check.

Decks must be 45 cards, total, including Illuminati, Group Cards, and Plot cards.

I reserve the right to ask people to change decks if I consider them too degenerate. Mostly, though, I'll point out that this game is more like a demo than a tournament--you should play a deck such that you'll be happy to see your play described in exhaustive detail on the web. Also, given the projected length of the game, you should play a deck that you'll enjoy playing for a year or so.

Decks should be submitted to me in the following format. Please specify one card per line, without writing things like 'Alternate Goals x2'--I have to get them into a one-card per line format to use my shuffling scripts, so I'd like you to make my life easier by doing it for me.

Lead Illuminati: <Illuminati>

Group Cards:
<Group cards (groups and Resources), one per line>

Plot Cards:
<Plot cards, (including Goals, Illuminati groups, NWOs, and so forth),
	one per line>

Basic Goal

The Basic goal will be set at 12 groups. (We're already committing to a year or so of play; making it longer won't be a problem.)

Speed Play

Despite what the World Domination Handbook says, you may not use die-modifying cards to affect speed-play die rolls. It would be too damn slow. (Speed-play rolls also do not count as rolls for things like the side effects of The Janor Device.)

Beginning the Game

Because rearranging the order of players is as easy for me as shuffling a deck, the 'roll dice to see who goes first' step of the beginning of the game will be replaced by randomly reordering the players to determine an order of play.

Committing attacks

There is no way to "tentatively" announce an attack the way there is in standard INWO. Once the attack is announced by the GM, it is committed.

Card-Specific Differences

Some cards require special procedures for play-by-email games. This section details those special procedures.

Arise!

I've seen Arise! used by having a player with Arise! give almost all his groups to another player, in exchange for having the other player make a successful attack. I don't like this--please don't abuse it to this level.

Australia

Australia's special ability depends upon whether the time is during work hours or not. this changes many more times over the course of a PBEM game than it does in the course of a face-to-face game. Therefore, I will decree that it is always "the weekend, a national holiday, or after 5 p.m." for the purposes of Australia in my PBEM games.

Having another coldie is optional.

Bar Codes

I do not know how much someone can comprehend in 10 seconds of looking through a deck. Therefore, I'll handle Bar Codes this way: I'll build a copy of the Group deck, and find a local expert INWO player to look through the deck. The player playing Bar Codes should provide commentary for the local viewer on what they expect and what they are looking for, so that the viewer can get those benefits of knowing what to expect. After the viewer has looked through the cards, I'll have him write a response to the player detailing to the best of his ability what he saw.

Crop Circles

See Rosicrucians

Dallas Catacombs

Because of the way I handle Power Structures, the special ability of the Dallas Catacombs is irrelevant. Oh well.

The First Thing We Do, Let's Kill All the Lawyers

I will not be enforcing the restriction about what you must say.

Jesus B.

I will not check whether you send the dollar to Jesus B. You should, however, be aware of the Holy and Divine Importance of sending the dollar for using Jesus B.'s ability.

The Great Pyramid

There is no effective way for me to check whether you're taking notes with the Great Pyramid. Therefore, the 'You may not take notes' clause of the Great Pyramid is void for the PBEM Game. (This makes the Great Pyramid more powerful...)

Regi$tered Trademark

If Regi$tered Trademark is played on a group, you must use the full name, spelling it correctly. This would mean, for example, that you could get NAILED for referring to 'The Servants of Cthulu'. Not that I have a pet peeve or anything.

If I fail to use the correct name for a group, you may taunt me, but there will be no game effect of my mistake.

Rosicrucians

For Rosicrucians, Crop Circles, and other '30-seconds' cards, I'll handle them in the following way: you get one message in which to specify what to do, including contingency plans. If I can't follow your plans, you'll get whatever cards are on top of your deck.

The Stark Fist of Removal

Showing the Stark Fist and reading the color text are optional. If they are done, they may only be done through ASCII.