WARNING: THIS INFORMATION IS NOT FINAL!
ARTICLE NEEDS TO BE REVISED!
Should you wonder what aims we have set for Etheria, or how Etheria is run, then this article may be of interest to you.
Etheria's Constitution
Many people have put years of spare time into making this shard a good place. Hopefully many more will follow and the shard's constitution is to ensure, that the project will continue its set course. This article shall thus describe, both the purpose of the shard, as well as the laws that apply to it - for just as we wish, that our time invested is not going to waste, so do you as a player have the right to be ensured, that the laws that apply to the shard, shall not be changed at whim.
§1 - Decision Makers:
Etheria is to be led by three admins of equal rank. Each admin may decide for his/her own realm, with the exception of major design changes which will require a 2/3rd majority and constitutional changes where all three admins have to agree. Also, new paragraphs can only be added by agreement of all three shard admins.
§2 - The Three Pillars:
Etheria Design is placed on three unchangeable pillar rules:
Role-play:
Etheria is to be designed as a medieval hardcore fantasy role-playing world.
Realism:
Within the limits of a fantasy role-playing world, Etheria is designed to be as realistic as possible.
Freedom:
Within the limits of a most realistic role-playing world, the player is to be given the outmost freedom possible for the effects of his actions.
Conclusion:
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As a hardcore role-playing world, the player should be asked to stay in character whenever possible while dropping out of character should not be allowed. Staff should write stories and run quests that help players to merge with this world. In relation to freedom though, the story line made up by staff should never be enforced on the player making him the tool of the quest, rather (once a player has accumulated enough influence, e.g. as a guild leader, or leader of a town) GM's should assist such a player in doing their own quests if they so desire (and as long as their quests are reasonable and well planned too) -> as such the players will gain the possibility to influence the future of the shard. On the other hand as to realism, staff should avoid stories that go beyond what players could achieve, unless these stories are later revealed as a ruse.
However Realism has also another aspect, for Etheria is trying to simulate a medieval world. Please be aware though, that Etheria is still a fantasy world, and not 14th century medieval Europe or Asia. Now how does this fit together? The answer is simple enough: 14th century Europe and Asia were both limited by religious, social and cultural restrictions, which may not apply to Etheria. So rather than checking if something did exist in 14th century Europe or Asia, we check if it would have been possible with 14th century technology.
Also Etheria, being a fantasy role-playing world, will involve use of magic to a certain degree - however also magic will not be allowed to work random miracles, but rather will have to follow a proper set of rules and regulations.
The last chapter of freedom stands for various abilities of the player, unmatched by most any other shard. These freedoms range as mentioned before from the chance to influence the future of the shard (as long as enough other players support your idea) or to build his own house and town, over the right to pvp whenever you see fit (as long as it is arguable within the limits of hardcore role-play - e.g. it's not wise to pull the beard of a dwarf, not even if he's your friend) down to freedom in choosing your skills or experimenting within them for a (nearly) unlimited time without dull retries.
§3 - Focus on Politics and Player Towns:
Etheria is to uphold a high focus on politics - as such player run cities and communities play a vital role. As player cities and their communities evolve, staff operated towns and their politics should retire to side-quest storylines only.
Players should be given the opportunity to build and maintain their own empires and their politics should be granted priority over any possibly staff operated cities on the shard - that is, as long as the actions of these communities are to be considered an addition to Etheria that does not compromise the shard's integrity and as long as it does not lead to a drastic shift of the gaming experience as a whole.
To give some examples:
Two cities might be allowed to forge an empire, yet such an empire would not be allowed to spawn the whole planet.
A town might go to war on another, yet a big repeative and unprovoked attacks against peaceful villages are not to be tolerated.
A city could declare to worship an evil entity, and might invite it's citizens to plunder passing caravans. Yet a community to engage in organized player killing and mass-murder is not acceptable.
In order to create stronger communities, the shard design is to assist by making it more interesting for players to spend their time in towns. This is to be done by two supportive measures:
Scripts should be designed in ways that make it interesting for players to players to play crafters, often as possible requiring stationary equipment, forcing players to adapt their homes to their crafts. As such players will find themselves spending more time in towns, making it in turn more interesting for others to drop by. Such crafts must not become tedious though, but rather should allow even experienced players to experiment with them, still discovering new combinations, options and possibilities.
Staff should try assist making towns more worthwhile places. One step of course is to run quests also in player operated towns, and if possible, include their story lines in these quests. The other measure though, will be to assist players in managing their towns wherever possible, not by action but with advice - this is true both for management ideas and construction observance. Especially for the later it is true, that while we favor outmost player freedom, also in the construction of their virtual homes, this freedom is to be controlled and constantly verified and a realistic impression of the world is to be maintained. As an example, both overly high towers, as well as fantastic buildings such as a pure marble house in an otherwise stone-built city are not to be tolerated, and staff is asked to advice players of solutions more fit to Etheria.
§4 - Magic on Etheria:
Etheria is to be designed as a fantasy world where powerful magic is to exist, at the same time and as a generic rule though, magic is not to be opened up to a wide public.
Magic provides important background to Etheria, yet it is not to become the focus of the shard. As a primary aspect this means that magic is not to be learned easily, that it's use for combat is to be discouraged as dishonorable and that it's practice in generic is to be feared and hated. As a secondary aspect that means, that NPC (including monsters) should not have access to magic easily, that quests should not focus on magic, and that neither books nor webpage story background should provide much information on it.
Etheria's primary magery skill is intended to be overpowered by design, as such giving it good reason to be feared - but it is not to be fit to dungeon combat. As an example, a very experienced mage might be the only one allowed to instant kill an enemy, yet such use should not only drain extremely rare reagents but also disable the caster for a matter of real life days which in turn will make the skill useless to most any combat situation.
Magic is to follow a detailed defined set of rules - not only to the use of reagents, but especially to the explanation of effects. As an example this could mean that to cast a fireball, cast by some elementalist sort of mage, would require an existing source of fire (such as maybe nearby lava or burning torches) - but it might also mean, that the fireball is merely a psionic/spiritual trick, leaving any overly intelligent (or stupid?) creature immune to it's effect (and preventing torches from being ignite by the spell!). Of course in a 'traditional' sense, this might also mean for the mage to channel pure energy from another plane, heating up atoms in the air to finally burst in a ball of fire - yet assuming such vast energies being channeled by the mage, in turn failure in casting would have to have extremely devastating effects on the caster.
As a side note to magic - this also means that 'death' is not to be a common event. Unconsciousness needs to be implemented to avoid players considering themselves dead. Both monsters and players alike should rather be taught to disable and pillage their victims than to kill them, for resurrection may be rare.
§5 - Consistent Development & Design:
Etheria is to have a professional, consistent and intuitive design. All in game controls are to operate by the same logic and all graphics are to stick to the overall shard design and layout.
Since Etheria will have a high level of complexity due to it's design, this professional and intuitive appearance has to be supported by providing both, a detailed user documentation to the public, as well as a detailed game administration manual to the shard's staff. In case shard scripts are made public, at least a how-to script guide has to be made available in addition.
§6 - Programming and Script Design:
All scripts of the shard are to be designed as open as possible in order to both, allow easy expansion and adaptation to concept changes, as well as to allow the use of the shard's script engine to be used by other shards (matrixshard script project).This is to easily allow opening up the shards scripts to the community, should Etherias Administrators choose to do so. Additionally scripts have to be well commented and match shard design rules as of §5.
§7 - Financing
A stable shard environment requires professional hosting. Thus, being a non-profit project, Etheria requires private sponsoring. It is up to the shard administration, as to whether to accept or deny a sponsor but in order to ensure our sponsors will agree with the Etheria project, any financier who has covered 20% or more of the shards operational expenses for at least six months, will automatically gain an active veto right relating to shard constitution changes. Etheria financiers will be informed in advance regarding any constitutional changes, leaving them a one week period to deposit their veto with the shard administration.
The veto right will concede with their sponsoring dropping below the 20% mark for two successive months, thus voiding all sponsorship privileges.
Conclusion:
Thus said, these are the basic laws for the shard administration, which shall hopefully provide a stable shard environment for you to play in. Thus said, there are additional laws though, some of which will apply to staff while others will apply to any player and which may provide more detailed information as to how the shard is operated along with your own do's and don'ts for this shard.
Information
Shard Laws