House RulesOrder Submission Schedule (Non-Standard)I will run a three-season rotation for orders submission: Spring, Fall, and Winter, with two seasons executed per week and retreats handled ad-hoc. Assuming no delays, this works out to 3 weeks for every 2 game-years.
This schedule
does not run on a standard days-per-phase model (
e.g. 2/1/1 or 3/1/2). I find that adjudication is quicker, and NMR's fewer, when players are given a regular weekly schedule instead.
All seasonal orders (
movement and
builds) will be due on
Mondays and
Thursdays by
7:00 PM (19:00) New York Time, which is EDT (UTC-4) or EST (UTC-5), depending on the time of the year. I will try to send out reminders on the morning-of, but those are not guaranteed. If you live in a time-zone that makes this timing (particularly the reminders) inconvenient, please let me know ASAP, and we can work something out.
Reminders for seasonal orders are not guaranteed, and they may be less than 24 hours.If everyone gets their orders in early, I can adjudicate much more promptly. However, I will not adjudicate movement or build turns earlier than the due date/time.
All
retreat orders are due
within 24 hours of the adjudication report. If you happen to miss a retreat order, I
do not always automatically disband those units. See the section below on missed retreats.
Unlike seasonal orders,
I will report retreats as soon as I receive all of them for a given turn.
Reminders for retreat orders will not be given.ExtensionsI can and do grant extensions at my own discretion. Please try to ask me about them as soon as possible. Saying you need one 5 minutes before the orders-due time is really frustrating to everyone.
At my discretion, if I grant an extension, I may amend the schedule for subsequent due dates. My
goal will be to ensure any seasonal due date/time occurs
at least 48 hours after the last season's adjudication and
at least 24 hours after retreats are reported.
Additionally, I may institute a delay or extension to compensate for changes in my own schedule.
Depending on the length of any given delay, I will either:
- Push the due time back a few hours (e.g. same day, but 2300 ET instead of 1900 ET).
- Skip one due date altogether, moving the schedule back to the following date (e.g. Monday's Spring Orders now due Thursday, Thursday's Fall orders now due the following Monday, et cetera)
- Propose two or more alternate schedules to be voted on by the group. If unanimous support cannot be established, I will default to the most lenient option.
Sample ScheduleAssuming no major delays, this could be a typical schedule.
- Code: Select all
Week 1 Monday 19:00 1903 Spring Movement due
20:30 1903 Spring report goes out
Tuesday 20:30 1903 Spring Retreats due (reported soon after)
Thursday 19:00 1903 Fall Movement due
20:30 1903 Fall report goes out
Friday 20:30 1903 Fall Retreats due
Week 2 Monday 19:00 1903 Winter Builds due
Thursday 19:00 1904 Spring Movement due
Friday 08:00 1904 Spring reported (maybe I granted an extension)
Saturday 08:00 1904 Spring Retreats due
Week 3 Monday 19:00 1904 Fall Movement due
Monday 20:05 1904 Fall report goes out
Tuesday 20:05 1904 Fall Retreats due
Thursday 19:00 1904 Winter Builds due
Week 4 Monday 19:00 1905 Spring Movement due, et cetera…
Grace Periods (Not in Effect at Game Start)Grace periods are
not automatically in effect at the beginning of a game. I will sometimes be forgiving to a person that's within an hour of the deadline for an early turn (since first-year NMR's are a pain for everyone, including the GM), but that's totally up to my own discretion.
Grace Period DetailsIf I announce a standing 12-hour grace period policy for all seasonal orders (never retreats), here's how it works.
The due date/time does not change: it's still 1900 New York Time (EST/EDT) on Mondays & Thursdays.
However, I will accept missing orders up to 12 hours late. In practical terms, this means that I will never adjudicate any earlier than 1900 EST/EDT, but after that point I will adjudicate as soon as I receive some orders from everyone (within that 12 hour window). I would advise you
not to attempt corrections or changes to prior orders within that 12-hour window; while it's not forbidden, it's totally within my discretion to accept them or not (usually depending on whether I've started the adjudication).
Players should
not use the 12-hour window to negotiate. Please don't try to game the system by waiting until the absolute last minute of the grace period to send orders. It's meant to provide breathing room to the busy and the tardy, and I don't take kindly to those who seem to be abusing the privilege.
Occasionally I will institute a 24-hour grace period policy, using these same stipulations, but I will do so only on a
temporary basis. 24-hour grace periods only last one game-year unless reinstated, and I only institute them when given considerable advance notice of a legitimate time conflict.
Example: one of my former players was an election official and was working late hours prior to a national vote. He gave me a week's notice that he'd be unusually busy, and I instituted the 24-hour policy for the affected game-year to give him some breathing room. As it turned out, I never actually had to use it (which made me quite happy).Assignment of PowersI will assign powers via blind auction. You may be familiar with the blind auction process from other games of Diplomacy; it’s become fairly standard procedure.
Blind Auction ProcedureEach player has 50 bid points to divide between the following five choices.
- Gondor (Blue)
- Mordor (Black)
- Isengard / Rhohan (Red)
- Rhovanion (Green)
- Eriador (Gold)
For each of the five choices, you must place assign a number of bid points (whole numbers only). The maximum bid for a choice is 30, and the minimum bid is 1.
Multiple bids from the same player may not be the same value. Each bid must be unique, forcing you to apply some order to your preferences.
Your bids can add up to less than 50 bid points, but I recommend allocating all points.
If you have no preference, I will assign 1 bid point to all choices on your behalf (this being the one exception to the unique-bids rule).
Once I receive all players’ bids, I will begin assigning powers in order from highest bid to lowest, using a random number generator to resolve the priority of same-valued bids.
Please do not talk about your preferences or bids in the forum. Contact me if you have any questions.
Adjudication MistakesIf I make a mistake in adjudication, please point it out ASAP. The window to do this is until the next season’s orders are due.
This means that you can potentially spot an error from the Spring Movement adjudication after the Spring Retreats have been reported, but not once the Fall Movement has been reached.
Depending on the timing of the correction, I will probably declare an extension for players to revise their orders.
I reserve the right to use my own judgment in applying such corrections.
Missed Orders (NMR)A player that does not submit seasonal orders to me by adjudication will receive an NMR (no moves received) for that phase.
If you NMR during a movement phase, all of your units will hold. If you NMR during a retreat or build phase, I will provide orders for you in the manners described below.
Missed RetreatsUnlike the standard Diplomacy policy of disbanding all missed retreats, if you miss providing retreat orders, I will retreat your dislodged units using the following priorities (from highest to lowest):
- Retreat to a province with another player’s SC.
- Retreat to a province with player’s own SC.
- Retreat to a water space (fleets only).
- Retreat to a land/canal/hybrid space with no SC.
If more than one possible retreat location has the same priority, I will use whichever region’s three-letter code comes first in alphabetical order.
I will give no consideration for whether some other retreating unit (even your own) can retreat to the same space.
Missed Winter OrdersSimilar to normal Diplomacy, if you miss submitting Build orders for a Winter turn, you will forfeit the relevant build(s) that turn.
If you were required to submit one or more Destroy orders that turn, but didn’t, then I will destroy units using the following priorities:
- Find the unit that’s the furthest from a valid build location controlled by the unit’s power.
- Destroy fleets before armies.
- If units are still equal in priorities 1 and 2, destroy the unit whose region’s three-letter code comes first in alphabetical order.
Repeated Missed Orders & Player ReplacementIf you miss turning in
two seasons in a row, or
at least three seasons overall, I may replace you. Because retreats are intentionally handled over a shorter period of time, an NMR for a retreat phase is not considered as part of this count.
An NMR during the first Spring orders phase of the first year will result in an immediate ejection from the game, and the game will be put on hold until I can find a replacement.
This is entirely at my discretion, and I reserve the right to replace players that I deem to be problematic.
End of Game & DrawsDraws do not have to include all survivors, but approval must be unanimous (with all votes in approval or abstaining).
Draw proposals expire at the beginning of the following season (ignoring retreat phases).
Votes for draws may be sent to me privately, or announced publicly, but
I will reveal everyone's vote once all votes are collected (or the draw expires).
Forced DrawsIn the unlikely event that you end up in a messy stalemate, and you can't get unanimous agreement for a draw, I'll force the game to end in a draw, including all surviving players, if and only if:
- Half or more of surviving players vote for it.
- No change to the state of the map has occurred for the duration of the past two game-years.
I also reserve the right to forcibly end any game in a draw, even if it does not match these exact stipulations, but as a GM, I hope never to have to invoke that right.
