Joining the Game and Etiquette

Joining, Leaving, or Going on Vacation
A Player may join the game at any time, they receive a Faction and as soon as they do they are in the game, their name and their base votes will be posted. Players must post into the game thread every round and are considered inactive until then.

Inactive Players – Players who have not yet posted during the round, or have posted a message titled “GOV” – Going on Vacation - go inactive for that round, and are assumed inactive in future rounds until they post “UnGOV”. This is not the same as RBIRL – Real Busy In Real Life – since it places a player inactive immediately and for the whole round. RBIRL traditionally just means the player isn’t expecting to be around, GOV is effectively skipping a round, though any bids placed before posting GOV are still valid.

Players are never considered Active in a round until they have posted. Inactivity is declared on any poster who has not posted into the game by the Early Auction Deadline, they are away for the round, a player may go active in round if they post before the end of the late auction phase, but only once or twice per game per player and will probably cost a player their Good Sportsmanship Prestige VP. Players can not attack or assassinate an Inactive player, bids from inactive players don’t count (bids received just prior to a post are fine). Inactive Players are assumed to have returned to their Homeworlds to oversee important business. Player who are inactive for two rounds automatically resign.

Resigning – Players may resign at any time, and their 200 VP are removed from the Pot, their assets auctioned off. A player may later rejoin as a new faction. Players resign by posting or sending a NB to the mod saying so.

Joining Late Game – A player who is joining late game (post round 1) automatically receives maximum starting wealth and may receive some random standard assets and/or legions if it is felt they are too disadvantaged, but should not assume they are on equal footing as average players who began during the first round, they just won’t be starting very far behind. Joining in Round 2 gives you a fairly even chance of placing first, joining in Round 6 realistically would not.

Etiquette
Players may lie through their teeth about themselves or others, except about the rules. There’s no penalty for doing so but the mod will assume they are mistaken and correct them. Players may not modquote or pretend to modquote in any fashion that represents an “Inescapable Conclusion”, covered below. Players are expected to post at least once during the early portion of each round, everything else is optional.

Players are expected to be courteous to other players, and also not to take offense at things directed at their character or faction. Saying “Bob is a [4 letter word]” is not okay, saying “Bob’s a liar and he cheated me” if contextual referencing Bob’s character is just fine. As an example, “Bob, that cowardly Harkonnen dog, just raided my Weapons Factory” is entirely fine and frankly encouraged. Usage of strong or foul language is frowned on unless it’s appropriate to game flavor, and should not appear in post titles to keep the game thread from becoming NSFW.
Inescapable Conclusion – Copying or forging pieces of your reports or messages from the mod, when done in a fashion that makes otherwise private info public and highly credible because it comes from the Mod is not allowed. Like copying a message from the Mod “Yes, as House Atreides you would tend to avoid assassinations, of course the House did own the character, Thufir Hawat, who was nicknamed the Master of Assassins so it’s not banned, you can launch them if you want to. Sorry if you thought you were under a restriction not to” would imply I was saying he hadn’t launched any assassinations that game, the player couldn’t post that. Copying reports from the Mod is not strictly forbidden, since they are standardized and can be easily faked, but at this time would be considered ‘highly frowned upon’, particularly if posted in bulk. You can certainly tell people what is in your reports though, paraphrasing is not necessary, they are highly standardized and thus easily forged. Just not so much and so fast that it would represent a highly credible source because you wouldn’t have faked that big a report, or done so that fast.