Rules update 2018

Overview

Over winter of 2017/2018 we carried out a review of the rules from the third year of Empire. As a result of that review we implemented some changes to the published rules. This page summarizes and explains the changes so that players can identify and understand the changes easily.

We try to include a section after each rules update to explain the reasoning behind the change.

Sorcery

The laws governing sorcerers have been updated to remove the restriction preventing them from carrying mana or from using mana for political reasons in the Conclave.

Reasoning

The key intention of a declaration of sorcery was to legally forbid the accused magicians from performing rituals. Over time the evolution of the game meant that additional elements were loaded onto this by us (when the Conclave was overhauled a few years ago) and by the players (using Senate motions to change the law). In hindsight it became obvious that the punitive elements of being declared a sorcerer were simply too strong - characters were legally not just forbidden from performing rituals, but also using mana crystals on the battlefield and much more importantly they were severely restricted from interacting with plot and with the politics of the Conclave. This was way more than the declaration was originally intended to support, a point that was brutally exposed when players began to unfavourably compare the judgement of excommunication with the declaration of sorcery.

Obviously a large number of characters are going to want citizens who are declared sorcerers to be unable to do anything. It is clearly in the interests of many characters to have a tool like sorcery or excommunication that prevents your political opponents from doing anything at all. But it's equally clear to us as game designers that that is very much contrary to the best interests of the overwhelming majority of players in the game. Characters get excommunicated or declared sorcerer because they are doing controversial things that cause conflict - they are taking actions that make the game more enjoyable for everyone to play. There have to be consequences for incurring the kind of opprobrium involved with a declaration of sorcery - but it is incredibly important to ensure that the consequences still give the player a chance to have fun playing their character as far as possible.

Sadly fixing the problem is not straightforward. Ideally we would strip the sorcery laws back to the original intent - a prohibition on performing rituals. But doing that would mean undoing some very specific changes to Imperial law that players made - specifically the one forbidding sorcerers from interacting with eternals and heralds. While it would improve the game if that prohibition wasn't there - changing it at this stage would deny the action taken by the Senate and in doing that would undermine the perceived value of all such actions taken by the players. In effect we would be robbing Peter to pay Paul.

As a result we've tried as best as possible to confine the changes we've made to only affect the original rules that PD put in place. That isn't straightforward since there is some overlap - but we've done our best to give those who are playing sorcerers as much game as possible while preserving the majority of the changes to the laws made by the Imperial Senate.

Sauce for the Goose

In discussion with players about sorcery, it is clear that a common frustration for some players is that the system does not allow them to have more fine-grained control over who can do things. Players can interdict rituals or items, remove them from Imperial lore, they can declare emnity on eternals or war on foreigners. But generally the legal system of the Empire does not allow the players to create special exceptions. You cannot interdict a ritual - but then let some people use it. You can't carve out exemptions from the laws for specific groups, nor can archmages, grandmasters, cardinals, or senators be given special powers to exempt individuals from the law.

It is important to stress that this is very much by design. In Empire what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. A key part of this is about preserving a degree of OOC fairness to the game - to ensure that individual players don't end up finding themselves locked out of parts of the game while all around them others players are having fun. It's also about ensuring that important decisions are meaningful and important - it's vastly easier for the Empire to decide to stop a handful of players from doing something - it's a much more consequential decision for the players to decide that nobody should be allowed to do that thing.

For both these reasons, it's an essential part of the game design that by and large the laws apply to everyone equally.

IC Explanation

In the process of reviewing historical documents, members of the Constitutional Court discovered that the rules forbidding sorcerers from carrying mana and employing it in the Conclave were introduced during the rule of Emperor Nicovar in extremely dubious circumstances and were never subject to scrutiny. As a result, the Court have issued new guidance that these laws are not constitutional - so sorcerers will no longer be restricted in this way.

The new restrictions forbidding the possession of vis and ritual paraphernalia and prohibiting sorcerers from interacting with eternals are equally constitutionally dubious, but as they were passed in good faith by the Imperial Senate and then approved by the Constitutional Court they remain part of current Imperial law.