Rules update 2025

Overview

Every year we carry out a review of some part of the game looking to see what we improve. This process of continous review allows us to keep the game fresh and ensures we remain happy that we're running the very best game we can. We don't have many updates this year, but the ones we do have are important for the players who are affected. 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 update to explain the reasoning behind the change, as well as providing an in-character rationale for what has changed where appropriate. As ever, it is important to remember that the rationale is there purely to provide a way for characters to explain any changes, it's not an actual plot development.

Sodalities

We have completely rewritten the rules for Imperial Sodalities. Under the new rules, an Imperial sodality can be given the power to elect Imperial titles and to employ other legal powers if the Senate wishes. Because of the new political power that these sodalities can wield, to be a full member of the sodality will require an appropriate Autumn ritual - a Mark of Fellowship, which we have added to Imperial lore. In addition the sodality must have a clearly expressed legal purpose and a simple symbol or sigil that they can be recognised by. Each Imperial sodality will have an upkeep of four thrones a season.

Reasoning

Sodalities didn't exist when Empire was created - we created the idea to encapsulate things players were making in the game, but there was never any clearly designed framework to govern how they worked. The rules for how to make a sodality were crude and caused more problems than they solved because they hadn't been designed the ground up to work well with the other parts of the game.

One of the most significant problems was that the Imperial titles being created by the Senate that were associated with a sodality couldn't then be elected by the sodality. Part of this was because we had no way to tell who was a member of the sodality and the rest of the game had not been built to allow players to create new ways to elect new titles. So the Military Council were being asked to appoint titles they had no involvement with, simply because nobody could think of a better way to do it.

To resolve the situation we have gone back to the drawing board and written a set of completely new rules for Imperial sodalities that are designed from the ground up to make work in harmony with the rest of Empire. The Mark of Fellowship is essential to that rewrite - by constraining players to being members of a single sodality - we make the choice of which sodality to be part of a deeply significant one. That enables us to empower membership and allow it to be the basis for voting on Imperial titles and potentially utilising legal powers in the Imperial Senate wishes. Crucially the new rules represent a framework that players can use to create new structures in the game that can wield power in their own right in the game.

The new rules won't be a good fit for some existing sodalities. Those groups can continue to exist without anything changing for them. We've made the distinction of an "Imperial sodality" to underline that anyone can call their organisation a sodality if they wish - the new rules only apply to Imperial sodalities that have been approved by a successful Senate motion. If an existing sodality does want to be part of the new framework, then we'll do what we can to support the transition this year with appropriate administrative motions for the Imperial Senate.

The ability to limit who can join an Imperial sodality exists to allow our plot team to create a single specific sodality - it is very unlikely that any attempt to limit who can join an Imperial sodality would be approved under any other circumstance. This is part of the design of sodalities - the compromise of becoming an Imperial sodality is that you gain the potential for more political power and prominence, but you lose the ability to control the sodality and control who can join.

IC Changes

To assist and empower the Imperial Senate, the civil service have spent the winter period researching the historical records for the treatment of sodalities and similar groups in the years prior to the Emperor Nicovar. They have identified rules that were used extensively during this period but fell into disuse afterwards. They have dusted them off, and having checked with the Constitutional Court that such rules would still be compatible with the current understanding of the Constiution, they have presented them for use by the Senate should they wish to do so.

Further Reading

• Rules update 2025
• Rules update 2024
• Rules update 2023
• Rules update 2022
• Rules update 2020
• Rules update 2019
• Rules update 2018
• Rules update 2017
• Rules update 2016
• Rules update 2015
• Rules update 2014
• Rules update 2013