SUBTERFUGE Forums

I do agree this is a good idea. If you guys think I’m qualified, I’d love to be a judge

blobbydud wrote:I think developing some sort of ‘community constitution’ would be really fun, even if it wasn’t the end all be all of subterfuge Arguments. I’ll link this thread in the discord and see if we can get some more people to join in.

Discord thingy seems awesome, share the good ideas.


I don't think we can have a constitution for now, but the judges will be veteran players with a good common sense. I think that'll be enough.

Okay I got some procedure laws (feel free to give comments)

1- the court will only rule the cases which *both parties* refer to the court. By doing such act they recognize the authority of the court and both parties shall respect the rule of the court and follow it.
PS: again, no case will be allowed in court with only one party presenting.
2- the court consists of 5 judges which vote/rule. Each voting takes 12 hours and if 3 judges rule, the court order is official.
3-each party can give maximum two paragraphs in his/her defence or interpretation (unless otherwise noted by judges)
4- judges should decide which interpretation of the agreement seems more fair or common, as their common sense and being a veteran in this game suggest.
5- lastly, the rule is absolute you can't change it or make objection when it is done.

That's it. Obviously when you bring a case that mean you already agreed to the rules.

roozbeh wrote:Okay I got some procedure laws (feel free to give comments)

1- the court will only rule the cases which *both parties* refer to the court. By doing such act they recognize the authority of the court and both parties shall respect the rule of the court and follow it.
PS: again, no case will be allowed in court with only one party presenting.
2- the court consists of 5 judges which vote/rule. Each voting takes 12 hours and if 3 judges rule, the court order is official.
3-each party can give maximum two paragraphs in his/her defence or interpretation (unless otherwise noted by judges)
4- judges should decide which interpretation of the agreement seems more fair or common, as their common sense and being a veteran in this game suggest.
5- lastly, the rule is absolute you can't change it or make objection when it is done.

That's it. Obviously when you bring a case that mean you already agreed to the rules.

Of course, the ultimate Subterfuge move would be to agree to the rules, come to court, get the decision, agree to follow it...and then backstab.

roozbeh wrote:1- the court will only rule the cases which *both parties* refer to the court. By doing such act they recognize the authority of the court and both parties shall respect the rule of the court and follow it.
PS: again, no case will be allowed in court with only one party presenting.
2- the court consists of 5 judges which vote/rule. Each voting takes 12 hours and if 3 judges rule, the court order is official.
3-each party can give maximum two paragraphs in his/her defence or interpretation (unless otherwise noted by judges)
4- judges should decide which interpretation of the agreement seems more fair or common, as their common sense and being a veteran in this game suggest.
5- lastly, the rule is absolute you can't change it or make objection when it is done.

I think this is a really good start, but I would add a few things.
1. The court has to provide an explanation of the decision, and if somebody disagrees, they can write a dissenting opinion. this would help keep decisions from being arbitrary, and would provide a log of past 'rulings' that you could compare current cases to.

2. Decisions shouldn't be absolute, in case something changes in the community, but if you want to rule in a way that breaks from previous rulings, you have to explain why.

Also, the constitution idea would be a way to quickly reference things that are true without arguing over them. Probably format as a list of truisms, I.E. "If you have a NAP with another player, and you attack them without warning, you have betrayed them." That way there's no need to have the same arguments over and over.

This kind of hits the core of how I think a court should function. It wouldn't be there to determine if players are cheaters or unfair, it would just determine what an action was without assigning good or bad to that. Subterfuge intrinsically involves doing underhanded things, and so long as a person can admit that what they're doing is a betrayal (Or whatever) then they're just playing the game. The court wouldn't assign blame or cast down judgement, it would just assign labels to the actions people take, and let the community determine how that affects them. (For example, if the court decides that somebody betrayed somebody else, then maybe people are less likely to trust them.)

Obviously on the case when somebody cheats during a special rules game or multiboxes, that's not okay no matter what.

I’d like to throw my two cents in about procedures of the court.

1. Similar to the US Supreme Court, when rulings are made the outcome should be the basis for all others cases coming into the court, and a list of all previous rulings should be on a forum post.

2. 5 judges seems like a good number, I agree with that. Appointed by people here. (My list would be Niv, Rooz, Blobs, some wildcard and I)

3. As for previous statement on both Parties needing to consent in order to have it come to the court, that doesn’t make any sense. In no court that I am aware of does the defendant have the power to say “nah, I don’t want to show up”

4. Let’s get this going!

Edit: For Judge selection, I believe a forum poll is a good idea to give us an idea of who people think is best, with the ultimate final decision being up to Rooz.

blobbydude wrote:

roozbeh wrote:1- the court will only rule the cases which *both parties* refer to the court. By doing such act they recognize the authority of the court and both parties shall respect the rule of the court and follow it.
PS: again, no case will be allowed in court with only one party presenting.
2- the court consists of 5 judges which vote/rule. Each voting takes 12 hours and if 3 judges rule, the court order is official.
3-each party can give maximum two paragraphs in his/her defence or interpretation (unless otherwise noted by judges)
4- judges should decide which interpretation of the agreement seems more fair or common, as their common sense and being a veteran in this game suggest.
5- lastly, the rule is absolute you can't change it or make objection when it is done.

I think this is a really good start, but I would add a few things.
1. The court has to provide an explanation of the decision, and if somebody disagrees, they can write a dissenting opinion. this would help keep decisions from being arbitrary, and would provide a log of past 'rulings' that you could compare current cases to.

2. Decisions shouldn't be absolute, in case something changes in the community, but if you want to rule in a way that breaks from previous rulings, you have to explain why.

Also, the constitution idea would be a way to quickly reference things that are true without arguing over them. Probably format as a list of truisms, I.E. "If you have a NAP with another player, and you attack them without warning, you have betrayed them." That way there's no need to have the same arguments over and over.

This kind of hits the core of how I think a court should function. It wouldn't be there to determine if players are cheaters or unfair, it would just determine what an action was without assigning good or bad to that. Subterfuge intrinsically involves doing underhanded things, and so long as a person can admit that what they're doing is a betrayal (Or whatever) then they're just playing the game. The court wouldn't assign blame or cast down judgement, it would just assign labels to the actions people take, and let the community determine how that affects them. (For example, if the court decides that somebody betrayed somebody else, then maybe people are less likely to trust them.)

Obviously on the case when somebody cheats during a special rules game or multiboxes, that's not okay no matter what.

You scored some good points here.
Yeah You're right about the spirit of the game and what courts should do. I again insist that the only cases that can be brough are those that both parties want to be here.
Other my rules like being absolute and stuff was for the court to be fast, otherwise there's just no point. No one can come to court if our ruling takes like 48 hours. Matters need to be practiced inside the game too. I also can bring some good hypothetical cases so we can build some artificial background for our laws.



I again emphasize that we're not there to judge about the justice, we just decide which interpretation of arguments is better than the other. Even though one party did a sneaky thing or stuff like that we only judge them by the words used in agreements.

nojo34 wrote:I’d like to throw my two cents in about procedures of the court.

1. Similar to the US Supreme Court, when rulings are made the outcome should be the basis for all others cases coming into the court, and a list of all previous rulings should be on a forum post.


3. As for previous statement on both Parties needing to consent in order to have it come to the court, that doesn’t make any sense. In no court that I am aware of does the defendant have the power to say “nah, I don’t want to show up”


Edit: For Judge selection, I believe a forum poll is a good idea to give us an idea of who people think is best, with the ultimate final decision being up to Rooz.

I like your first idea and definitely gonna use that.
As for your number 3, that's how they do it in international courts since these courts (like ours) can't coerce people to do things. In order to stop complaints, we can ask people to add a CBBUIC (can be brought up in court) at the end of agreement. We simply can't rule on a matter that parties do not recognize the authority of the court. CBBUIC is the only time that screenshots are allowed only to show the authority of the court was recognized by both parties.
(Simply put either CCBUIC is in their agreements otherwise both of them should show up here)

And yes judge selection as a poll is a good idea but there are some requirements on who can join. (Like he/she needs to be L2, have more than 40 games and so on)

How do we make the existence of the court known?

niverio wrote:How do we make the existence of the court known?

I guess just word of mouth. I’ll throw it up on reddit, tell everyone in my games. The discord server already knows about it. This is going to be it’s largest challenge,