On Norms and the “Social Contract”

[Agent W]

Citizens of Orbis,

At the outset of this games founding, and upon joining the game, we all agree to play by a set of rules dictated to us by Alex and the moderation team. This codification of rules is common in all communities, and ostensibly serves to protect the community from bad and anti-competitive behavior. It is also true that outside of the official game rules, there exists certain norms, what is expected of individual players and alliances. However, unlike the game rules, these norms are not codified, and there’s no universal, nor even a plurality of agreement on what they are. This has been made visibly evident by the recent drama surrounding the allegations that Camelot broke their Non-Aggression Pact agreement with TFP. This has led to TFP attempting to create a truly global coalition to figure out how to punish Camelot. This effort has widely been met with indifference by many alliance leaders. During discussions, Kastor, the current leader of TGH made a comment that really resonated with me. I will paraphrase it as “After NPOLT, the community came together to agree to a social contract, so as to guarantee the events of that war will not be repeated.” In some ways he is correct, in others, that statement lacks the true historical context and is somewhat misleading given the current state of P&W. P&W has always had norms. Many of these norms were taken from other natsims, some developed organically. For example, actively recruiting members from another alliance, or poaching, is a non-normative behavior under current P&W norms. This has always been a norm in P&W, and I suspect it will continue to be the case. Norms, however, are a fickle thing, and can be both eroded and destroyed in any community. It used to be a norm that in order to declare a war, you need to present a casus belli, or a just reason for why you’re undertaking that war. This norm has been eroded to a nearly maximal state, with only 1-2 alliances even bothering with CB’s these days. After the conclusion of NPOLT, there was no United Nations to prosecute the war crimes of the NPO, nor was there ever major discussions of what parts of their conduct norms might be established to guard against. However, despite the lack of coordination, many such norms took hold. It would be against the norms of the game to commit the same OOC attacks, reparations demands, and wholesale destruction of alliances that were hallmarks of the scars NPO gashed onto the game in their heyday. Yet, despite all of the trauma NPO inflicted on the game, it seems to me that the norms of this game are in more danger, and have decayed to a higher degree than I’ve ever witnessed in my tenure in P&W. It should be shocking to hear some of the discussions of “destroying Camelot” that have come from TFP’s coalition effort against them, but given the extent of the backsliding present in this game, it’s just another Wednesday. Norms are only as powerful as people are willing to go to enforce them. I believe that communities benefit when they have robust norms, and use their power to enforce those norms.

Given the importance I place on norms, I wonder of the value a social contract might bring to a game like P&W. Smarter people than I have extolled the values of such a concept, and if you need a case and point of why such a construct might be valuable, I urge you to join RON and observe the state of nature for yourself. Now you may say, “WANA, this is dumb and I disagree with your premise.”, which is your right. I think, however, that there are certain enlightened individuals in our community that could and will see the value in creating such a contract, and in the norms they would establish. Norms cannot be imposed, though. Norms must be constructed, and with enough popular support and informal and formal enforcement to actually take hold. I don’t propose to tell others what they should and shouldn’t do. I do wonder if it’s possible to use this forum, and this thread in particular, to have a discussion and work towards building consensus on what, if any norms should exist, and how we can build a social contract that would strive towards a better and more enjoyable community.

Perhaps you have read to this point, and you still disagree with my premise that norms are important to our community. Why, pray tell then, have the major alliance leaders spent the past 24 hours vigorously debating about how to respond to an alleged violation of norms. What has become clear to me as I read through those conversations, is that there is no broad consensus about what should be done when one occurs. Not only that, but many alliance leaders have taken the position that if the violation of said norms doesn’t directly affect them or their alliance, they couldn’t care less. I think this attitude is widespread, and detrimental to the game and the community at large. This blasé attitude of “not my problem” and “I only care about me” reflects a corrosive ambivalence that is eating away at everything that is supposed to make natsims engaging. There are, and have been, opportunities to reverse the destruction of this game’s politics, but there have not been leaders with the gumption or chutzpah to turn back the tide. I am making this post in the hopes, that one will emerge.

So dear community, I leave it up to you. Should the game have norms? If so, what should they be? Would a social contract work? I have always said that the players of this game have the power to create any world they want, and it is with that notion that I ask for the community’s feedback and input on what I have written. Thank you for your time.

-WANA

Executive Emeritus of the Syndicate, Crypto-Jew of the Church of Spaceology, and Emperor of the New Pacific Order

[penpiko]

You guys can thank me later. 

[Sketchy]

Me agreeing with WANA wasn't on my bingo card for the year.

[Krampus]

15 minutes ago, penpiko said:

You guys can thank me later. 

> tl;dr read the damn thing and if you don't care enough to take it seriously I don't care enough to take you seriously

[Lucasss]

holy text wall 🥀

[Meridian2]

I could be wrong but didnt house stark try to do a whole "Orbis Court" thing a couple years back? like wanas not actually wrong to be honest the norms or unspoken rules/agreements that govern what should and shouldnt be done is all but nearly gone like how poaching is becoming more rampant, counters no longer having to be labled as counters and not even having to give a CB anymore to start a war. this game has taken a major decline even before i left the game a month ago and this should be something alliances like eclipse, rose, TKR and T$ should be working to fix as the most powerful alliances in the game they have both the power and the influence to make and enforce these norms/ unspoken rules and bring this community back to being an actually vibrant and fun game to play and relax.

just my thoughts on the matter so do with them what you will, only responded because I got a notification.

[Corvidae]

In my opinion, the FA hierarchy has obsessed over NAPs for far too long as the perfect tool to ensure their 400 IQ 4D chess plans go perfectly.

In most instances, with the only exception being Eclipse, NAPs have been bad for almost every alliance in the game since 2020 (NPOLT) either negatively impacting activity to a point of internal collapse (Rose from almost 2 years of peace at one point) or just outright being a poor political move that saw them lose successive wars (Grumpy, TKR, T$, etc.) The benefit they provide already exists via the end of the war, most sane groups don't sacrifice rebuild or member interest to hash out the same fight right after ending it.

NAPs should not only stop being a "norm", this move should be cheered as something different rather than the world police sticking their nose up Epi's metaphorical behind about it.

I definitely appreciate Shwin's walls of text and effort to make this into a political issue as I found it interesting and has motivated a lot of posts... but it's really a Camelot vs. TFP issue, and Camelot's allies have already cut ties as a result. TFP's allies should wake up and react if it's a further problem from there (As the Rose coalition was the party with whom the NAP was signed).

I guarantee that if any major violated a NAP, the "punishment" would only be the result of political convenience or no punishment would happen at all. Camelot's only in danger of "punishment" due to their relative isolation and weak FA position -- which they've had for awhile now.

 

 

 

Aside from my anti-NAP rhetoric in general: 

Sketchy and Vexz have been the loudest voices against Epi during this whole debate in RON, and to that I say: Enforce the norm if you believe it so strongly. It was your (Rose's) NAP that got violated anyway. I wouldn't fault Rose for defending an ally or defending their peace terms if they truly believe the NAP was violated. I wouldn't fault Singularity for defending their ideological stances.

 

Asking the community to perma-roll Camelot together is definitely overkill though.

 

 

 

 

End of day: You won't see meaningful politics for the sake of politics without meaningful changes to the economic system. Any given alliance has to save up for ever-more percentages of the year just to stay or become relevant. Cities need a hard-cap just as a short-term solution, then a new system needs to be rolled out. The game isn't dying or collapsing due to some unseen force of entropy, we're just ten years into a game that didn't have an end-game designed.

Edited May 29 by Corvidae

[Hobbs]

The only social contract this game requires is that all players agree to finally let it die. 

[hidude45454]

1 hour ago, Krampus said:

> tl;dr read the damn thing and if you don't care enough to take it seriously I don't care enough to take you seriously

🗣🔥

[Sir Scarfalot]

I remember long ago in >bloc there was an alliance that blitzed someone they had an NAP with. They lost all their allies and the guy they blitzed got a ton of support from the rest of the game.

Ironically they did this because they were convinced that he was going to blitz them, and he was pretty despised, but like I told them: pacts matter. If they’d waited for him to hit them, they’d have been awash in support from the most unexpected places and he’d have lost most of his power anyway.

now, the cam situation is more complicated than that, since the NAP had an explicit exit clause (two actually). What we therefore need is something from IRL law: arbitration.

The questions are simple: Was Camelot proxied by Rose/TFP, was “good-faith diplomacy” attempted before the invocation of the exit clauses, and what should be done about the answers to the preceding?

These are important because we are in uncharted waters and the precedents that they set will affect our gameplay for years.

As for how we answer these questions, I’ll set up forum threads for each; though ultimately it is up to the alliance leaders of the game to decide for themselves how to proceed on a concrete level.

[Conald Petersen]

Instead of a social contract why don't the parties just enforce the NAP they signed, violating a treaty isn't the collapse of this game, it's playing the game. If you believe it's advantageous to violate a treaty then it is logical to break it, but you also have to suffer the consequences. If people want to discourage NAP breaking then there has to be tangible consequences. Thus far there have been minimal consequences besides forum posts and meaningless embargoes. Like others have said: if you actually care about the NAP and are a party to it then enforce it, if you aren't a party to the NAP but are worried about "enforcing norms" then enforce them (you don't have to be a party to the NAP to do that, and who is Cam or Sam going to call in anyways), if you think Cam is justified then support them, and if you don't care/just find this all entertaining then sit back and grab your popcorn. All this talk about norms, NAPs, and the health of the game is puffery and hot air. If you truly care about the game and truly believe that breaking a NAP will kill the game then go do something about it. If not then stop acting like a little squeak and can it cuzzos.

Hot take: I could care less about either side and I think this is good for the game, I've seen more forum posts in the past week than in the past 3 months and every news server has been buzzing. Isn't player engagement in the community the root issue for the games declining player base? I would hazard a guess that the majority of those actually involved in the fighting are also having fun. Sitting back and farming while keeping FA behind closed doors is brutes cuz, its boring and doesn't create CONTENT (which is what everyone says this game needs). 

I could care less about NAPs, norms, ect. I'm just here to separate nations from their money and drop a couple nukes. I don't see AA's, treaties, or blocs, just profit centers. The microwave just beeped so I need to grab my popcorn while it's still hot...

tldr: if you don't like it, do something about it or shut your hole and go back to looking at your pixels cuz

[EpimetheusTalks]

Camelot has done the most to try and codify game norms and instruct new players to follow them. Link to recent examples. The use of normative language is an effort by Rose to make a mockery of us and our efforts to rehabilitate our reputation. However, other have engaged with the topic in good faith and so this will serve as our contribution to that.

We have supported norms because they benefit smaller and weaker alliances like ours which in a contest of strength and numbers will lose. When we uphold norms or undermine them we are doing so for pragmatic reasons and encourage other alliances to do the same. We don't have to like you to work with you so long as we can trust you to keep your end of the bargain.

Some alliance, like The Syndicate, Grumpy Old Bastards, Eclipse, and Spectre have kept their word but for the rare bad day. We consider them normative actors and so when we deal with them we often appeal to norms. Rose and The Fighting Pacifists are not normative actors and they have never been in our experience.

They believe, like superpowers are want to do when frustrated, that norms are mere limitations that they have outgrown the usefulness of. When they were 'glassing' our upper tier in 2022 we appealed to them and said this is unjust and their answer was consistently that if you don't want to be kicked around you need better tiering. When they openly proxied us several times their answer to our frustration was that if we didn't want to be hunted then we needed to feared. The only thing stopping Rose from proxying The Syndicate as it did for long stretches of the game's history was the knowledge that they would be proxied in turn.

This understanding of Rose is a necessary piece of context when interpreting our actions. What did we say when Myrmidon was preparing to hit us? We said if they did their benefactor would pay a price for it. We told them we weren't bluffing but admittedly we were and Rose called our bluff. They broke the traditional norms so we deferred to the norm they taught us, the unspoken one that undergirds the relations between the top 10 in the game and real life. Its a cold war strategy.

As Nixon said, "The international golden rule, particularly one that must apply whenever you're dealing with an adversary like the Russians is, do unto others as they unto do you. Plus 10%." - https://youtu.be/ZHAMqpgil-I

If you want to dismiss this argument I ask you one thing. What justice exists in this game but for the justice you can deliver yourself? Who can an alliance in our political position, diminished as it is, appeal to? Who will defend us against an enemy so deceitful and secretive that can hurt us from a world away at a day's expense. Should we cozy up to their enemies and thereby polarize the game even further or act independently, defending ourselves and our interests to the extent we can? Should the other great power's unwillingness to treaty us, thereby our lack of alternatives, factor into your judgment of our decisions?

It shouldn't go unnoticed that Rose and its allies have appealed to the largest possible coalition to thoroughly destroy us rather than to coax us back into compliance with the game's norms. At no point did they seriously address our concerns or do the bare minimum needed to uphold the treaty they cling to.

I remember asking them whether they had any sympathy for us when we lost our entire rebuild in their name, in violation of a NAP the mercenaries agreed, and they said no. So forgive us but it is our policy they receive none in return. Furthermore, why should we doubt that they will circumvent NAPs and proxy others when they have admitted such to us dozens of times and we have seen the plots with our own eyes. Some people have said these actions were before a war and that alleviates them of normative responsibilities but we disagree because when, if not on the precipice of war, should norms be upheld?

I know some people have argued that that we should have trusted Rose. I understand the importance of trust since it's the foundation of all treaties and norms. However, we would argue that this trust was eroded and that their attempts at reproachment were proven to be lies. There are very few which would argue we have not been lied to by Rose and fewer still that would argue Rose has not lied to the greater community recently (Rose Lies war).

Some alliances have told Rose that removing Camelot from the greater political community is not a punishment because that is already the case. That's a harsh thing for us to hear since we have spent years trying to join it but it is manifestly true. Camelot is expected to uphold the game's norms but it is not protected by them. If Oblivion or Event Horizon decided tomorrow that they wanted to roll us in violation of any number of agreements written and unwritten there would be no criticism. This is exactly what happened with Myrmidon. If this war with Rose, began with an offensive war against us only the world's smallest violin would play for us. 

Our cause is attracting sympathy precisely because the offense is so small and the punishment is so great that even our enemies see it is unjust.

Additionally, while we're on the topic of norms it is worth addressing the precedent that uniting the game to excommunicate and perma-roll one alliance would set. Does anyone want to give Rose that power? Can every alliance party to such an agreement be certain it will not be turned on them? There are those among you which have already started questioning whether Rose is acting more like NPO than we are. They have seen games conquered before by those trying to establish global order.

In contrast, our understanding of norms has always been that they are voluntary things. If you follow norms we'll follow them with you and if you do not we will not. When we trade with someone in a top 50 alliance we trust their discretion and we trust they will pay us and many of you have experienced that, even recently. Rose is not a normative actor so we do not treat them that way. We believe this understanding is one that most of the top 50 alliances share which is why they have told Rose to handle this itself.

"In our view, we have played by the rules and been outfoxed at every turn by people that don't. Now your rules mean nothing to us and we have nothing to lose. So if the question you're asking is why don't we follow the NAP? The answer is simple, what if we don't?"

This is what we said when we left the non-aggression pact.

These are not the words of an alliance that has abandoned norms but rather one that has been abandoned by them.

Tl;dr

 

Edited June 1 by EpimetheusTalks

[Soul Toucher]

On 5/29/2025 at 4:52 PM, Corvidae said:

NAPs should not only stop being a "norm", this move should be cheered as something different rather than the world police sticking their nose up Epi's metaphorical behind about it.

Thinking excessive NAPs are bad (which I personally agree with) doesn’t mean that breaking in-game treaties—especially NAPs—shouldn’t be heavily frowned upon. And when you know, in this case, that the offending AA isn’t interested in reps, then recruiting for a roll doesn’t seem all that crazy.

I think degrading the value of treaties and NAPs would hurt the game more in the long run than any AA or sphere walking into a trap or a new hegemony being propped up.

[SleepingNinja]

6 hours ago, EpimetheusTalks said:

snip

What I got out of this is your negotiating for an apparently sovereign raiding AA that you only have an oA clause with. That's new, never seen that before.😂 

[EpimetheusTalks]

12 hours ago, SleepingNinja said:

What I got out of this is your negotiating for an apparently sovereign raiding AA that you only have an oA clause with. That's new, never seen that before.😂 

They fought with us against Rose in November and we were subject to the same peace agreement. We were told if Samurai breached the agreement Camelot would be rolled. When Antarctica blitzed and rolled Samurai in Jan we thought they were outside the NAP and it was fine. Samurai lost that war. The problem was that Antarctica wanted to stack another NAP on them that would prevent them defending us again if Rose hit us.

We intervened because we didn't want to be NAP cycled and we didn't tell Samurai we were doing it. TGH/Rose knew this and the moment we showed interest then Kastor took over AA's negotiations and implicitly threatened to enter the war himself (in breach of the NAP). Samurai then agreed the terms because they weren't aware we were in their corner.

What Rose did here was a complete violation of our NAP intended to weaken Samurai and create resentment. So you know what we did? We said this NAP no longer exists because it was a breach of the Rose NAP and if Antarctica or Samurai wanted it to they'd have to go through us. The first alliance to say that was a good idea was Rose because they realized then we were done being nice.

Rose was then happy to promise us that we could roll AA into dust after our next war. Not because they'd done anything wrong, they'd followed orders, because they were weak. It's an example of how Rose doesn't care for norms in our dealings with them.

Edited June 1 by EpimetheusTalks

[Ogaden]

This community could do with fewer norms and more chaos

[Buorhann]

You either enforce it or don’t.  Appeasement works!

11 hours ago, Ogaden said:

This community could do with fewer norms and more chaos

I’ll be damned.

On 6/1/2025 at 10:19 AM, EpimetheusTalks said:

They fought with us against Rose in November and we were subject to the same peace agreement. We were told if Samurai breached the agreement Camelot would be rolled. When Antarctica blitzed and rolled Samurai in Jan we thought they were outside the NAP and it was fine. Samurai lost that war. The problem was that Antarctica wanted to stack another NAP on them that would prevent them defending us again if Rose hit us.

We intervened because we didn't want to be NAP cycled and we didn't tell Samurai we were doing it. TGH/Rose knew this and the moment we showed interest then Kastor took over AA's negotiations and implicitly threatened to enter the war himself (in breach of the NAP). Samurai then agreed the terms because they weren't aware we were in their corner.

What Rose did here was a complete violation of our NAP intended to weaken Samurai and create resentment. So you know what we did? We said this NAP no longer exists because it was a breach of the Rose NAP and if Antarctica or Samurai wanted it to they'd have to go through us. The first alliance to say that was a good idea was Rose because they realized then we were done being nice.

Rose was then happy to promise us that we could roll AA into dust after our next war. Not because they'd done anything wrong, they'd followed orders, because they were weak. It's an example of how Rose doesn't care for norms in our dealings with them.

Why did AA hit Samurai and why did Kastor (who was my FA at the time) threaten we’d intervene if Camelot hit AA?

Missing ALOT of context with this spiel.

[Sweeeeet Ronny D]

If you dont like it, be the change you want to see.

[EpimetheusTalks]

6 hours ago, Buorhann said:

You either enforce it or don’t.  Appeasement works!

I’ll be damned.

Why did AA hit Samurai and why did Kastor (who was my FA at the time) threaten we’d intervene if Camelot hit AA?

Missing ALOT of context with this spiel.

We don't know why because AA refused to provide any logs, make any official announcements, or negotiate. We spoke to your coalition about it and you immediately abused our good faith to bend Samurai's wrist and force them into another punitive surrender while you had a NAP with them. It's entirely possible that Samurai planned to raid AA but if you argument is that justified AA's preemptive strike then our preemptive strike against Rose is also justified.

Also, The Golden Horde had no grounds to enter the war since it was a preemptive strike/offensive war by Antarctica Alliance on our ODP ally. If we had decided to come in you couldn't have done anything about it which George admitted in our conversations. It's why he told us to let it go as a favor to him rather than arguing legitimacy.

Edited June 7 by EpimetheusTalks

[Popat]

All majors should hold a meeting and come together and codify the rules of war and treaties so that no alliance can push way too hard and drive communities outside of the game and do similar unjust acts such as making an alliance one's extension , holding servers hostages as part of peace terms , when a NAP break is justified etc and also establish a consensus on issues like whether prots should be hit or not. The rules should be obeyed and newer treaties should be made according to whatever gets agreed upon. I do not say this to minimize wars. The game is Politics & War. I say this to minimize the impact they have on game health and community retention. People can keep their grudges to themselves , act on them but should not be allowed to go way too harsh.

[EpimetheusTalks]

1 hour ago, Popat said:

All majors should hold a meeting and come together and codify the rules of war and treaties so that no alliance can push way too hard and drive communities outside of the game and do similar unjust acts such as making an alliance one's extension , holding servers hostages as part of peace terms , when a NAP break is justified etc and also establish a consensus on issues like whether prots should be hit or not. The rules should be obeyed and newer treaties should be made according to whatever gets agreed upon. I do not say this to minimize wars. The game is Politics & War. I say this to minimize the impact they have on game health and community retention. People can keep their grudges to themselves , act on them but should not be allowed to go way too harsh.

They have already created a server that's meant to represent the game and discuss game health. The first thing that server did was declare Camelot an enemy of Orbis and permanently ban it from politics and trade and subject it to 10 months of war. The second thing it did was ban the top 30 alliances participating from sharing information about it.

I used to support the idea of a 'United Nations' for the game. Lots of people did. However, the idea has clearly been weaponized by bad actors. It's become a secret police and there's no disputing that.

[Rageproject]

2 hours ago, EpimetheusTalks said:

They have already created a server that's meant to represent the game and discuss game health. The first thing that server did was declare Camelot an enemy of Orbis and permanently ban it from politics and trade and subject it to 10 months of war. The second thing it did was ban the top 30 alliances participating from sharing information about it.

I used to support the idea of a 'United Nations' for the game. Lots of people did. However, the idea has clearly been weaponized by bad actors. It's become a secret police and there's no disputing that.

So the UN concept was a good idea…. Until it punished Camelot for its actions? 🤦🏻‍♂️

[EpimetheusTalks]

9 hours ago, Rageproject said:

So the UN concept was a good idea…. Until it punished Camelot for its actions? 🤦🏻‍♂️

The UN concept should never have been weaponized to permawar enemies. It's pushing the game towards Cybernations.

[Sir Scarfalot]

40 minutes ago, EpimetheusTalks said:

The UN concept should never have been weaponized to permawar enemies. It's pushing the game towards Cybernations.

10 months =/= permawar.

[EpimetheusTalks]

2 hours ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

10 months =/= permawar.

It's a 10 month minimum as you well know. It exceeds the length of NPOLT and it's being organized in advance with the tacit consent of the entire top 50. It's not like NPOLT where people weren't told the plan. There's no subtlety or nuance to this. Even if the war ended by their own admission it's permanent political isolation, permanent embargo, and permanent removal from DNRs. They're counting nations that leave/delete on a scoreboard and celebrating it openly on the forums.

You were one of the players that taught me about paperless ideologies and how we needed to prevent P&W becoming CN. I don't understand how you can support this convention. Please explain it to me because I don't think your values have changed. The only conclusion I can come to right now is you think Camelot wasn't sufficiently punished for NPOLT and therefore anything is justified against us. If that's your perspective how do you reconcile the fact Clooney is in this coalition?

Edited June 28 by EpimetheusTalks