Bay 12 Games Forum

Today, like I did the previous year and the preceding since 2013, I would like to ask you what you will do for Christmas.

As for me, I plan to stay home with my sibilings and our friends.

Today, like the previous year, I would like to ask you what did you for Christmas.

As for me, due to my younger brother having been infected by COVID, we had to receive way less persons, and my pregnant elder daughter couldn't come at all.

As I did the previous year and the preceding ones, I would like to ask fellow member what do they plan to do for Christmas, especially with COVID.

As for me and my family, we plan to eat together, albeit without our relatives from abroad because of the COVID quarantines.

As I did the previous years, I want to ask you what you did for Christmas.

As for me, I was at my mother's house to eat with other relatives and friends.

As criminal law, civil law concepts will take a great deal of importance for the Commerce Arc and when the Economy is reestablished. The existence of residents makes necessary the modeling of personal status, the presence of trade companies makes necessary the definition of contracts and corporations, and boats might require the definition of the responsability of a ship-owner in regard to the cargo and the passengers.

Civil law is traditionally divided in three parts: personal law, property law and obligation law. In my criminal law post, I mostly used ideas from common law, because I thought it would fit better the DF universe; here, I will take some concepts from continental law because I think they might be easier to simulate.

I hope this post will not be too long nor too difficult to understand; maybe re-reading this post after a first reading might be easier. Likewise, I hope I didn't make too much vocabulary errors.

LEGAL PERSONHOOD AND LEGAL CAPACITY

Legal persons will be the persons able to have rights and duties in civil law, such as owning property, having debts and an identity. In short, they are able to be in civil law.

Legal capacity shall refers to the ability to alter these rights and duties by using some, or all, of the legal instruments, such as suing in court, disposing of property and agreeing for contracts. In short, it is the capacity of being actor (as opposed to subject) in the civil law, being able to act.

Each legal person has an estate, which is the sum of his claims and obligations.

These legal persons shall be further divided in two categories: natural persons and moral persons.

Natural persons

They are, using the terms in the game, living sentient creatures (tokens CAN_LEARN and CAN_SPEAK).

Their legal personhood starts at birth (although inheritance might start before for unborn children in some legal systems) and ends at death (some civilizations might enact civil death and outlawry for some criminals and "abominations" such as vampires and werecreatures, while resurrection as a sentient being might allow these previously dead to regain their former legal personhood, thereby excluding undeads).

Legal differenciation and legal castes

The pre-1400 times featured what I could call heteronomy, or the contrary of isonomy, meaning some classes of persons could have different rights from each other because of their different legal statuses, and live under different laws (the term of "estate" might lend to confusion with property law, so legal status will do the trick).

Putting this part in the "Going further" part, as I did in my post about criminal law, was something I first envisaged, but since such distinctions already existed in the game (visitors aren't considered as fortress members but can petition for admittance, nobles have specific priviledges and there are POWs), I thought my ideas would be easier to implement than if I spoke about proposals about which no stubs are present in the game.

Such legal castes, defined in the raws, could have the following dividing factors among others: free or not? Belonging to the site or not? Belonging to the entity or not? Citizen or not? From a specified civilization or not? In short, they would be defined by status, race, culture and wealth among others.

Exemples of castes already present in a fortress: commoners, nobles, residents and POWs. Moreover, it seems entity citizenship is separate from site citizenship, as can show loyalty cascades involving separatists loyal to the fort and not the civilization, loyalists who are the reverse, citizens loyal to both and renegades enemy of both.

In game, they could have different personal statuses, with separated juridical capacities in each civilization (for exemple, in civilization A, slaves could have recognized property rights over chattel while in civilization B, slaves could own nothing, all their goods being their masters'). Rights might be defined in the raws, so that we might have flexibility. We could also have branching, so that, for exemple, property rights on land are separated of property rights on chattel.

• Legal privileges shall mean, in this part, additional rights for a caste and differences from the baseline. For exemple, owning land in a civilization would be open only to the citizens while nobles would have the right to entail their lands.
• In the opposite side, legal disabilities would be things a natural person would be unable to do compared to the baseline (for exemple, a slave could be unable to own real property).

The baseline shall be defined to be a citizen of the entity (other baselines might be chosen in a legal system, so as to have civilizations where only citizens would have full capacity; really oppressive ones would have the baseline to be the nobles).

Each legal caste could have differences relating to the extant of their juridical capacity and eventual privileges and disabilities; personnal law shall vary also, for exemple priests could be reqired to transmit all or part of their property to their temple after their death while nobles could be able to give all their property to one heir, as opposed to commoners, who would have to divide theirs equally between their children.

The different ways to move between these legal castes should be defined in the raws, and a legal system could chose, by procedural generation (see infra) which classes and which ways to move. Maybe Legal Stratification, Inclusivity and Social Mobility should be variables for an entity.
Rights such as "Owning real estate" should be listed under caste with the settings YES (this caste will always have this right in every law system), MAYBE (this caste may or may not have this right) and NO (this caste will never have this right).

It would be desirable to ensure each class is defined as being included in a larger class, so that the selection and the generation of the relevant laws are facilitated and the "birth" and "death" of a class during WorldGen will be made easier by ensuring it would just involve starting from an existing class by branching (nobles splittling from freemen and, further, royalty splitting from nobility as a subcategory or, conversely, craftsmen and merchants fusing in one same class). Moreover, they might inherit from the settings from the larger caste: for exemple, if CAN_OWN_REAL_PROPERTY for bondspersons is set to NO then it will be equally, by default, set at NO for slaves, serfs and other castes inheriting from bondspersons excepted if, for exemple, it is set to MAYBE for indentured servants.

For exemple, a society might just have freemen, and then they will have to deal with the captured enemies who attacked them by giving them the status of POW. Given this society admits slavery, most of these POWs who weren't sent back would be enslaved. In the meantime, a nobility might develop among the freemen.

The attribution of a given legal caste to a natural person shall be viewed below.

Rough exemple of a class, here, slave:

[SOCIAL_CLASS:SLAVE]
[DESCRIPTION:A slave is a sentient being considered as a property]
[NAME:slave:slaves:slave]
[IS_SLAVE:YES] Enable modifiers linked to the ethics for slavery to apply
Moral persons

Moral persons shall be associations with legal personnality and juridical capacity. Their juridical capacity shall start at creation and end at dissolution.

Categories

The different kinds of such persons shall include organizations such as temple management associations, workers unions, warrior lodges, hunting clubs, artist bands, monastic orders and trade guilds.

Administrative and governmental bodies might be described in a future post about public law.

Regulations

Law shall define the membership and the leadership, and could limit which property and which actions they can do, for exemple forbidding traders' associations from owning rural real property, or making the owning of temples a monopoly of temple associations.

Criminal organisations such as robbers' bands, pirates and illegal cults might have special rules (i.e. banned apart if the ethics allow it - I don't see goblins having issues with robbers and pirates, since theft, assault and murder are "personal matters" to them, and cults which would be criminal in one site might be the ruling organisation in another). Front organizations might be possible, and are indeed present in DevDiaries, with shadow orgs infiltrating governments: we could have a charity masking a local demon cult or an political opposition movement.

Governments, both national and local, along with administrations, shall have special regulations, part of public law.

Creation of a moral person

Their creation, or incorporation, shall be the decision of at least three natural persons with juridical capacity.

The act, or Charter, would have to be registered to the local authorities and would set the basic rules of the corporation. Some societies would ask for further conditions, such as approval from a leader, whether local or from the entire civilization, some, or all, of the founders having a skill or being of a specific category, or the payment of a sum. Conditions on the founders might also be imposed, such as being priests to create a temple association.

Some societies could admit the creation of corporation by oral testimony, or witnesses to the creation by the founders of a corporation. It could cause the birth of corporations "from immemorial time." In this case, the Charter might be uncodified or even unwritten, consisting from separate documents and customs (a set of practices developed during the ages). In other cases such as family clans (see below about personal law), no Charter shall be needed.

Structure and governance of a corporation

A corporation shall have a Governing Body, initially staffed by the founders, among who the first Directors will be named; one of them will be selected to become the Head Director. Of course, these names could be redefined in the rows for each corporation.

The governing body as a whole shall exerce the corporation's legal capacity in its name, and pass the bylaws needed by the organisation.

Below this governing body shall be Officers, individuals tasked with administring the corporation under the Governing Body. For exemple, the directors of a trade company, members of the Governing Body, could nominate adjunct merchants to administrate their markets and their posts; another exemple would be a treasurer or a bookkeeper. Their definition in the rows could follow how noble positions are written.

Some corporations, such as guilds, monastic orders or mercenary bands, could have members. They could have various rights and duties: for exemple, the trader or the worker member of a guild might be asked to cover for the costs and, conversely, could receive part of the profits. The number of such members could be limited or not, and if the former, such memberships could be sold (trade houses). Conditions, such as culture, skills and residence, could be set by the Charter or by bylaws. Several categories of memberships could eventually be defined, to separate, for exemple, apprentices and masters in guilds. Corporations might be able to discipline their members and officers, whether by fines, suspension or expulsion.

Nomination to the Governing Body could be by cooptation by surviving Directors, hereditary transmission, sortition among all or some Members and election by Members among others.

All these previous points shall be set up in the Charter, which could be modified either by the unanimity of the Governing Body or by a vote from the members, among other methods spelled in the Charter or by law.

Bylaws will be expanding on the Charter and being voted at the majority of the Governing Body: for exemple, while the position of Treasurer might be established by the Charter, the wages might be set by a bylaw; another exemple might be the fares for the patients of an hospital or the admission of pupils into a school. Still another exemple would be the conditions of admittance to a library: if the Charter has dispositions concerning them then the bylaws cannot go against them (a disposition banning racial discrimination ban the Governong Body from banning any elve or setting a Dwarf-only policy), else the Governing Body has complete liberty, excepted if the laws disposes (for exemple, a law banning race discrimination would prevent any bylaw from enacting discrimination, and some Charters, depending fom the origin, might be concerned by such bans).

Below is an rough exemple of corporation (a guild of miners and owned by them; a separate corporation could be defined for mining companies whose members are shareholders and which would hire miners); of course, a real raw entry would have been more complex:

[CORPORATION:MINING_GUILD]
[NAME:mining guild:mining guilds]
[DESCRIPTION:a guild of miners bearing the benefits or the risks of a mining venture in proportion of their investment]
[ACTIVITY:MINING] It means the governing body will take decisions to further this goal of mining i.e. buying picks, renting mining rights and selling the minerals. Also, the name will be generated to points to mining as its activity i.e. "Boatmurdered Mining Guild"
[GOVERNING_BODY:miners' council]
[NOMINATED_HOW:ELECTION:MEMBERS] This body shall be elected by the members
[DIRECTORS:deputy head miner:deputy head miners]
[SKILL:MINING:m] The minimum skill at mining to even apply as director. This minimum might be set by the Charter or a bylaw
[HEAD_DIRECTORS:head miner:head miners]
[MEMBER:fellow miner:fellow miners]
[SKILL:MINING:m] The minimum skill at mining to even apply as member. This minimum might be set by the Charter or a bylaw
[PERSONAL_APPORT:YES] The miner must invest money or tools in the venture. Specific details provided by the Charter or a bylaw
Dissolution of a corporation

A corporation could be dissolved when its members or, when it isn't any, governing board elect, in the former, to the 2/3 of the total votes, and in the latter, in the unanimity. Other methods to dissolve a corporation shall also exist, such as completion of the goal, mootness (there's no use to have a mining corporation for a place where there's no more ores) and bankruptcy.

If the corporation totally ceases to function for a determined time (seven years for exemple) then the local authority could notice this, issue an ultimate warning enabling any interested persons able to take this organisation and, if it isn't headed, dissolve the corporation.

When a corporation is dissolved, the local leader shall liquidate the estate and distribute the proceeds to either the members or, when it isn't, it shall go to the state. Specific regulations shall exist for some goods such as temples.

This will prevent the existence of "ghost" corporations, such as a temple authority whose temple was destroyed by goblins 50 years ago and whose priests are all dead.

Subsidiary corporation

A corporation might create a subsidiary corporation, whose governing body shall be his father's, represented by an Officer, or be otherwise submitted. For exemple, a temple might create an hospital or have a monastic order.

It might be more used in public law.

PERSONAL LAW

Personal law defines the law related to natural persons and their relations.

It mainly deals with filiation and marriage; here, filiation whall refers to how someone is related to another person and how families are delimited.

Filiation and naming

Filiation shall either be matrilineal or patrilineal, depending of the gender conventions of the civilization. Dispositions on adoption shall vary from totally prohibited to fully allowed and include restrictions on factors such as the age or the race of the adoptee.

As for the naming, legislations would have, as a minimum, given names; others might provide for patronyms and/or matronyms, family names or clan names, to be determined following the filliation.

Maybe legitimity should be provided for, to describe children born out of wetlock.

Some legal systems might provide for family emblems and blasons.

Marriage and family

Marriage shall be monogamic or polygamic, and in the latter it shall be polygynic, polyandric or group marriage. Divorce shall be regulated, if allowed, and its consequences shall be defined; some laws might allow for unilateral repudiation. Maybe temporary marriages could be defined in some laws. The set of natural persons, or spouses, united by a same marriage shall be named couple.

Some laws might allow for concubinage, or a consort of lower status. This consort would have less rights than a full spouse (no heritage, for exemple, apart from a sum fixed in the contract), and the offspring might be deemed illegitimate.

A family unit, or household, shall be constitued of a couple and its minor children. One member of the couple might be the head of household and might be determinated by gender, age or any other factor.

Depending from the laws, the property in a couple might be possessed in common or each spouse might retain his own goods. If this isn't too complex, we could see a mix of both systems, such as each spouse keeping his own property but any property gained during the marriage, or marital property, might be owned by the couple; details might be regulated by a contract of marriage, which could additionally set up other things such as the place of residence or the religion followed, depending of whether laws allow it. The minor children's property will be managed by the couple (see below for "Relation with legal capacity").

Some legal systems might provide for clans, or a set of households descending from a founding household. Such clans might have communal property and a clan leader.

Both clan leaders and heads of household might have public law powers and duties, whether on taxation or even criminal law. I could imagine some clan leaders being judges for small claims between clan members.

Entering and leaving a legal caste

As seen above, natural persons might be divided in several castes holding different laws, rights and duties.

A legal person can be only in one caste at once in any legal system; private international law might be discussed in an entry on public law but we could say that a noble dwarf caught and enslaved by goblin invaders doesn't lose his status in his home civilization and, if he escapes, he will still be a noble back home. States might make agreements about returning their bondspersons or, if culturally related, mutually recognize each other's nobility.

Entering and leaving a caste might involve filiation, and the notion of legitimacy might come at play: for exemple, being born from nobles might confer nobility to the legitimate offspring. Moreover, volunteer acts might be involved, such as pledging loyalty to the local leader to be able to gain the citizenship. Laws enacted by the authority might play too in this regard.

Relation with legal competency

In some cases, a natural person might be unable to exercise the totality legal capacity by lacking legal competency, for exemple, in minority (the age could vary around the year of the end of the childhood), insanity or absence; in some legal systems, werecreatures might be deemed incapables during their period of lunacy.

A legal guardian will have to be named to help incapables to use their legal capacity, and sometimes, this guardian will already be determinated by operation of law: for exemple, minor children might have their parents, or the head of household, as their guardian.

In some cases, it might be a partial incapacity: for exemple some legislations which would allow a slave to own property might have his master manage any legal action involving it; in others, foreigners might be required to have a patron.

Successions

When a physical person dies, his estate shall be divided among the heirs.

Laws shall stipulate the amount of freedom in how can someone dishes out his properties, whether outside the family (in some places, no piece of family property shall be passed to non-relatives) and how much inside the family (which relatives can be alowed to get property). Egality between heirs shall also be regulated (in some places, heirship shares shall vary according to gender or birth rank, going from a slight bonus to the attribution of the whole succession to an heir (primogeniture, ultimogeniture)).

Persons shall be able to create wills to say how they would like to have their estate divided, while keeping with the law, by listing their gifts to various persons, for exemple "I gift to my son {{?}} the sum of 500¤ and my horse {{?}}". In some places, the law might require the property of a person to be passed to his children but the will will specify how the division shall be done, awarding such good to such heir. Conditional gifts might be provided for in some legislations, for exemple a will might require an heir to take care of someone to get a good, along with alternates, in cases where the conditions aren't there for the gift, such as "I gift to my son {{?}} the sum of 500¤ and my horse {{?}} if {{?}}, else {{?}}".

There should be rules for intestate successions, along with escheat to the authorities for heirless and intestate successions.

If the deceased resurrects, even as a sentient being, or otherwise recover his legal personhood previously lost by death then his heirs will not be forced to return his property.

Mandate and delegation

Related to legal capacity, a person, whether natural or legal, named grantor shall be able to delegate the exercise of some of his rights to someone named agent by a contract of mandate. For exemple, a trade company could delegate to one of its officers the right to buy ivory in one place. Such mandate could be revoked at will by either the grantee or the agent.

This could be related to guardianship, seen above.

PROPERTY LAW

Property is divided in real property and chattel. The manners of conveying it will also be studied there, along with the seveal limitations one could put on a property. Some chattel might be res nullius, such as the fish in a river; likewise, some land might be terra nullius, such as deserted land outside any public control (some legislations could make State property any land not owned by anyone); whoever take them shall become their owner.

Property rights shall include usus (the right of use the good), fructus (the right to enjoy the fruits from it) and abusus (the right to sell it or otherwise to dispose of it); subrights might be linked to each of these categories, such as selling, destroying and leasing. We might have usufruct (the union of usus and fructus) and naked property (abusus).

Categories

Properties are divided in two kinds:

• Real property shall be land and buildings; an owner should own the surface, the depths below and one cube of the sky above his land, or his building. We could see several subunits such as mining rights, grazing rights and logging rights, enabling owners to rent these subunits to others. In addition, property attached to real property shall be real property, such as a millstone bound to a farm, along with some rights on real property, such as mortgage.
• Chattel shall be moveable goods such as items, pets and slaves, and the rights about such items. In addition, some goods produced by real property, such as harvests, shall be chattel. Rights such as some debts, along with torts, might be treated, in some jurisdictions, as property.

Laws and procedures about real property shall be stricter and more complex than the ones about chattel. Should artifacts be real property or a priviledgied class of chattel? This determination will be done after testing the better way to simulate it.

The valuation of a property might be the sum of the values of each ot its rights: for exemple the value of a piece of real estate will be the sum of the values of the rights to mine, log and farm, along with other rights. How will these rights be defined? For exemple, mining rights might be defined by the value of the ores gathered during ten years of mining. Other might be more difficult, such as the housing rights in a house. Appraiser might become a more valuated skill in some societies.

Conveyance

Property shall be conveyed by selling, gifting, accession and inheritance.

• Convention and agreement will be studied below in the Contracts part.
• Gifting shall be when a party gift a property, whether real or chattel, to another party.
• Accession shall be when the product of a property shall become the property of the owner. For exemple, the ovner of a tree is the owner of the fruits of this tree. Special rules might apply when the property is a living being (animals, slaves).
• Succession shall deal with the conveyance of property after the death of a physical person or the dissolution of a moral one.

Trusts and sureties

Some law systems would provide for some forms of property the owner shouldn't be able to alienate: it would be, for exemple, fee tails (real property whose owner would plan the carrying for the following generations), benefices (property whose fruits would be the wages of the holder of a position), dowry (transfer of parental property, gifts or money at the marriage of a child), dower (property from a spouse to another to protect him in cases of widowhood), tribal lands (land granted to a tribe by a government).

All will be modelised as trusts and shall be defined in the raws with tags indicating the trustor, who create the trust from his own estate, the trustee who manages it and the beneficiary who receives the benefits, along with some of their characteristics (i.e. only a spouse can receive a dower from his parents).
The mechanics could be the following: the trustor keep the naked property and transfer the usufruct to the trustee, who manages it on behalf of the beneficaries.

The trustee could also be a position, or office, meaning the beneficiary shall be the holder of the position. It shall be especially useful for temple, along with public law.

They might be used to prevent some corporations to dispose of property related to their main goal: if a mining corporation shall be enabled to sell less interesting spots, a temple authority shall be prevented to sell its temple or its worship tools, but not sell parts of its fields.

Related items, sureties, whether using real or chattel property, could be established in order to guarantee an obligation; they will depend of if the original owner is able to use it or if it is under the guard of the other signatory or an independent party. For exemple, an adventurer might ask someone to pay, in a trust, the wages of a worker he hired in order to raid a tomb, so that the worker's family is guaranteed to not be cheated of their parent's rightful money. Another exemple would be of a debt by a fortress to traders guaranteed by an artifact.

Composite property

In order to streamline the management of property, the game shall allow for composite property, or a larger good formed from other pieces of property.

For exemple, one could define in the raws a tavern, composed of a minimum number of rooms, a kitchen and a eating room with, optionally, a brewery, and a workshop from a workplace, storage space and a room.
Workshops are set to be eventually defined in zones, including, on a space, the needed tools and storage; the whole could be defined as a property, so instead of selling the tools, the storage and the space, one could sell or buy the whole thing at once.

Of course, the value of such goods shall be the total value of each of the components.

The creator of this composite property might give its name; we could have farms, landed estates and houses with unique names.

OBLIGATIONS LAW

Obligations shall be contractual and extra-contractual. Some would be things persons would have agreed upon while others whould involve a person having to do something for an action or an omission he did.

Contracts

Contracts are willing agreements made legally enforceable.

Some might have to be written and conserved in the court's library by local Statutes of fraud but, in some legal systems, using witnesses for an oral contract shall also be acceptable, while risked.

Exemples of contracts:

• Sale: a party shall agree to sell to another party a property; while the basic contracts of buying chattel goods and paying them straight away will not present any difficulty, sales on credit or of real property might have to be written down.
• Leasing: a party shall rent to another a property, whether chattel (for exemple, the rental of an horse) or real property (for exemple a room); it shall have the amount of the rent and a term (daily, monthly, quaterly or yearly). They might have to be written, for those of longer term. Local laws could regulate such rents. Rents could be fixed or depending of another factur such as the products of the property (i.e. crops of a field)
• Hiring: a party shall hire for a time factor (day, month, trimester or year) and eventually a maximum time, a physical person, for wages, either in cash or in goods, depending from the skills and eventual regulations. Additionally, bounties (for exemple, a part of the treasure) might be provided for.
• Loaning: a party shall loan to another a sum of money and interests can be aplied to the loaned capital, on a basis of daily, monthly, trimesterly or yearly terms. The rate should be depending of the trustworthy nature of the debtor, the existence of a collateral or personal caution and eventual regulations on maximum rates (in some places, no interest might be allowed). It shall also says whether the interests shall be simple or compounded.
• Pact of trade association: A number of persons might poll their funds and invest it in ventures such as a trade expedition. Each associate receive a share of the benefits or the debts proportional to the share of his investment in the venture.
• Commission: A party ask another to fulfull a task in exchange of something. For exemple, someone might ask a smith a sword in exchange of money. In some cases, the client might be able to furnish the needed material (for exemple, giving gold and diamonds to a jeweler) and in other cases, he might be paid on the products (for exemple a butcher might be able to keep a bit of meat for himself).
• Mandate: A contract about a grantor asking an agent to exercise some of his rights on his behalf.
• Marriage: A contract describing the management of property inside a couple. Other matter, such as religion or residence, might be described.

Of course, such contracts could be combined, for exemple a contract over the making and the selling of an artifact whose funding would be done by a loan, said artifact being afterwards part of a caravan.

Contracts might be deemed null and void if one of the parties didn't consent freely or if the contract itself was unlawful (a contract of sales on slaves might be void in an abolitionist civilization). Additionally, force majeure might impede the execution of contract, such as the renting of a farm being ended by a dragon rampaging, or a caravan attacked by a goblin band.

Enforcement

While, in the majority of the cases, each party will try to keep his part of the bargain, in a minority of cases, one (or all!) of the parties will not respect the contract; in these cases, the aggreviated party shall go to court to make the other party keep his word.

After the complainant has proved the existence of the contract (easy when a written trace exist in an official building, difficult when in oral form) and if the violation is proven to be true, the judge shall order the other party to act on his obligations and then, if not done, order coercitive measures adapted to the nature of the obligation.

For exemple, seizure might be used for obligations involving money while other methods such as jailing might be available. Sureties shall be used. In addition, it shall constitute the tort of contract violation (see below).

Further measures, such as jailing or deprivation of rights, might be used.

Finally, in addition to the sureties seen above, we could have personal guarantees, where someone promises to accept to undertake the contractual responsability of someone else, such as someone guaranteeing a debtor will pay his debt; he might done so for a fee.

Torts and extra-contractual obligations

Any action or inaction from a legal subject harming another legal subject shall submit the former to the obligation to indemnify the latter.

Torts, being essentially the civil equivalent to crime, shall be defined by the same manner than the one I used to define crimes. It might actually be simpler, since tort law only consider the damage caused and the existence of responsability; moreover, the only "punishment" available shall be to pay a sum of money to the aggreviated party or to make otherwise the other part whole: for exemple restituing a stolen item or, in some universes, revivifing a murdered person.

Torts shall cover damages against the life, the bodily integrity, the property and the honor of a person, and shall be related to the ethics and the values of a civilization. A civilisation accepting murder might no see any wrong to make whole in a killing.

Other forms of respnsability might be envisioned: vicarious responsability for workers and dependents, responsability of the guardian of an item (for exemple the owner of a dog is responsible for injuries caused by it).

Defenses might include legality (a soldier shouldn't be sued by an enemy fighter), consent (two brawlers shouldn't get to sue each other), self-defense, and some might be universal or specific.

The wounded interests, defined in the rows for each tort, might be corporeal (wounds, infirmity), material (destruction) or moral (loss of face and dignity), and would define the value of each tort: for exemple the tort of trespass in goods might be defined as material, meaning that damages awarded to the victim will depend of the value of the item, while slender might be defined as moral and the damages being defined on a factor depending of the value of a reputation defined by the legal system. Here again, Appraisal might be an useful skill to determine the value of a tort.

If the judge found against the defendant, he shall create a simili-contract between the victim and the culprit entitling the former to reparations from the latter, to be enforced as seen above.

Exemple of tort, here, assault:

[TORT:ASSAULT]
[DEFINITION:The act of inflicting physical harm or unwanted physical contact upon a person]
[NAME:assault]
[ACTION:ASSAULT] Describes the action done by the tortfeasor
Additionally, in some legal systems, such claims might outright be bought and sold as chattel, enabling some to earn money by suing in courts; other jurisdictions might ban it, and some might even have laws against champerty.

Bankruptcy

When the estate of someone is not sufficient to ensure the fulfilment of his duties and obligations (in laymen's terms, when someone hasn't enough money to pay his debts), he shall be in bankruptcy.

There, various events might happen:

• The debtor's estate shall be liquidated and the proceeds handed down to the creditors in prorata of their claims on it.
• The debtor is indentured to his creditors to work his debt.
• The debtor is enslaved.

When a corporation is in this case, the governing body might, in some cases (illegalities commited) and/or in some legal systems, be found responsible and might have to pay the part of the debt not covered by the corporation's estate. The corporation itself ceases to exist.

[PART 1/2]

As of today, each creature and plant are defined separately, as if a wolf and a dog were totally separate, or a tomato and a potato.

What I propose is to make phylogenetic trees and biological families active in the game, mainly by defining templates in the rows.

Easy to say, but, concretly, how to do it?

There is already relevant tags: COPY_TAGS_FROM orders the loading of the tokens of another creature and APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION, combined with any CREATURE_VARIATION, can create giants and animal people, so defining a creature in function of another is already supported.

Starting from this, we could even enact my suggestion in the vanilla game, simply by defining creatures such as Canidae and, if additional tokens are available for the plants, Solanaceae, and define them as DOES_NOT_EXIST and FANCIFUL to prevent them from created, before deriving other creatures and plants out of them.

However, we could treat this as a specific feature instead of a hack, providing us with more opportunities beyond making the adding of additional creature by modders easier. While the number of creatures might be high enough, it might make creating other plants easier; moreover, it makes modifying several creatures at once easier, thereby making the creation of new tokens and the suppression of obsolete tokens easier in future updates.

For exemple, let's define the template (in the rest of this post, it will be named "taxinomical family") for the Canidae:

[CREATURE_TEMPLATE:CANIDAE]
[DESCRIPTION:A family of medium-sized highly social mammalian carnivore.]
[NAME:canid:canids:canid]
[CREATURE_CLASS:MAMMAL][NATURAL]
[LARGE_ROAMING]
[BONECARN][BODY:QUADRUPED_NECK:TAIL:2EYES:2EARS:NOSE:2LUNGS:HEART:GUTS:ORGANS:THROAT:NECK:SPINE:BRAIN:SKULL:4TOES_FQ_REG:4TOES_RQ_REG:MOUTH:TONGUE:GENERIC_TEETH_WITH_LARGE_EYE_TEETH:RIBCAGE]
[BODYGLOSS:PAW]
[BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:STANDARD_MATERIALS]
[BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:STANDARD_TISSUES]
[BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:VERTEBRATE_TISSUE_LAYERS:SKIN:FAT:MUSCLE:BONE:CARTILAGE]
[BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:BODY_HAIR_TISSUE_LAYERS:HAIR]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:NAIL:NAIL_TEMPLATE]
[USE_TISSUE_TEMPLATE:NAIL:NAIL_TEMPLATE]
[TISSUE_LAYER:BY_CATEGORY:TOE:NAIL:FRONT]
[SELECT_TISSUE_LAYER:HEART:BY_CATEGORY:HEART]
[PLUS_TISSUE_LAYER:SKIN:BY_CATEGORY:THROAT]
[TL_MAJOR_ARTERIES]
[BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:STANDARD_HEAD_POSITIONS]
[BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:HUMANOID_RIBCAGE_POSITIONS]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:SINEW:SINEW_TEMPLATE]
[TENDONS:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:SINEW:200]
[LIGAMENTS:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:SINEW:200]
[HAS_NERVES]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:BLOOD:BLOOD_TEMPLATE]
[BLOOD:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:BLOOD:LIQUID]
[CREATURE_CLASS:GENERAL_POISON]
[GETS_WOUND_INFECTIONS]
[GETS_INFECTIONS_FROM_ROT]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:PUS:PUS_TEMPLATE]
[PUS:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:PUS:LIQUID]
[CASTE:FEMALE]
[FEMALE]
[CASTE:MALE]
[MALE]
[SET_BP_GROUP:BY_TYPE:LOWERBODY][BP_ADD_TYPE:GELDABLE]
We could define the dog as thus, by using the token DERIVES_FROM_TAXONOMIC_FAMILY:

[CREATURE:DOG]
[DESCRIPTION:A medium-sized highly social mammalian carnivore.  It has a keen sense of smell.  It can be trained to obey commands.]
[DERIVES_FROM_TAXONOMIC_FAMILY:CANIDAE]
[NAME:dog:dogs:canine]
[CASTE_NAME:dog:dogs:canine]
[CREATURE_TILE:'d'][COLOR:6:0:0]
[PETVALUE:30]
[PREFSTRING:loyalty]
Add the rest below...
Here, we just defined a dog only as a specific case of Canidae, taking this taxonomical family as a template; other might be defined such, such as foxes, wolfes and coyotes.

Making interactions might also be easier: for exemple, we could have a method to create hybrids, by declaring any creatures whose taxonomic families are identical able to procreate, allowing the birth of wolf-dogs but not of wolf-cats.

Training animals might be easier if one already knows how to train one of its sibilings: for exemple, training a coyote might be easier if one already knows how to train dogs.

In future updates, veterinary care might be easier on an animal if we already know how to heal its sibiling (see training); farther down, syndromes and infectious diseases might be affected on entire families, such as rabies on all Canidae. We could also code all Solanaceae as having syndromes, as most of them have alcaloids (nicotin, solane).

Other features might be the generation of other creatures from a taxonomical family in a world, such as a new Canidae.

Could a taxonomic family be a descendent of another, for exemple define Canidae as a "son" of Carnovora? Could a creature be the "son" of several taxonomical families, such as wolf men being both Canidae and Humanoid? While the first might add more modulability, the second might led to issues with token colision (see ).

So, what's your opinion on this suggestion?

As I did on 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016, I want to ask fellow members what they intent to do for today.

After reading the thread better weddings, the very complete Funerary rites and the excellent Holidays, observances, festivities, birthdays, I thought it would be a good idea to generzlise them to all significant events happening to a person or a group.

• Events describe things such as birth, the construction of a building, the elevation to someone to a noble title (coronation or adoubement) or, like in the threads I quoted earlier, weddings and funerals.
• Customs would be how these events would be celebrated; they would have, of course, tags on how to celebrate them (music, eating, dancing) and ethic codes. They would also have codes for relative importance.
• Together, they would make a Tradition.

WHY?
I think giving civilizations more occasions to be different is good, and that it would give more life to culture to have different events differently celebrated.

Moreover, making spheres more relevant to the gameplay is a good idea; this could nicely tie up with religion.

• EVENTS

They would be notable events, important enough they would be celebrated by an individual, a family, a settlement or even a civilization.

They would be defined in raws, to ensure a better modability of the concept and could have tags indicating their name, what exactly this event is, who would be concerned for the celebration (CREATURE, FAMILY, SETTLEMENT, ENTITY), its relative importance (VERY_LOW, LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH, VERY_HIGH) and the associated ethics and spheres.

At world gen, civilizations would chose to celebrate events, taking account their ethic values and their spheres.

The more someone is traditionalist, the more likely he is to celebrate events, or to made them celebrated if he is the head of a group concerned with them.

Exemple of event, this one for the Moon-worshipers:

[EVENT_CELEBRATED:NEW_MOON_FEAST]
[NAME:"New moon day"] Name of the event
[SPHERE:MOON] Part of the sphere of the moon
[PERIODIC:MOON_PHASE:27:0] It happens every new moon
[CELEBRATION_LEVEL:MEDIUM] It would have an average importance for those celebrating it.
[CELEBRANT:CREATURE] A creature might celebrate it in his corner.
[CELEBRANT:FAMILY] ...or with his family.
[CELEBRANT:SETTLEMENT] ...or celebrate it as a collective body.

This is the New Moon Feast, part of the sphere of the Moon, happening every new Moon with a MEDIUM level of festivities in civilizations where moon has a great deal of importence.

Another exemple, this one for those celebrating and advocating the killing of sapients:

[EVENT_CELEBRATED:FIRST_SAPIENT_KILL]
[NAME:"First sapient-killing"]
[SPHERE:MURDER]
[CELEBRATION_LEVEL:HIGH]
[CELEBRANT:CREATURE]
[ACTION:KILL_SAPIENT_ENEMY]
[ACTION:KILL_SAPIENT_ENTITY_MEMBER]
[ACTION:KILL_SAPIENT_NEUTRAL]
[FIRST_TIME] Indicates this is the first time this action has been done by the agent
[ETHIC:KILL_ENEMY:REQUIRED]
[ETHIC:KILL_ENTITY_MEMBER:REQUIRED]
[ETHIC:KILL_NEUTRAL:REQUIRED]
As you might see, it is the celebration of the first killing made by the creature. It is an important celebration and requires ethics ordering the killing either of an ennemy, a neutral or another entity member.

Finally, let's see the following:

[EVENT_CELEBRATED:BUILT_FORTRESS]
[NAME:"Built a fortress"]
[SPHERE:FORTRESSES]
[BUILT_SITE:FORTRESS]
[CELEBRATION_LEVEL:VERY_HIGH]
[CELEBRANT:SETTLEMENT]
This is the celebration of the building of a fortress by its builders and inhabitants.

These are only basic exemples of what could be done with a system of raws for such events: they could be used to simulate the events of the life of a creature, of a community or diverse acts such as the coronation of kings, victories against siegers, learning a secret or someone gaining the rank Legendary (or any other) in a skill.

And this is only with the current version: further versions might add more events and consequently more traditions: building a boat, forming armies or the founding of a school might also be events to be celebrated by the player, whether as adventurer or as overseer.

CUSTOMS
They would be how is celebrated an event.

As with events, they would be defined in raws, to ensure further modability.

Processions, games, praying, visites to temples and erecting statues should be able to be included as means to celebrate events; of course they would be scaled relative to the celebrating body: given the same tradition, a civilization wanting to commemorate a victory over enemies would give a bigger gift to a temple than a citizen wanting to celebrate the birth of his child.

Here's an exemple of how it would be done:

[CUSTOM:GIFT_CRAFTS_TEMPLE]
[NAME:"Build a statue"] Name of the tradition
[ITEM:item:ANY_CRAFT] "item" is the item to be gifted
[GIFT_ITEM:item:TEMPLE] "item" is to be gifted to a temple
[IMPORTANCE:MEDIUM] "item" is to be gifted to a temple

Here, a crafted item (FIGURINE, AMULET, SCEPTER, CROWN, RING, EARRING, or BRACELET) will be given to a temple.

Of course, other tags could be added, such as ethics - for exemple, a civilization where TORTURE_ANIMALS is set to PUNISH_CAPITAL wouldn't organise animal fights to celebrate an event -, race and/or civilization, and possibly spheres to steer some traditions - a temple consecrated to a deity of peace would not be the best place to gift weapons; however, for a more perfect implementation, I think economy should be put back in the game.

This template could also be used to generate rituals and liturgies for temples.

HOW WOULD IT WORK DURING GENERATION?

• Initial attribution

During world gen, civilizations would receive an initial list of events to celebrate, based on their ethics and their favourite spheres and then these events would receive appropriate customs based on their importance and eventual ethics restrictions and sphere steering, creating the traditions of the civilization.

• How could they evolve?

A civilization could take a tradition from its neighbours, such as an human civilization taking the celebration of the spring from elves.

A major historical event could also create a tradition, such as a victorious defense of a settlement against a dragon. It could then, if significant enough, became a recurrent and periodic celebration.

Finally, less traditionalist beings could choose to not practice a tradition or otherwise change the custom used, for exemple replacing the building of a statue for a birth with the gift of an item to a temple).

The repression of a tradition, whether by occupiers (see the Books of the Maccabees) or by a ruler, or conversely a specially traditionalist ruler enforcing long forgotten traditions could cause revolts.

A civilization could invade another if they find some of its traditions barbaric, such as an human civilization organising dogfights to celebrate the new moon getting invaded by elves.

• Scholarship

Some Geographers and Pholosphers could redact books on traditions in a civilization, listing them either all ("The Traditions of [X]") or in part, related to the spheres ("The Traditions of [X] related to [X]"); they could also list traditions in several civilizations, listing them all ("The Traditions of [X], [X] and [X]"), by sphere ("The Traditions of [X], [X] and [X] related to [X]") or by event ("[X] in [X], [X] and [X]").
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HOW THE PLAYER WOULD INTERACT WITH THEM?:

• Fortress Mode

During Fortress Mode, dwarves would practise their traditions, taking account their work assignements. The more the TRADITION belief is high, the most likely a dwarf is to practise a tradition, or to order it practised if he hold a position with the LAW_MAKING token - after all, criminal law, womething I hope I will write about, is the way a society enforces a subset of very important traditions.

Less traditionalist dwarves could not celebrate a tradition if they find it too much cumberstone or otherwise change the custom used, which could cause conflicts with more traditionalist dwarves, especially if, as a law-maker, they change or even stop organising a custom, such as the mayor not celebrating the founding of his fortress with the sacrifice of a sheep, either stopping the celebration outright or otherwise replacing it with a party.

In order to prevent players to buy "The Worthlessness of Tradition" and making their dwarves read it so as to not be bothered with them, dwarves could get good thoughts when practising traditions and, if the traditions was especially important, bad thoughts; both would be related to the TRADITION belief.

Scholars could themselves write books related to traditions based on what they read or they heard about.

• Adventure Mode

Adventurers could find books related to traditions, pracice them (for exemple, gifting a crown to a temple of a deity of valour after fighting a megabeast) or, in places where the ruler is very traditionailstic, be punished for disrespecting the local traditions, such as not assisting to the festivities for Summer at the temple while a prayer is sung.

They could write themselves books on the traditions of the civilizations they went in or read about.

• Legends Mode

The player might be able to see the different traditions by civilizations if he choose to reveal all, else he might have to do some adventuring by himself.
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BILAN

I hope my proposition, while raw in parts, presents well my suggestion and will bring useful ideas for future discussions, and that other posters will be able to ameliorate it.

Of course, I'm sure we all will be satisfacted to see Toady will implement cultures and traditions.

SEE ALSO

The following threads can be read to speak about the topic:

• Celebrations and Holidays (April 17, 2008)
• Dwarven Funerals / Visiting Graves (March 27, 2009)
• Different Mthodes to "bury" Dead (April 14, 2009)
• Festivals and holidays- some new ideas (July 23, 2009)
• Fortress Culture (September 12, 2012)
• Coming of Age traditions (February 04, 2013)
• Courting rituals (March 21, 2016)
• Reintroduce Parties - Games & Music (July 20, 2017)