In Rulers, players all act simultaneously during the current turn. Once all actions and events have been resolved, the GM declares the end of the turn for all players and advances the game to the next turn.

Taking Actions

Actions in Rulers are grouped into 3 categories: Economic, Political and Military. All of the actions available to players are listed in their corresponding sections.

⚒️ Economic Actions

⚖️ Political Actions

🏹 Military Actions

Actions cost Basic or Special Resources or a combination of both. If the cost of the action cannot be paid with the resources available to a Ruler during the turn, then the action cannot be taken. During the Action Phase, any action may be taken as many times as a Ruler can pay its cost.

Economic Actions typically only affect the Realm of the Ruler taking the action. Whereas Political and Military Actions typically affect other Realms and Rulers in some way.

All turns are taken simultaneously by all Rulers. When all players have communicated they have completed their actions for the turn, then GM advances play to the next phase.

Actions in Rulers occur once the cost is paid. A Ruler cannot fail to send a Messenger, there are no dice rolls to see if they succeed at building construction. The outcome of certain actions, may be decided by other players or dice rolls.

• Economic Actions - Assumed to always succeed.

• Military Actions - Outcomes determined by rules for Warfare.

• Political Actions - Outcomes determined by other players or optional rolls.

For example, a Ruler can Issue Orders to their Army to besiege a Settlement. The action of giving that order cannot fail. However, the outcome of capturing the Settlement will be determined by the rules for Warfare using the Army’s Might as the dicepool for the siege roll. Similarly, if a Ruler takes the Draft Treaty action, they cannot fail to write the treaty. However, it is up to the receiving Ruler to decide if they agree to the treaty or not.

Interacting with GMRs

Gamemaster Rulers, are Rulers controlled by the Gamemaster and so they may respond to messages, treaties and warfare as that Ruler might according to their personality and culture.

If a GM prefers, when another player takes an action that affects a GMR the GM may choose to roll dice to determine the success of that action. In this case, use the Influence production of the Ruler who took the action as a dicepool, to make an opposed roll against the Influence production of the receiving Ruler. A roll of 5-6 is considered a success. If the GMR rolls fewer successes than the player Ruler, then they succeed in convincing the GMR to agree with whichever course of action they had intended.

Passage of Time

Rulers assumes that one turn is equivalent to one season, and that there are four seasons in a year (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter). Every 4th Turn is referred to as the New Year 🌄, and certain events or actions resolve at that time.

The players and the GM may decide to have a different time scale for their turns, such as a week, a month or a year. If this is the case, every 4th turn is still the turn where certain events and actions resolve when they refer to the New Year 🌄.

Phases

Each turn is comprised of four phases:

Start of Turn, Action Phase, Warfare Phase and End of Turn.

During each phase, certain actions resolve or actions are taken. Players may resolve phases by themselves where possible. However, players cannot go back to an earlier phase in the turn once play has advanced to the next phase. Should it be necessary, the exact order in which events occur or conclude are listed.

Turn Order

Start of Turn

• Armies, Messengers and all Agents of the Crown move.

• Building construction finishes. Buildings are demolished.

• Trades from Offer Exchange actions arrive from other Realms.

• Resources are produced by the Realm. Upkeep of the Realm is paid.

• Total available Resources for the turn are calculated.

Action Phase

• New Year:
  • Assembly begins if one is being hosted.

• Messengers at their target destination deliver all messages, replies, Treaties and Exchanges to the recipient Ruler.

• Rulers may take all actions in any order (⚒️Economic, ⚖️ Political, 🏹 Military).

Warfare Phase

Conflicts between Armies with the highest total Might from all participants resolve first.

• Battles between Armies resolve.

• Sieges between Garrisons and Armies resolve .

End of Turn

• Returned Messengers are dismissed. Armies disband if Upkeep was not paid this turn, or if the Disband Army action was taken.

• Routed and Crippled Armies move back to their Realm.

• New Year:
  • Assembly ends if one is being hosted.
  • Garrisons replenish.
  • Defeated and Broken Armies return to their Realm.
  • Establish Settlement or Advance Settlement actions proceed to the next stage.

• Available Resources for the turn are reset to 0.