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This article attempts to explain the conduct one should adopt while playing. It is made of two parts, one verbatim from Lunarch, and another from the community addressing common concerns.

Lunarch's Statement

The following is a copy of the relevant part of Lunarch's blog post regarding manners:

We often get questions about what kind of behaviour is acceptable on the Prismata servers. Though we encourage players to be kind and show good sportsmanship while playing Prismata, here are some clarifications on 3 rules that will be enforced:

1. No harassment. Players may receive temporary or permanent chat bans or alpha key revocations for abusive, profane, or discriminatory language directed at another player in any in-game chat.
2. No exploiting game bugs. We love it when players discover bugs, but there will be penalties for players who intentionally and repeatedly abuse bugs in the Prismata alpha to grief their opponents or obtain rewards unfairly.
3. No intentional disconnects or stalling. Players are not permitted to unnecessarily waste their opponents’ time in situations where the outcome of a game is already known. In particular, players should resign or play their turns quickly if it is absolutely clear that they have no hope of winning.

If you notice a player breaking any of the rules above, feel free to report them using the in-game bug-reporting feature, or contact us using support@lunarchstudios.com. In the future, we may add direct reporting within Prismata, or even automated detection of behaviours like intentional disconnection (autodetection features have worked quite well for online chess sites, for example.)

Notwithstanding the rules above, here are some important clarifications on things that are allowed:

• Players are entitled to take the full amount of their allotted time to think of all turns, including the first few turns (though note that unspent time is partially added to your time bank, and your opponent can often think on your turn, so it’s usually beneficial to play quickly.)
• It is acceptable to use emotes freely as allowed by the game (they have been rate limited).
• It is acceptable to congratulate your opponent or say “gg” in global chat before resigning or after a game is over, (but emotes are recommended over the global chat).

Additionally, here are some guidelines for good sportsmanship. We will not enforce these, but other players might consider you to be impolite if you break them:

• As the winning player, don’t say “gg” or make emotes of that nature before the game has ended. Most players consider the “offensive gg” to be disrespectful.
• Don’t be a jerk to other players in the global chat, especially new players.
• Avoid spamming too many emotes. It can be annoying to your opponent.
• Don’t whine too much about game balance in the global chat. A better place for that is on the Prismata subreddit, where the devs will read your arguments and are much more likely to respond.

Community Guidelines

The following are widely shared considerations among the player base, unenforced but generally agreed upon conventions about what is or isn't appropriate in Prismata.

Ongoing games and global chat

It is considered inappropriate to comment on ongoing games in global chat. Stuff like pointing out players mistakes or giving tips to other players while they are playing is considered very bad mannered. Commenting on your own games in global chat while they are ongoing can be annoying for your opponent and other users discussing strategy or other things.