History of the Main Rules

The history of this set of rules is thought to be:

• Initial author unknown.
• Typed in by Paul Roberts (PER10).
• Later history unknown.
• Used by CUSFS for a while.
• Martin Hardcastle (MJH22) made some modifications.
• Julian Birch (JMB29), some modifications and clarifications.
• Richard Fairhurst (RJF1001), further modifications and clarifications.
• Ben Jameson (BFJ1000), yet more modifications.
• Jim Cameron (JC10007) and Elizabeth Pringle (EMPP1), more, mistyped, modifications.
• David Allsopp (DNA1000), surprisingly, made some modifications.
• Paul Menage (PBM1001) was Easter 1995 Umpire, and initiated 3 targets per player.
• Nigel Harris (NJH27) made modifications.
• Ben Harris (BJH21) changed even more things, notably the bomb blast radius formula to be based on a cube root.
• Chuan-Tze Teo (CTT20) modified still more rules.
• Martin Read (mpr22) corrected the text of the bomb rules, and set a (semi-)codified timing rule (after a few shoutings, getting the wording right).
• Lynnette Dray (lmd21) modified a few more things, surprisingly.
• Charlie Baylis (cgb23) took this ruleset in 1999 in order to back out the strange necromancy rules, and made a couple of other patches.
• Matt Laycock, Ed Nokes and Bjorn Holzhauer improved and HTMLised the ruleset, with the help of Matthew Wakeling, Dave Hammond and others.
• Ralph Owen (rho21), Ed Nokes and Bjorn Holzhauer altered the rules for Michaelmas 2001, with suggestions from Ed Wallace.
• Modifications made by Tom Garnett (tmg27)
• Clarifications and a few alterations made by Rosemary Warner (rjw76), with suggestions from Ralph Owen.
• Matthew Johnson (mjj29) and Michael Cripps (mac57) updated the rules for Lent 2003.
• Matt Johnson (mjj29) tidied up the HTML, Ric Brackenbury (rab71) added a few pedantic changes, and rewrote the bomb rules with Adam Biltcliffe.
• Adam Biltcliffe (amgb2) rewrote and restructured large parts of the rules in an attempt to make them vaguely comprehensible to new players.
• Martin O'Leary (mewo2) poked at things a bit in Michaelmas 2004.
• David Birch (dtb26) made some minor alterations, and changed dead players a little. The bomb rules were completely removed during Lent 2005.
• Martin Lester (mml27) modified the rules for Michaelmas 2005.
• Richard Gibson (rsig2) restructured some things and obfuscated other things for Lent 2006.
• Philip Bielby (pmb45) and Nick Plummer (nrp28) instituted automagic Policification, tightened up the conduct rules, and added general silliness for Michaelmas 2006.
• Steve McCann (smm57) implemented a lot of the changes made for the Michaelmas Massacres 2007 Eliminate game umpired by Joshua Guy Blanchard Lewis. He also made some small changes here and there.
• Emma Pewsey (ep320) removed non-direct methods of killing, bouncy balls, and shields, and made the Umpire female for Michaelmas 2008.
• Luke Bennett (lrb34) changed a couple of things.
• Paul Tinton (pkt25) tweaked a few minor things and made computer rooms OOB
• Emily Scragg (ess38) banned projectiles from college dining rooms.
• Luke Robins (lr331) shuffled things a bit for Michaelmas 2010.
• Matthew Hinks (mjh223) tidied up the page and changed rules relating to OOB status and society meetings for Lent 2011
• Matthew Fitch (mhdf2) added his name to the bottom of the page. (also added the rule about assassin-like activities)
• Thomas Ruddle (tjr45) added some stuff about safety and Safer Space, with input from Alison Madgwick and Cheryl Weedon.
• Alison Madgwick (am2064) changed a few things for Michaelmas 2013.
• Niklas Ek (ne250) changed a few things for Lent 2014.
• Douglas Hall (dah76) made a few changes for the Michaelmas 2014 game, then reworded a lot of things that irritated him because he's obsessive like that.
• Michael French (mf522) would like it to go on record that any suggestion (be it for weapons, rule changes, methods of play, or otherwise actions not specifically allowed in the rules) originating from Ben Morley is banned unless expressly permitted by the Umpire of the current game. He also tweaked and clarified various rules for Michaelmas 2015.
• Alex Hibbert (ajh269) reworded a variety of rules, changed the OOB rules for socs to be a blanket 2 mins after, and merged 'Timeout' and 'Cease-fire' for Michaelmas 2016.
• Kim Ward (kltw2) for Lent 2016 sorted out the Conduct section, clarified what Police can and cannot do, added suggestions for the content of notes, and accidentally made all the section titles blue? (Oops.)
• Andrew Darby (ajd224) changed the police rules (Kim's version was a good attempt in the right direction, but still lead to confusion very frequently when squads of mixed police and players clashed). He also formally added that accomplicing can act towards competancy.
• Andrew Browne (ajb329) updated many things, including removal of players from the wanted and incompetence lists, the status of accomplices in general, and in particular those to illicit kills, and the disclaimer.
• Sam Sully (sjs252) and Leo Zlotnikov (lz375) made many changes, starting with reformatting the HTML to be prettier. Other changes include: changing the @srcf.ucam.org emails to @srcf.net emails (these are more concise and equally valid), removing the mention of private police pseudonyms and changing "OoB on a bike" to "OoB while cycling" (with some caveats) to prevent people waddling around on their bikes claiming to be OoB. A number of smaller changes were made also.
• Jack Lawrence (jel75), Yuhang Xie (yx306), Sheamol Obeda (msko2), and Ciara Aberdeen (kla41) made a number of changes to the rules to take account of the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected games primarily between Michaelmas 2020 and Lent 2022.
• Ciara Aberdeen (kla41) also made a number of small changes to seal any loopholes brought to her attention during the Lent 2022 game, including small additions to the Death, Accomplices, Code of Conduct: Personal Safety, and Out of Bounds sections
• Henry London (hjl59) and Jamie Syiek (bms53) changed a lot of the wording, adding explicit sections for the long-unnoficial Open Season and the Duel, removed competency for police kills, and made Accomplices respawn.
• Jamie Syiek (bms53) and Henry Caushi (hc537), for the Lent 2023 game, made servery queues OoB, explicitly disallowed players from impersonating trade union representatives or protesters, and made some slight wording changes. Finally, Police can fight back against unprovoked attacks from non-incompetent non-wanted players in self-defense and stun them!
• Peter Jackson (pj375) and Bertie Politi (aap67) removed the rule disallowing lying on the fire safety boards, since no-one actually uses them
• We would also like to recognise the effort many others who have contributed to the development of the rules over the years, some of which asked not to be named.

History of the Weapons Rules

The history of this set of rules is fairly short:

• Adam Biltcliffe (amgb2) split the weapons rules off from the main ruleset. For previous history, see the main rules.
• Martin O'Leary (mewo2) tightened things up a bit for Mich 2004.
• David Birch (dtb26) changed some things around a bit and removed bombs in Lent 2005.
• Martin Lester (mml27) made some modifications for Michaelmas 2005.
• Richard Gibson (rsig2) made minimal changes for Lent 2006.
• Philip Bielby (pmb45) and Nick Plummer (nrp28) made some small changes for Michaelmas 2006.
• Joshua Guy Blanchard Lewis (jgb38) brought back Bouncy Grenades and Shields with rules to make them less broken for Michaelmas 2007.
• Steve McCann (smm57) removed poisoned letters for the Lent 2008 assassins game.
• Emma Pewsey (ep320) removed bouncy grenades and shields again, and also removed all indirect weapons for Michaelmas 2008.
• Luke Bennett (lrb34) added poison again, but removed CPS's.
• Paul Tinton (pkt25) removed poison again, reinstated CPSs and clarified blocking for Michaelmas 2009.
• Matthew Hinks (mjh223) shuffled things around and clarified blocking, among other minor things, for Lent 2011.
• Emily Room (er364) added attack animal costumes in Michaelmas 2011.
• Daniel Baker (djb212) added general costumes in Lent 2012.
• Cheryl Weedon (clw68) integrated changes made by Alison Madgwick and others into the mayweek rules
• Michael French (mf522) clarified how long limbs take to regrow for Michaelmas 2015, and tweaked some things.
• Kim Ward (kltw2) updated the banned weapons section to include things such as a muzzle velocity limit on dartguns, in light of the fact that recognised toy weapons manufacturers putting out more powerful weapons renders "Unmodified dartgun" no longer sufficient for safety.
• Sam Sully (sjs252) and Leo Zlotnikov (lz375) banned electronic labels (no, your phone is not a knife) and allowed a single ricochet for bullets
• Tom Carey (twc37) made very minor edits to wording
• Jamie Syiek (bms53) added labeling rules (clarifications, really), and the Ubiquity Rule as a test for an item being ubiquitous