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Rules & Conduct

What is this?

Estado Libre is an original, fan-made implementation of a classic "banana republic" party game loop — secret roles, a public budget vote, under-the-table skimming into a personal account, and simultaneous secret army orders. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a copy of any specific commercially published board game; the code, art, and text here are original.

How a round works

1. Roles are dealt at random: a President plus several ministries.
2. The President proposes a budget; everyone votes on it in secret. Some years a foreign power quietly slips the President cash — only they know how much.
3. If it passes, ministers can quietly skim funds into their personal account — with a real risk of getting caught.
4. Commanders secretly choose to support the President or revolt, and which region to march toward; anyone can also fund a secret assassination attempt.
5. Orders resolve together, and the next year begins.

After a fixed number of years, whoever has the most money hidden away wins.

Key locations

Four buildings sit across the country, and their positions change every game. A minister begins at their own ministry's building and keeps its benefit for free; taking someone else's means travelling, which exposes you. The palace sits alone in the capital; the other three take a province each, which always leaves one province empty — a backwater to hide in, or to mass an army in unobserved.

• Presidential Palace — the seat of power. Well guarded, so hard for an assassin to reach.
• National Bank — skimming from here is far less likely to be caught by auditors.
• Army Barracks — a commander stationed here raises an extra unit each year.

The map

Troops are stationed in regions, not pooled in one place. The capital holds the palace and is adjacent to all four provinces; the provinces form a ring, each adjacent to its two neighbours. Each year a commander can hold position or move to an adjacent region — so taking the palace from a distant province takes more than one year of marching.

A revolt only succeeds if the rebels outnumber the palace's defenders in the capital itself. A huge army sitting in the north accomplishes nothing that year.

Spectating

Anyone with a room code can watch a game without taking a seat. Spectators see the public view only — the roster, the map, and the dispatch log — never hidden balances, votes, or orders, and they can't act or chat.

Conduct

This is a game about backstabbing your fellow ministers — that's the point, and it's all in character. What's not okay, in chat or player names:

• Harassment, hate speech, or targeting other players outside the game itself.
• Anything you wouldn't want a stranger seeing, since anyone with the room code can join a public room.

Chat runs through a basic automated filter, but it isn't perfect. The host of a room can remove disruptive players at any time.

Privacy & data

Player names, chat messages, and game state are stored only for the lifetime of a room, and rooms are automatically cleared out after a period of inactivity. There's no account system and no data retained beyond that. Don't share anything in a public room you wouldn't want other participants to see.

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