This document is an agreement between everyone at this table. Its purpose is to make sure the game is a good experience for all of us. It is not a legal contract and it is not meant to feel like one — it is meant to feel like a group of people who want to play a good game together deciding, in advance, how they will treat each other.
1Definition
A social contract is an informal agreement between individuals governing behavior and expectations within a specific social experience. This one governs the expectations players and the DM should have for After Asylum: Hubris — a campaign using the 5.5th-Edition Dungeons & Dragons rules, set in the world of Aevum, fifty years after the events of Seeking Asylum.
2Schedule
After Asylum: Hubris is played on the first and third Tuesday of each month, roughly 6:00–10:00 PM Arizona time (MST / UTC-7, year round — Arizona does not observe daylight saving time).
Players and the DM are asked to be on time and prepared to play at each session. If you know you will be late, let the group know in advance. Sessions will generally begin within fifteen minutes of the scheduled start, regardless of attendance.
3Attendance
We will play so long as three players can make a given session. If a player cannot attend, they will tell the DM at least two days prior; if the DM cannot run, they will notify players at least two days in advance.
If a player is absent, their character will be controlled by another player or the DM as appropriate for that session. The DM will avoid, to the maximum extent possible, causing permanent harm to an absent player's character while that player is not present to make decisions for them.
4Treatment of Others
We agree to treat all players and the DM with respect, both in and out of character. The purpose of this game is to have fun together; we will be supportive, kind, and generous with each other at the table.
This includes being patient with new players who may not know the rules or the world's history as well as others. After Asylum: Hubris is a sequel campaign, but it is not a closed table — everyone at it deserves to feel welcome.
5Personal Boundaries
We will respect the personal boundaries of all players and the DM. Sexual acts and sexual violence will not be described explicitly, whether within the game or out of character; if such events occur within the story, the DM will fade to black rather than describe specifics.
Players are encouraged to raise any additional content concerns at session zero or at any point during the campaign. The DM will note and honor them without judgment.
6Safety Tools: Lines & Veils
After Asylum: Hubris deals with mature themes — the consequences of war, moral complexity, the long reach of trauma, and what happens when people with great power try to fix things. These are handled with intention, not gratuitously, but they are present. We use the Lines and Veils framework to manage content at the table.
- Lines are hard limits. Content that crosses a Line does not appear in the game at all, not even implied. If something is a Line for any player or the DM, it is a Line for the whole table. Lines are set at session zero and can be added at any time.
- Veils are soft limits. Content behind a Veil can exist in the fiction but is not described explicitly — the DM fades to black and moves past it. Sexual content and graphic torture are Veils by default unless the table agrees otherwise.
Identifying your Lines and Veils is not a sign of weakness or oversensitivity; it is how a group of people who respect each other builds a game that works for everyone. If something comes up in play that a player wants added, they can raise it at any time, without explanation or justification required, and the DM will honor it immediately.
7Player and Character
We agree to maintain a healthy distinction between player and character. What a character knows, believes, or does is not necessarily what the player knows, believes, or does. We will not hold out-of-game grudges for in-game events, and we will not use out-of-game knowledge to influence in-game decisions unless the DM explicitly permits it.
Playing a character whose values differ from your own is part of the game. Playing a character who does something terrible to another character is not the same as doing something terrible to another player. We trust each other to know the difference — and to check in when the line feels unclear.
8The World and Its History
After Asylum: Hubris is a sequel set fifty years after Seeking Asylum. Players from that campaign bring knowledge and connection that new players do not have. This is a feature, not a hierarchy.
New players are encouraged to read the world-history Codex but are not required to have deep prior knowledge; the DM will provide context as needed. Veterans of Seeking Asylum are encouraged to share the world's history generously, and to remember that discovering things for the first time is one of the great pleasures of roleplaying.
9The New Gods
The gods of Aevum were mortals fifty years ago, and they are present in the world in ways that create genuinely unusual situations at the table. A character who worships Vitana is, in a sense, worshipping the character of a player who once sat at a version of this table. A character who follows Proelius is following the theological legacy of a three-foot gnome who walked into every fight so his friends wouldn't have to.
We agree to treat this with the weight it deserves and the humor it occasionally invites, in equal measure.
10Amendments
This contract may be updated at any time by mutual agreement of the group. If any player or the DM has a concern about how the game is running, they are encouraged to raise it openly — a game that works for everyone at the table is better than a game that works for most of them. This document will be revisited at the start of each new story arc and updated as needed.