Cracked Life Rules

Hey! Whoever you are, thanks for taking a look at my pack. This is Cracked Life, a new season of the Life Series, designed by me, WaffleHere. If you don't know what the Life Series is, I would highly recommend giving it a watch and checking out the subreddit and wiki.

Every season of the Life Series is different, however, let me explain this one.

(I have already explained it once, so I'll link that video here. I still highly recommend reading the rest of this page, as it is filled with updated information.)

How to play Cracked Life

You can use this command to see a list of steps for how to start, manage, and alter the series on the fly in game.

/function crackedlife:help

The Session System and Worldborder

To ensure that all drama and gameplay happens involving all players, the Life Series is played in a series of 'sessions.' These sessions are typically 3 hours long and ideally have all players present. Players should only be allowed to join the game during these sessions.
For the best experience, the player list should be locked down quickly. Players joining 1 session late is one thing, but joining 3-5 sessions late is not very fun.
A Worldborder is usually set in place before the series starts. No border means much less interactions with each other, so a border forces interactions and conflicts. Typical size is around 600x600, but you could go larger.

Lives

Each player starts on Six Lives. Players are Dark Green when on 6, 5, or 4 lives, Green when on 3 lives, Yellow when on 2, and Red when on their final life.
Dark Greens and Greens are peaceful. They should gear up and try to survive.
Yellows can kill Dark Greens in order to steal one of their lives. This can happen through PVP, traps, or any kind of shenanigans that were directly caused by the Yellow and led to the Dark Green's death.
Reds are hostile and can kill anyone they want. Reds will also gain back a life if they kill a Dark Green.
When you lose your final life, you are set to Spectator mode, and you are out of the series.

Social Rules

While these may not be hardcoded rules, the honor system should be in place. It is much more fun if all players follow the rules. Ensure that someone who is very familiar with the rules has admin and can decide on punishments for any rule-breaking.

Being "peaceful" means that you can not initiate combat on someone, nor have an intention to kill them. For example, a Dark Green can not begin critting out a thief in their home, but they can punch a thief away from their chests. A Yellow can not drop a TNT minecart on a Red's head, but they can bomb or burn down their base.
Being "hostile" means that you CAN initiate combat on people with intention to kill. Reds can begin to attack Greens or Yellows, plant bombs, create deadly traps, or pour lava on people. Be careful of retaliation, though.
Retaliation and Self Defense are NOT prohibited. If a Green gets jumped by a Red, they most certainly can pull out their own sword and even end up eliminating the Red. However, if the altercation is over, (the Red runs away, pearls out, or otherwise exits the fight), the fight is OVER. No further attacks can be made by the Green name. This means no tracking the Red down and killing them, no blowing up their base in retaliation, etc.
Team fights will definitely happen. In cases like those, the two sides are considered to be in a fight together. While a Green teammate of a Red cannot help that Red jump someone else, they can help that Red defend their base if another group is attacking. (And by attacking I mean actual pvp, not a TNT cannon, for example.) Similarly, if two Greens are teamed up and one gets jumped, the other Green can get in between the fight and get the attacker to back off. They cannot help the original Green 2v1 the Red.

Secret Roles

A rule that you should definitely implement (but is technically optional) is the Boogeyman and the Cursed, two secret roles which trigger each session to cause mayhem and move players' life counters along, so to speak.

The Boogeyman

At the beginning of each session, an admin should run this command once for each Boogeyman.

/function crackedlife:giveboogeytag

Each time it is run, the command will mark a random non-red player as a Boogeyman. The Boogeyman has one job: kill a non-red before the end of the session.
The Boogeyman must kill a non-red player either through pvp or traps before the end of the session. If they fail, they will be set directly to Red life at the end of the session. If they succeed in killing someone, however, they are rewarded with three bonus hearts.
The Boogeyman is a SECRET ROLE. While they are not disallowed from telling their allies or others, revealing themselves is probably not a good idea. Failure means an extreme punishment.
The Boogeyman is one of the only times Greens are allowed to kill people. Enjoy it.

A title telling the player that they are The Boogeyman in red text.

The Cursed

At the beginning of each session, an admin should run this command once for each Cursed.

/function crackedlife:givecursedtag

Each time it is run, the command will mark a random non-red player as a Cursed. The Cursed, similar to the Boogeyman, must kill another non-red player before the end of the session. However, the Cursed has a catch.
When marked as the Cursed, the player will be given an invisible timer between thirty minutes and two and a half hours. When this timer runs out, they are given a 5 minute timer to kill a non-red player, or they will lose two lives. If they succeed in killing someone in this time period, they are rewarded with four bonus hearts. The punishment can not eliminate players.
Keep in mind, the Cursed does not know when their Curse will activate. While they can set up traps or otherwise prepare to kill before they receive the message, they MAY NOT initiate combat or arm a trap until the Curse activates.

A title telling the player that they are Cursed in purple text.

Activating Roles

Roles can be activated partway into the session by running the command below. This should be run after giving out roles secretly.

/function crackedlife:rolesactivate

When this function is run, players will be told their roles. Most players, including all Reds, will be 'Nothing!' and their session will continue normally. Random non-reds will be picked to be Cursed or Boogeymen. Feel free to switch up how many of each role are enabled each session!

A title anticipatorily reading "You are..." in yellow text.

Crack!

Once the series has been started, you will notice a timer above your hotbar. This is the Crack! timer. When the timer runs out, (every 15 minutes by default) 5 random players will Crack. When a player cracks, they lose two of their permanent hearts. While your health is reset upon death, this slow deterioration will lead players to kill to regain their hearts.

A title displaying "Crack!" in red text.

Players above 10 hearts will be guaranteed to lose hearts on every Crack, so players can't stockpile health.
Every so often, a random non-cracked, non-red player will be instantly reduced to 4 hearts.

A title displaying "The curse consumes you" in purple and red text.

Cracked Players

When a Dark Green, Green, or Yellow name inevitably drops to four maximum hearts, they become Cracked. Cracked players have a pink name, and will stop losing hearts. The only way for them to get their hearts back is to kill non-red, non-cracked players. If a Cracked player kills someone else, either through PVP or traps, they will gain 10 hearts, putting them at 14.
While Cracked players cannot be killed by Yellows, Boogeymen, or Cursed players, they can be killed by Reds. When a Cracked player is killed, their killer gains 3 bonus hearts. So be careful!

Shattered Players

When a Red name drops to 5 hearts, they become Shattered. Shattered players, like Cracked players, must kill non-cracked players to regain health. Every player a Shattered player kills earns them 5 hearts.
However, unlike Cracked players who cannot drop below 4 hearts, Shattered players will continue to lose health, one half heart at a time. If they do not kill someone to regain health, they will run out of health and be eliminated.

The Timer

The Crack timer can be altered. At default, the time for the timer to elapse is 15 minutes. By using either

/function crackedlife:fastertimer

/function crackedlife:fastesttimer

an admin can change the timer to 10 minutes or even 5 minutes.

All timers can also be paused or resumed by running

/function crackedlife:starttimer

/function crackedlife:stoptimer

The Slice of Life

Players that are not confident in their trapping or PVP abilities can still regain health. By crafting and consuming a Slice of Life, players can regain 2 hearts per Slice, though this cannot raise them above 10 hearts.
Slices of Life are understandably expensive, costing 5 gold blocks, 3 gold ingots, and 1 melon slice. (It is recommended that an admin grant all players the recipe with the following command.)

/recipe give @a crackedlife:glistering_melon_slice

A crafting recipe for the Slice of Life, containing 5 gold blocks, 3 gold ingots, and a melon slice, resulting in an enchanted glistering melon slice.

The description of the Slice of Life item in the player's inventory.

Giving Lives

Players may also give lives to their allies or trading partners by using this command.

/trigger givelife

This will lose the user 1 life and give 1 life to the nearest person within 3 blocks. Make sure to stand within range, otherwise the command will fail.

A title displaying "You gained a life!" in green text.

A title displaying "You lost a life..." in red text.

Finale and End Fight

Both the Ender Dragon fight and a Finale sequence are included in this season. Activate either of them using

/function crackedlife:end_timer_init

/function crackedlife:finale_init

The End Fight

When activated, a timer between 15 and 5 minutes will start in the background, at the end of which an end portal will open at the location marked by using

/function crackedlife:portal_marker

This portal marker will replace all water blocks within 5 blocks of it with end portal when the end countdown is activated.
Any player left in the Overworld when the portal closes after 5 minutes will lose two lives. This punishment can not eliminate you.
This punishment can also be disabled by simply using this command when all players are online.

/advancement grant @a only minecraft:story/enter_the_end

The Finale

When it comes time for the Finale session, the Finale sequence can be activated using the above command, after which all players can kill anyone, regardless of life count. This is best run either when some players have been eliminated and there are almost no Greens and few Yellows, or when there is around 45 minutes to an hour remaining in the final session. Enjoy the sequence, it's very dramatic.

Recommendations

One definite recommendation is to install Simple Voice Chat or some other proximity chat mod. (Unless you don't want to/can't use voice chat.) This makes the series much better. I typically set the voice range to about 32 blocks and the whisper range to about 12. I usually disallow groups, but you can do whatever makes the most sense for you.
Think about installing a recipe pack, such as my Life Series recipes pack, which rewrites TNT, horse armor, and netherite upgrade template recipes and adds an (albeit expensive) recipe for the heavy core, or my Affordable Templates pack, which makes duplicating templates no longer require diamonds.
Life Series are best experienced with 12 to 18 people. The worldborder size should be set accordingly, (I go with around 600x600) and try to center it on some kind of structure. (I usually go with a Trial Chamber or Ancient City.)

Credits

If you do end up using this Life Series in a video series or a video in general, make sure to credit me, WaffleHere, as designer and creator as well as @Grian as the original creator of the life series.
If you are posting on Youtube, go ahead and give me a ping in the description at @wafflesarehere. Thanks!

Other than that, enjoy the chaos. Welcome to Cracked Life.

Cracked Life

Compatibility

Minecraft: Java Edition

Platforms

Tags

Creators

Details