What is the Fair Play Agreement (FPA)?
The Fair Play Agreement (FPA) is a system to help prevent races being decided by crashes, softlocks, power surges/outages, and other unfortunate circumstances out of the player’s control. While this system provides some protection to the players when the circumstances are outside of player control, it does not protect the player from crashes and softlocks that are known and avoidable (see here for a list).
How Does it Work?
For a tournament or league race that is covered under the FPA, a runner can invoke FPA by typing !fpa in the race chat. From this point, you may backtrack and redo any checks (and only those checks) that had previously been done. From the moment you invoke FPA, you have up to 15 minutes to redo checks and get back progress that was lost. If at any point you do a check that you have not previously done or gain information that you did not previously have (such as reading a new hint stone), your FPA call will immediately end. You should also try and set your inventory and time of day to as close as possible (within reason) to the point where you had crashed, and you may not use this time to give yourself an ammo refill to restart your time at a higher count than when you started. [For example, if you crashed when you only had 2 bombchus remaining, at the end of your FPA, you should burn any excess bombchus until you once again have 2 remaining]
When you have caught back up, type “caught up” in the race chat. If you need to invoke the FPA multiple times in a single race, the time used in the first call is subtracted from your total time for the second. For example, if there is a 5 minute time difference between when you first typed !fpa and “caught up” in chat, you have only 10 minutes left for the second instance. If you do not indicate that you were “caught up” in the race chat, staff will assume that you used the full 15 minutes.
If your opponent invokes the FPA, you do not need to do anything differently, just continue to play the seed. If the player that made the FPA call either loses by over 15 minutes or wins, the race results stand, otherwise, tournament staff will review the call and determine the winner as soon as possible (within 24 hours maximum).
What is and isn't covered?
Generally speaking, any known, avoidable crash or softlock is NOT covered by the FPA. An exhaustive list can be found here. Any crashes or softlocks similar to those on the above list are also not covered. If you are unsure of what anything on the list means, please ask BEFORE racing as ignorance is not a valid excuse here.
Restreams
When a race is being featured on a restream, there is a tangible benefit to having both players progress synchronized. For races featured on a restream, we will default to the “old method” of FPA. In these cases, both players must either sit in a tournament voice channel in discord or otherwise be reachable at a moment’s notice. When the FPA is called, the race monitor assigned to the race will contact the other player and ask them to pause for an FPA call. When the player who crashed is caught back up, the race monitor will first ensure that the other player is ready, then restart both runners with a countdown in race chat.
Behind the Scenes
Each race where a runner invokes FPA will be manually reviewed by tournament staff. The reviewer will ensure that:
- The reason for the FPA call was valid
- No checks or additional information were gained by the player before the crash
- The time between !fpa and "caught up" is accurate
From there, the reviewer will recalculate how the finish time needs to be adjusted and alert the race participants for a final result.
Team Formats
The FPA is enacted for an entire team, rather than for the individuals on the team. Any member of the team may call for an FPA, regardless of which member has experienced the interruption. The entire team is allotted a total of 15 minutes of recovery time. Any member of the team that is not catching up on lost progress must pause the game.
Tournament Specific Changes
The details above are considered the general rules for FPA. If a tournament or event wishes to use FPA and wants to deviate from the specifics outlined above, (such as allowing no maximum FPA time), they MUST outline these changes in their tournament rules document. If an event uses FPA and does not list any changes to this FPA document in their rules document, then it will be assumed they are using the FPA system as above.
FAQ
- What if the runner gains information that they had not had before the crash? This is when the time ends. If the runner decides to gain any information that they didn’t have pre-crash, the FPA time ends. Maybe they didn’t check the Kokiri Forest gossip stone and check it again on their way past to reclaim checks. That would be the end of their FPA recovery time (for that call).
- What if a player tries to abuse this system? Since this system does not interfere with the second runner, a player who abuses the system can be removed from the FPA. Their opponents would still be covered.
- Can I opt out? No, you cannot opt out. However, you may choose not to invoke the FPA if you crash.
- What if I make an FPA call due to a crash that is NOT covered by the FPA? Then I spend the next 15 minutes retracting my steps instead of optimally routing in new checks while backtracking? This is basically the biggest problem we envision with this system. We have done our best to provide an exhaustive list of crashes and softlocks that are covered by the FPA and it is up to you to familiarize yourself with the list.
- Won’t the player who made the FPA call be able to metagame off of their opponent’s finish time? Technically, yes. But the amount of information is really minimal. The FPA covers a maximum of 15 minutes. The odds you will be able to metagame your final required item, clear your final dungeon, climb ganon’s tower and defeat ganon in 15 minutes is basically zero. So we do not think that there is any concern here.