# Dognami Libre — Official Rules _Doggo 108 — Rulebook_ Dognami Libre is the free-pool individual game. It is built atop the Weekday Challenge: every weekday a player records a Walk and earns points by matching the Required Pattern. Libre layers a weekly **team-stacking** mechanic on top: successful players are paired and merged into ever-larger teams, week after week, until one team-member's failure brings the whole tier crashing back to solo. These rules govern Dognami Libre. The daily scoring rules they rest on are defined in the companion document **The Weekday Challenge — Official Rules**, and are referenced here as **TWC §X.Y**. --- ## 1. Object of the Game **1.1** The object of Dognami Libre is for a **Player** to survive as long as possible in the Dognami **Cascade** — a weekly team-stacking process in which successful Players merge into ever-larger teams. **1.2** Survival requires that the Player and every other member of their current team complete the Weekday Challenge successfully each week. A team that survives a week is merged with another same-sized surviving team to form one of double the size. A team that fails is **Crashed**: all its members are returned to solo play and must start the climb again. **1.3** There is no fixed objective beyond endurance. The game has no winner — only survivors. The largest surviving team at the end of a Season is publicly recognised. --- ## 2. Eligibility **2.1** Dognami Libre is open exclusively to Walkers whose account type is **Free**. **2.2** Walkers with account type **Indie** are explicitly excluded from Dognami Libre and shall neither be paired, merged, nor Crashed. Indie Walkers may still play the Weekday Challenge for personal points. **2.3** Walkers with account type **Manager**, and Walkers currently on a Manager's roster (see **Doggo 7s** rules), are excluded from Dognami Libre for the duration of their managed-team membership. A Walker who leaves a managed team and reverts to Free re-enters Dognami Libre at solo (tier 1) on the following Sunday Evaluation. --- ## 3. Tiers and Team Composition **3.1** Every Dognami Libre Player belongs to a **Dognami Team** of a defined **Tier**. The Tier denotes the team's current size: | Tier | Team size | |------|-----------| | 1 | 1 (solo) | | 2 | 2 | | 3 | 4 | | 4 | 8 | | 5 | 16 | | 6 | 32 | | n | 2^(n−1) | **3.2** There is no upper Tier cap. Teams may continue to merge indefinitely so long as same-Tier survivors are available to pair with. **3.3** Every new Player begins as a solo Tier 1 team containing only themselves. --- ## 4. The Sunday Evaluation **4.1** Once per week, at **00:00 UK time on Sunday night** (i.e. immediately following Friday's close of play in the Walker's local timezone, plus an evaluation window over Saturday), the System performs the **Sunday Evaluation**. **4.2** During the Sunday Evaluation, the System processes every Dognami Team in three steps: - **4.2.1 Assess.** For each team, count the proportion of members who completed the week's five-day Pattern Schedule **with all five Walks classified as correct** under TWC §6.1. - **4.2.2 Cascade.** If that proportion fails to meet the survival threshold defined in §5, the team is Crashed (see §5). - **4.2.3 Promote.** Surviving teams of the same Tier are paired at random and merged into a single team of the next Tier. The merged team retains the higher-scoring constituent's identity (see §6). **4.3** The Sunday Evaluation is automatic. Players take no action during the evaluation. Outcomes are communicated by email by 00:30 UK Sunday night, and are visible on the Player's dashboard from that moment onward. --- ## 5. Collapse Conditions **5.1** A Dognami Team is Crashed at the Sunday Evaluation if either of the following holds: - **5.1.1 Challenge failure.** Ten per cent (10%) or more of the team's Players failed to complete the week's Pattern Schedule with five correctly-classified Walks. For these purposes, a Player has "failed the week" if any single weekday for that Player carries a Walk that did not match the Required Pattern, or carries no valid Walk at all. - **5.1.2 Recruitment drain.** Ten per cent (10%) or more of the team's Players were recruited away to a managed team during the immediately preceding **Hire Window** (Friday 23:55 → Saturday 23:55 UK), governed by the Doggo 7s rules. **5.2** The threshold in §5.1 is applied as a strict greater-than-or-equal-to comparison. Worked examples: | Team size | Failures or recruits | Crashed? | |-----------|---------------------:|----------| | 2 | 1 | Yes (50%) | | 4 | 1 | Yes (25%) | | 8 | 1 | Yes (12.5%) | | 16 | 1 | No (6.25%) | | 16 | 2 | Yes (12.5%) | | 32 | 3 | Yes (9.375% — but 4+ are needed in practice to clear 10%). Recomputed: 3/32 = 9.375% → No; 4/32 = 12.5% → Yes. | (Note: row 6 corrected — three failures out of 32 is 9.375%, which is below the 10% threshold. The team survives. Four failures crash it.) **5.3** When a team is Crashed, all of its Players are returned to solo Tier 1 on the spot. Their personal Weekday Challenge points are unaffected — only Tier and team membership reset. **5.4** A Crashed Player may begin climbing the Cascade again from the following Monday. There is no cooldown. **5.5 Path B reprieve.** A Tier-1 Player who would otherwise be Crashed under §5.1.1 is reprieved — and advanced to Tier-2 pairing alongside the §5.1.1 survivors — if their combined score across the just-closed week and the immediately preceding week is **strictly greater than 90 points**. The threshold is calibrated to TWC §6: two perfect weeks earn 100; one perfect week plus a four-correct/one-wrong-shape week earns 95 ✓; two four-correct/one-wrong-shape weeks earn exactly 90 ✗ (strict). Any missed day in either week pulls the sum to 80 or below, disqualifying. Path B applies only to Tier-1 → Tier-2 entry. Higher-Tier promotions remain governed solely by §4.2.3. --- ## 6. Team Identity and Naming **6.1** Each newly formed Tier-2 team is assigned an **auto-generated team name** drawn from a sports-club-style generator (examples: _Real Paws_, _Pups United_, _FC Kibble_). Names are intentionally evocative of football and rugby clubs. **6.2** When two same-Tier teams merge, the **higher-scoring** team's name survives. The lower-scoring team's name is retired (it may be reused by the generator in future). **6.3** If two merging teams have identical aggregate scores, the team whose first member uploaded a Walk earliest in their history keeps the name. Beyond that, the System breaks ties by lexicographic ordering of internal team IDs — a deterministic but non-meaningful fallback that Players need not understand. **6.4** Team names are not editable by Players. The auto-generated identity is part of the game's flavour. --- ## 7. The Team Leaderboard Score **7.1** Independent of the Cascade, the System maintains a **Team Leaderboard Score** for each active Dognami Team. The Team Leaderboard Score determines public ranking within the Dognami Libre standings; it does **not** affect Cascade survival, which is governed solely by §5. **7.2** Each Walk contributes to the Team Leaderboard Score as follows: - **7.2.1 Base score.** The points awarded under TWC §6 (+10, +5, or −10). - **7.2.2 Tier multiplier.** Multiplied by a factor that scales with the team's current Tier, recognising that coordination at higher Tiers is harder. - **7.2.3 Timezone multiplier.** Multiplied by a factor (1× to 13×) reflecting the time-zone spread between this Player and the team's current top scorer ("ground zero"). A 12-hour difference earns the maximum 13×; same time zone earns 1×. **7.3** The exact multiplier formulae are tuning constants that the System may adjust between Seasons. The current values are documented on the **How to Play** page on the Doggo 108 website. **7.4** A Player's personal score (used for individual rankings and referral bonuses, see §9) is computed without multipliers — it is simply the sum of their per-Walk TWC §6 points. --- ## 8. Exceptions and Edge Cases ### 8.1 Account-type change mid-week **8.1.1** A Walker who changes account type from Free to Indie mid-week is removed from their Dognami Team at the moment of the change. Their absence does **not** count as a failure under §5.1.1 — they are simply withdrawn. **8.1.2** A Walker who changes account type to Manager, or who joins a managed team, is likewise withdrawn from Dognami Libre without penalty to their former team. ### 8.2 Co-walked Walks **8.2.1** Per TWC §7.2, all Walks recorded for a shared dog accrue points to the Principal. A Co-walker who is themselves a Dognami Libre Player accrues no Dognami points from the shared dog's Walks. **8.2.2** A Co-walker who has no dog of their own and walks only as a Co-walker is **ineligible for Dognami Libre**, because they cannot generate Weekday Challenge points in their own name. ### 8.3 Walkers who never miss **8.3.1** A Player who completes the Pattern Schedule perfectly for many weeks running, while the wider Dognami repeatedly Crashes around them, does not accumulate any special status from longevity beyond their public season records. The game rewards consistency only insofar as it keeps the Player's team alive. ### 8.4 Mid-Season joiners **8.4.1** A Walker who registers at any point during the Season enters Dognami Libre as a solo Tier 1 team on the next Sunday Evaluation following their first completed Weekday Challenge week. ### 8.5 Season transitions **8.5.1** At the end of a Season, all Dognami Teams of all Tiers are dissolved without prejudice. The Season's largest surviving team is recognised in the public season records. The new Season begins with every returning Player at solo Tier 1. --- ## 9. Referrals (Summary) **9.1** Dognami Libre Players who refer new Walkers earn a portion of the referred Walker's Weekday Challenge points: **100% for the first five weeks**, **10% thereafter**. Referrals are configured by a unique link of the form `https://www.doggo108.com/?ref={uid}`. **9.2** Referral points are added to the referrer's personal score only. They do **not** propagate into the Team Leaderboard Score multipliers under §7.2. **9.3** Referrals do not affect Cascade survival. A referred player's failure or success counts toward the team to which the referee themselves belongs — not the referrer's team. --- ## 10. Glossary **Cascade.** The weekly Dognami Libre evaluation process that promotes surviving teams to the next Tier and Crashes failing teams. See §4 and §5. **Crashed.** A Dognami Team that has failed the week's evaluation under §5.1. All its members are returned to solo Tier 1. **Dognami Team.** A team of one or more Dognami Libre Players, of a defined Tier. See §3. **Hire Window.** The 24-hour window each weekend (Friday 23:55 → Saturday 23:55 UK) during which Managers may recruit Free-pool Players. Governed by the Doggo 7s rules. Referenced here only as a Crash trigger. **Player.** A Walker who is enrolled in Dognami Libre — that is, a Walker holding account type Free who is not currently on a managed roster. (Compare **Walker**, defined in TWC §8.) **Sunday Evaluation.** The scheduled cascade-and-merge process that runs at 00:00 UK time on Sunday night. See §4. **Tier.** The numeric label for a Dognami Team's current size, doubling at each successful Sunday Evaluation. See §3.1. **TWC.** Abbreviation for _The Weekday Challenge — Official Rules_, the companion rulebook governing daily scoring. References to TWC §X.Y point to a clause in that document. --- _End of rulebook — Dognami Libre._ _Companion rulebooks: The Weekday Challenge · Doggo 7s._