Players can (and it is heavily recommended that they do) form alliances of
magicians, called Councils.
A council is nothing more than a group of magicians who have decided to
agree on a set of rules that they themselves have written.
Councils are, in fact, a game-within-the-game. A version of Nomic inside
the SpellMaster game.
Creating a new council only takes three or more magicians who tell a GM
that they want to do so. A new council has only three rules:
- Anything that is not covered by a rule can be decided by a vote.
All rules except this one can be created, modified or abandoned by vote.
- A simple vote requires a simple majority (50% + 1 vote)
Changes to rules require a 2/3rd majority.
- All council members have one vote.
The interesting part is that only rule one can not be changed. Especially the part about equality can be modified to give senior members more votes, higher ranked members more votes or anything else that can be agreed upon according to the then-in-effect rules.
Players can freely create ranks and positions within their councils, can
create rules to govern learning structures, formula trading or simple matters
of respect and tradition. Everything is subject to definition by you, the
players. Including such simple things as whether or not the rules are
published.
This also means you have none but yourself to blame if things get out of
hand. The potential is endless. You can easily give one player dictator
powers and have a set of rules that is secret, yet carries severe penalties
for violations. Then again, who would want to be in such a council?
One thing to remember is that rules are still in-game agreements between characters. They don't bind the players and they can not supercede game rules (or natural laws of the game world, for that matter). They are like laws - including that they can be broken. You should include a few rules about punishments for violations.
The game provides every council with its own board on the forum where only members of the council can read or write. Councils are free to add further resources like websites, wiki sites, etc. - the only condition is that they have to give the GMs access to these sites so they can include their contents in the game where appropriate.