How to run a hardcore season like the creators: rules, revive and finale

The difference between a hardcore server that fizzles out after four days and a season your friend group still talks about months later isn't in the plugins. It's in the set-up: a fixed end date, a rule set everyone knows in advance and an answer to the question of what happens when you die. That's how the creators do it, and that's how you do it with your own group.

1. Pick a season length and stick to it

The well-known hardcore seasons on YouTube last three weeks, and that's no coincidence. Short enough to keep the tension up, long enough to build a base and get a story going. For a group that plays two or three evenings a week, three to four weeks is ideal. We'd advise against anything longer than six weeks: whoever dies in week one drops out. Put the end date in Discord and agree that the server locks after that, no matter how many players are still alive.

2. The rule set (template)

Copy this into your Discord and adjust whatever doesn't fit your group:

1. Everyone has one life. Whoever dies becomes a spectator until the end of the season, unless rule 5 applies.
2. Logging out during a fight or a fall counts as a death. The admin puts you in spectator.
3. No exploits, no duping, no X-ray. If you're unsure whether something is allowed, ask before you do it.
4. PvP is allowed from day 4, not during the first three days. Wrecking bases is allowed, but not with lava or TNT.
5. Every player can be brought back once. Cost: a totem or an agreed set of rare items, to be sacrificed by a living player.
6. Spectators may watch but may not pass information to living players.
7. The world border starts at 3000 blocks and shrinks in the final week.
8. On the final day there's a finale event; whoever is still alive then shares the win unless the group agrees otherwise.

3. Tech that enforces the rules

Rules work better when the server enforces them itself. The basics: a Paper server with hardcore=true, a whitelist with enforce-whitelist=true and no more than two ops. How to set that up is in How to make a hardcore SMP server with friends. On top of that:

• Combat logging: a plugin that counts a player logging out mid-fight as dead, so rule 2 doesn't depend on the player's honesty.
• Revive: a revive plugin for rule 5, or an admin who runs /gamemode survival name after the group has made the sacrifice. See reviving a dead player.
• CoreProtect to settle arguments about wrecked bases with facts: installing CoreProtect.
• DiscordSRV for automatic death announcements in Discord. That turns every death into an event for the whole group: setting up DiscordSRV.

4. Build towards a finale

Without a finale a hardcore season dies a quiet death: the last two players avoid each other and nobody's watching any more. The creators solve that with events and a shrinking world. You can too, with nothing but vanilla commands:

worldborder set 3000
worldborder center 0 0
# final week: shrink to 500 blocks over 7 days
worldborder set 500 604800

The border then shrinks slowly and visibly. Announce it in advance so players can get their stuff out of the edge. For the final evening, an arena at spawn and an announced time work best; spectators can watch and the BlueMap map gives the viewers at home an overview.

5. Keeping spectators involved

The biggest risk with hardcore is that half the group is nothing but an audience after a week. Give spectators a role: let them organise the finale, do commentary in voice chat, keep the map up to date or make a tier list. If you really want them back in the game, go for a deathban of a few days instead of permanent death; that's a rule you set beforehand, not halfway through.

6. Recordings and streams

Many groups want to record their season, even if it's just for the group chat. A few practical rules: never show the server address on screen, use groups in Simple Voice Chat so teams can't eavesdrop on each other, and agree that a stream may not give away information the others don't have. See installing Simple Voice Chat for the group feature.

7. After the season

1. Make a backup of the world and download it, so the group can walk through it later: creating a backup.
2. Put the server on free play without hardcore for a few days, so the spectators get to build a bit too.
3. Start the new season with a fresh world and a new seed: resetting your world. A new season on an old world is never as exciting as the first.

How much server you need

A season with ten to fifteen friends runs well on 8 GB of RAM; smaller groups manage with 5 GB. At MC-Node that's €8.80 or €5.50 per month, cancellable monthly, so exactly the length of a season. We've put everything you need for a season like that on one page: start your own hardcore SMP.

Further reading

• The best plugins for a hardcore SMP
• Starting an SMP with your friend group (and keeping it fun for months)