Deals between players that the game itself enforces
BuiltNeoForge1.21.1
Status
Jar and tests green; the author has since shelved the design
Mod loader
NeoForge
Minecraft
1.21.1
Who installs it
Everyone on the server needs it
📜 What it is
Anyone can promise another player three diamonds for a stack of iron. Fine Print makes the game hold the diamonds. You craft a Contract, fill in one fill-in-the-blank sentence, and shake on it by right-clicking the other player, at which point the payment leaves your inventory and sits in escrow, which just means the server is holding it. The game then watches the job on its own, and the moment it is done the escrow pays out and both copies of the paper burn to ash. Nobody has to trust anybody.
Writing a contract feels less like opening a menu and more like filling in a form at a desk: I want, I pay, by, sealed with. The nervous part is the handshake: you right-click your friend, they see the same sentence in plain English plus your public record of deals kept and broken, and then your diamonds are simply gone from your inventory until somebody earns them. What changes the mood most is the wax. Handing someone a contract sealed in Bitter Wax tells them what breaking it will cost before either of you has said a word, and the answer is that the whole server will find out.
👥 Playing with friends
The whole mod. Two players minimum; alone there is nobody to make a deal with.
⚠️ Before you install
Never playtested. Every screen has hardcoded pixel layouts that have never been rendered, so expect overlapping widgets at unusual GUI scales.
The author has shelved the design. The mod ledger marks it KILLED and says not to restart it as designed.
Item art is procedurally generated placeholder texture, legible but plain.
Needs two or more players. Solo there is nothing here at all.
⏱️ Your first 5 minutes
New to this mod? Do these in order and you will have seen the point of it.
Craft a Contract from paper, an ink sac and a gold nugget.
Craft Plain Wax from honeycomb and red dye. It makes two, and you cannot sign without a seal.
Right-click the contract to open the compose screen and fill in the four blanks.
Pick the payment out of the inventory grid at the bottom until the line reads 'Ready to sign.'
Right-click the other player. When they accept, your payment leaves your inventory.
Right-click your copy any time to see the counter, or run /contracts for everything you owe.
🔁 How it works
One screen, one sentence
The compose screen is laid out as a fill-in-the-blank sentence (I want, I pay, by, sealed with) and you fill it in by cycling the term type and clicking items out of your own inventory grid. When every blank is filled and you are holding the right seal, the bottom line flips from 'Not ready yet' to 'Ready to sign.' There are no blocks, no machines and no dependencies anywhere in the mod.
Tip: Without the matching seal item in your inventory the clause name renders dark red and the contract stays unsignable.
The handshake and the escrow
You sign by holding the contract and right-clicking the other player. They get a confirmation screen showing the same sentence in plain English, plus your record of contracts kept and broken. On accept there is a seal sound and wax particles, both players end up holding a sealed copy, and the payment leaves the author's inventory immediately. It is taken at seal time rather than at completion so it cannot be spent twice.
Tip: An offer lapses after about a minute if nobody answers it.
Six kinds of deal
Deliver: bring me 64 iron ore, handed in from your inventory. Hunt: kill 20 creepers, counted automatically. Mine: mine 500 stone, counted automatically. A job: free text like 'build me a house', which the author approves when satisfied. Truce: neither of us attacks the other, where the first to swing forfeits. Escort: stay within 24 blocks of me for 5 minutes, with the clock only running while you are actually close.
Tip: Kills and blocks only count for the signer, and never for a fake player.
The seal decides the penalty
There is no penalty dropdown. What breaking the deal costs is decided by what you seal it with. Plain Wax costs you only your reputation. A Bonded Seal forces the signer to match the pot with the same items as the payment, and if they break it the other side takes both piles. Bitter Wax marks a breaker as an Oathbreaker. Seeing red wax on a contract someone hands you tells you how serious they are without reading a word.
Tip: A truce always demands a matching stake whatever the seal; a pact where one side risks nothing is not a pact.
Your word is one public number
Every player has exactly one stat: contracts kept versus contracts broken. It is shown on the offer screen before you agree to sign with someone, and anyone can look it up with /contracts record. There are no factions, no standing bars and no formula. That is the entire social system.
Tip: /contracts on its own lists everything you are currently on the hook for.
Five rules settle every dispute
There is no court and no arbitration screen. If the signer fails or the deadline passes, the payment refunds to the author and the signer takes the mark. If the author voids a signed contract, the payment goes to the signer as a kill fee. You can always buy your way out, you can never rug-pull. If the signer voids, it refunds and they take the mark. If both void, it is a clean cancel with no marks. And silence is acceptance: submitted work the author never answered is paid at the deadline.
Tip: Partial deliveries always go home to whoever handed them in, even if that person is the one who broke the deal.
🎒 Items & blocks
Contract (Draft)
Blank paper with a tooltip that reads 'Blank. Right-click to write it.' Right-clicking opens the compose screen; the terms live on the item itself, so it describes itself even sitting in a chest.
Where: Crafted from paper, an ink sac and a gold nugget.
Sealed Contract
What both parties hold after the handshake. Right-click it for the live counter and the one or two actions available to you: hand in, mark the job done, approve and pay, or ask to void.
Where: Appears in both players' hands the moment an offer is accepted.
Plain Wax
The default seal. 'Break it and you lose only your name.' The payment refunds to the author and the breaker takes a permanent mark on their public record.
Where: Crafted from honeycomb and red dye; makes two.
Bonded Seal
'The signer must match the pot. Break it and the other side takes both.' Signing is refused outright if the signer cannot put up matching items; succeed and they get their stake back plus the payment.
Where: Crafted from Plain Wax and an iron ingot.
Bitter Wax
'Break it and you are marked an Oathbreaker for all to see.' Glowing and Weakness for five real minutes, plus a server-wide announcement. If the breaker is offline, the mark waits for them at login.
Where: Crafted from Plain Wax and a fermented spider eye.
🖼️ Texture gallery
Every texture this mod ships, at its real in-game size, scaled up so you can see each
pixel. Most are 16×16, the same size as a vanilla dirt block.
Flavour, not rules. None of this changes how the mod behaves.
Oathbreaker
Break a contract sealed in Bitter Wax and the server reads one line: your name, and the word Oathbreaker. You glow, so everyone can see you through walls, and you hit weakly, for five real minutes. Log out to dodge it and the mark simply waits, and you get 'You are still marked an Oathbreaker' on your way back in.
Silence is acceptance
The one rule written on a tooltip rather than in a menu. If somebody builds your house, marks the job done and you never answer, the deadline pays them anyway. Ignoring the person you hired is not a way to keep both the building and the diamonds.
🎁 Jokes & trivia
Bits you might miss
The harshest punishment the mod can inflict on you is being made to glow.
The most serious legal instrument in the game is crafted out of a fermented spider eye.
The compose screen really is a form: 'I want [ 64 x Iron Ore ] I pay [ 3 x Diamond ] by [ 3 days ] sealed [ Plain Wax ].'
A truce contract turns two players into a nuclear treaty. Both sides stake, the first to swing forfeits everything, and the entire server is told who did it.
You can walk away from a contract you wrote. It just costs you the payment as a kill fee to the other party. You can buy your way out; you can never rug-pull.
Griefing was not solved with a rule. A signer who logs off forever simply lets the clock run out, and the author quietly gets refunded.
From the workshop
The mod ledger records Fine Print as KILLED ('do not restart as designed') because the premise needs three people to learn a rule set before anything enjoyable happens. The built jar dates from the same week as that verdict, so the code is finished and the idea is shelved at the same time.
The build ships with a unit test whose only purpose is to prove that no outcome can destroy items. Every payout path either hands the stacks to an online player or queues them for delivery at login; nothing is ever dropped on the floor of an unloaded chunk.
Payout is keyed to the ledger entry, never to the item, so duplicating a sealed contract cannot duplicate the payout. The paper is a receipt, not the money.
Nothing in it has ever been clicked by a human. The handoff table lists the in-game playtest as 'NONE' in capitals, right under a green build and 16 out of 16 passing tests.
All three screens are hand-laid-out with hardcoded pixel offsets and have never been rendered even once; the author's own top risk is simply 'Everything UI.'
❓ FAQ
Can I play this by myself?
No. Every contract has two parties and you cannot make a deal with yourself, and the mod says so in as many words. It needs at least one other person in the world with you.
What stops someone taking my payment and never doing the job?
They never touch your payment. It goes to the server the moment the contract is signed and only moves when the condition is actually met, the deadline passes, or somebody voids. That is the entire idea of the mod.
What if the job is something a computer cannot check, like 'build me a house'?
That is the 'A job' term type. The signer marks it done, the author approves and pays. If the author never answers, the deadline pays the signer anyway.
Is this mod finished?
The code is: it builds, sixteen unit tests pass and a dedicated server boots on it cleanly. The design is not being continued; the author's own ledger lists it as stopped and advises against restarting it as designed.
Where can I download it?
Nowhere yet. It is a private build with placeholder art, not a public release.
⚒ Crafting recipes
Bitter WaxBonded SealContractPlain Wax
⬇️ Get it
Status: The jar compiles and the author has tested it himself, but it has not had a real playtest yet.
Install NeoForge for Minecraft 1.21.1. The
install guide walks through this assuming no prior knowledge.
Drop the mod's .jar file into your mods folder.
Everyone on the server needs it.
Launch the game with that loader's profile selected.
📦 Where is the file?
This wiki documents the mods; it does
not host them. Builds live in the project's own repository under
mc-fine-print/build/libs/.
