I was considering adding a parenthesis for clarity:

(as in ‘must,’ or ‘shall,’ and directed toward them in particular)

but I felt it would be unnecessary and overprescriptive.

I much prefer mechanical limitations rather than resorting to Fair Play, because its subjective. I agree with the idea though, but not the execution.

“A Wizard should not deliberately and unreasonably [...] prolong the non-performance of a game action which is required of them” takes us back to the currently rejected Compulsory mechanic that if you’re required to do something, you shouldn’t do anything else until you’ve done that. (If the duel rule says that a duelist “must submit a plan”, are you “deliberately and unreasonably prolonging non-performance” if you choose to vote on some proposals first?)

Putting it under Fair Play instead of a more objective mechanic gives us two things:

—in the general case, the must and should clauses, etc., can be judged using common sense, and therefore scam judgment becomes less about the letter and more about intention. Deterring scams in such general cases is what Fair Play is all about.

—in specific rules, like when duelists “must submit a plan”, you can just add a specific consequence IF AND WHEN you want one. Thus, new rule proposals with must or should clauses (which are a very common phenomenon in most games) don’t have to be perfect, they just have to have some clarity.

*must or shall clauses, not must or should

So judges can go about their business, so long as they get around to their (voluntarily offered and accepted) obligations reasonably soon. And duelists get the usual 48 hr deadline for plan submissions. And new rules generally work as intended, unless poorly written, and then they get scammed as usual, but not as often on must/shall technicalities.

Would judges be allowed to take other game actions instead of their obligations, though?

We’d accept a judge not feeling like judging just yet and stepping away from their computer to get some sleep or eat an ice cream, but would we accept them not feeling like judging right now and taking other game actions instead?

Tending to against, as I think a “must” rule with undefined consequences it is a bad rule that needs rewriting, rather than something that the Core Rules should be normalising.

Fair enough.