Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Proposal: Patronage of the Mad Prince

Vetoed. Josh

Adminned at 03 Mar 2010 03:38:45 UTC

Append the following text to rule 2.3 Royal Blood:

The Mad Prince may, as an optional daily action, Provide Patronage to any Commoner by increasing Commoner’s resources by the same amount that would occur if Commoner Scavenged, choosing the two Resources awarded as pleases the Mad Prince.  The Mad Prince may perform daily actions even though he is not a Commoner.

A strict reading of 3.1’s glossary and its references to Commoners could suggest that the Royal Blood law actually significantly limits the options of the Mad Prince in basic gameplay, so the second part is included to make it waterproof.

posted by dbdougla at 02 Mar 2010 04:46:43 UTC Comments (3)

Comments

Put:

02-03-2010 05:22:57 UTC

I thought daily actions are to be vetoed?

Kevan: he/him

02-03-2010 08:36:44 UTC

If Ais523 has explicitly said that he’ll veto all daily actions (I know he’s generally against the use of daily actions when they make for a “grind” mechanic), that should be made public - I hadn’t heard it either.

This seems okay because nobody’s grinding from it, it’s just an action the Prince can take when he feels like it, and he can’t take it more than once a day.

against Giving out Coal seems a bit much, when it’s our lifeblood and would put a player an entire week ahead of others. Would be okay if it was limited to the other resources, though, or even if he just threw players a couple of gemstones.

ais523:

02-03-2010 09:11:27 UTC

veto Encouraging me to grind is just as bad as encouraging other people to grind. I’m also leery of a mechanic that lets me reward arbitrary players; it would seem that I would necessarily have to unfairly favour people in order to actually use it. I may be mad and evil and in favour of world domination and all that; but that doesn’t mean I have to be unfair. (I did explicitly state I’d veto all daily actions, in the commentary to my AA. Also attempts to make me an admin.)

Apart from issues with dailies and the balance implications of being able to bump people a week forwards whenever I like, I don’t think the clause specifically allowing me to perform dailies is necessary. “Royal Blood” prevents me being considered a Commoner for the purpose of dynastic rules; but the definition of dailies is, despite my best efforts in previous dynasties, still in the Glossary, and therefore not a dynastic rule. (There is a potential issue with “he isn’t a commoner for the purpose of the rule, and therefore incorporating the definition in the glossary into the ruleset means that the once-a-day restriction doesn’t apply to the Mad Prince, but that’s the sort of scam which would only really have a chance of working in B (where you’d probably get away with it) and Agora (where it would probably fail, but inspire discussion for a few days); and scamming inside your own dynasty is IMO bad form, as what could you hope to achieve? You can’t win your own dynasty, and IMO it’s bad form to try to help any particular other player win, unless the entire theme of the dynasty is based around an unfair setup to begin with.)