BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

I merged them myself a while ago, mostly to avoid the implication that I’d won eight dynasties when I’d only won seven, and to stop my next dynasty from being misleadingly labelled as my ninth. Feel free to shuffle things around if you want to make your DoV more prominent, though.

I’d prefer to have them unmerged. Kevan doesn’t have eight wins, but he does have seven wins and one mantlepass. The current version is misrepresenting history, really.

I also think the next Dynasty that Kevan will supervise should be called the Ninth Dynasty of Kevan.
Roujo won a full Dynasty and, had he chosen not to give the mantle back to Kevan (which he could have done), the following dynasty would have counted as a totally separate one. There is no reason his win is lesser than any other.

I see Kevan’s point. It’s a bit messy having two dynasty names for something that is effectively one contiguous dynasty. It feels like the kind of thing that we would have to explain, tediously.

Hm, going by that reasoning, my dynasty shouldn’t even be on the wiki, since it implies that I have won one dynasty, when I have actually won zero.

oh, also, de-idling myself.

I understand that it might be confusing to newcomers, but it’s still what happened: I gave my win back to Kevan so that he could start over, so he posted another Ascension Address. In my opinion, that means another Dynasty. I don’t think we should change the public record just so that newcomers don’t get confused. If they want to get what happened, they can read the wiki - it was pretty plainly explained in the notes of the Seventh.

I guess I disagree just on the grounds that it’s not important enough that the maintenance of factual accuracy should displace the need for ease of use. This isn’t the ruleset, where accuracy is required; it’s a strictly informal chronicle of proceedings and thus should strive towards simplicity rather than complexity. If understanding the end of the dynasty relies on knowing about a proposal that passed early on then splitting the page out creates an unnecessary roadblock.

The main downside is, of course, personal; I acknowledge that I have the luxury of feeling that way because it’s not my DoV at stake. But when all is said and done passing the mantle does implicitly mean that you lose the right to have your DoV acknowledged in the dynastic history outside of a footnote in the dynasty that you won.

I know that I won’t have my name up there in the people who have had Dynasties: I didn’t, I gave it away.

Still, I think it is more confusing to say “Two people won the Seventh” than “The Seventh was won quickly, so the Eight was given to the same person”. Right now, the acknowledgement of my DoV is “Roujo won the first version of this Dynasty”, as if it wasn’t a real win since after all the Dynasty carried on. Also, while the roadblock you mention is true, it doesn’t apply here since no Proposal passed before my DoV - so understanding the Eight/Second Seventh isn’t impaired by the fact that the First Seventh ended quickly.

In your Fourth Dynasty, Purplebeard won after one day. He chose to keep his win and lead a Dynasty of his own. When I won, I chose to give it back, and now I feel I am penalized for doing it. I know it’s just History - a wiki page among others - and I know I’m mostly arguing because it’s my DoV that’s at stake. Still, I wanted to share my opinion and my arguments.

I think it’s perfectly legitimate to argue about :)

Also, while the roadblock you mention is true, it doesn’t apply here since no Proposal passed before my DoV - so understanding the Eight/Second Seventh isn’t impaired by the fact that the First Seventh ended quickly.

Granted, but we do try to be consistent and live by precedent, and the thought experiment does show why it’s not a great precedent to adopt.

The speed of the win isn’t the question here, it’s the passing of the mantle. Your win was legitimate, but it’s being acknowledged in much the same way as Galdyn’s victory in the Second Dynasty of Darth Cliche - i.e. a footnote on the dynastic history page of that dynasty. I do think there’s an argument to be made for shifting your DoV from Miscellaneous to Ascension, but not for creating an entire new page.

(For what it’s worth, the contribution that you will be remembered for in that dynasty is much more likely to be reclaiming the old BlogNomic site than the DoV, anyway.)

What bothers me is that right now it’s acknowledged as a “first version” win alongside the “real” win. It feels like my win wasn’t as important since I decided to allow the Dynasty to continue. From my point of view, that’s like saying “Hey, you decided to give Kevan a second chance, so it doesn’t really count”.

Moving it to Ascension would be better, but still… From a rules standpoint, two dynasties happened. From a simplicity standpoint, I think it’s simpler to separate them - making a short Seventh page explaining my scam and a long Eight page with the actual dynastic history - than to keep them together, which means that there were two version of the Seventh, each of them won by a different person. I think saying that two people can win a Dynasty is a worst precedent than making an exception to the Roadblock.

(For what it’s worth, the contribution that you will be remembered for in that dynasty is much more likely to be reclaiming the old BlogNomic site than the DoV, anyway.)

Yeah, that was fun. =)

Oh, sorry, don’t read too much into how I worded or placed the bit about your Ascension, I was just hurriedly combining the two pages. Two Ascension sections would make much more sense, if we were keeping them on the same page.

We deliberately got rid of the “each dynasty is named according to the number of Dynasties its Emperor has headed” because the strict counting system didn’t always match common sense, and I’d have thought that common sense in this case would have been that screwing up the start of your dynasty (and having a kind player pick it up and hand it back to you) shouldn’t increment your dynasty count. I’d feel misrepresented any time anyone referred to me having won eight Dynasties.

Maybe I could formally disclaim ownership and make the Seventh Dynasty of Kevan into the First Non-Dynasty?

We could always separate the history page into two sections called “Seventh Dynasty of Kevan - Take One” and “Seventh Dynasty of Kevan - Take Two”. Would that work for everyone? Roujo gets recognition for a legal (and clever) victory, and Kevan’s next Dynasty can still be called his eighth.

Sorry, I was a bit caught up in my emotions in the last comments…
*blushes*

I understand what you mean by the number part… It’s true that it wouldn’t be truly representative. I don’t think you have to disclaim, either: you were the Emperor of both of them. What if they were “The Seventh Dynasty of Kevan” and “The Seventh Dynasty of Kevan, Take 2”? I think it would be representative of the number of Dynasties you have headed - 7 - while showing that they were two separate Dynasties. If the general consensus is that they should be on the same page, two Ascension section (Ascencion - Take One and Take Two, maybe) would be nice. I’d prefer two pages, but maybe that’s just me. =P

[semi-related]
I find it really cool that we can have such conversations without it being interpreted as “pointless discussions over superfluous matters”. That’s one of the reasons I like Nomic. It’s about discussing, arguing, building a game together. Sometimes there are “confrontations”, but it’s not personal: it’s part of the game. So it stays cool and light, and at the end of the day Proposals and CfJs pass or fail, but people still have fun.

Thank you all for this game - it’s really appreciated. =)
[/semi-related]

(The above was written while Purplebeard posted his comment)

Why not make it “The Seventh Dynasty Of Kevan” and “The Other Seventh Dynasty Of Kevan”?

Among other things, combining them means that if someone asks “What was the shortest dynasty?”, you don’t really have a name to answer them with. There should be separate names, at least. If it’s only a matter of counting, I don’t particularly care about the numbers; mantle-passing screws them up anyway.

I like “The Other Seventh” =D

Is anybody really going to ask what the shortest dynasty was? And when all is said and done, are we keeping the dynastic record for their sakes?

I suspect that anyone who cares about when the shortest dynasty was will have found out well before they need to ask.

To elaborate on the above: things like shortest dynasty, coolest theme, proposal with most ever comments - i.e. things that cannot inform the way that future players play the game but comprise part of its folklore - are unsuited to the dynastic history, which is at best a somewhat dry recitation of facts. I perceive the wiki as being fundamentally more utile - for looking up old mechanics, evaluating the success of specific proposals and getting inspiration from successful scams. IRC and the like are far more suited to those players who want to get more involved in the more abstract questions, just as in another context they would fall more into the sphere of oral history than written.

Ruojo’s scam deserves recognition in the dynastic history because it was a good scam, not because it was a quick one.

I know I would ask. In fact, I did when I first joined. =P

Still, it’s true. Those things don’t really belong in Dynastic History. The “Records” page lists the objective records - shortest, most comments. I think that page will better appease the statisticians than an oral “Oh, I think that Dynasty lasted about 6 months, so it might be the longest”. =P

About the value of my scam, I think both viewpoints are valid.
- It wasn’t that original, but I was the first to see it.
- It was a good one, and the timing doesn’t matter.
As the value of a scam is largely subjective, it will vary from person to person.

Oh, and Josh: I don’t feel that this discussion lead to the consensus that Kevan’s Seventh “was considered to constitute one continuous dynasty”. Kevan, Purplebeard, ais523 seem to share my opinion that it can be considered as two separate Dynasties, the issue between us being how to refer to them. =P

I’m not saying you’re not right, just that the wiki edit might be a little premature.