Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Call for Judgment: Unfair actors list

Timed out, failed 7-2—Rodlen was here

Adminned at 04 Apr 2009 09:42:45 UTC

Cut every scene in Act 4, and make it Finished.

Devenger’s messing with the list of actors has made Act 4 /incredibly/ unfair to all concerned, especially people who only just got back online after doing RL work for ages. There’s also no challenge in randomly rolling a DICE1 and getting Brad Pitt, and a huge body-count bonus. If you just want more bodies, do it by changing the rules, or at least by making it fair to everyone, not by messing with the lists inside an Act.

Comments

Kevan: he/him

31-03-2009 16:37:31 UTC

Yes, I thought this was a bit of a strange call from Devenger, and rushed to get my scene in before the list was changed again (it was actually DICE3, with two 10-point actors and one 1-point).

Retroactively wasting the time and writing of anyone who contributed anything seems a bit harsh, though. Can’t we just force a few rerolls to recast and rescore the scene?

against

ais523:

31-03-2009 16:41:50 UTC

for @Kevan: I’m happy to adopt a different solution to this, if you can think of one. Also, it was DICE1 for a while; I checked the wiki history. (It may have been DICE3 before that, though, there were several versions.) Something has to be done about it, anyway.

Kevan: he/him

31-03-2009 16:53:39 UTC

My different solution is “recast and rescore the scene” - reroll on the current actor table, for each Pitt, Jolie and Art, and deduct the difference from the Scene’s Body Count and Scripter’s Bodies.

Devenger:

31-03-2009 17:53:07 UTC

Dear God, what have I done? Wouldn’t a better CfJ be to revert the list to the 3-person list that (almost) started the Act, and remove my right to change the list? The body count bonus was precisely 10, which isn’t game-breaking. And frankly, yes, dice rolls don’t take much skill, but that’s never stopped the common formula for some Dynasties of Dice For The Win.

A better response to this problem might have been posting a non-offical post with your complaint, or PMing me. It’s simply a possibility I had not considered, not some deep intended injustice designed to spite anyone. As it stands, I’m actually thoroughly annoyed you jumped to a CfJ instead of being prepared to handle the problem sensibly.

(I changed the list in response to the first comment I’d actually had on the list-changing, which was negative, in http://blognomic.com/archive/recasting/.)

against Reverting the list to the one with only three entries for the remainder of this Act.

ais523:

31-03-2009 19:26:34 UTC

Well, I wouldn’t have voted for Stunt-Casting if the list was set to make it obviously the right decision for everyone. Personally, I feel that I shouldn’t have to be able to access imdb (which after all, isn’t the sort of website that can be easily justified for accessing from a network connection I don’t own, even though Blognomic arguably is) just to be able to participate in the game. Also, having the same famous actors in nearly all the scenes in an act is just a mess. (You’re also punishing players who miss act 4 in particular, by making it a lot more high-scoring than the others, although it’s less of a problem.) It’s also sort-of ridiculous to have a strategic option which it can’t possibly be a bad idea /not/ to use…

arthexis: he/him

31-03-2009 19:37:54 UTC

against I don’t think this fixes the issue, but I still think there is an issue that needs to be fixed (namely, the manipulation being done by the Producer)

Klisz:

31-03-2009 19:39:52 UTC

for

Kevan: he/him

31-03-2009 20:16:30 UTC

Devenger may have misjudged things by switching the list back mid-act, but we have an actual “Climax” rule which allows bonus double-body-counts (which will punish any players who happen to miss such an act).

Qwazukee:

31-03-2009 20:54:42 UTC

against Everything that Dev did was legal, and he wasn’t trying to benefit anyone in particular. If there’s an issue with the fairness of the rule, then you should propose to change it (or you should have voted against it in the first place).

I would vote for a rule change that seemed sensible.

ais523:

31-03-2009 21:19:11 UTC

@Qwazukee: I didn’t expect the Producer to scam the rule in question, especially as he’s in charge of the dynasty.

Devenger:

31-03-2009 21:38:27 UTC

Scam to what purpose? I wanted to see what people would do with a couple of well known actors having to fill ridiculous roles for game play reasons. I think people have written a few pretty funny scenes from it, that might not have happened with the big list of people most people have not heard of. I didn’t see this side-effect coming, admittedly, which was unwise - but generally, scams are premeditated, and attempt to achieve something more tangible than more opportunity for interesting things…

Rodlen:

31-03-2009 22:27:17 UTC

against

gill_smoke:

02-04-2009 13:37:22 UTC

against Dude, your harshing my mellow. There’s a movie to be made, why not focus on that?

Josh: Observer he/they

03-04-2009 04:46:29 UTC

against