BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

Yay! Conspiracy!

Nah.  It would be better if the Clan Lords earn trust by keeping secrets, even though they’re not required to do so.  Could lead to some interesting betrayals.

I’m thinking of the current Combat mechanics that we sort-of but don’t-yet agree on. There’s only seven levels of health, so a single betrayal in a ten-move could end up with someone Dead and plenty of hard feelings.

But then again, this is really asking the question: Is Clan Lordship supposed to be a GM-like position to keep the game running and help Bucky out, or is it a in-world position where corruption is something that happens and players have to be on their toes against it? We need to choose one option or the other, not just stay in the middle.

I could see the Dynasty going the Corruption route, although once we enter the land of diplomatic wheeling-dealing the actual game mechanics cease mattering in favor of who is in with whom. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just a different thing, and I don’t know which one Bucky wants.

Ideally, both.  There should be certain boundaries in the ruleset which they are just plain not permitted to cross (even at the risk of losing their lordships), but everything else is fair game.

Okay, but those boundaries should be enforceable.  It’s simple, no?  Just state some consequences for violations (“Don’t do this or else...”).

Should be generalized to *all* characters, not just Clan Lords.

@Bucky: Could you give me an example of what one of these boundaries would be?

I took a walk and thought about this more, and it isn’t so quite so simple than at first glance.

Suppose A and B duel, with C as Clan Lord. A makes the exact right counters to all of B’s moves, B dies. What happened?

1: A got very very lucky. Yeah, right, but it’s still a conceivable possibility.
2: C told A all the right moves. This is what everyone is going to suspect, but what if…

3: C told B the /wrong/ moves to back-stab him. A is then framed for this.
4: C told B the right moves to make, but to make sure that D, another conspirator, wins, B sacrificed himself and made the wrong moves to frame A and C.
5: A was planning to do 4, but C was suspicious, so C told B to wait, gave A an arbitrary list of moves, then took A’s moves and gave them to B, who made the wrong moves so A /won/, and thus framing A.
6: C fooled both combatants into thinking that he was in with them, and just chose the one he liked better to win.
7: A and B wanted to end the Clan Lordship of C, who is completely honest in this scenario. They conspire and match their moves up. B dies and everyone thinks it’s C’s fault somehow.
8: 7, but B was supposed to win. A backstabbed B by matching up his moves to win.

And so on, and so forth. There’s absolutely no way to untangle the web once it’s all over, so there’s no way to punish the ‘culprits’. For all we would know, all or none of them could be involved somehow. In fact, even if this proposal passes there’s no way to be sure what actually happened, because if we say all perfect wins are just 7 and 8s, some Clan Lord and a friend could pull a 2. Unless we have a computer do it somehow, there’s no way we can make /sure/ nothing funny’s going on.

I won’t self-kill this just yet, though. I want to hear what everyone else thinks.

Wouldn’t the obvious solution be to not make any rules that are susceptible to such backstabbing, and fix or eliminate the ones that are?

Why? This rule is not enforceable in any way, yet it gives the implication that Clan Lords do not cheat, and in a way allows them to be considered “incorruptible”. If the others think they aren’t, simply remove them.

Actually, this does not say what the sub-rule should be titled.

I will always vote against any proposal that involves players having the responsibility of handling hidden information.

Per Yoda