BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

Fame

• ais523 gains 2 Fame for finishing in the lowest number of Plays as Scrutinised.
• Josh gains 8 Fame for finishing in the lowest number of Plays as an Underdog.
• Habanero gains 3 Fame for finishing in the second lowest number of Plays as a Runner.
• JonathanDark gains 1 Fame for finishing in the second lowest number of Plays as Scrutinised.
• CyberStella gains 1 Fame for not finishing as an Underdog.
• GetPunnedOn gains -100 Fame (to a minimum of 0) for not finishing as Scrutinised.

Medals

• ais523 and Josh gain 1 Gold for finishing in the lowest number of Plays.
• Habanero and JonathanDark gain 1 Silver for finishing in the second lowest number of Plays.

Link to Race 4, since a Sticky Post doesn’t stay on the front page forever:

Race 4

In the rule Races, change “If there is an Ongoing Race but no Racing Snails” to “If there is an Ongoing Race but no more than one Racing Snail”.

Something happened that probably needs more publicity than a couple of wiki history entries and a comment in the current Race, so I’m making a post to explain.

JonathanDark attempted to Spot Danger (bringing the Danger Level to 4), then activate a Stomp Rocket for 96, presumably under an interpretation where multiple copies of the same item apply the passive multiple times. The action doesn’t actually do that with either of the main interpretations of the rules, though:
- I think the correct interpretation of “Items may also have Passive effects, which apply to all Snails who have that Item in their Items.” in the Official Ruleset is that if a Snail has multiple copies of the same Item, the Passive effect only applies once (because the rule seems to check to see if at least one copy of the item is held). Several Passive Effects are clearly designed to use this interpretation, e.g. otherwise a set of Reverse Rockets would all fire simultaneously if you got eaten once.
- In particular, Flashy Shell Wrap doesn’t work correctly under JonathanDark’s interpretation; Josh’s 4 Flashy Shell Wraps would, under that interpretation, have caused four Spot Danger actions whenever Josh’s Plays increased by 2. In that situation, the Danger Level would actually be 9 prior to JonathanDark’s actions rather than 3, so the attempt to Spot Danger failed, and in any case the distance moved wouldn’t be 96. However, Josh used my interpretation when resolving his actions earlier; if my interpretation is incorrect then Josh’s actions would not have been resolved properly, and the real gamestate would look quite different from the tracker, depending on just how much of his actions were valid.

JonathanDark didn’t update other Snails’ Rocket Fuel as part of the actions. I’ve updated it assuming that only one copy of the passive fires even if you have multiple items. Under JonathanDark’s interpretation, GetPunnedOn would have substantially more Rocket Fuel (and probably I would do, depending on just how much of Josh’s actions were legal), so if we decide that that interpretation is correct, that’s another part of the gamestate that would need correcting.

This isn’t a CFJ because I think I’ve fixed things with a wiki update, but it seems likely to cause controversy, so it’s worth explaining what happened in case a dispute arises (and to invite opinions about which of us has read the Official Ruleset correctly).

(A link to the Race 4 post for convenience, because it’s dropped off the front page: Race 4)

Change the core rule “Calls for Judgement” to read as follows:

Any Snail or Idle Snail can raise a Call for Judgement (abbreviated “CfJ”) by posting an entry in the “Call for Judgement” category. Snails are encouraged to do this only when two or more Snails actively disagree as to the interpretation of the Ruleset, or when a Snail feels that an aspect of the game needs urgent attention.

A Pending CfJ may be Enacted by any Admin or Idle Admin if either of the following is true:

• It is Popular.
• It was posted between 48 and 120 hours ago, and has been open for comments and in the “Call for Judgement” category ever since it was posted, with no comments containing an AGAINST voting icon having been made to it.

A Pending CfJ may be Failed by any Admin or Idle Admin if either of the following is true:

• It is Unpopular.
• It specifies neither changes to the gamestate or ruleset nor corrections to any gamestate- or ruleset-tracking entities.

When a CfJ is Enacted, the gamestate and ruleset are updated as specified in the CFJ, and the Admin or Idle Admin Enacting it shall update the ruleset-tracking page and gamestate-tracking entities accordingly.

Dynastic rules cannot prevent or limit the creation of CfJs and cannot prevent or limit changes being made via CfJ enactment. This rule cannot be overruled by a dynastic rule.

In the core rule “Votes”, change:

Additionally, if the author of a Votable Matter has not used a valid voting icon in a comment to the post, then the author’s Vote is FOR.

to

Additionally, if the author of a Votable Matter is not idle and has not used a valid voting icon in a comment to the post, then the author’s Vote is FOR.

In he rule Track Record, change “30” to “10”.

Unidle the Idle Snail named “Habanero”, except that when doing so, set that (formerly Idle) Snail’s Position to 0 and Plays to 0 rather than setting them to the values which they would normally gain upon unidling. This overrides any restrictions in the dynastic rules that might prevent setting those values.

I am back from Christmas vacation and would like to be unidled! Keep in mind:
- Per the rule Races “If the Position of a Snail is after the Finish Line, they may not Play, and their Position cannot be changed while a Race is Ongoing”. I am currently at 109cm, after the Finish Line. This means I am not moved to the Bucket upon unidling as “when a Snail unidles it is moved to the Bucket” might suggest, since the more limited in scope clause takes priority per the Appendix.
- I have made no Plays in the Ongoing Race, and per the rule Plays “The number of Plays each Gastropod has made in the Ongoing Race is publicly tracked as a number”. This means my Plays become 0 when I unidle. (On an unrelated note, I believe the proposal which passed to increase every Snail’s Plays by 1 did nothing for this same reason.)

Repeal the dynastic rule “Sleep”.

In “Plays”, change “Awake and Racing Snail” to “Racing Snail”.
In “Predators”, change “Awake Snail” to “Snail”.

This dynasty has been full of incorrectly performed actions. We collectively (and I in particular) have been trying to fix the tracker as we notice them (the Glossary permits you to “alter the representation to match what [you] believe to be the correct application of an incorrectly-applied alteration. This may include completing incomplete actions”), but given how many mistakes we’ve already found and caught, it seems likely that there are still some uncaught mistakes in the tracker that cause it to not properly reflect the gamestate.

And that has got me worrying a bit. At BlogNomic, the normal way you perform actions is to directly edit the tracker to reflect the result of the action. However, what if the tracker was wrong to start with? If you’re working from the wrong starting value, you produce the wrong result – and by the current reading of the appendix, that probably implies that the action never happened and/or is still in progress. (The exact wording is “If authorised by the rules as a result of a Snail’s action, changes to gamestate which is tracked in a specific place (such as a wiki page) do not take effect until the representation of that gamestate has been updated to match the authorised change.”, which is ambiguous based on the meaning of “updated” – but it probably means “the tracker has to match the gamestate after the change, at least with respect to the values that changed”. There’s potentially a more lenient reading, “the tracker has to be changed in a way that simulates the effect of that change on the tracker, even if this is different from the affect the change has on the gamestate”, although I don’t think that’s consistent with the usage of “authorised”.) This means, in effect, that a mistake by someone else can cause an apparently legal action to not take effect. (This is a particular problem if the action is a step in an atomic action; in that situation, you have to revert it due to being unable to continue, but it is unclear what it means to revert an action that was impossible in the first place.) All this is particularly likely to cause a snowballing effect – if one action fails due to the tracker incorrectly reflecting the starting state of the action, the tracker will be in an even wronger state, making further actions likely to fail, and it is quite possible that we end up in a state where all dynastic actions have been illegal for weeks.

For what it’s worth, I consider that taking advantage of this situation would essentially be a core rules scam (and thus barred by Fair Play) – if we are making a best-effort attempt to maintain the gamestate, we should probably treat that as the actual gamestate for the purpose of determining whether actions are legal, rather than letting someone point out an error early in the dynasty as a late-reveal scam. I’d be more comfortable if the rules actually reflected that intuition, though (and yet it’s a hard thing to express unambiguously in ruletext, something I know from experience at other nomics). This is particularly important for knowing how much to revert if an action is performed incorrectly – say a Snail attempts to perform an action near the end of their Waking Hour, and notices there was a mistake in it after the Waking Hour is over, are they allowed to fix it, do they have to revert, or do they have to wait for someone else to fix it during their Waking Hour? The core rules don’t really help us to figure out the details of a situation like that.

I’m not sure what we should do about this (or even whether we should do anything about it), but I thought it was worth letting other players know what I was worried about rather than worrying alone, especially if there’s a simple way to fix the situation.

Spot Danger three times.

In the rule “Races”, in the text “Reset the Plays of every Snail to 0” and the text “Set the Status of all Snails to Healthy”, replace “Snail” with “Gastropod”.

In “Plays”, change

Slipstream: If the most recent Play in the Ongoing Race was from a Snail other than you, change your Position by the same amount that Snail’s Position changed in their most recent Play.

to

Slipstream: Choose a Play made by a Snail other than you in the previous 24 hours, and change your Position as described in “Slipstream Distance” below.

Add a subrule to “Plays”, “Slipstream Distance”:

When a Gastropod Slipstreams a Play, the distance moved is based on the distance between the current Position of the Gastropod, and the Position from which the Play was made, as follows:

• The Play was made from exactly 1cm in front of the Gastropod’s current position: twice the distance that the Play moved (and in the same direction)
• The Play was made from 2-10cm in front of the Gastropod’s current position: the distance that the Play moved (and in the same direction)
• The Play was otherwise made from within 20cm of the Gastropod’s current position: half the distance that the Play moved, rounded up (and in the same direction)
• Other cases: one third the distance that the Play moved, rounded to the nearest integer (and in the same direction).

Set GetPunnedOn’s Pecking Order to 5. Set ais523’s Pecking Order to 6.

In the rule “The Award Ceremony”, change

Each Snail may have a Pecking Order;

to

Each Snail may have a Pecking Order, which (if present) is an ordinal number representing a position within a list (e.g. 1st, 2nd, etc.);

In the rule “Race Fame Modification”, change

Any Snail whose Pecking Order is 2 or Higher is Scrutinised. Any Snails whose Pecking Order is one of the two lowest values is an Underdog, unless they are Scrutinised. All Snails who are neither Scrutinised nor Underdogs are Runners.

to

Any Snail with a Pecking Order of 1st or 2nd is Scrutinised. Any non-Scrutinised Snails whose Pecking Order is later than all, or all but one, other Snails with a Pecking Order are Underdogs. All Snails who are neither Scrutinised nor Underdogs are Runners.

Replace

Leapsnail: If one exists, randomly select a Snail before the Finish Line whose Plays are between 0 and 4 less than yours or whose Position is within 20 of yours. Set your Position to be 1 greater than the selected Snail’s.

with

Leapsnail: If one exists, randomly select a Snail before the Finish Line whose Plays are between 0 and 4 less than yours and whose Position is within 20 of yours. Set your Position to be 1 greater than the selected Snail’s.

Change the first paragraph of the rule “Items” to:

Each Snail has a publicly tracked list of Items, defaulting to an empty list (the order in which Items are listed within the list is irreievant, and if a Snail has multiple copies of the same Item, this is tracked via listing the Item and its quantity, e.g. “Magnet (2)”). Each Item has a name, and optionally an effect that is applied when the Item is Discarded. Items may also have passive effects, which apply to all Snails who have that Item in their Items (but if a Snail has multiple copies of the same Item, only one of those copies applies its passive effect).

and change the decription of Rocket Fuel in that rule to:

Rocket Fuel: Does not count as an item for any Crystals. Passive effect: if you ever have more than 20 Rocket Fuel, you lose Rocket Fuel until you only have 20 left (this does not count as Discarding an item).

Also, change each of the three copies of

When discarded, discards all Rocket Fuels you own. Moves you one cm for every Rocket Fuel discarded this way.

to

When Discarded, remove all Rocket Fuels you own from your list of Items, and you move 1 cm for every Rocket Fuel removed this way.

In the rule “Predators”, change

If that Gastropod is not a Slug, it has at least 1 Play

to

If that Gastropod is a Snail, and the Race has been ongoing for less than 60 hours, that Snail has at least 1 Play

If “Safety Protocols” was not enacted, the rest of this Proposal has no effect.

In the rule “Items”, replace the text “until Spot Danger has been performed” with “until after the next time Spot Danger has been performed”.

Increase the Plays of every Snail by 1.