Thursday, July 01, 2021

Proposal: Sprucing up a bit

Enacted popular, 7-0. Josh

Adminned at 02 Jul 2021 17:51:12 UTC

In “The Crypt of Dracula”, change “#666666” to “#888888” and update the ruleset accordingly.
If the proposal “Tepesh Mode” passed, reword the first paragraph of “Ritual Chambers” to the following:

The four rooms in the corners of the Zahndorf Crypt map are known as the Ritual Chambers. Ritual Chambers have a text colour of #FFFFFF and are always Lit. The Ritual Chamber located at A1 is called the Yellow Bile Chamber and has a background colour of #585B1F. The Ritual Chamber located at A8 is called the Black Bile Chamber and has a background colour of #1B2E4F. The Ritual Chamber located at H1 is called the Blood Chamber and has a background colour of #591F2E. The Ritual Chamber located at H8 is called the Phlegm Chamber and has a background colour of #2C541D. Richardo von Nestor may set these Chambers to have any Description that he wishes.

If the proposal “Tepesh Mode” did not pass, replace “Ritual Chambers have a background colour of #333333 and are always Lit.” with “Ritual Chambers are always Lit. They have a background colour of #333333 and a text colour of #FFFFFF.”
Move the Ritual Chambers’ entries to the top of the Room Legend.
Append periods to the end of the Descriptions of the Crypt Entrance, Entrance Vestibule, /\_/\, (=‘_’ ), and (, (”) (”) rooms.
Change the Description of the Shattered Stairway room to “A grand hall with a broken stairway that terminates in a bloody, rune-spattered stretch of stone.”

making the map more readable & fixing up a few descriptions while i’m at it :0

Proposal: The Ever-Changing Crypt

Enacted popular, 8-0. Josh

Adminned at 02 Jul 2021 17:50:11 UTC

In the rule “The Crypt of Dracula”, append the following to the paragraph beginning with “There is a list of Lit rooms”:

When a Vampire Lord or Richardo von Nestor changes the effect of a room, they may immediately update that room’s description to reflect the mechanical changes.

Proposal: Shadowy Benefactors

Self-killed. Josh

Adminned at 02 Jul 2021 17:49:37 UTC

Delete the sentence “Spending the cost and performing of the action is considered to be an atomic action” from the first paragraph of the rule “Vampire Lords” and then append to that paragraph the following:

Mysterious Actions may be performed at any time but require that their Cost be spent from the Puissance of the Vampire Lord carrying it out.

Reword the sentence that reads “While a Vampire Lord is Bloodthirsty, they may not perform any Power Actions except Blood Frenzy.” to:

While a Vampire Lord is Bloodthirsty, they may not perform any Power Actions or Mysterious Actions except Blood Frenzy.

Add a new subrule entitled “Remote Actions” to the rule “Vampire Lords” immediately after the subrule “Lair Actions” as follows:

Richardo von Nestor’s Starting Items are a publicly tracked list, defaulting to an empty list, and may consist only of items from the list of Treasures in the rule entitled Treasure. When the Crypt Awakens, Richardo von Nestor begins holding all the items in his Starting Items; then, Richardo von Nestor’s Starting Items are set to an empty list.

As a Mysterious Action that is also a Daily Action with a cost of 2, a Vampire Lord may add one item from the list of Average treasures to Richardo von Nestor’s Starting Items. As a Mysterious Action that is also a Daily Action with a cost of 3, a Vampire Lord may add one item from the list of Fine treasures to Richardo von Nestor’s Starting Items.

The spend-and-perform-are-atomic stuff is covered by the appendix now. And I think we should have space for actions that cost Puissance but don’t disturb the crypt, so long as they take place outside the crypt.

Proposal: Rubber Fangs

Timed out and failed, 2-6 with one unresolved DEF. Josh

Adminned at 02 Jul 2021 17:48:54 UTC

If Richardo von Nestor voted against this proposal, it has no further effect.

To “The Crypt of Dracula”, add:-

If at least three Vampires have communicated to Richardo von Nestor (either publicly or privately) that they think a particular named Room is “a bit silly”, and if that Room is not a Ritual Chamber, then Richardo von Nestor may change the name and description of the Room with that name, at any time.

Perhaps Josh has some grimdark cryptid abattoir in mind for Column 7, for when he comes to write that expedition diary, but even that could probably use some pronounceable room names.

Proposal: Angel of Music

Enacted popular, 10-0. Josh

Adminned at 02 Jul 2021 12:27:05 UTC

In “The Organ” Replace

At any time, Richardo von Nestor may set the Organ to be Playing

with

At any time when Richardo von Nestor would be permitted to Enter the Crypt, Richardo von Nestor may set the Organ to be Playing

Also append

Richardo von Nestor may set the Organ to Not Playing at any time

to the end of the same rule

 

Proposal: [Core][Appendix] Defining slotlessness

Self-killed. Josh

Adminned at 02 Jul 2021 12:26:38 UTC

In the “Other” list in the appendix rule “Keywords”, add a new entry (in the appropriate alphabetically-ordered position):

Free Proposal
      A Free Proposal is a proposal that either a) has the “[Free]” tag, or b) has another tag that is defined by dynastic or special case rules as making proposals it is applied to Free. As an exception to the core rule “Proposals”, Free Proposals do not count as Proposals, and the submission of a Free Proposal does not count as the submission of a Proposal, for the purpose of determining whether a Proposal submission is illegal due to exceeding a limit on the number of Pending Proposals by the same author or on the number of Proposals submitted by the author that day.

Change the rule “Cleanup Proposals” to read as follows:

A proposal from Richardo von Nestor is a Cleanup Proposal if it consists entirely of moving text between dynastic rules without changing that text, of reformatting a list of items as a list of bullet points, and/or adding bold markup and/or paragraph breaks to a rule. A Cleanup Proposal may be given the tag “[Cleanup]”.

Richardo von Nestor is permitted to submit Cleanup Proposals as Free Proposals. The tag “[Cleanup]” makes a proposal Free.

The concept of “a proposal that doesn’t cost a slot” comes up very frequently in dynasties (including this one, and I’m planning a proposal to make further use of it), so we may as well have it in the core rules; we never seem to quite get the definition exact when we’re doing it dynastically, so future dynasties could likely benefit from an exact definition too.

Note that if someone tries to place a slotlessness tag like “[Cleanup]” or “[Slotless]” on a proposal without permission, this makes the proposal outright illegal (as opposed to making it legal but costing a slot), which is probably the simpler way to do things because it has no knock-on effects.

Call for Judgment: The Best Disinfectant

Passes 7-0. Enacted with no effect by Brendan.

Adminned at 30 Jun 2021 16:21:31 UTC

If the Vampire Lord called lemonfanta spent any Puissance between the posting and enactment of this CfJ then revert the actions that led to that expenditure.

If that CfJ has not been resolved then change its text to read “Reduce the Puissance of the Vampire Lord called lemonfanta by 1”.

Call for Judgment: something something vampires burn in sunlight

Passes 7-0—Clucky

Adminned at 30 Jun 2021 16:06:50 UTC

Set lemonfanta’s Puissance value to 13.

had a record heatwave n couldn’t think for most of monday, could i get a little rollback so i can act before becoming bloodthirsty?

Proposal: Tepesh Mode

Timed out and enacted, 7-0. Josh

Adminned at 02 Jul 2021 12:24:02 UTC

In the rule Ritual Chambers, add the following to the end of the first paragraph:

The Ritual Chamber located at A1 is called the Yellow Bile Chamber. The Ritual Chamber located at A8 is called the Black Bile Chamber. The Ritual Chamber located at H1 is called the Blood Chamber. The Ritual Chamber located at H8 is called the Phlegm Chamber. Richardo von Nestor may set these Chambers to have any Description that he wishes.

In the same room, as a third paragraph, add

Richardo von Nestor may not move to a Ritual Chamber through the use of a Secret Passage Map, and all Ritual Chambers must be omitted from the secret random selection that takes place as a result of the use of that item.

In the rule Ritual Chambers change “random room” and “random Non-Ritual Chamber” to “random Ordinary Room”, and in the rule “Run Initialisation” after the text “and is not orthogonally adjacent to Richardo’s starting location” add “and is not a Ritual Chamber”. In the same rule, in the sentence “then a random non-Ritual Chamber gains the following Effect”, change Effect to Feature.

Tuesday, June 29, 2021

Proposal: Little Devils

Passes 7-0. Enacted by Brendan.

Adminned at 30 Jun 2021 17:27:31 UTC

Update the Nutritious Denizen trait to be

Nutritious: When Richardo Encounters and slays a Nutritious Denizen, once the room is Pacified, if his Energy is greater than 0 it increases by an amount equal to one more than the Denizen’s Brutality before it was slain. (+0)

 

Nutritious seems a bit weak, and there is no reason not to put it on things just to get the discount especially 0 brutality things. So giving Richardo a bit more energy when he slays them, and increasing the cost so you can’t just spam Denizen that give you 1 money a round and long as they survive twice you make your money back.

Call for Judgment: It all adds up to zero

Reached quorum 7 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 30 Jun 2021 08:27:46 UTC

If the CFJ “Toll Taker” has not been Enacted or Failed, fail it. If it has been Enacted, reverse its effects.

In “Lair Actions”, change

(to a minimum cost of 1)

to

(the total cost of this action cannot be less than 1)

Uphold all attempts to Explore a Room or Light a Room this dynasty prior to the posting of this CFJ that failed, and/or spent the wrong amount of Puissance, solely because:

  • the total Darkness or Shadow scores of their included Features was 0 or less; and
  • the Puissance expenditure of the action was calculated on the basis of the unmodified sum of the Darkness/Shadow score, rather than substituting 1 for the sum of the Darkness/Shadow scores.

A counter-CFJ to Clucky’s. This should be a no-op from most people’s point of view, but will converge the gamestate in Clucky’s interpretation to match the gamestate in everyone else’s.

Call for Judgment: Toll Taker

Fewer than a quorum not voting against. Failed 1-7 by Kevan.

Adminned at 30 Jun 2021 08:28:39 UTC

Uphold the action taken by Brendan here: https://wiki.blognomic.com/index.php?title=Zahndorf_Crypt&type=revision&diff=15579&oldid=15578, including the amount of Puissance they spent

Uphold the action taken by Jumble here: https://wiki.blognomic.com/index.php?title=Zahndorf_Crypt&type=revision&diff=15487&oldid=15486, including the amount of Puissance they spent

Reduce Brendan and Jumble’s Puissance by one each.

The rules state “Lighting a Room is a Power Action with a cost of 3 plus the total Shadow scores of the Features being placed in that Room’s Effect (to a minimum cost of 1). “

Both Jumble and Brendan added rooms with no features, but put the cost of that at three. My interpretation of “the total Shadow scores of the Features being placed in that Room’s Effect (to a minimum cost of 1)” means the total cost of all features placed is 0, but you add a minimum of 1. So they should’ve paid 4.

Dusting Jumble and Brendan over this feels overly harsh, as they wouldn’t have spent that much had they realized it would dust them. But making them pay the Puissance now feels fair.

Story Post: Richardo’s Ninth Expedition

Richardo has felt the shifting of the ground beneath his feet and knows that this trip into the crypt is likely to be different from those he has experienced before.

All Vampire Lords are strengthened by his approach, and the sepulchres of Brendan, Chiiika and Jumble gather power on behalf of their masters.

Richardo enters the Crypt through its entrance hall and heads to the east.

The books of the Library of Souls are getting hungrier; as Richardo passes through to the east they continue to feed the Vampire Lords with their dark magic.

Richardo finds himself once again in the Forgotten Corridor, but this time a dark magic has taken root here, that immediately pushes him backwards, back into…

...the Library of Souls, where again the enchanted books whisper darkness between themselves and the dark hunters that surround them. Richardo returns west.

In the Crypt Entrance, Richardo turns north.

In Room BA, Richardo notes that the spot where he had, in the past, reliably found a treasure chest now sits empty. The guardian creatures of this room continue to convert dust and grime into blood magic and feed it to the Vampires of the crypt. Richardo heads west.

In the next room Richardo finds that a toxic mixture of gas and water has combusted into a hellscape of unimaginable horror. Collapsing to his knees to pray, he slips on a pool of filmy water and submerges his head into the flaming sluice, causing himself a Grievous Injury. He dashes from the room, and from the Crypt, in abject agony, but unnoticed by him, a Glyph belonging to the Vampire Lord Jumble has absorbed his torment and is feeding it to its ravenous caster.

Vampire Lord stat changes:

Vampire Lord - Puissance - Influence
ais523 - 8 - 0
Brendan - 6 - 1
Chiiika - 6 - 1
Clucky - 6 - 0
Darknight - 2 - 0
Jason - 4 - 0
Jumble - 6 - 7
Kevan - 6 - 0
lemonfanta - 6 - 0
Phil - 4 - 0
Raven1207 - 6 - 0

Apologies to ais for miscalculating their Puissance

Proposal: Angel of Music

Reached quorum 9 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 30 Jun 2021 10:29:09 UTC

Add a new rule to the ruleset. called The Organ:

The Organ can be either Playing or Not Playing, defaulting to Not Playing, and its status is publicly tracked.

At any time, Richardo von Nestor may set the Organ to be Playing. When the Organ is Playing, no Power Actions may be taken.

If the Organ has been Playing for more than half an hour without an Enter the Crypt action having been completed then any Vampire Lord may set the Organ to Not Playing.

Add the following as a second-to-last bullet point in the atomic action Enter the Crypt:

Set the Organ to Not Playing

Proposal: You can’t seal us away that easily

Reached quorum 7 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 30 Jun 2021 10:26:12 UTC

In “Run Initialisation”, replace

Richardo’s starting location is the Crypt Entrance. Whenever a room is Pacified, if Richardo found an ingress, he should change the name of the room in this paragraph to the name of the room in which that feature was found.

with

Richardo’s starting location is a publicly tracked Room. Whenever a Room is Pacified, if Richardo found an Ingress while applying the effects of that Room’s featrures, Richardo’s starting location becomes that Room. Whenever Richardo’s starting location would not be a Lit Room, Richardo von Nestor or any Vampire Lord can change Richardo’s starting location to a random Lit Room.

An “Ordinary Room” is a Room that is not Richardo’s starting location, and is not orthogonally adjacent to Richardo’s starting location.

Set Richardo’s starting location to be the Room named “Crypt Entrance”.

In “Lair Actions”, in the paragraph starting “Inhabiting a Room”, change “the room located at E4” to “Richardo’s starting location”, and “room E4” to “Richardo’s starting location”.

In “Denizen Actions”, change

; and a Summoning Location, which must be a Lit Room that is neither the room located at E4 nor orthogonally adjacent to it.

to

; and a Summoning Location, which must be a Lit Ordinary Room.

and

subject to the restrictions that each Denizen’s location after the change must be a Lit room orthogonally adjacent to (or the same as) its location before the change, and that no new location can be the room located at E4, nor a room orthogonally adjacent to it.

to

subject to the restriction that each Denizen’s location after the change must be an Lit Ordinary Room orthogonally adjacent to (or the same as) its location before the change.

Making sure that the Lair always has an entrance; also, changing E4-connected restrictions to be entry-connected instead.

This also fixes the Ingress rule, which is currently nonfunctional due to the way in which it uses “should” (it gives Richardo a recommendation to change the rules, but no ability to do so). I was really, really tempted to fix it to be functional with its current tracking method, and then create a room with an Ingress called “Crypt Entrance. ais523 has achieved victory” and hope he hit it, but a) it seems unethical to fix the rule in a way that leaves that loophole open (especially as the fix is necessary for the rule to do anything at all and thus for the scam to work), even though it wasn’t me who introduced it in the first place, b) the scam would almost certainly just get fixed by CFJ before I could exploit it, because Richardo could choose not to enter the Crypt until the bug was fixed, and this sort of scam is normally only worth doing if it *immediately* wins you the game when exploited, and c) I’m rather enjoying this dynasty’s mechanics and it would be a shame to cut the whole thing short by scam even if it did lead to a win. So I’m moving the tracking location from the ruleset to the wiki, in order to stop people using the Ingress rule to inject arbitrary flavour text into the Ruleset as non-flavour text.

Monday, June 28, 2021

Proposal: “We helped patch up Richardo’s wounds. He was suffering from an undefined injury.”

Enacted popular, 7-0. Josh

Adminned at 30 Jun 2021 09:11:52 UTC

In “Crypt Denizens”, change

When a Denizen injures Richardo von Nestor, each Vampire Lord whose name is contained in its Sycophancy

to

When Richardo von Nestor becomes Lightly Wounded or Grievously Injured upon Encountering a Denizen, each Vampire Lord whose name is contained in that Denizen’s Sycophancy

Additionally, if the rule “Crypt Denizens” contains a bullet point starting with the word “Bloodsoaked”, amend it to read as follows:

  • Bloodsoaked: When the Crypt Settles, if Richardo von Nestor became Lightly Wounded or Grievously Injured upon Encountering this Denizen in this Enter the Crypt action, all Vampire Lords with Sigils in the room where the Encounter took place gain Puissance equal to the Energy lost by Richardo von Nestor as a result of the Encounter (+2)

A fix I missed in the Denizen cleanup: although flavourful, the verb “injures” is currently undefined, and the rules aren’t written to suggest that the Denizen specifically causes the injury (as opposed to, e.g., Richardo panicking and running into a wall). Sometimes having clear flavour makes it easy to miss that the concepts you’re using aren’t properly defined.

Also making the same fix to Josh’s new rule, if it gets enacted, because it contains similar language.

Proposal: Inversion of Power

Self-killed. Josh

Adminned at 30 Jun 2021 09:11:23 UTC

In the subrule “Features”, add to the list “Glyphs and Sigils” the following bulletpoint:

- All Vampires who do not have an engraved Sigil here lose 1 Puissance, unless they are Dust.
(+4)

“Spend until you get to exactly 1” is getting a bit boring now, don’t you think?

Proposal: Atomic Age [Core] [Appendix]

Fewer than quorum not voting against. Failed 1-6, Josh

Adminned at 30 Jun 2021 09:10:50 UTC

Add the following to the list of Fair Play violations

A Vampire Lord should not deliberately delay completion of an atomic action once they begin it.

Add the following bullet point to the list of bullet points in Atomic Actions

If an Atomic Action began more than 24 hours ago and has not been completed, the entire action is canceled (they undo all the steps they have performed of that Action and are considered never to have performed that Action.)

Pokes mentioned some scams around delaying completion of your atomic action so that other people could do stuff mid action which would cancel out unfavorable dice rolls. Seems like a useful thing to patch. Also I think letting actions timeout is probably a good call, which we can safely do if we make it clear you can’t go like “oops that was a bad roll not gonna finish this action”

Proposal: Tepesh

Timed out and enacted, 6-3. Josh

Adminned at 30 Jun 2021 08:33:25 UTC

Rename the rule Cornerstones to Ritual Chambers and rewrite its text as follows:

The four rooms in the corners of the Zahndorf Crypt map are known as the Ritual Chambers. Ritual Chambers have a background colour of #333333 and are always Lit.

At any time, as a Power Action, any Vampire Lord may spend the Darkness cost of a Feature to add that Feature to the Ritual Chamber of their choice. Ritual Chambers may not contain Glyphs and can never be made into the Sepulchre of a Vampire Lord.

When the Crypt Settles, if Richardo was Lightly or Grievously Wounded in a Ritual Chamber, or if Richardo collapsed a Dracula’s Sepulchre without Dusting Dracula, then a random room gains a Denizen with the name of Dracula, with the following statistics: Brutality 3, Cunning 5, the Bloodsoaked and Evasive traits, and a Sycophancy of None.

When the Crypt Settles, if Richardo encountered and defeated the Denizen Dracula, then a random non-Ritual Chamber gains the following Effect, which may only be added to a room under this circumstance and may not otherwise be added to any room:
* Richardo encounters Dracula’s Sepulchre

A room with the effect “Richardo encounters Dracula’s Sepulchre” should be treated as a Sepulchre for the purposes of collapsing a Sepulchre in the rule Sepulchres. If Richardo collapses a room with the “Richardo encounters Dracula’s Sepulchre” effect while holding a Silver-Tipped Stake then Dracula is Dusted.

In the rule Crypt Denizens, add the following to the end of the first paragraph:

A Vampire Lord may not name a Denizen “Dracula”.

Add the following to the list of Denizen Traits a Denizen may have:

*Bloodsoaked: When the Crypt Settles, if this Denizen Lightly or Grievously Injured Richardo von Nestor in this Enter the Crypt action, all Vampire Lords with Sigils in the room where the Injury took place gain Puissance equal to the Energy lost by Richardo von Nestor as a result of his interaction with this Denizen (+2)

In the rule Lair Actions, change “Cornerstone” to “Ritual”.

Story Post: Richardo’s Eighth Expedition

Richardo approached the crypt for his eighth expedition.

He started, as usual, in the Crypt Entrance, and then decided to patrol Room BA to the north.3

Room BA was, as usual, spotlessly clean and inhabited only by the motorised pucks. A fine chest was placed neatly in the middle of the room but Richardo ignored it and moved back to the south.

This time, Richardo moved from the Crypt Entrance to the east, into the Library of Souls.

The tormented books of the Library continued to syphon power into the sigils and souls of the Vampire Lords, but offers no attractions to Richardo, who spots a previously unnoticed door to the south. He cautiously creaks it open.

The room beyond is Escheresque, a stairway that somehow wraps and contorts itself through a non-Euclidian space to create a staircase that wraps around to rejoin itself, infinitely. Richardo takes a tentative step onto the stairway but immediately slips on the slick marble, falling down the stairs for maybe ten whole minutes, Grievously Injuring himself in the process. He retreats to heal his wounds.

Stat changes: UPDATED 14.30 UTC
Vampire Lord - Puissance - Influence
ais523 - 4 -
Brendan - 4 -
Chiiika - 4 -
Clucky - 4 -
Darknight - 2 -
Jason - 3 -
Jumble - 4 - 1
Kevan - 4 -
lemonfanta - 4 -
Phil - 3 -
Raven1207 - 3 -

Sunday, June 27, 2021

Call for Judgment: Drunken Vampire Lord

Fails 0-8.  - Jumble

Adminned at 28 Jun 2021 02:44:16 UTC

Undo edit marked here: https://wiki.blognomic.com/index.php?title=Zahndorf_Crypt&diff=15567&oldid=15565

And pausing future atomic and dynastic actions until the dice rolls are redone and resolved and the gamestate is appropriately fixed of the marked error above.

I made an oopsie. I was copying and pasting one of the previous dice rolls and had not accounted for 2 rooms made after the dice roll

Proposal: Step Into My Parlour

Times out and passes, 6-0. Enacted by Brendan.

Adminned at 29 Jun 2021 18:25:55 UTC

To the second paragraph of “Vampire Lords”, add:-

A Vampire Lord may only Enthral another if that second Lord can be shown to have asked to be Enthralled by the first, in a blog post or comment made within the previous 24 hours.

In “Richardo’s Journey”, add a step after “Carry out any effects that take place when the Crypt Settles.”:-

* For each Vampire Lord without a Sepulchre, and with an Influence above zero, set their Influence to zero.

Striking out the two mechanics based on reacting quickly to Josh posting a Crypt Entry: making it so that you can only Enthral a player who has asked to become Enthralled by you, and saying that a collapsed Sepulchre definitely zeroes your Influence (rather that allowing a quick-reacting Vampire to build a fresh Sepulchre before anyone else can zero them, if they happen to be online when Josh posts an update).

Proposal: The Bloodsucker Proxy

At 3-6, the number of Vampire Lords who are not voting AGAINST it is less than Quorum. Failed by Brendan.

Adminned at 28 Jun 2021 22:29:03 UTC

Add a new rule to the dynastic ruleset, called The Proxy Vote:

Vampires have some limited mind control powers.

Richardo von Nestor has access to a special type of vote that can only be his vote on proposals. This vote is called PROXY and is signified with the purple up-arrow icon. Richardo von Nestor may only vote PROXY on proposals, and is encouraged to use it on proposals what only affect the balance of Vampire Lord-specific actions, such as proposals that affect Puissance costs for Power Actions.

On any proposal where Richardo von Nestor has cast a vote of PROXY, any Vampire Lord may spend 2 Puissance to use mind control by including the words “mind control” in their EVC. Any EVC that contains the words “mind control” for which the necessary Puissance spend cannot be evidenced remain EVCs but are not considered to contain the words “mind control” for the purposes of this rule.

On any proposal, at any given time, the Psychic Pressure is the voting icon used in the majority of the EVCs on that proposal that contain the words “mind control”. If there if no such majority then the Psychic Pressure is DEF. At any time, a vote of PROXY on a proposal is considered to be a valid vote in the same direction as the Psychic Pressure on that proposal.

Saturday, June 26, 2021

Proposal: cornerstone clarity clause

Passes 8-0. Enacted by Brendan.

Adminned at 28 Jun 2021 22:04:26 UTC

In the rule “Cornerstones”, replace “Sentences” with “Non-feature Sentences”.

so that features added to cornerstones, during their creation or otherwise, aren’t barred from being added to other locations!

Proposal: Gathering Dust

Enacted popular, 11-0. Josh

Adminned at 28 Jun 2021 08:00:13 UTC

Enact a new rule, “Cleanup Proposals”:-

A proposal from Richardo von Nestor is a Cleanup Proposal if it consists entirely of moving text between dynastic rules without changing that text, of reformatting a list of items as a list of bullet points, and/or adding bold markup and/or paragraph breaks to a rule. A Cleanup Proposal may be given the tag “[Cleanup]”.

Cleanup Proposals are not counted as proposals for the “already has 2 Proposals pending” of the rule “Proposals”, and may be made even if Richardo von Nestor has 2 Proposals pending.

Have wondered for a while if we should try out something like this, giving the Emperor a bit more freedom to tidy up the ruleset without spending a slot.

Proposal: The Duracell Bunny

Enacted popular, 7-0. Josh

Adminned at 28 Jun 2021 07:58:38 UTC

Change the first bullet point of the Enter the Crypt atomic action to read as follows:n

Set his location to be the his starting location; set his Energy to its starting value.

Add the following as a new subrule to the rule Richardo’s Journey, called Run Initialisation:

During the Enter the Crypt action, Richardo has a value called Energy, which must be an integer.

The starting value for Richardo’s Energy varies based on the number of lit rooms in the crypt, as follows:

Less than 10 lit rooms: Starting energy 5
10-15 lit rooms: Starting energy 6
16-20 lit rooms: Starting energy 8
21-30 lit rooms: Starting energy 10
31-40 lit rooms: Starting energy 14
41-64 lit rooms: Starting energy 18

If every room that is orthogonally adjacent to Richardo’s starting location has no Effects then he must add 1 to his Energy’s starting value.

Richardo’s starting location is the Crypt Entrance. Whenever a room is Pacified, if Richardo found an ingress, he should change the name of the room in this paragraph to the name of the room in which that feature was found.

Add the following to the list of Opportunities in the rule Features:

Richardo finds an ingress (+2)

Proposal: Richardo levels up

Self-killed. Josh

Adminned at 28 Jun 2021 07:58:11 UTC

At the end of the content that is directly within “Richardo’s Journey” (but before any subrules), add a new paragraph:

The number of times Richardo has Entered the Crypt is publicly tracked (this number is updated when the Crypt Settles).

In the first bullet point in “Richardo’s Journey”, change

set his Energy (which is an integer) to 6

to

set his Energy (which is an integer) to equal the number of times Richardo has Entered the Crypt (not including the action currently being performed)

This won’t have a huge impact immediately, but is likely to make things go faster / bigger things happen as the Dynasty goes on.

Proposal: Our Denizens

Enacted popular, 7-0. Josh

Adminned at 28 Jun 2021 07:54:21 UTC

Move the subrule “Crypt Denizens” from being a subrule of “Vampire Lords” to instead being a subrule of “The Crypt of Dracula”.

In “Crypt Denizens”, change

The following Denizen Traits can be held by Crypt Denizens:

to

The following Denizen Traits can be held by Crypt Denizens (and are Selectable, with the Trait Cost specified in parentheses at the end of their descriptions, unless otherwise specified):

and in the list immediately after the sentence, append “(+1)” to the item “Evasive”, “(+2)” to the item “Mischievous”, “(-1)” to the item “Nutritious”, and “(not Selectable)” to the item “Quick”.

Then add a new item to that list:

Industrious: When the Crypt Settles, each Vampire Lord whose name is contained in this Denizen’s Sycophancy gains 1 Puissance. (+2)

Delete all the rule text from “Vampire Lords may summon Denizens to do their bidding” to “This effect may be stacked with the Glyph effect” inclusive from “The Crypt of Dracula”.

To the end of “Crypt Denizens”, add the following paragraph:

When a Denizen injures Richardo von Nestor, each Vampire Lord whose name is contained in its Sycophancy gains an amount of Influence equal to the amount of Energy Richardo von Nestor lost. This effect may be stacked with the Glyph effect.

Then add the following subrule to “Crypt Denizens”, with the title “Denizen Actions”:

Summon Denizen is a Power Action. To perform Summon Denizen, a Vampire Lord selects a Name for the Denizen (which cannot be nor contain “Dracula”), a string of flavour text; its Brutality and Cunning, each of which is a non-negative integer; zero or more Selectable Traits; and a Summoning Location, which must be a Lit Room that is neither the room located at E4 nor orthogonally adjacent to it.

The cost of this Power Action is equal to the chosen Brutality, plus the chosen Cunning, plus the total Trait Cost of the chosen traits (but is instead 2 if it would be less than 2). When this action is performed, a Denizen is created at the chosen Summoning Location, with the chosen Name, Brutality, Cunning, and Traits. Its initial Sycophancy contains only the Vampire Lord who performed the action.

Move Denizens is a Power Action and also a Daily Action, with a cost of 2. When performing it, a Vampire Lord chooses any number of Denizens whose Sycophancy contains the name of that Vampire Lord, and changes the locations of those Denizens, subject to the restrictions that each Denizen’s location after the change must be a Lit room orthogonally adjacent to (or the same as) its location before the change, and that no new location can be the room located at E4, nor a room orthogonally adjacent to it.

 

Puts all the Denizen rules into one place (they’re currently a bit spread out and hard to follow), removing duplication between them, and fixing some ambiguous language (also giving Move Denizens a cost because it doesn’t currently have one, and fixing two scams). Also adds a way for us to get Puissance from our Denizens (inspired by Josh’s “Hunter the Hungry” but much simpler).

I originally wrote out all the changes to “Denizen Actions” individually, but there are so many minor grammar changes that it made more sense to just specify the new text. Nothing’s actually being repealed here (unless i’ve made a mistake); all the content of the deleted block of text is being added back in to “Crypt Denizens” or “Denizen Actions” (often with fixes / clarity improvements).

Saturday, June 26, 2021

Proposal: There Goes My Hero

Quorum Reached. Passes 7-0—Clucky

Adminned at 27 Jun 2021 16:36:25 UTC

Add the following to the end of the step of “Richardo’s Journey” that starts “Secretly randomly select a Lit room”

. When randomly selecting a room for this step, Richardo may only select the Room which was his immediate previous location if it is the only option in the set of rooms he is randomly choosing from.

No more running back and forth between the same rooms unless its Ricky’s only option

Proposal: Popularity Hauntest

Unpopular, 2-7. Josh

Adminned at 26 Jun 2021 18:50:40 UTC

Enact a new rule entitled “Rewards” as follows:

When enacting a Proposal, the enacting Admin must increment by 1 the Puissance of the Vampire Lord who created that Proposal, unless that Vampire Lord is Dust.

Story Post: Richardo’s Seventh Expedition

Richardo von Nestor returns to the vault, grimly determined to continue to cleanse the crypt of the evil that lurks within.

In a distant corridor of the catacombs, Vampire Lord Jumble’s Sepulchre feeds on the dark energy disturbed by von Nestor’s footfalls.

As usual, Richardo finds himself in the Crypt Entrance, whose mosaic walls once depicted scenes of holy virtue but which are now smashed and broken. He progresses north.

Room BA is spotlessly clean as usual. The puck-shaped machines that polish its marble floor are disturbed and the gyration in their patterns provokes a small trickle of energy to accrue to each Vampire Lord. Richardo decides to open the fine chest and is surprised to not find the usual collection of a stake, a tincture, a map and a rod of smoothing, but instead a set of bandages and an elaborate crossbow. He pockets them and returns to the Crypt Entrance.

From the Crypt Entrance he continues west.

On the Tenuous Bridge he is harried by an aggressive bat; its scratches leave him lightly injured. He notes that the north entrance from this room has been sealed following his elimination of the Vampire Lord Brendan, and instead returns once again to the Crypt Entrance.

Finding himself back in the entrance hallway, Richardo finds that he is fatigued and elects to return another day.

Stat changes in this run:

Vampire Lord - Puissance - Influence
ais523 - 1 - 0
Brendan - 1 - 0
Chiiika - 1 - 0
Clucky - 1 - 0
Darknight - 1 - 0
Jason - 1 - 0
Jumble - 1 - 1
Kevan - 1 - 0
lemonfanta - 1 - 0
Phil - 1 - 0
Raven1207 - 1 - 0

Proposal: Unlucky for Some

Enacted popular, 7-0. Josh

Adminned at 26 Jun 2021 18:49:56 UTC

In “Unlife”, replace “If a Vampire Lord’s Puissance is above 10” with:

If a Vampire Lord’s Puissance is above 13

Reproposing a minor aspect of Lemonfanta’s Sledgehammer.

Proposal: Clarity in Darkness

Enacted popular, 10-0. Josh

Adminned at 26 Jun 2021 18:48:44 UTC

Amend the Dynastic Rule entitled “The Crypt of Dracula” by appending the following to the first paragraph:

Rooms can be Lit (but by default are not); any room that is not Lit is Dark.

Amend the Dynastic Rule entitled “The Crypt of Dracula” by appending the following to the paragraph beginning “There is a list of Lit rooms”:

Only Lit rooms have names, effect, and descriptions; any other room with one of those properties immediately ceases to have it.

Makes it clear that Dark and Lit are mutually exclusive, then ensures that we don’t accidentally forget a “loses its name, effects, and description” for something that makes a room Dark.

Proposal: Better go get your armour

Enacted popular, 8-0 .Josh

Adminned at 26 Jun 2021 18:47:38 UTC

In the rule The Crypt of Dracula, in the sentence “When Richardo von Nestor is Grievously Injured by an Effect, his Energy is reduced by 10”, change the 10 into a 6.

In the rule Lair Actions, in the paragraph “Distilling is a Power Action with a cost of 1. The Vampire Lord carrying it out may spend 12 Influence to gain 1 Blood Mana Crystal”, change the 12 into an 8.

Making BMCs more attainable through non-Glyph/Grievous Injury routes

Friday, June 25, 2021

Proposal: laying the groundwork

Enacted popular, 7-0. Josh

Adminned at 26 Jun 2021 18:46:13 UTC

In the rule “Cornerstones”, append to the first paragraph “Sentences in the effect of Lit Cornerstone Chambers count as features for the purposes of the Enter the Crypt atomic action but cannot be removed from the room they are in or added to other rooms.”
In the rule “Lair Actions”, change “a Lit room that is neither a Sepulchre nor the room located at E4” to “a Lit room that is not a Sepulchre and is neither the room located at E4 nor a Cornerstone Chamber”.

so that when we do light up some cornerstone chambers they can have unique effects & not be sepulchre’d

Proposal: Ope, there goes gravity

Self-killed. Josh

Adminned at 26 Jun 2021 18:45:31 UTC

Reword the step in the rule “Richardo’s Journey” that reads “Secretly randomly select a Lit room that is orthogonally adjacent to his current room and change his location to be that room” to read:

  • Secretly randomly select a Lit room that is orthogonally adjacent to his current room and change his location to be that room; if there are no such valid rooms, then instead, secretly randomly select a Lit room that is diagonally adjacent to his current room and change his location to be that room

Proposal: Money Pleeeeeease

Timed out and enacted, 5-1. Josh

Adminned at 26 Jun 2021 18:44:18 UTC

Add the following to “The Crypt of Dracula”

When the Crypt Awakens, each Vampire Lord who is not Bloodthirsty gains 1 Puissance

 

Story Post: Richardo’s Sixth Expedition

The last run had taxed Richardo; he could not sleep at night for visions of lemonfanta’s face crumbling and fading into dust under his silver-tipped stake. He had briefly considered hanging up the whip and shield for good. But the evil stirring beneath Zahndorf could not be ignored, so reluctantly, he gathered his belongings and headed once more for the Crypt. Feeling him approach, the Sepulchres of ais, Brendan and Jumble all compound the Power of their owners.

Arriving in the mosaic entrance hall, he resolved to ensure that lemonfanta’s Sepulchre was gone for good, and moved west.

He was surprised to find that, instead of the burned-out Hallway of Wonders, to the west was now a vast space filled with nothing but infinite darkness and one thin, rickety Tenuous Bridge. In the darkness, Richardo’s leg falls through one of the slats, and he Lightly Injures his ankle; in the darkness far below, ais’ Glyph responds to his torment, causing the Vampire Lord to grow strong. Richardo crosses the bridge and exits to the North.

In the Pillar Room, Richardo finds that the centre of the space dominated by another massive stone Coffin. This one is wrought with an elaborate coat of arms, and no legend beyond the family name of Brendan - one that Richardo knows well from the chronicles of the Massacres of Scandinavia. Lamenting the lack of a weapon to plunge into the beast’s heart, Richardo contents to set the room on fire before exiting to the East.

As Richardo enters Room BA is is fortunate enough to see a swarm of the hockey-puck shaped guardians of the room disappearing into a crack in the masonry. He opens the fine chest here and collects a silver-tipped stake, a rod of smoothing, a holy tincture and a secret passage map; he immediately uses the last two of these.

The map guides him through a storm drain to a room that had not previously appeared on the maps: the Hollow Room. The room is completely empty, dusty and full of cobwebs, except for a moonlit dais holding a plain wooden coffin, which is covered with a fabric bearing the legends and acts of the great Vampire Lord ais523. This time Richardo is better prepared, and slams his silver-tipped stake into the Vampire Lord’s chest causing the eternally youthful flesh of the demon to pucker, dissolve and dissipate into the air. He sets the room aflame and then exits to the North,

In the Gravity Room, Richardo finds himself drawn back south, but his Rod of Smoothing erases the ward on the Western door, breaking the spell. He notices a fine chest here but ignores it. He exits into the west.

He finds himself back in the familiar surroundings of the Shattered Stairway, but is uneasy to note that the sharp stake pit has been smoothed over, almost as if the stone of the crypt had healed itself. There is a Laughing Gargoyle here; with the last of his strength Richardo lashes at it with his whip but the Gargoyle merely mocks him before racking at him with sharpened basalt wings. Exhausted from this Grievous Injury, Richardo retreats to his home to rest.

Here are the stat changes from that run:

Influence Puissance
ais523 - 2 - 3
Brendan - 1 - 1
Chiiika - - 1
Clucky - - 1
Darknight - - 1
Jason - - 2
Jumble - 1 - 2
Kevan - - 2
lemonfanta - - 2
Phil - - 2
Raven1207 - - 2

Proposal: Hunter the Hungry

Self-killed. Josh

Adminned at 26 Jun 2021 08:56:26 UTC

Add a new rule as a subrule to Vampire Lords, called Peons:

Peons are non-combat workers that Vampire Lords use to carry out their bidding. Each Vampire Lord has a non-zero integer number of Peons that is publicly tracked, and which defaults to zero. Peons are also publicly tracked in relation to Lit Rooms, where they are listed in the form of the name of the Vampire Lord who placed them there (eg an entry of Harris x3 under Peons for a room would denote three Peons placed in that room by Harris).

As a Power Action with a cost of 1, a Vampire Lord may Send Instructions to their Peons. When a Vampire Lord carries out a Send Instructions action then they may carry out as many of the following as they wish, repeatedly as appropriate:
* Reduce their Peons by 1. Add a Peon in their own name to the room of their choosing.
* Remove a Peon in their own name from a room and increase their Peons by 1.
* Move a Peon in their own name from one room to another room.

Whenever the Crypt Awakens, each Peon present in each room activates any Glyphs or Sigil Features that are present as if only the Glyphs or Sigils of the Vampire Lord that controls them were present. Whenever a room is Pacified, any Peons that are present in that Room are Freed, and are removed from the game.

Add a new rule as a subrule to Vampire Lords, called Hunting:

At any time, but no more than once between the completion of each Enter the Crypt action, each Vampire Lord may Terrorise Zahndorf.

When a Vampire Lord Terrorises Zahndorf they must randomly select one of the following outcomes: Feed, Influence, Denizen, Peon.

If the result is Feed then the performing Vampire Lord immediately gains 3 Puissance. If this results in the Vampire Lord having more than 15 Puissance then they must then immediately carry out a Blood Frenzy action.
If the result is Influence then the performing Vampire Lord immediately gains 1 Influence.
If the result is Denizen then they convert a citizen of Zahndorf into a monster under their bidding; they must immediately place a Denizen with 1 point in either Brutality or Cunning in the Location of their choice, with its Sycophancy set to themselves, and may optionally spend 2 Puissance to give that Denizen the Trait of their choice.
If the result is Peon then they mentally dominate a citizen of Zahndorf to act as their Peon; if possible, they must immediately reduce their Puissance by 3 and, if they do, award themselves one Peon.

Add the following to the list called Glyphs and Sigils in the rule Features:

* Each Vampire Lord with an engraved Sigil here gains 1 Peon (+3)
* A Denizen is spawned here with 1 Brutality for each Sigil present, with no Sycophancy (+2)

Proposal: Punching the Wall

Enacted 8-0. Josh

Adminned at 26 Jun 2021 08:55:19 UTC

In “Lair Actions”, replace “Randomly select a Lit Room and randomly select a Feature (other than ‘This room contains a Glyph’). Add that Feature to that Room.” with:-

Randomly select a Lit Room and randomly select a Threat Feature. Add that Feature to that Room.

Angrily crafting a treasure chest or magical focal point doesn’t feel very bloodthirsty.

Idle pokes are the Devil’s Plaything

Can someone idle me? I’m far enough behind on the rules that I’m not sure how to do it myself dynastically, e.g., what should happen to my sepulchre?

Proposal: 3 Much Treasure

Timed out and enacted, 7-0. Josh

Adminned at 26 Jun 2021 08:54:06 UTC

In “Treasure”, reword the second pragraph to the following:

An average treasure chest will contain one item from the average treasures list. A fine treasure chest will contain one item from the fine treasures list and one item from the average treasures list. The contents of a chest are secretly randomly determined when that chest is opened. As a Power Action with a cost of 2, a Vampire Lord may predetermine the contents of a single treasure chest to any valid value by appending the names of the items to be contained in that chest to its entry in the relevant room effect, in brackets; when Richardo von Nestor opens a chest with one or more sets of predetermined values, the contents are one secretly randomly chosen set of values attached to the relevant chest, and then that set of values (along with the associated brackets) is deleted from the room effect.

Move all brackets containing item names from any rooms’ descriptions to the same rooms’ effects, placing them immediately following the relevant chest feature and maintaining the order in which they appear.

there, it’s random now, y’all happy?

Thursday, June 24, 2021

Proposal: Cornering the Market

Timed Out. Fails 2-4—Clucky

Adminned at 26 Jun 2021 21:59:37 UTC

Add the following to the Average Treasures

Everburning Torch: Richardo treats Dark Cornerstone Chambers as if they were Lit.

Replace the text of “Cornerstones” with

The four rooms in the corners of the Zahndorf Crypt map are known as the Cornerstone Chambers and are always Dark. By default, Cornerstone Chambers have a background colour of #882200. They cannot be the subject of Power Actions, and may not contain Sigils, Glpyhs, or Sepulchres.

Each Cornerstone Chamber has a non-negative integer level of Haunt, which is by default 5 and can be no more than 5. A Cornerstone Chamber with 5 Haunt is considered to be Haunted, otherwise it is Weak. The Haunt of a Cornerstone Chamber is tracked in place of its name on the map though is not its name. (Cornerstone Chambers have no name and may only be specifically referred to by their grid position). Weak Cornerstone Chambers have a background color of #FF4400

The effects of Ricardo moving to a Cornerstone Chamber are as follows: he loses any Everburning Torches he is carrying. The Haunt of that Cornerstone Chamber is then reduced by Ricardo’s Energy, to a minimum of zero, and then Ricardo’s Energy is reduced by the same amount the Haunt was reduced by.

When the Crypt Settles, the Haunt of every Cornerstone Chamber which Richardo did not move into during journey that just occurred is increased by 1 (to a Maximum of 5).

In “Richardo’s Journey” add a new step after “Apply any effects of the features of that room, in the order that they are listed in the rule Features, to Richardo” that says “If the new room is a Cornerstone Chamber, apply the effects of Richardo moving there”

This is really a two parter, but someone else is free to write the second part. The basic though is that once every Cornerstone Chamber is weakened, Dracula is summoned. Game can then shift from “Richardo trying to make it to the corners to weaken them” to “Richardo trying to find and slay Dracula”

Proposal: You snooze, you lose

Times out and passes 4-0. Enacted by Brendan.

Adminned at 25 Jun 2021 22:28:57 UTC

Append to the first paragraph of the rule “Sepulchres” the following:

To collapse a Sepulchre is to take an Atomic Action that entails setting the Vampire Lord whose Sepulchre it was to have no Sepulchre, making the room that was most recently their Sepulchre Dark, and removing that room’s name, description and effect.

Reword the sentence beginning “When the Crypt Settles” in the rule “Sepulchres” as follows:

When the Crypt Settles, if Richardo von Nestor moved into a room which was a Vampire Lord’s Sepulchre, then Richardo von Nestor must collapse the Sepulchre. When a Vampire Lord becomes idle while having a Sepulchre, then if no other Vampire Lord has collapsed that former Sepulchre since the idle Vampire Lord became idle, any Vampire Lord may collapse that former Sepulchre.

Append to the paragraph beginning “Each Vampire Lord has an Allegiance…” in the rule “Vampire Lords” the following:

If a Vampire Lord’s Allegiance is set to the name of an idle Vampire Lord, they are not Enthralled, and may set their Allegiance to none at any time.

I think the way Sycophancy is worded already handles idleness, as do Sigils and Glyphs.

Proposal: Whispers in the Dark

Enacted 8-2. Josh

Adminned at 24 Jun 2021 16:09:01 UTC

Replace

If no noise has been heard from the Crypt for at least 24 hours (noise is heard from the Crypt whenever a Power Action is taken or the Crypt is Entered)

with

If it has been at least 24 hours since the Crypt was last entered, and at least 12 hours since the last Power Action was taken

Proposal: Fire & forget [Appendix]

Unpopular, 3-7. Josh

Adminned at 24 Jun 2021 16:08:34 UTC

In the rule Official Posts, change

An official post may be altered by its author if it is less than eight hours old and either no Vampire Lord has commented on it or (if it is a Votable Matter) if all comments on it contain no voting icons; otherwise this can only be done as allowed by the Ruleset.

to read

An official post may be altered by its author if it is less than four hours old; otherwise this can only be done as allowed by the Ruleset. Whenever an official post is edited, the author must make a comment to the post describing the changes made in the edit.

Posting this without totally endorsing it: a shorter edit window, but one that allows early voters uninterested in wrangling over wording to vote without closing the edit window. I think that 4 hours isn’t quite enough to encourage abuse? Anyway, it is presented here for discussion.

Wednesday, June 23, 2021

Proposal: 2 Much Treasure

Self-killed. Josh

Adminned at 24 Jun 2021 16:07:57 UTC

In “Treasure”, reword the second pragraph to the following:

An average treasure chest will contain one item from average treasures list. A fine treasure chest will contain one item from the fine treasures list and one item from the average treasures list. The contents of a chest are secretly randomly determined when that chest is opened. As a Power Action with a cost of 2, a Vampire Lord may set the contents of a single treasure chest to any valid value by appending the names of the items to be contained in that chest to its entry in the relevant room effect, in brackets; when Richardo von Nestor opens such a chest, the contents are not randomly determined but instead are the firstmost set of values in the room effect, and then those values (and the associated brackets) are deleted from the room effect.

Move all brackets containing item names from any rooms’ descriptions to the same rooms’ effects, placing them immediately following the relevant chest feature and maintaining the order in which they appear.

so that there’s a first-in-first-out queue in set-value treasure chests, preventing richardo from gaining an arbitrary # of items simultaneously from the same treasure chest :0

Proposal: Crystal Clearinghouse

Enacted popular, 8-0. Josh

Adminned at 24 Jun 2021 16:06:27 UTC

If “Another Way Out” passed, undo the changes it made to the ruleset.

If the sentence “Any Puissance or Influence that would accrue to an Enthralled Vampire Lord from the above Features instead accrues to the Vampire Lord who Enthralls them.” appears in the rule “Features” then reword it as follows:

Any Puissance or Influence that would accrue to an Enthralled Vampire Lord from the above Features instead accrues to the Vampire Lord who Enthralls them; when the Crypt Settles, each Enthralled Vampire Lord who would have gained Puissance or Influence if not for this sentence has their Allegiance set to none, and ceases to be Enthralled.

Reword the paragraph “Each Vampire Lord has a number of Blood Mana Crystals. Blood Mana Crystals must be a non-negative integer and defaults to zero.” in the rule “Vampire Lords” as follows:

Each Vampire Lord has a number of Blood Mana Crystals, which is a publicly tracked non-negative integer defaulting to 0.

 

Trying to use one proposal slot for two points of cleanup: restoring a Journey step that got overwritten, and unorphaning a pretty important variable.

Call for Judgment: As long as we’re calling out scams

Reached quorum 7 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan. Doesn’t - I think - revert Lemon’s unenthrallment, as this was not an example of “Dark Favours claimed, spent or exchanged”, it was a regular Favour granted.

Adminned at 23 Jun 2021 10:30:22 UTC

If the paragraph reading “If a Vampire Lord is Enthralled, then as a Daily Action, they may grant the Vampire Lord who most recently Enthralled them a Favour, then set their Allegiance to none and cease being Enthralled” exists in the rule “Vampire Lords” then reword it as follows:

If a Vampire Lord is Enthralled, then as a Daily Action that is also an Atomic Action and is known as Emancipating, they may grant the Vampire Lord who most recently Enthralled them a Favour, then set their Allegiance to none and cease being Enthralled.

If the bullet point reading “Enthralldom, as per the rule Vampire Lords” exists in the rule “Dark Favours” then reword it to:

  • Emancipating, as described in rule Vampire Lords

If the bullet point reading “Spend: An Initiator spending a Favour that they hold to gain a resource or advantage from its Lender, the Provider;” exists in the rule “Dark Favours” then reword it to:

  • Spend: An Initiator spending a Favour that they hold to transfer a resource or advantage from its Lender, the Provider, to the Initiator;

Revert the effects of any Dark Favours claimed, spent or exchanged between the time this Call for Judgment was published and the time it was enacted.

Since “gain” doesn’t necessarily mean “one person loses what the other receives” per the Appendix, and “Enthralldom” doesn’t necessarily mean “I stop Enthralling you as per the defined Daily Action,” there is currently a scam offering infinite Influence by means of Dark Favours—it’s probably too rickety to pass a victory vote, but I still think it’s worth cleaning up.

Proposal: Spooky Action at a Distance

Timed out and enacted, 4-2. Josh

Adminned at 24 Jun 2021 16:05:30 UTC

Enact a subrule to Vampire Lords called “The Ancients”:-

If an idle Vampire Lord has been idle for the entirety of the current dynasty, they may perform the Lighting a Room Action as if they were not idle, and without paying its Puissance cost, so long as doing so would not modify the values of any Vampire or idle Vampire, and its cost would have been no more than 10 Puissance. Such a Power Action is known as an Ancient Action.

Each idle Vampire Lord may take no more than one Ancient Action per dynasty, and an Ancient Action cannot be taken if one has already been taken that day.

Per my comment on Ghosts of Winters Past.

Proposal: Would’ve been a fun scam, but I’m still having fun

Passes 8-0. Enacted by Brendan.

Adminned at 23 Jun 2021 21:20:37 UTC

Add the following to the second paragraph of the “The Crypt of Dracula”

Room names may not contain the word “Dracula”

If any room currently contains the word “Dracula” replace it with “Alucard”. Then, for each pair of rooms have the same name, randomly select one of them an append “1” to its name and append “2” to the other one in the pair. Repeat this step until no rooms have the same name.

Currently I feel that were someone to add a room called “Dracula”, Dracula would exists as an entity in the game. Then adding one called “Dracula is Dust” is a bit more of a stretch, but you could probably argue “Dracula exists as an entity in the game, and Dracula is Dust (also exists as an entity in the game)”, and thus the end game clause is fulfilled.

People might shoot the scam down for flavour texts reasons. Or maybe the “Dracula is dust” bit is a bridge too fair. But better safe than sorry.

Proposal: Night of the Denizens

Passes 8-0. Enacted by Brendan.

Adminned at 23 Jun 2021 21:18:35 UTC

Appends the following in Section 2.2:

    Vampire Lords may summon Denizens to do their bidding.
 
  Summon Denizen is a Power Action. To perform Summon Denizen, a Vampire Lord select a Name, two non-negative integers as Brutality and Cunning, any non-repeating Selectable Traits and a Lit Room Coordinates which is not E4 or orthogonally adjacent to E4 as the Summoning Location.
 
  The list of Selectable Traits which must be a subset of Denizen’s Traits, along with the Trait Cost listed in parentheses, is as follows:
  Evasive (1)
  Mischievous (2)
  Nutritious (-1)
 
  The cost of such summoning is derived from the formula:
  Brutality + Cunning + All taken Trait’s Trait Cost.
 
  After a Vampire Lord has paid the specified Cost, they may summon a Denizen at the Summoning Location with the specified Brutality and Cunning and specified Trait(s), and set the Sycophancy status of the summoned Denizen to their name.

  Moving Denizens is a Power Action and also a Daily Action. For each Denizen a Vampire Lord controls, they may specify a Lit Room Coordinates orthogonally adjacent to the current room it occupies and is not orthogonally adjacent to E4 and is not on E4, and it’s location becomes the new location.

  When a Denizen injures Richardo von Nestor, if there is any Vampire Lord name in it’s sycophancy, that vampire lord gains Influence for each energy Richardo von Nestor lost. This effect may be stacked with the Glyph effect.

Implementation of an unfinished Denizen rules without method to summon any Denizens by anybody.

Call for Judgment: Ghosts of Winters Past

Fewer than a quorum not voting against. Failed 1-7 by Kevan.

Adminned at 23 Jun 2021 16:11:19 UTC

If Proposal: The Undying [Core] [Special Case] [Appendix] has not been enacted, immediately enacted it.

Revert the effect of any Power Actions undertaken by Vampire Lords who were idle at the time at which the Action was carried out.

Proposal: Splurge

Reached quorum 7 votes to 2. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 23 Jun 2021 20:37:37 UTC

If there is a Power Action called Devastation, remove it from the ruleset. If there is a Lair Action called Machination, remove it from the ruleset. If there is a sentence in the ruleset that starts “While a Vampire Lord is Bloodthirsty, they may not perform any Power Actions except”, rewrite that sentence to read as follows:

While a Vampire Lord is Bloodthirsty, they may not perform any Power Actions except Blood Frenzy

Add the following to the end of the rule Lair Actions:

Blood Frenzy is an atomic Power Action with a cost of 7. When a Vampire Lord carries out a Blood Frenzy, they must take the following steps:
* Randomly select a Lit Room. If it contains any Features, randomly select one of those Features and remove it from that Room.
* Randomly select a Lit Room and randomly select a Feature (other than ‘This room contains a Glyph’). Add that Feature to that Room.

Note that this proposal removes the Lair Action Machination from https://blognomic.com/archive/the_crypt_is_about_to_get_very_boring but not the Power Action Machination from https://blognomic.com/archive/deus_vault

Proposal: Energy Enrichment

Passes 8-0. Enacted by Brendan.

Adminned at 23 Jun 2021 20:22:56 UTC

In the subrule 2.2.1 Features - Glyphs and Sigils, change

If Richardo is not Enriched, he gains 1 Energy for each Active Sigil engraved here and becomes Enriched

To

If Richardo is not Enriched, he gains 1 Energy for each Active Sigil engraved here and becomes Enriched (+1).

We simply can’t pay costs based on undefined costs OR worse, this is an not yet fully defined feature masquerading as a defined one.

This proposal fully defines the feature.

Monday, June 21, 2021

Proposal: Deus Vault

Times out 5-1 with 1 unresolved DEF. Enacted by Brendan.

Adminned at 23 Jun 2021 20:04:21 UTC

Add the following paragraph to the rule “Lair Actions” unless a paragraph beginning “Machination is a Lair Action…” exists in that rule, in which case, replace that paragraph with the following paragraph:

Machination is a Power Action with a cost of 7. The Vampire Lord carrying it out chooses another Vampire Lord who does not have a Sepulchre; and chooses a Lit room that is neither a Sepulchre nor the room located at E4, but is diagonally adjacent to a room reachable from room E4 by a path of orthogonally connected Lit rooms; and sets that chosen Vampire Lord’s Sepulchre to that chosen room.

If the sentence “While a Vampire Lord is Bloodthirsty, they may not perform any Power Actions except Devastation.” exists in the rule “Unlife” then replace it with the following:

While a Vampire Lord is Bloodthirsty, they may not perform any Power Actions except Devastation or Machination.

:D

Mentorship announcement

Kevan will be acting as chiika’s mentor.

Introduction - Chiiika

Fluff and more fluff: *flipping more and more notes from desk*
“This seems fun.”
Chiiika straightens herself, then opens a portal again to….. somewhere.
“Where will I go? Nevermind.”

Important part: Chiiika wants to formally joins as a player. Hope we all have a great time here!

Proposal: Blood Simple

Timed out and failed, 2-5. Josh

Adminned at 23 Jun 2021 08:39:55 UTC

Replace the paragraph beginning “If a Vampire Lord is Enthralled, then as” with:-

If a Vampire Lord is not Enthralled, they may set their Allegiance to the name of any other Vampire Lord. A Vampire Lord may remove their own name from a Vampire Lord’s Allegiance at any time.

Replace all the paragraphs in “Unlife” containing the word “Enthralled” with a single paragraph:-

Imparting is a Power Action with a cost of 1. The Vampire Lord carrying it out may select a Vampire Lord who is Enthralled to them and increase that Lord’s Puissance by 1.

Reword “Dark Favours” to:-

If the game is in Interregnum, any Vampire Lord may - for every Vampire Lord who is Enthralled to another - create an Unripe Favour held by that first Lord and lent by the second, and remove the Enthrallment.

If “Another Way Out” passed, undo the changes it made to the ruleset.

If “forget the scalpels, bring the sledgehammer!” passed, replace “may not perform any Power Actions not described in this sub-rule, except for Devastation” with “may not perform any Power Actions except for Devastation”.

Suggesting a major simplification of Enthralment to just “if someone agrees to become Enthralled to you, you get all of their Puissance and can choose to give them some of it back, or give them some of your own, until you agree to release them”, with leftover Enthralments being converted to Favours at the end of the dynasty. As it stands it feels like we’ve got two different stats - Enthralment and Favours - doing the same kind of thematic vampire-allegiance work, but with different scopes, and with the actual meat of vampiric intrigue (offering to assist or spare someone in exchange for their obedience) being opaque or absent.

This also addresses the trapped-at-1-Puissance problem, and removes the fastest-biter-first issue where Enthralment is currently all about being quickest to respond to a Crypt Entry post, rather than a dusted vampire cautiously choosing who they trust to restore them.

Proposal: forget the scalpels, bring the sledgehammer!

Timed out and failed, 2-6. Josh

Adminned at 23 Jun 2021 08:39:27 UTC

In the rule “Lair Actions”, remove the paragraph starting with “Devastation is”, as well as the paragraph beginning with “Machination is”, if one exists.
Append to the same rule:

Devastation is a Power Action with a cost of 7 plus the total Shadow scores of the Features in the selected Room’s Effect. The Vampire Lord carrying it out may select a Lit room that is not a Sepulchre or Cornerstone Chamber and collapse it: the room becomes Dark and loses its name, description, and effect.

In the rule “Unlife”, change the paragraph beginning with “If a Vampire Lord’s Puissance is above 10” to the following:

If a Vampire Lord’s Puissance is above 13, then that Vampire Lord is Bloodthirsty. While a Vampire Lord is Bloodthirsty, they may not perform any Power Actions not described in this sub-rule, except for Devastation.

we all seem to agree that devastation is going to cause problems in the long run; i think that this change makes devestation’s effects on the crypt much simpler n easier to recover from than the removal of features. plus it doesnt break flavour like renovating-while-bloodthirsty does, *and* it doesn’t discourage vampire lords from using expensive-but-easily-removed features! and there’s a bonus bit of slightly increasing the cap on puissance, bc imo the current window between 0 and 11 could use a smidge more breathing room :0

Proposal: Another Way Out

Timed out and failed, 3-6. Josh

Adminned at 23 Jun 2021 08:38:55 UTC

Add the following to Vampire Lords

Vampire Lords have a non-negative integer of Penitence, which by default is zero. Vampire Lords who are not Enthralled always have 0 Penitence.

When the Crypt Settles, any Vampire Lord with 15 or more Penitence has their Penitence set to 0, their Allegiance to none, and ceases to be Enthralled. .

In “The Crypt of Dracula” after “Any Puissance or Influence that would accrue to an Enthralled Vampire Lord from the above Features instead accrues to the Vampire Lord who Enthralls them.” add

The Enthralled Vampire earns one Penitence for each Puissance they would have accrued, and three Penitence for each Influence they would have accrued.

Giving people a way out of Enthrallment without owing favors, though its rather expensive.

Proposal: When Life Gives You Lemons… Give Lemon Life

Enacted popular, 7-0. Josh

Adminned at 22 Jun 2021 14:59:03 UTC

In “Vampire Lords” replace

If a Vampire Lord is Enthralled, then as a Power Action with a cost of 1, they may grant the Vampire Lord who most recently Enthralled them a Favour, then set their Allegiance to none and cease being Enthralled.

with

If a Vampire Lord is Enthralled, then as a Daily Action, they may grant the Vampire Lord who most recently Enthralled them a Favour, then set their Allegiance to none and cease being Enthralled.

Per Lemon’s comment in the slack… enthralled vampire lords can’t actually currently break out of enthrallment without immediately becoming dust again which seems a bit silly

Sunday, June 20, 2021

Proposal: The Undying [Core] [Special Case] [Appendix]

Enacted popular, 8-0. Josh

Adminned at 22 Jun 2021 14:57:22 UTC

In “Idle Vampire Lords”, replace “excluding Rules” with “excluding the core and appendix Rules”.

In “Seasonal Downtime”, replace “defined by the rules” with “defined by the core rules”.

This probably happens more than we realise: we have both a core and a dynastic rule called “Vampire Lords”, which means that the dynastic one (and its subrules?) are all exempt from the restrictions on idle players. I don’t think it actually breaks anything, it just means idle players aren’t quite as inert as we thought they were, right now.

Proposal: Too Much Treasure

Enacted popular, 9-0. Josh

Adminned at 22 Jun 2021 14:55:56 UTC

In the subrule “Treasure”, change

As a Power Action with a cost of 1

to

As a Power Action with a cost of 2

and

when Richardo von Nestor opens such a chest then the contents are not randomly determined but instead are the values set in the room description.

to

when Richardo von Nestor opens such a chest then the contents are not randomly determined but instead are the values set in the room description, and the contents of the chest revert to being randomly determined (all content in square brackets and the brackets themselves are removed from the room description).

Right now, unrandomizing the contents of a treasure chest is both very cheap and very powerful.

Make it a bit more expensive, and more temporary.

Proposal: The crypt is about to get very boring?

Timed out and failed, 3-6. Josh

Adminned at 22 Jun 2021 14:55:26 UTC

In the subrule “Unlife”, change

While a Vampire Lord is Bloodthirsty, they may not perform any Power Actions except Devastation.

to

While a Vampire Lord is Bloodthirsty, they may not perform any Power Actions except Devastation and Machination.

To the subrule “Lair Actions”, append a new paragraph:

Machination is a Lair Action with a cost of 6 plus the Darkness score of the chosen Feature. The Vampire Lord carrying it out selects a Feature that is listed in the “Threats” list of the rule “Features”, and an Explored Room, and adds that Feature to that Room.

If “A Hundred Thousand Tealights” was enacted, change “an Explored” to “a Lit” and “Darkness” to “Shadow” in the newly added paragraph.

It looks like almost everyone is Bloodthirsty right now. With the only way to get back in range being Devastation, this means that we’re probably going to have very few Features left in a couple of days.

Adding a counterpart to Devastation that’s also very inefficient, but has more interesting side effects. It’s hard to get the flavour to fit, but it seems like trying to kill Richardo is the sort of thing you’d do while Bloodthirsty.

Proposal: Eject Button [Appendix]

Self-killed. Josh

Adminned at 22 Jun 2021 09:31:07 UTC

In the rule “Atomic Actions”, add the following after the bullet beginning with “If a Vampire Lord arrives at a step in an Atomic Action and they cannot perform that step”:

* If at any point before the completion of the Atomic Action a Vampire Lord no longer wishes to complete that Action, they may undo all the steps they have performed of that Action and are considered never to have performed that Action.

there was some talk a lil bit ago about someone being obligated to complete an atomic action started by mistake or misunderstanding, so maybe we ought to fix that

Proposal: Decisions, decisions

Self-killed. Josh

Adminned at 22 Jun 2021 09:30:00 UTC

In the rule Richardo’s Journey, after the text “noise is heard from the Crypt whenever a Power Action is taken or the Crypt is Entered”, add “and the time of the last noise to be heard from the crypt may be publicly tracked”.

Add a new rule to the ruleset as a subrule of Richardo’s Journey, called Richardo’s Lessons, with the following text:

Richardo von Nestor has a set of Lessons that he has learned through his experiences in the Crypt. Richardo’s Lessons are tracked in a list at the end of this rule.

When the Crypt Settles, if Richardo von Nestor was Grievously Injured during this Enter the Crypt action, then he may Learn a new Lesson. Any step of the Entering the Crypt action in which an outcome is determined by a number being randomly generated is referred to as a Choice. When Richardo Learns a new Lesson, he may identify one Choice that he took during that Enter the Crypy action that led to his being Greviously Injured, and its outcome; he is encouraged to pick the Choice that most causitively led to the Grievous Injury being enacted upon him. This choice must then be recorded in the list of lessons at the end of this rule.

A Lesson is applicable when a Choice being made is identical to a Choice described in a Lesson. When Richardo von Nestor is making a Choice as part of a Move during an Enter the Crypt action, the options to be randomly selected from always omit those named in an applicable Lesson, unless that would result in there being no valid options.

Lessons:
When moving from the Entrance Vestibule, moving to the Shattered Stairway leads to Grievous Injury.

In the Enter the Crypt atomic action, after the bullet point that says “Reduce his Energy by 1”, add a new bullet point with the following text:

** Evaluate whether any of the Lessons that Richardo has learned might be applicable to any step in this Move. If they are then they should be applied where appropriate.

Starting to make Richardo’s movements more transparently logical

Story Post: Richardo’s Fifth Expedition

Having recovered from his previous exertions, Richardo once more takes up the whip and shield and braves his way into the Cathedral catacombs.

Crossing the unholy threshold into the mosaic grotto of the Crypt Entrance , he surveys his surrounding and decides to head north, to the newly-minted Room BA.

Room BA is a deserted, sparklingly clean space with a single elaborate chest sitting in a beam of light in the middle of the room, which sends a little jolt of charge into the crypt of every Vampire Lord as Richardo enters. Richardo decides to open the chest and finds a Holy Tincture, a Silver-Tipped Stake, a map detailing a secret passage through the crypt, and a Rod of Smoothing. He immediately uses the tincture and the map, restoring his energy a little and allowing him to slip behind a gargoyle into a small tunnel, leading him through a dusty passage to the Forgotten Corridor.

Re-entering this musty and broken courtyard, Richardo remembers that the last time her was here he was struck by falling masonry, so he uses his Rod of Smoothing to repair the crumbling stone and concrete, removing this room’s ‘Richardo von Nestor is Lightly Wounded if he is not Perceptive’ effect. He then exits through the room’s only exit, to the West, and into the Library of Souls.

The books stir, agitated, when RIchardo enters this room, as usual depositing large amounts of power into the crypts of the Vampire Lords. Richardo feels like he dropped something back in the Forgotten Corridor so he heads back.

He hadn’t. Back to the Library of Souls.

The sentient tomes of the library had barely finished dumping power into the Vampire Lords’ crypts before they’re called upon to do so again. This time Richardo continues west, back into the Crypt Entrance,

Annoyed at having got so turned around, and flagging in energy, Richardo continues through to the west, entering the Hallway of Wonders.

The Hallways is its usual rainbow, prismatic self, but this time Richardo finds a dais in the middle of the room, upon which has been placed an elaborate, ornate coffin. Engraved on the side of the coffin is a passage in Latin which he translates to mean “Here in unholy slumber lies the great Lord of the Vampires, lemonfanta, ravager of the Germanic Peoples, turn back lest your blood feed her hunger and your torment fuel her eternal life”. Richardo feels his palms prick with sweat, and he knows that he must tear down this monstrous edifice, but before he does, he prises open the lid of the coffin. Seeing the immortal form of the fabled lemonfanta in repose, he hesitates for a second, then drives his silver-tipped stake into her heart; she does not wake as her body ages a thousand years in a second, before turning to dust. Richardo then takes a long moment to set the room aflame, bringing it down around him as he leaves, exhausted. The magic of the room allows one last fitful spurt of power to fuel the sigils in nearby rooms before collapsing in upon itself.

Vampire Lord statistic changes:

Influence Puissance
ais523 1 6
Brendan 1 5
Clucky 6
Darknight 3
Jason 5
Jumble 5
Kevan 5
lemonfanta 1 5
Phil 6
pokes 6
Raven1207 4

Saturday, June 19, 2021

Proposal: Richardo von Nestor has no sense of direction

Timed out and failed, 1-6. Josh

Adminned at 21 Jun 2021 20:54:58 UTC

In rule “The Crypt of Dracula”, subrule “Features”

Change

If a Feature says is that an exit is blocked, this means that the room in that direction from the room with the Feature is removed from the set of possible selections of Richardo von Nestor’s next destination, if it would be in that set. (North is towards the top of the map.)

To

If a Feature says is that an exit is blocked, this means that the room in that direction from the room with the Feature is removed from the set of possible selections of Richardo von Nestor’s next destination, if it would be in that set. (North is towards the top of the map, East is the right of the map, South is bottom of the map, and West is left of the map)

I meant to post this earlier before Kevan’s proposal got enacted but got busy with lab stuff for my summer apprenticeship for my professor. I think putting in the other 3 directions should also be defined as well since you could argue that it goes counterclockwise or that that North isn’t opposite to South and the same for East and West.

Proposal: Reinheritance

Timed out and enacted, 6-0. Josh

Adminned at 21 Jun 2021 19:32:44 UTC

Enact Proposal: Inheritance, which can be found at the following link: https://blognomic.com/archive/inheritance2

In the ruleset, change the sentence that begins ‘When a Vampire Lord Shatters’ to read as follows:

When a Vampire Lord Shatters, they must reduce their Blood Mana Crystals by 1 and then may increase their Puissance by 10, ceasing to be Dust if applicable, and may set their Allegiance to -.

In the rule Dark Favours, add the following immediately before the text ‘Favour transactions are carried out between an Initiator and a Provider’:

In this Dynasty, Favours may only be claimed, spent or exchanged through the favour transaction types detailed in this rule.

In the same rule, after the text ‘The following lists detail the dynastic resources and effects that can be exchanged as part of a result of a single Favour transaction’, add:

; any Dynastic resource or variable not specifically appearing on either list may not be exchanged in a Favour transaction

Proposal: A Hundred Thousand Tealights

Reached quorum 7 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 20 Jun 2021 19:37:57 UTC

Replace the word “Unexplored” with “Dark” throughout the ruleset. Replace “#998877” with “#444444”. Replace “#997068” with “#333333”.

Replace the word “Explored” with “Lit” throughout the ruleset, correcting a/an accordingly.

Replace “Exploring a Room is a Power Action” with “Lighting a Room is a Power Action”.

Replace “Darkness” with “Shadow” throughout the ruleset.

As discussed on Slack regarding the opacity of a room being “continuously explored”, Lit/Dark might be easier terms to think about.

Friday, June 18, 2021

Proposal: Waiting To Be Judged

Timed out / quorumed 7 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 20 Jun 2021 19:35:00 UTC

In “Richardo’s Journey”

replace

If no noise has been heard from the Crypt for at least 24 hours (noise is heard from the Crypt whenever a Power Action is taken or the Crypt is Entered), Richardo von Nestor may Enter the Crypt,

with

If no noise has been heard from the Crypt for at least 24 hours (noise is heard from the Crypt whenever a Power Action is taken or the Crypt is Entered), and there are no pending calls for judgement which have the tag “[Pressing]”, Richardo von Nestor may Enter the Crypt,

We might have to just get josh to play it cool on this one, but it occurs to me that we could wind up in situations like with the treasure chests where various people disagree with how the rulings have been interpreted and the best thing to do is just go “lets wait until this issues is resolved”

This allows people to go “hey I want this resolved before the next run” without needing to spend power actions delaying the timer.

Call for Judgment: Sub Zero Hero

Enacted 7-0. Josh

Adminned at 19 Jun 2021 21:11:33 UTC

In Richardo’s Journey after “set his Energy” add ” (which is an integer)”

Energy is not currently specified to be an integer. Per “If a set of valid values is not specified in their definition, game variables defined to hold numeric values can hold only non-negative integers.”, this makes actions which would cause his Energy to go below 0 (such as Grievously Injured, or exploring a chest at 0 energy), potentially preventing Josh from doing a run.

Proposal: Bard is the Ward

Timed out and failed, 1-4. Josh

Adminned at 20 Jun 2021 18:49:16 UTC

Reword the rule “Sepulchres” as follows

A Vampire Lord may have up to one Sepulchre, which is an explored room. The location of a Vampire Lord’s Sepulchre (if any) is publicly tracked. Each Sepulchre has a non-negative publicly tracked integer number of Wards, which defaults to 1 and is tracked in the Vampire Lords table and left empty for Vampire Lords who do not possess a Sepulchre. 

When the Crypt Awakens, increase the Influence of each Vampire Lord with a Sepulchre by 1.

Whenever a Room is Pacified, if that room contains a Sepulchre, reduce the number of Wards on that Sepulchre by 1 (to a minimum of 0)

When the Crypt Settles, if a Sepulchre has 0 Wards, then the Sepulchre collapses: that Vampire Lord is set to have no Sepulchre, the room becomes unexplored, and the room loses its name, description and effect.

add the following to Lair Actions

Empowering A Sepulchre is a Power Action with cost 3 plus 2 for each Ward on the Sepulchre of the Vampire Lord carrying out the action. It can only be performed by Vampire Lords who possess a Sepulchre. When performed, the Vampire Lord who performed the action’s Sepulchre gains 1 Ward.

Proposal: Don’t Talk To Me Until I’ve Had My Blood

Timed out and enacted, 3-1 with 1 unresolved DEF. Josh

Adminned at 20 Jun 2021 09:23:20 UTC

In “Unlife”, replace “While a Vampire Lord is Bloodthirsty, they may not Explore Rooms or Engrave Sigils.” with:-

While a Vampire Lord is Bloodthirsty, they may not perform any Power Actions except Devastation.

Proposal: Inheritance

Self-killed. Josh

Adminned at 19 Jun 2021 19:27:51 UTC

Add the following to the end of the rule Vampire Lords:

Each Vampire Lord has a number of Blood Mana Crystals. Blood Mana Crystals must be a non-negative integer and defaults to zero.

Add the following to the end of the rule Lair Actions:

Distilling is a Power Action with a cost of 1. The Vampire Lord carrying it out may spend 12 Influence to gain 1 Blood Mana Crystal.

Add the following to the end of the rule Unlife:

Shattering is a Power Action with a cost of zero. When a Vampire Lord Shatters, they may reduce their Blood Mana Crystals by 1 and may increase their Puissance by 10, ceasing to be Dust if applicable, and may set their Allegiance to -.

Add a new rule to the ruleset, called Victory, with the following text:

No Vampire Lord may have the name Dracula. If Dracula exists as an entity in the game, and Dracula is Dust, then the Vampire Lord with the most Blood Mana Crystals has achieved Victory.

 

Friday, June 18, 2021

Call for Judgment: Entering at E4

Fewer than a quorum not voting against. Failed 0 votes to 6 by Kevan.

Adminned at 18 Jun 2021 09:11:38 UTC

Uphold all attempts to Inhabit a Room this dynasty prior to 01:16 UTC, 18 June 2021.

In the paragraph in “Lair Actions” that starts “Inhabiting a Room”, change “reachable from room E4” to “reachable from the room located at E4”.

I believe the only sensible interpretation of “Room E4” in the ruleset is “the room located at E4”, rather than “the room labelled E4”. If you agree with me, the Sepulchre creation that’s been going on this dynasty was legal; voting for this CFJ effectively enforces this interpretation (it’s an effective no-op if you agree with me about what the gamestate is).

Clucky disagrees; under his interpretation, all attempts to create Sepulchres this dynasty have been illegal (because there is no room labelled E4). So we need a CFJ to resolve the dispute.

Proposal: Road Bumps, Not Run-Enders

Timed out and enacted, 7-0. Josh

Adminned at 19 Jun 2021 19:26:19 UTC

In the rule “Crypt Denizens”, replace “If the result is lower, Richardo is Grievously Injured.” with “If the result is lower, Richardo is Lightly Wounded a number of times equal to the Denizen’s Brutality (at minimum once).”
Add the following Denizen Traits to the list in the same rule:

* Mischievous: If a Mischievous Denizen is not slain, immediately after Encountering it Richardo ceases to be holding one secretly randomly selected item that he is holding (if any such items exist).
* Nutritious: When Richardo Encounters and slays a Nutritious Denizen, once the room is Pacified, if his Energy is greater than 0 it increases by an amount equal the Denizen’s Brutality before it was slain.

Sort the list of Denizen Traits alphabetically.

i agree w/ josh’s comment on my other proposal, so here’s a lil rule change to that effect & a couple traits to boot!

What Is He Doing In The Shadows

Vampire Lord Zack’s schemes have become too baroque and malign to be tracked by mere gamestate. He becomes idle after 7 days of (apparent?!) inactivity; quorum remains 7.

Proposal: An Emanation of Energy

Timed out and failed, 1 vote to 4 with 4 unresolved DEFs. Josh

Adminned at 19 Jun 2021 19:25:32 UTC

Make room H1 explored and give it the name “Summoning Altar”, the description “A candlelit chamber dominated by an altar, upon which occult diagrams are drawn and a fresh sacrifice lays bleeding”, and the Effect “A Crypt Denizen is spawned with Brutality equal to DICE4 minus one, Cunning equal to DICE4 minus 1, one randomly-selected Denizen Trait from the the ruleset, a Location of “Summoning Altar”, a Sycophancy of “None”, and a name determined by Richardo von Nestor.”
Add the following to the rule “Cornerstones”:

The Summoning Altar is the lower-leftmost room of the crypt map. A Vampire Lord may gain 2 Puissance immediately before performing the Summoning a Denizen Power Action if they forfeit the option of choosing the spawned Crypt Denizen’s Location and instead set it to the Summoning Altar.

In the same rule, append to the first paragraph “Sentences in the effect of explored Cornerstone Chambers count as features for the purposes of the Enter the Crypt atomic action but cannot be removed from the room they are in or added to other rooms.”
Add the following to the rule “Lair Actions”:

Summoning a Denizen is a Power Action with a cost of 3 or 5, chosen by the Vampire Lord before performing the action. If the cost is 3, it is a lesser summoning; if the cost is 5, it is a greater summoning. The Vampire Lord carrying it out may spawn a Crypt Denizen with a Sycophancy, Location, and Trait list of their choosing, as well as Brutality and Cunning scores of their choosing, so long as the sum of those scores is not greater than 4 (if lesser summoning) or 7 (if greater summoning) minus 2 for each Denizen Trait in the Denizen’s Trait list.

Enthralling a Denizen is a Power Action with a variable cost: the Vampire Lord carrying it out must first choose a Crypt Denizen, and the action’s cost is equal to half the chosen Denizen’s Cunning (rounded up). If the Denizen’s Sycophany is “None”, they may set its Sycophancy to their own name; otherwise, they may set its Sycophancy to “None”.

In the rule “Lair Actions”, change “an explored room that is neither a Sepulchre nor the room located at E4” to “an explored room that is not a Sepulchre and is neither room E4 nor a Cornerstone Chamber”.

a bit lengthy, but its got a lot of necessities. here’s some ways for crypt denizens to spawn, along with ways for sycophancy to come into play. as for what it *means* to have a sycophant, we can figure it out later! oh, and, since this proposal explores a cornersone chamber, a lil rider rule about cornerstone sepulchres that i think is only fair considering whoever got the cornerstone sepulchre first would have a big defensive advantage :0

Story Post: Richardo’s Fourth Expedition

After hearing no sounds emerging from the Crypt for 24 hours, Richardo decides to brave the mausoleum once more.

Entering into the Crypt Entrance, he surveys his options and decides to move west.

The Hallway of Wonders is quiet, but somewhere, a bloodstained rune syphons power into the sigils engraved into the Crypt Entrance and the Pillar Room. Richardo continues on to the Pillar Room.

This long, dark corridor with its widely spaced pillars casts weird, angular shadows, but is empty, apart from the sigil of the Vampire Lord ais523. Richardo turns back the way he came.

The Hallway of Wonders remains well-lit by torchlight flickering in reflection on the beaten gold trophies that are suspended above its doorways. The rune continued to direct power at the sigils in neighbouring rooms. Richardo continues to the Crypt Entrance.

In the Crypt Entrance, Richardo spots a previously unnoticed chest sitting in the lee of a mosaic design. Opening it, he finds a Holy Tincture, which he immediately drinks, restoring his energy somewhat. This time he decides to continue east.

In the Library of Souls he can hear the books shuffling as soul energy passes between their leather bindings. Power flows from this room to each of the Vampire Lords’ coffins as they sleep, and innumerable sigils in this room syphon off more power, agitated by the power emanating from the von Nestor family shield. Richardo continues to the east.

In the Forgotten Corridor, Richardo finds a dead end. His energy flagging, he fails to notice a crumbling mortice at the edge of one of the room’s suspended balconies, and a heavy chunk of masonry falls and strikes him on the head. He is only lightly wounded but nevertheless decides that his energy is too depleted, so he retreats to Zahndorf to rest.

In this run, Richardo’s Energy changed from 6 to 0. gained 2 energy from a Tincture, lost 1 Energy from a Light Wound, and spent 7 Energy moving or opening chests.

Vampire Lord Puissance changes are as follows:

ais523 5
Brendan 2
Clucky 4
Darknight 1
Jason 2
Jumble 2
Kevan 2
lemonfanta 2
Phil 4
pokes 4
Raven1207 3
Zack 1

Proposal: Some tidying up

Timed out and enacted, 7-0. Josh

Adminned at 19 Jun 2021 19:22:59 UTC

Remove the Writ of Blessing and the Angel’s Feather from the lists of treasures. Change the description of Watchful Saint Figurine to “Richardo immediately uses this to become Perceptive”.

Make all currently owned Favours ripe. Add the following as a second paragraph to the rule Dark Favours:

All Favours are always ripe in this dynasty.

In the same rule, at the end of the sentence that starts ‘If the game is in Interregnum’, add “They must then make all remaining Favours unripe.”

Proposal: Twisty Little Passages

Reached quorum 8 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 19 Jun 2021 12:52:39 UTC

Add four Threats to the list in “Features”:-

* The north exit is blocked (+1)
* The south exit is blocked (+1)
* The east exit is blocked (+1)
* The west exit is blocked (+1)

Add a paragraph to the rule:-

If a Feature says is that an exit is blocked, this means that the room in that direction from the room with the Feature is removed from the set of possible selections of Richardo von Nestor’s next destination, if it would be in that set. (North is towards the top of the map.)

Wednesday, June 16, 2021

Proposal: Symphony of the Might

Cannot reach quorum, with 6 votes against. Josh

Adminned at 18 Jun 2021 08:57:17 UTC

Enact a new rule entitled “Victory” as follows:

If one Vampire Lord (known as the Ascendant Vampire Lord) is not Enthralled, and every other Revenant Vampire Lord is Enthralled by that Ascendant Vampire Lord, then the Ascendant Vampire Lord achieves victory in the current dynasty.

Disagree about the condition here if you like, but I swear to Dracula if anyone starts the standard fuss about the phrasing of “achieves victory” I will make it my eternal blood vow to end you in all dynasties, forever.

Proposal: N’Oubliette [Appendix]

Enacted popular, 7-0. Josh

Adminned at 18 Jun 2021 08:55:11 UTC

To “Richardo’s Journey”, add:-

If a specific step of Entering the Crypt is impossible to perform, Richardo may skip it (this takes precedence over the Atomic Actions rule). If Richardo believes that the current Entering the Crypt action will include more than 50 Moves, and if at least 6 Moves have been performed, he should skip the step that includes the words “carry out another Move”.

If the proposal “Call-Off Schedules” failed, replace the second added sentence with:-

If Richardo believes that the current Entering the Crypt action will take more than 50 repeats, and if at least 6 Moves have been performed, he should set his Energy to zero whenever it would be reduced by 1, during the action.

In “Atomic Actions”, replace “An Atomic Action may direct the Vampire Lord performing it to skip some of its steps, which the Vampire Lord must do and in which case the skipped steps are considered completed for this rule.” with:-

If a rule allows the Vampire Lord performing an Atomic Action to skip some of its steps, the skipped steps are considered to have been completed.

We’re already at a point where Richardo can hit an impossible “randomly select an explored room that is orthogonally adjacent” step, if he has collapsed a room and walked beyond it into a single unconnected chamber.

We’re also undoubtedly going to hit a situation at some point where Josh can’t easily (or ever) complete the atomic because Richardo is somehow gaining Energy faster than he can lose it.

(Edited to add a rider saying that rules in general can permit skipping, as well as Atomic Actions themselves.)

Proposal: Call-Off Schedules

Timed out and enacted, 6-1. Josh

Adminned at 18 Jun 2021 08:46:36 UTC

Rewrite the atomic action in the rule Richardo’s Journey as follows:

*Set his location to be the room labelled Crypt Entrance; set his Energy to 6.
*Carry out any effects that take place when the Crypt Awakens.
*If Richardo can legally carry out a Move, do so. A Move consists of the following steps:
**Reduce his Energy by 1.
**Secretly randomly select an explored room that is orthogonally adjacent to his current room and change his location to be that room
**Use or otherwise apply the effect of any items that he is holding (if appropriate and relevant based on its description)
**Encounter any Quick Denizens in that room, in a secretly random order
**Apply any effects of the features of that room, in the order that they are listed in the rule Features, to Richardo
**Encounter any other Denizens in that room, in a secretly random order
**That room is then Pacified; carry out any effects that take place when that room is Pacified.
**If his Energy is greater than 0, carry out another Move.
*He retreats; reset all of his gamestate variables to null values.
*Carry out any effects that take place when the Crypt Settles.
*Make a post to the blog summarising this Enter the Crypt action. It is recommended that this include an outline of Richardo von Nestor’s variable changes, and any changes made to the gamestate of any Vampire Lords as a result of this action.

Rewrite the second paragraph of the rule Sepulchres as follows:

When the Crypt Awakens, increase the Influence of each Vampire Lord with a Sepulchre by 1. When the Crypt Settles, if Richardo von Nestor moved into a room which was a Vampire Lord’s Sepulchre, then the Sepulchre collapses: that Vampire Lord is set to have no Sepulchre, the room becomes unexplored, and the room loses its name, description and effect.

In the rule Glyphs and Sigils, change “If a room contains a Glyph then every time Richardo loses Energy to a feature in that room, the Vampire Lord/s who owns that Glyph gain Influence equal to the amount of Energy so lost” to:

Whenever a Room is Pacified, if that room contains a Glyph then the Vampire Lord/s who owns that Glyph gain Influence equal to the amount of Energy lost by Richardo during the completion of that Move.

If any Sigils are Inactive, make them Active. Remove “Sigils may be Active or Inactive and are by default Active. An Inactive Sigil is denoted by having a * next to the Vampire Lord’s name in the list of Sigils for a room” from the rule Glyphs and Sigils. If Proposal: When was that? was enacted, after “Rooms may not otherwise have a * in their name”, add “Whenever the Crypt Awakens, all Newly Furnished rooms cease to be Newly Furnished.” In the rule Features, change “Richardo von Nestor gains 1 Energy for each Active Sigil engraved here. Set all Sigils engraved here to Inactive. (+1)” to “If Richardo is not Enriched, he gains 1 Energy for each Active Sigil engraved here and becomes Enriched”.

In the rule Crypt Denizens (excluding subrules), rewrite the text after “The following Denizen Traits can be held by Crypt Denizens:” as follows:

*Evasive: When an evasive Denizen is Encountered, it may not be slain. When a Room is Pacified, if this Denizen would have been slain during this Move, it instead changes its Location to a randomly-selected explored room that is orthogonally adjacent to its current Location, and it loses the trait Evasive.
*Quick: Quick Denizens are always encountered before non-quick Denizens, and are also encountered before room effects are applied

When Richardo Encounters a Denizen, he first determines if the Denizen is immediately slain by an item Richardo possess, and then applies the effect of any Traits that the Denizen has. If the Denizen is still alive and present in that room, he then randomly generates a number between 1 and his current energy, and compares that result to the Denizen’s Brutality plus its Cunning. If the result of Richardo’s roll is higher, the Denizen is slain. If the result is equal, Richardo is Lightly Wounded. If the result is lower, Richardo is Grievously Injured.

This was the subject of a lengthy argument between Clucky and myself recently. The parameters of that argument don’t bear rehashing, but the short version is, it is either legally required or simply my preference that any component part of an atomic action be at the very least called off from within the bulleted list of the atomic action itself. That call-off can lead to explanations or clarifications or knock-on effects elsewhere in the ruleset, but what [can’t/I would prefer didn’t] happen is that bits of ruletext exist that purport to be part of the atomic action that aren’t triggered by a directive within the atomic action itself.

This adds some keyword triggers (Awakens, Pacified and Settles) that can act as anchor points for effects that people don’t want to insert into the action itself; because these are directive within the atomic action I [am legally allowed to/would be happy to] refer to ruletext elsewhere in carrying out those effects.

Wednesday, June 16, 2021

Proposal: When was that?

Timed out and enacted, 6-1. Josh

Adminned at 18 Jun 2021 08:41:29 UTC

In “The Crypt of Dracula” after “Room names must be unique and may be used to specifically refer to the room that carries them; otherwise, they are flavour text.” add

Rooms may be Newly Furnished. Newly Furnished rooms are denoted by adding a * after their name. Rooms may not otherwise have a * in their name.

In “Lair Actions” after ” giving it a name and a description,” add

marking it as Newly Furnished,

in the same rule, replace

A Vampire Lord cannot perform this action unless either the selected room has been continuously Explored since before the last-but-one time Richardo von Nestor Entered the Crypt; or the Vampire Lord performing the action is also the Vampire Lord who most recently caused the selected room to become Explored.

with

A Vampire Lord cannot perform this action if the selected room is Newly Furnished, unless the Vampire Lord performing the action is also the Vampire Lord who most recently caused the selected room to become Explored.

add the following step to the Enter the Crypt atomic action, after the “Set all Inactive Sigils to Active” step

Set all Newly Furnished rooms to no longer be Newly Furnished

Set the Pillar Room and all rooms which were newly explored after the time this proposal was created to be Newly Furnished.

Its really hard to tell just at a glance which rooms “have been continuously explored before the last-but-one time Richardo von Nestor Entered the Crypt”. Requires diving into the wiki history. This should have the same effect but its easier to track because its right there on the wiki for everyone to see.

Call for Judgment: Closurer

Reached quorum 7 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 16 Jun 2021 17:45:50 UTC

Uphold the completion of the following Atomic Actions at the detailed times:

The Entering the Crypt action culminating in the story post Richardo’s First Expedition, completed at 11 June 2021, 19:32:00 UTC
The Entering the Crypt action culminating in the story post Richardo’s Second Expedition, completed at 13 June 2021, 19:48:00 UTC
The Entering the Crypt action culminating in the story post Richardo’s Third Expedition, completed at 15 June 2021, 21:40:00 UTC

Josh’s post here: https://blognomic.com/archive/closure1 outlines the need for the change, but he got a date wrong which would mess with things and I noticed only after I voted FOR

Call for Judgment: Closure

As CfJ: Closurer was enacted, this CfJ no longer changes the gamestate or ruleset, so can be failed.

Adminned at 17 Jun 2021 09:29:53 UTC

Uphold the completion of the following Atomic Actions at the detailed times:

The Entering the Crypt action culminating in the story post Richardo’s First Expedition, completed at 11 June 2021, 19:32:00 UTC
The Entering the Crypt action culminating in the story post Richardo’s Second Expedition, completed at 13 June 2021, 19:48:00 UTC
The Entering the Crypt action culminating in the story post Richardo’s Third Expedition, completed at 15 June 2021, 21:40:00 UTC

“If one or more steps of an Atomic Action were done incorrectly, the Vampire Lord must redo the Atomic Action”. Unfortunately, all three of these AAs were done incorrectly, as the summary post is supposed to “summarising [the] Enter the Crypt action, including detailing any variables changed”. None of them detail the changes made to Richardo’s Energy so none of them have been legally completed.

Tomorrow I’m going to put up a proposal fixing a number of issues with the AA, this one included, but I did just want to make sure that the gamestate wasn’t going to slip into the sea in the meanwhile.

Story Post: Richardo’s Third Expedition

Having recovered from his previous interactions with the stairs, Richardo braves the crypt once more.

Arriving at the Crypt Entrance again, he opts to head east, into the Library of Souls.

Richardo is unaffected by the Library of Souls but every Vampire Lord in the Crypt is stirred by the movement of the power around them.

Richardo returns from the Library of Souls to the Crypt Entrance and declines to investigate the average chest.

Richardo moves south, to the Entrance Vestibule.

Richardo remembers that continuing south leads to his being impaled on some spikes to returns north to the Crypt Entrance. This time he does open the chest and finds a Depleted Ring of Warding.

He then moves West, to the Hallway of Wonders. The magic of this room activates the sigils engraved into the Crypt Entrance. Richardo then uses his Ring to erase Ravel1207’s sigil in the Hallway of Wonders.

His energy depleted, Richardo withdraws to rest.

EDIT TO ADD 21h40: Summary of Pussiance changes:

ais523 2
Brendan 2
Clucky 3
Darknight 1
Jason 2
Jumble 2
Kevan 2
lemonfanta 2
Phil 3
pokes 3
Raven1207 2
Zack 1

Proposal: The Favour of an Immortal

Timed out and enacted, 6-3. Josh

Adminned at 17 Jun 2021 09:18:39 UTC

Add a new rule to the ruleset called Dark Favours:

This rule governs the use of favours in this dynasty. Wherever is contradicts the contents of another rule, this rule takes precedence.

Favour transactions are carried out between an Initiator and a Provider. In this dynasty, the following favour transactions are considered to be equivalent:

* Spend: An Initiator spending a Favour that they hold to gain a resource or advantage from its Lender, the Provider;
* Incur: An Initiator awarding a Favour as its lender to a Provider in exchange for a resource or advantage, with the Provider’s consent.

Whenever a dynastic rule specifies that dynastic resources or mechanics may be moved or generated as a result of a Favour transaction, either of the two types of transactions detailed above may be used, regardless of the language used in the rule text. This notwithstanding, no Vanpire Lord may ever be in possession of more than five Favours in total at any time. Conducting a Favour transaction of any kind with each discrete partner is a daily action.

Favour transactions between a Vampire Lord and Richardo von Nestor may only take the form of a Spend transaction.

If the game is in Interregnum, any Vampire Lord may remove any duplicated Favours (i.e. repeated Favours with the same holder and lender) past the first from all Vampire Lords.

The following lists detail the dynastic resources and effects that can be exchanged as part of a result of a single Favour transaction:

Between Vampire Lords:
* Up to 3 Puissance, or 1 Puissance if the Initiator is Dust
* 1 Influence
* The Sycophancy of 1 Crypt Denizen

Between a Vampire Lord and Richardo von Nestor:
* 1 Influence

If Proposal: Dark Machinations Mk II was enacted, add “* Up to 2 Trust” to the ‘Between Vampire Lords’ list above.
If Proposal: Blood money was enacted, add “* The inclusion of the Initiator’s name on a Glyph held by the Provider” to the ‘Between Vampire Lords’ list, and “* A Glyph with an Initiator’s name in a room that does not contain a Glyph” to the ‘Between a Vampire Lord and Richardo von Nestor’ list above.
If Proposal: Doug Funnie was enacted, add “* Enthralldom, as per the rule Vampire Lords” and remove “* Up to 3 Puissance, or 1 Puissance if the Initiator is Dust” in the ‘Between Vampire Lords’ list above.

Monday, June 14, 2021

Proposal: Doug Funnie

Passes 7-0. Enacted by Brendan.

Adminned at 16 Jun 2021 20:03:02 UTC

Reword the paragraph in the rule “Vampire Lords” that begins “Each Vampire Lord has an Allegiance…” as follows:

Each Vampire Lord has an Allegiance, which is publicly tracked and which defaults to none. If a Vampire Lord’s Allegiance is set to the name of another Vampire Lord, then the former Vampire Lord is said to be Enthralled; to Enthrall another Vampire Lord is to set that Vampire Lord’s Allegiance to one’s own name.

If a Vampire Lord is Enthralled, then as a Power Action with a cost of 1, they may grant the Vampire Lord who most recently Enthralled them a Favour, then set their Allegiance to none and cease being Enthralled.

Add a paragraph to the end of the rule “Features” as follows:

Any Puissance or Influence that would accrue to an Enthralled Vampire Lord from the above Features instead accrues to the Vampire Lord who Enthralls them.

Add to the list in the rule “Richardo’s Journey” as the second-to-last bullet the following:

For each Vampire Lord who is Enthralled and who had Influence or Puissance that they would have gained instead accrue to the Vampire Lord who Enthralls them during this action, set the Allegiance of that Enthralled Vampire Lord to none (and that Enthralled Vampire Lord ceases to be Enthralled).

Reword the rule “Unlife” as follows:

If a Vampire Lord’s Puissance is 0, then that Vampire Lord is Dust. While a Vampire Lord is Dust, they may not spend Puissance, their Puissance is 0, and their Puissance cannot be raised above 0 except by means defined in this rule. If a Vampire Lord is not Dust, then that Vampire Lord is Revenant.

If a Vampire Lord’s Puissance is above 10, then that Vampire Lord is Bloodthirsty. While a Vampire Lord is Bloodthirsty, they may not Explore Rooms or Engrave Sigils.

If a given Vampire Lord is Dust, any other Vampire Lord who is Revenant but not Enthralled by the Dust Vampire Lord or Bloodthirsty may, as a Power Action that is also a Daily Action with a cost of 1, raise the Puissance of that Dust Vampire Lord to 1 and Enthrall that Vampire Lord.

If a given Vampire Lord is Dust, any other Vampire Lord who is Bloodthirsty and not Enthralled by the Dust Vampire Lord may, as a Power Action that is also a Daily Action with a cost of 2, raise the Puissance of that Dust Vampire Lord to 3 and Enthrall that Vampire Lord.

If a given Vampire Lord is Dust, and another Vampire Lord who is Revenant is currently Enthralled by that Dust Vampire Lord, then that Enthralled Revenant Vampire Lord may, as a Power Action with a cost of 1, raise the Puissance of the Dust Vampire Lord Enthralling them to 1, then set their own Allegiance to none and thereby cease to be Enthralled.

I really do try to write short proposals, but this is the best way I can think of to address Kevan’s and Clucky’s concerns. You can lend a Favour to get out of being a Thrall, or you can wait for Richardo to free you, at a cost.

Proposal: Bats in the Belfry

Vetoed. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 16 Jun 2021 18:03:34 UTC

If the proposal “Blood money” passes add the following to the list of Threats, if it does not pass add it to the list of Features

A new Denizen is spawned here with name “Bats”, 1 Brutality, 0 Cunning, and trait Roaming. (+2)

Add the following to the list of Denizen traits:

Roaming: After Richardo von Nestor retreats, as part of the Enter the Crypt action, the location of each Roaming denizen is to set a randomly-selected explored room that is orthogonally adjacent to its current Location.

Add a new sub-rule to “Richardo’s Journey” called “Ricardo’s Secrets”

Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all random occurrences that are performed as a direct result of the Enter the Crypt action may be done secretly.

Bats + a clause that stops us from having to keep saying “secretly random” plus fix a few areas like Secret Passage Map or Evasive that aren’t currently secret.

Proposal: Building bigger

Timed out 5 votes to 2 with the Emperor deferring to nothing. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 16 Jun 2021 18:02:55 UTC

In the rule or subrule “Unlife”, change

If a Vampire Lord’s Puissance is above 10

to

If a Vampire Lord’s Puissance is greater by 10 or more than that Vampire Lord’s Influence

Under the current rules, it’ll never be possible to build a room with a cost of 9 or more without dusting yourself. It makes sense to have some way to build more expensive rooms, at a lot of risk (you have to create a Sepulchre, and if it collapses you’ll have to spend your Puissance on a near-worthless action).

Proposal: ... Too Quiet

Reached quorum 8 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 16 Jun 2021 13:38:54 UTC

Replace “At any time but not more than once every 48 hours” with:-

If no noise has been heard from the Crypt for at least 24 hours (noise is heard from the Crypt whenever a Power Action is taken or the Crypt is Entered)

Speeding things up, at least potentially, and removing the incentive to wait to build or devastate a room towards the end of the 48 hour cycle.

Proposal: Mud Honey

Self-killed. Failed by Brendan.

Adminned at 15 Jun 2021 20:47:40 UTC

Reword the rule “Unlife” as follows:

If a Vampire Lord’s Puissance is 0, then that Vampire Lord is Dust. While a Vampire Lord is Dust, they may not spend Puissance, their Puissance is 0, and their Puissance cannot be raised above 0 except by means defined in this rule. If a Vampire Lord is not Dust, then that Vampire Lord is Revenant.

If a Vampire Lord’s Puissance is above 10, then that Vampire Lord is Bloodthirsty. While a Vampire Lord is Bloodthirsty, they may not Explore Rooms or Engrave Sigils.

If a given Vampire Lord is Dust, any other Vampire Lord who is Revenant but not Bloodthirsty may, as a Power Action that is also a Daily Action with a cost of 1, raise the Puissance of that Dust Vampire Lord to 1 and gain a Favour with that Dust Vampire Lord as its lender.

If a given Vampire Lord is Dust, any other Vampire Lord who is Bloodthirsty may, as a Power Action that is also a Daily Action with a cost of 2, raise the Puissance of that Dust Vampire Lord to 3 and gain a Favour with that Dust Vampire Lord as its lender.

Proposal: Monster Mash

Passes 7-0. Enacted by Brendan.

Adminned at 15 Jun 2021 20:46:37 UTC

Add the following to Crypt Denizens

Whenever Richardo moves into a location that matches the location of one or more crypt denizens, he Encounters all of those denizens. Denizens are encountered in a secretly random order, although denizens with the quick trait are always encountered before ones without the quick trait. Additionally, Denizens with the quick trait are encountered before the room effects are applied (but after items effects), while denizens without the quick tag are encountered after room effects are applied.

When Richardo Encounters a Denizen, if the Denizen is not immediately slain by an item Richardo possess, he secretly rolls a die equal to his current energy. He compares that result to the Denizen’s Brutality plus its Cunning. If the result of Richardo’s roll is higher, the Denizen is slain. If the result is equal, Richardo is Lightly Wounded. If the result is lower, Richardo is Grievously Injured.

Add

Quick: Quick Denizens are always encountered before non-quick Denizens, and are also encountered before room effects are applied

to the list of denizen traits.

Proposal: Blood money

Passes 9-0. Enacted by Brendan.

Adminned at 15 Jun 2021 20:42:09 UTC

Move the rule Vampire Lords to the top of the dynastic ruleset. Make the rules Lair Actions, Crypt Denizens, Unlife and Sepulchres subrules of it.

Rename the rule Sigils to “Glyphs and Sigils”. Replace its first paragraph with the following:

Glyphs are powerful markers used by Vampire Lords to signal their domain, while Sigils are cantrips used to power small blood magics. Each room may be engraved with up to one Glyph or Sigil from each Vampire Lord. If a room contains a Sigil from a Vampire Lord then no Glyph may be created for that Vampire Lord, and vice-versa.

A room may only contain one Glyph and a Glyph may belong to no more than three Vampire Lords.

If a room contains a Glyph then every time Richardo loses Energy to a feature in that room, the Vampire Lord/s who owns that Glyph gain Influence equal to the amount of Energy so lost..

Rewrite the rule Features as follows:

The sentences in the lists below are Features that Rooms may possess, with their Darkness scores given afterwards in brackets.

Glyphs and Sigils:
This room contains a Glyph belonging to [x] (+1)
Richardo von Nestor gains 1 Energy for each Active Sigil engraved here. Set all Sigils engraved here to Inactive. (+1)
Each Vampire Lord gains 1 Puissance. (+1)
Each Vampire Lord with an engraved Sigil here gains 1 Puissance. (+2)
Each Vampire Lord that has an engraved Sigil in an orthogonally adjacent room to this room gains 1 Puissance.(+3)

Threats:
Richardo von Nestor is Lightly Wounded if he is not Perceptive. (+1)
Richardo von Nestor is Grievously Injured if he is not Agile. (+3)
Richardo von Nestor is Grievously Injured; if he is Agile he instead is Lightly Wounded. (+5)
Richardo von Nestor is moved back to his previous location. (+1)
Richardo von Nestor loses all of his equipped Items. (+2)

Opportunities:
Richardo approaches a fine treasure chest (+1)
Richardo approaches an average treasure chest (0)

Add the following to the end of the first paragraph of the rule Lair Actions: “When adding a Feature with the string ‘[x]’ in its description, a Vampire Lord must replace [x] with their own name.”

Add the following to the list of average treasures:

* Roc’s Feather: Richardo immediately uses this to become Agile
* Writ of Blessing: Richardo immediately uses this to become Perceptive

Add the following to the list of fine treasures:

* Angel’s Feather: Richardo becomes Agile
* Watchful Saint Figurine: Richardo becomes Perceptive

Most of this is just tidy-up; the important bit is glyphs allowing room owners to convert damage to Richardo into VPs.

Proposal: Richardo von Nestor becomes Agile

Passes 10-0. Enacted by Brendan.

Adminned at 15 Jun 2021 20:38:17 UTC

Change the Darkness scores of all Features with negative Darkness to 0. If https://blognomic.com/archive/of_antioch passed, change the Darkness score of “Richardo approaches a fine treasure chest” to +1.
In the rule “Lair Actions”, replace “Exploring a Room is a Power Action with a cost of 5” with “Exploring a Room is a Power Action with a cost of 3”.

Remove from the Effect of the Library of Souls “Richardo von Nestor becomes Perceptive.” unless Clucky includes that exact phrase in an EVC on this proposal, as well as “Richardo von Nestor becomes Agile.” unless Clucky includes that exact phrase in an EVC on this proposal.
Remove from the Effect of the Hallway of Wonders “Richardo von Nestor becomes Perceptive.” unless Raven1207 includes that exact phrase in an EVC on this proposal, as well as “Richardo von Nestor becomes Agile.” unless Raven1207 includes that exact phrase in an EVC on this proposal.

i think the direct outcome of having cost-reducing features is already beginning to show itself, and its gonna be pretty damn silly if *every room* makes richardo Perceptive and Agile. 0 cost should be the lowest it goes, so u can at the v least make an assesment of whether u want a cheap feature w/o it feeling mechanically necessary

Monday, June 14, 2021

Proposal: Dark Machinations Mk II

Unpopular at 3-7. Failed by Brendan.

Adminned at 15 Jun 2021 20:37:33 UTC

Add to the Dynastic rule “Vampire Lords” before the paragraph describing Allegiance:

Each Vampire Lord has a Trust, which is a publicly tracked non-negative integer that defaults to the lowest Trust value held by any active Vampire Lord.

Set all active Vampire Lords’ Trust to 0.
Add the following rule, called “Dracula’s Demands”, above “Crypt Denizens” in the Dynastic rules:

A Demand is an objective whose completion furthers the plans of the dark forces beneath Zahndorf Cathedral. A Demand consists of a name (which is flavour text) and a Condition describing an event, circumstance, or course of action that must come to pass for the Demand to be fulfilled. Demands that are assigned to Vampire Lords are publicly tracked alongside the names of the Vampire Lords and/or idle Vampire Lords they are assigned to.

As a Weekly Communal Action, any Vampire Lord may perform the following atomic action:
* Randomly group all active Vampire lords into sets of 2; if there is an odd number of active Vampire Lords, include one set of 3.
* Randomly assign one of the Demands listed in the Ruleset (excluding those which are currently assigned) to each set of Vampire Lords determined in the previous step of this action, such that no two sets receive the same Demand.
* For each newly-assigned Demand, add its name to the publicly tracked list of assigned Demands alongside the names of the Vampire Lords it is assigned to.

If an assigned Demand has had its Condition fulfilled in the last 24 hours and was not assigned during that period, any Vampire Lord that it is assigned to may erase that Demand’s name from the list of assigned Demands to increase by 3 the Trust of all Vampire lords and/or idle Vampire Lords it is assigned to. After this occurs, that particular Demand is no longer considered to be assigned until it is assigned again.

The list of Demands that can be assigned is as follows, with each Demand’s Condition following its name:
* Bloodthirst. Richardo von Nestor is Grievously Injured twice in the same Enter the Crypt action.
* Sacrifice. Four Crypt Denizens have been slain since this Demand was last assigned.
* Hidden Ritual. An single explored room connected to E4 with an orthogonally-connected path of explored rooms is never Richardo von Nestor’s location during three consecutive Enter the Crypt actions.

a rework of the demands framework using a hardcoded list of valid demands this time; the ones here are just some initial examples, as there aren’t enough to assign, so we’ll need further proposals to define more valid demands :0

Story Post: Richardo’s Second Expedition

Richardo commenced his second expedition at 19h48 UTC.

Having chanced upon a sewer map, he stealthily navigated through the undercroft of the Cathedral, before slipping back into the Shattered Stairway. He then confidently set off north, towards the Entrance Vestibule, got confused, turned around, and went back into the Shattered Stairwell, tripping over a piece of mosaic and Grievously Injuring himself on a sharpened spike.

He then retreated. pokes, Phil, ais523, Kevan, Jason, Jumble, and lemonfanta all gained Puissance for the presence of their Sigils.

Proposal: Red Mist

Passes 7-1. Enacted by Brendan.

Adminned at 14 Jun 2021 15:58:54 UTC

To “Unlife”, add a paragraph:-

If a Vampire Lord’s Puissance is above 10, then that Vampire Lord is Bloodthirsty. While a Vampire Lord is Bloodthirsty, they may not Explore Rooms or Engrave Sigils.

To “Lair Actions”, add:-

Devastation is a Power Action with a cost of 7. The Vampire Lord carrying it out may select a room and remove a Feature from it.

Was going to add a plain old cap on Puissance, to encourage people to build stuff instead of stockpiling it to use later, but may as well try something a bit different, spinning off of Dust.

Saturday, June 12, 2021

Proposal: Level Knevel

Enacted 9-0. Josh

Adminned at 14 Jun 2021 13:10:25 UTC

If Proposal: Of Antioch was not enacted, this proposal does nothing.

Otherwise, change the Darkness scores of the average treasure chest and the fine treasure chest to be -1 and 0, respectively.

Proposal: [Appendix] Too late to edit?

Timed out and enacted, 6-4. Josh

Adminned at 14 Jun 2021 13:08:54 UTC

In the rule “Official Posts”, in the sentence

An official post may be altered by its author if it is less than two hours old and either no Vampire Lord has commented on it or (if it is a Votable Matter) if all comments on it contain no voting icons; otherwise this can only be done as allowed by the Ruleset.

change “two hours” to “eight hours”.

We’ve had a lot of instances lately when useful feedback on a proposal came just too late for the author to incorporate it (or else, the author got online a little too late to edit it in). This is promoting a weird sort of grind where you want to be online almost constantly to make sure proposal feedback gets in in time.

The two-hour time limit is, therefore, probably too strict. BlogNomic did fine for many years with a much more lenient limit (apart from one scam which involved editing an official post into a proposal over 48 hours after it was posted, something which isn’t possible in today’s ruleset). I’m being on the conservative side and raising it to 8, but I think the current editing limit is definitely too short. (And of course, if you think someone’s trying to abuse the mechanism, you can just vote on their proposal to lock it from editing.)

Proposal: No Artificial Favourings [Special Case]

Enacted 5-3. Josh

Adminned at 14 Jun 2021 13:06:23 UTC

In “Favours”, make the following replacements, where the replaced strings exist:-

  • “any Dynastic resource of their choosing” with “any tabular resource of their choosing”
  • “any resource of their choosing that is described only in the Dynastic Rules” with “any tabular resource of their choosing”
  • “a single point of any Dynastic resource” with “a single point of any tabular resource”
  • “a single point of any resource of the claiming Vampire Lord’s choosing, so long as it is described only in the Dynastic Rules and the lender has at least one point of that resource to give” with “a single point of any tabular resource of the claiming Vampire Lord’s choosing, so long as the lender has at least one point of that resource to give”.

Remove the paragraph “For the purposes of this rule, a resource is Dynastic if it is described only in the Dynastic Rules and wiki pages used to track Dynastic gamestate.” from the rule.

Add a new paragraph to the rule:-

A resource is tabular if the only Rules that it is described in are Dynastic Rules, and if it is being publicly tracked as a number, in a table that contains one row corresponding to each Vampire Lord.

If any Sepulchres were created through claiming Favours, while this proposal was pending, collapse all such Sepulchres.

I think we need to rein in the scope of Favours here. It’s a tough constraint on design if any rule that creates a game object (like the Sigils Pokes says they’re considering, or Sepulchres, or Denizens) has to remain alert for “bam, I create/steal one instantly for free!”, from the couple of players who have background Imperial Favours from the previous dynasty. Making all variables opt-in might be too harsh on the Favoured, but we should at least constrain it to something like “a publicly-tracked number in a table”.

Proposal: Of Antioch

Timed out and enacted, 6-1. Josh

Adminned at 14 Jun 2021 13:03:23 UTC

Repeal the rule Equipment, and remove the text “and set his Equipment to a secretly-randomly chosen item that is different from the one that he equipped at the start of his last Enter the Crypt action” and “equipment chosen or other” from the atomic action in the rule Richardo’s Journey.

In the rule Richardo’s Journey, change the bullet point which starts “Reduce his Energy by 1” to read as follows:

Reduce his Energy by 1. Secretly randomly select an explored room that is orthogonally adjacent to his current room and move into it, then apply the effect of any items that he is holding (if appropriate based on its description), then apply any effects of the features of that room in the order that they are listed to Richardo. Repeat this step until his Energy is 0 or lower; then finish this step and move on to the next step of this action

Add the following to the list of features in the rule Features:

* Richardo approaches an average treasure chest (-2)
* Richardo approaches a fine treasure chest (-5)

Add the following as a sub-rule to the rule Richard’s Journey, called Treasure:

If Richardo approaches a treasure chest, and if he is holding two or fewer items, he will secretly randomly elect to whether or not to open it; if he does then he expends 1 Energy to do so and starts holding the contents of that chest. When Richardo uses an item he ceases to be holding it.

An average treasure chest will contain one item from average treasures list. A fine treasure chest will contain one item from the fine treasures list and one item from the average treasures list. The contents of a chest are secretly randomly determined when that chest is opened. As a Power Action with a cost of 1, a Vampire Lord may set the contents of a single treasure chest to any valid value by appending the names of the items to be contained in that chest to its entry in the relevant room description, in brackets; when Richardo von Nestor opens such a chest then the contents are not randomly determined but instead are the values set in the room description.

The list of available Treasures are as follows:

Average treasures
* Holy Tincture: Richardo immediately uses this item to gain two Energy
* Secret Passage Map: Richardo immediately uses this item and must randomly select from any explored room to be his next destination
* Bandages: The first time during a journey when Richardo is Grievously Injured, he uses this item and is only Lightly Wounded instead
* Rusty crossbow: The first time Richardo encounters a Denizen, he uses this item and it is immediately slain
* Depleted Ring of Warding: The first time Richardo enters a room that contains active Sigils, he uses this item and one of those Sigils (selected secretly at random) is destroyed

Fine treasures:
* Rod of Smoothing: The first time Richardo enters a room while holding this item, he uses it and one feature (chosen secretly at random) is removed from that room, before any effects are enacted
* Elaborate crossbow: Richardo destroys any Denizen he encounters. This item is not used when this affect is applied.
* Empowered Ring of Warding: The first time Richardo enters a room that contains active Sigils, he uses this item and any Sigils in that room are destroyed
* Holy Distillate: Richardo immediately uses this item to gain 5 Energy
* Silver-Tipped Stake: If Richardo enters a room that is a Sepulchre, he uses this item and the Vampire Lord whose Sepulchre it is becomes Dust.

Add an average treasure chest to the room called Crypt Entrance.

Proposal: I built this

Timed out and enacted, 7-0. Josh

Adminned at 14 Jun 2021 08:53:52 UTC

At the end of the paragraph in “Lair Actions” that contains the word “Sigil”, add a new sentence:

A Vampire Lord cannot perform this action unless either the selected room has been continuously Explored since before the last-but-one time Richardo von Nestor Entered the Crypt; or the Vampire Lord performing the action is also the Vampire Lord who most recently caused the selected room to become Explored.

If a majority of EVCs on this proposal contain the word “Refund”, then remove all Vampire Lords but Clucky from the list of Vampire Lords with Sigils engraved in the Library of Souls, and increase the Puissance of each Vampire Lord removed from the list this way by 2 minus the number of times Richardo von Nestor entered the Library of Souls before this proposal was enacted (if this would be an increase by a negative number, it becomes a reduction by minus that number instead).

Right now, there’s no benefit to being the person to explore a room (except for use as your Sepulchre), because everyone else can immediately just turn up there too, and won’t have had to pay the costs to explore it. Neither pokes’s nor Clucky’s proposal fixes this.

This gives the Vampire Lord who explores a room two expeditions’ worth of exclusivity on placing Sigils there, meaning that if someone wants to go to the effort of making a room, they can get a bit of a head start on making use of it.

Also adding an option to effectively make this change retroactive, allowing Clucky the exclusivity period for their exploration of the Library of Souls even though it was explored before this proposal was posted; it sets the gamestate to the state it would be been in if all the Sigil engravings but Clucky’s had been illegal.

Saturday, June 12, 2021

Proposal: Name in Blood

Timed out 5 votes to 3 with 1 unresolved DEF. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 14 Jun 2021 07:31:18 UTC

Replace the sentence starting with “Engraving a Sigil is a Power Action” with

Engraving a Sigil is a Power Action with a cost of 1 plus 1 for each other Sigil the Vampire Lord performing the action has engraved across all rooms

 

Feel like this is a fairer way to prevent people from plopping down Sigils everywhere than making you pay more for each sigil that is there.

Proposal: The blood price price

skilletted. Josh

Adminned at 13 Jun 2021 20:18:09 UTC

Replace “Engraving a Sigil is a Power Action with a cost of 2.” “Engraving a Sigil is a Power Action with a cost equal to one plus the number of Sigils that were engraved in that room at the moment 24 hours prior (considering a room that did not exist to have zero Sigils).”

Proposal: Dark Machinations

s/ked. Josh

Adminned at 13 Jun 2021 20:17:35 UTC

Add to the Dynastic rule “Vampire Lords” before the paragraph describing Allegiance:

Each Vampire Lord has a Trust, which is a publicly tracked non-negative integer that defaults to the lowest Trust value held by any active Vampire Lord.

Set all active Vampire Lords’ Trust to 0.
Add the following rule, called “Dracula’s Demands”, above “Crypt Denizens” in the Dynastic rules:

A Demand is a publicly tracked objective or instruction whose completion furthers the plans of the dark forces beneath Zahndorf Cathedral. A Demand consists of a name, which is a string of flavour text; a Condition, which is a text string describing an event, circumstance, or course of action; and a Delegation which is a text string that defaults to “Pending”. A Demand with the “Pending” Delegation is a Pending Demand. Vampire Lords may as a Weekly Action add a Pending Demand with a name and Condition of their choosing to the bottom of the Demands list. Richardo von Nestor may as a Daily Action remove one Pending Demand from the Demands list.

As a Weekly Communal Action, if there are a number of Pending Demands equal or greater to half the number of active Vampire Lords (rounded down), any Vampire Lord may perform the following atomic action:
* Select a number of Pending Demands exactly equal to half the number of active Vampire Lords (rounded down).
* Randomly group the active Vampire lords into sets of 2; if there is an odd number of active Vampire Lords, include one set of 3.
* Randomly assign one of the Pending Demands selected in the first step of this action to each set of Vampire Lords determined in the second step of this action.
* For each assigned Demand, move it to the top of the Demands list and change its Delegation to a list of the Vampire Lords in the set it was assigned to, separated by commas.

When a Vampire Lord is named in the Delegation of a Demand and that Demand’s Condition is fulfilled (the event or circumstance comes to pass or the course of action is performed), that Vampire Lord may erase that Demand to increase by 3 the Trust of all Vampire Lords named in its Delegation.

If Richardo von Nestor included the phrase “Metaphor Shmetaphor” in an EVC on this proposal, replace “Richardo von Nestor may as a Daily Action remove one Pending Demand from the Demands list.” with “Richardo von Nestor may at any time remove a Pending Demand from the Demands list.” and replace “any Vampire Lord may perform the following atomic action:” with “any Vampire Lord or Richardo von Nestor may perform the following atomic action:” in the rule “Dracula’s Demands”.

i mentioned the other day that i would love to see a game about engineering neutral ground to accomplish goals, so here’s that!! this is similar to the scrapped mechanic of tasks from the AI dynasty, but i think this dynasty is a much better fit for the concept.

and demands are grouped together bc i think 2-3 players trying to make something happen is more feasible than 1 player trying to make something happen in the economy we’re building up :0

Proposal: lil crypt denizen fix

Enacted 8-0. Josh

Adminned at 13 Jun 2021 20:16:42 UTC

In the rule “Crypt Denizens”, after the sentence “A Crypt Denizen is an NPC inhabitant of the Zahndorf Crypt.” add “Existing Crypt Denizens and the states of their attached variables are publicly tracked.”

and this should also naturally bring the laughing gargoyle into existence, since that gargoyle is out there in the rules void (and the orphan variable rules only limit dynastic actions)

Proposal: Powers of adjacency

Enacted 8-0. Josh

Adminned at 13 Jun 2021 20:15:39 UTC

In Rule “The Crypt of Dracula”, Subrule “Features”,

Add the following on the bulleted list in the subrule

* Each Vampire Lord that has an engraved Sigil in an orthogonally adjacent room to this room gains 1 Puissance.(+3)

Proposal: [Special Case] Favour tweaking

Timed out and enacted, 4-0. Josh

Adminned at 13 Jun 2021 20:13:54 UTC

In “Favours”:

- Replace “any resource of their choosing that is described only in the Dynastic Rules” with “any Dynastic resource of their choosing”,

- Replace “a single point of any resource of the claiming Vampire Lord’s choosing, so long as it is described only in the Dynastic Rules and the lender has at least one point of that resource to give.” with “a single point of any Dynastic resource of the claiming Vampire Lord’s choosing, so long as the lender has at least one point of that resource to give.”

- Add a paragraph to the end: “For the purposes of this rule, a resource is Dynastic if it is described only in the Dynastic Rules and wiki pages used to track Dynastic gamestate.”

Because I think I should be able to do so, I’d like to head off possible CfJs now that I couldn’t Favour a sigil from Richardo because it is in some way “described” in Zahndorf Crypt as well as the Dynastic rules.

Proposal: Revenant Revenue

Self-killed. Failed by Brendan.

Adminned at 13 Jun 2021 19:49:43 UTC

Rewrite the rule “Unlife” as follows:

If a Vampire Lord’s Puissance is 0, then that Vampire Lord is Dust. While a Vampire Lord is Dust, they may not spend Puissance, their Puissance is 0, and their Puissance cannot be raised above 0 except by means defined in this rule. If a Vampire Lord is not Dust, then that Vampire Lord is Revenant.

If a given Vampire Lord is Dust, any other Vampire Lord who is Revenant may, as a Power Action with a cost of 1, raise the Puissance of that Dust Vampire Lord to 3 and gain a Favour with that Dust Vampire Lord as its lender.

Story Post: Richardo’s First Expedition

Richardo entered the crypt at 19h26 UTC.

Before entering he drank a Boost Juice, giving him 8 Energy, and then made his way to the Crypt Entrance.

Confronted by a door to the south and a door to the east, Richardo elected to take the door to the south. He made his way into the Entry Vestibule.

Now choosing between continuing south and returning north, he elected to continue south. This brought him to the Shattered Stairwell, where he slipped on some loose tiles and fell into a pit of sharpened stakes. Grievously wounded, he then elected to retreat to recover from his wounds.

The Vampire Lords pokes, Phil, ais523, Kevan, and Jason all gained Puissance from the splatter of his blood onto their activated sigils.

Proposal: Tuesday Hamburger

Reached quorum 9 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 12 Jun 2021 08:05:28 UTC

Replace the text of the bullet point in the rule “Numbers and Variables” beginning with

  • Unless otherwise specified, to “spend” or “lose” an amount X of a numeric value “V”...

With the following:

  • Unless otherwise specified, to “spend,” “pay” or “lose” an amount X of a numeric value “V” means to subtract X from V; to “gain” X of a numeric value “V” means to add X to V; and to “transfer” or “pay” X of a numeric value “V” from A to B means to subtract X from A’s V and add X to B’s V. Unless otherwise specified, only positive amounts can be spent, paid, lost, gained, or transferred, a Vampire Lord can spend or pay from only their own values, and a rule that allows Vampire Lords to transfer or pay a numeric value to another Vampire Lord only allows them to transfer that value from themselves to that other Vampire Lord (of their choice unless otherwise stated).
  • If a Dynastic Action is defined as having a cost X of numeric value V, or defines a requirement to spend, pay, or lose X of numeric value V to accomplish an effect or multiple effects, then the arithmetic effects of spending or payment and the act of carrying out those effects are considered to be subsequent steps in an Atomic Action, with the spending or payment step taking place before the effects step unless stated otherwise.

Clucky’s “Powered On” was common-sense enough (and the first draft using “pay” instead of “spend” was a sufficiently obvious synonym) that I think it deserves appendicization.

Call for Judgment: Smudge on the Map

Enacted 7-0. Josh

Adminned at 11 Jun 2021 17:55:02 UTC

Relabel the room in cell E4 to be “Crypt Entrance”, and update the legend accordingly.

Can’t start a run without fixing this either.

Proposal: What Fools These Mortals

Reached quorum 9 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 12 Jun 2021 08:02:51 UTC

Add a Feature to the list:-

* Richardo von Nestor loses all of his equipped Items. (+2)

In “Richardo’s Journey”, remove the word “currently” from “the one that he currently equipped at the start of his last Enter the Crypt action”.

If Richardo von Nestor did not include the phrase “It’s-a me, Richardo!” in comments on this proposal, rename “Boost Juice” to “Holy Tincture” throughout the ruleset and gamestate, “Warp Whistle” to “Sewer Map” and “Lucky Ring” to “Bandages”.

Throwing in a way for us to take Richardo’s items away during a run (although it won’t affect the two “starts with” items), and maybe renaming them.

(This proposal was initially and primarily adding random item selection, but I’ve just realised that the Cessna proposal is already fixing that.)

Thursday, June 10, 2021

Proposal: Affording to Explore

Self-killed. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 12 Jun 2021 07:58:29 UTC

In the rule “Richardo’s Journey”, add the following two bullet points to the bulleted list, with the first point added to the start of the list, and the second point added to the end:

  • Each Vampire Lord with less than 8 Puissance gains 1 Puissance.
  • Make a Story Post explaining which rooms Richardo entered during this Atomic Action, and what effects were applied as a consequence.

We need incentives to actually do something in terms of dynastic actions, or else “hang onto your Puissance, and wait and see what happens” will be the optimal strategy.

Adding a low level of Puissance regeneration (that only affects people who are actually spending it) will make it safer for people to experiment and do things, without risking being locked out from the game when more important uses for a currently rare resource get added later. Trying to add this via dynastic mechanics would mean that one player would have to take a huge hit in order to make the dynasty more fun for everyone else, so it makes more sense to add it by proposal.

While we’re here, let’s ensure that the main activity of the dynasty (Entering the Crypt) actually has visible effects, otherwise it’ll be hard to track what’s going on, and people may think that the dynasty’s inactive due to lack of action on the blog.

Proposal: Mystifying Maze

Fewer than a quorum not voting against. Failed 3 votes to 7 by Kevan.

Adminned at 12 Jun 2021 07:57:52 UTC

Add a new subrile of “The Crypt of Dracula” titled “Mystifying Maze”:

Each room that is a Mystifying Maze has a direction, which is a publicly tracked value from the set {north, east, south, west}, and defaults to east. When selecting a room to move into from a room that is a Mystifying Maze, rather than the standard random selection, use the follow the steps:
-In clockwise order, starting from the direction that is 90 degrees clockwise from the rooms direction select the first direction that leads to an explored room.
-Set the direction of the current room to the direction selected in the previous step.
-Move to the room along the direction selected in step 1 from the current room

All actions following the moving into a room (ie. applying effects of the room Richardo moved into) are executed as described in “Richardo’s Journey”.

In “The Crypt of Dracula” add to the list of features:

* This room is a Mystifying Maze (+2)

Add to the effect of “Entrance”:

* This room is a Mystifying Maze

Proposal: A Vampire Lord’s Home is its Castle

Reached quorum 7 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 12 Jun 2021 07:56:32 UTC

In the rule “The Crypt of Dracula”, amend

while explored rooms have a background colour of #666666

to

while explored rooms have a background colour of #666666 (or #CCCC00, if they are a Sepulchre)

Append a new paragraph to “Vampire Lords”:

Each Vampire Lord has an Influence, which is a publicly tracked non-negative integer defaulting to 0. While a Vampire Lord does not have a Sepulchre, changes which would increase their Influence instead do nothing, and any Vampire Lord or Richardo von Nestor may set their Influence to 0.

If there is a subrule “Sepulchres”, repeal it.

Enact a subrule “Sepulchres” to “The Crypt of Dracula”:

A Vampire Lord may have up to one Sepulchre, which is an explored room. The location of a Vampire Lord’s Sepulchre (if any) is publicly tracked.

If Richardo von Nestor moves into a room which is a Vampire Lord’s Sepulchre, then the Sepulchre collapses: that Vampire Lord is set to have no Sepulchre, the room becomes unexplored, and the room loses its name, description and effect.

Add the following bullet point just after the first bullet point in the list in the rule “Richardo’s Journey”:

  • Increase the Influence of each Vampire Lord with a Sepulchre by 1
Add the following paragraph to the rule “Lair Actions”:
Inhabiting a Room is a Power Action with a cost of 3, which can only be taken by a Vampire Lord with no Sepulchre. The Vampire Lord may select an explored room that is neither a Sepulchre nor the room located at E4, and set their Sepulchre to that room. This action can only be performed on a room that is diagonally adjacent to a room reachable from room E4 by a path of orthogonally connected explored rooms.
If any room has a name of the form “X’s Sepulchre”, where “X” is the name of a Vampire Lord, that room becomes that Vampire Lord’s Sepulchre. Set all other Vampire Lords to have no Sepulchre.

Giving people somewhere to be. The Influence Score tracks how long you managed to stay in the dungeon without Richardo finding you.

Hopefully this will also give us something to do (and a reason to spend Puissance), in that we can defend our Sepulchres, and indirectly attack each others’ by diverting Richardo towards them.

Mystifing Maze

These are not the droids you’re looking for.

Proposal: The Cessna 150 is now boarding

Passes 8-0. Enacted by Brendan.

Adminned at 11 Jun 2021 19:23:58 UTC

Rewrite the rule Richardo’s Journey (preserving any subrules unchanged) as follows:

Unless otherwise stated, any properties or gamestate variables held by Richardo von Nestor are privately tracked by himself. At any time but not more than once every 48 hours, Richardo von Nestor may Enter the Crypt, which is an atomic action with the following steps:

* Set his location to be the room labelled Crypt Entrance and set his Energy, which is a integer, to be 6
* Set all Inactive Sigils to Active
* Reduce his Energy by 1. Secretly randomly select an explored room that is orthagonally adjacent to his current room and move into it, applying any effects of that room as he does so. Repeat this step until his Energy is 0 or lower; then finish this step and move on to the next step of this action
* Richardo von Nestor retreats; reset all of his gamestate variables to null values.
* Make a post to the blog summarising this Enter the Crypt action, including detailing any equipment chosen or other variables changed.

If Proposal: Its Dangerous To Go Alone has been enacted, change the first bullet point of the atomic action to read:

* Set his location to be the room labelled Crypt Entrance; set his Energy, which is a integer, to be 6; and set his Equipment to a secretly-randomly chosen item that is different from the one that he currently equipped at the start of his last Enter the Crypt action.

A couple of minor tweaks: Richardo von Nestor tracks his own variables, so none of them are orphaned; the drafting error that currently results in Richardo repeatedly activating sigils rather than moving has been fixed; and a blogpost summarising the action has been added.

Proposal: Its Dangerous To Go Alone

Passes 8-1. Enacted by Brendan.

Adminned at 11 Jun 2021 18:55:44 UTC

Add a subrule to “Richardo’s Journey” called “Equipment”

Richardo may have a single item equipped, the name of which is publicly tracked. When an item is equipped, any previously equipped item is no longer equipped. Each item also has an effect, which applies to Richardo’s Journey whenever he has that item equipped.

* Boost Juice: Richardo starts with two additional Energy
* Warp Whistle: Richardo starts at whatever his location was before it was set to ‘none’ during his last Journey rather than the Crypt Entrance
* Lucky Ring: The first time during a journey when Richardo is Grievously Injured, he is only Lightly Wounded instead

Add the following as the final step of Richardo’s Journey

* Richardo von Nestor equips an item of his choice different from the one he currently has equipped

Set Richardo von Nestor’s equipped item to Boost Juice

Proposal: That Coffin Sound

Self-killed. Failed by Brendan.

Adminned at 11 Jun 2021 18:54:52 UTC

Add a subrule to “The Crypt of Dracula” called “Sepulchres”:-

If a room is named “X’s Sepulchre”, where X is the name of a Vampire Lord, then it is that Lord’s Sepulchre. If a Lord’s Sepulchre does not contain a Feature that includes the word “Consecrates”, and/or there is not an orthogonally-connected path of Explored rooms from room E4 to the Sepulchre, then any Vampire Lord may collapse that Sepulchre, making it Unexplored.

Whenever Richardo von Nestor Consecrates a Sepulchre, its Lord loses 1 Puissance.

Add a Feature to the list in “Features”:-

Richardo von Nestor Consecrates this room. (+1)

In “Vampire Lords”, after “Each Vampire Lord has a Puissance, which is a publicly tracked non-negative integer that defaults to 10.”, add:-

If a Vampire Lord’s Puissance would go above 10 (or 15 if that Lord has a Sepulchre) then it instead becomes that value.

I like Josh’s “individual coffin room as an expensive insurance policy” idea. Setting up a Sepulchre gives you a higher Puissance cap, but is bad news if Richardo finds it.

Proposal: Draculaid Up

Passes 7-3. Enacted by Brendan.

Adminned at 11 Jun 2021 18:49:04 UTC

Enact a new rule entitled “Unlife” as follows:

If a Vampire Lord’s Puissance is 0, then that Vampire Lord is Dust. While a Vampire Lord is Dust, they may not spend Puissance, their Puissance is 0, and their Puissance cannot be raised above 0. If a Vampire Lord is not Dust, then that Vampire Lord is Revenant.

Proposal: Powered On

Reached quorum 7 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 11 Jun 2021 08:40:25 UTC

In “Vampire Lords”

replace

Power Actions always require that their Cost be paid from the Puissance of the Vampire Lord carrying it out.

with

Power Actions may be performed at any time but always require that their Cost be spent from the Puissance of the Vampire Lord carrying it out. Spending the cost and performing of the action is considered to be an atomic action

Right now its a bit unclear if you can actually perform Power Actions

Unidling

Could an admin please unidle me?

Proposal: Like a Record

Self-killed. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 11 Jun 2021 08:38:42 UTC

In “The Crypt of Dracula” add to the list of features:

* When moving from this cell select the first explored room in clockwise order after the previous selected one starting from north.  (+2)

Add to the effect of “Enterance”:

* When moving from this cell select the first explored room in clockwise order after the previous selected one starting from north.

Proposal: The Danger is in a Particular Location

Reached quorum 9 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 11 Jun 2021 08:38:08 UTC

Add the following subrule, called “Cornerstones”, to “The Crypt of Dracula”:

The four rooms in the corners of the Zahndorf Crypt map are known as the Cornerstone Chambers. Unexplored Cornerstone Chambers have a background colour of #997068 and cannot be the subject of dynastic actions.

If any of the Cornerstone Chambers are explored, clear their names, descriptions, and effects from the gamestate and return them to an unexplored state.

since the corner chambers are the hardest for Richardo to reach, i think they should be important; let’s pledge to decide what they are via direct proposals instead of dynastic shenanigans!!

Proposal: Bada bane, bada boon

Self-killed. Failed by Brendan.

Adminned at 10 Jun 2021 20:43:07 UTC

If Proposal: Architecture and Immorality and Proposal: Energizer Bunny were not enacted then this proposal has no effect.

Add the following to the end of the list in the rule Features:

* Richardo von Nestor gains n Energy (-[n-1])
* Richardo von Nestor becomes Blessed (-3)

Add the following to the end of the atomic action in the rule Richardo’s Journey:

* Make a post to the blog describing Richardo’s Enter the Crypt action, detailing which rooms were entered and how the effects of those rooms were enacted upon him.

Proposal: Double Jump

Passes 9-0. Enacted by Brendan.

Adminned at 10 Jun 2021 20:35:43 UTC

To “Richardo’s Journey”, add:-

If the effect of any Room causes Richardo to “become” anything, that state lasts until he retreats.

To the list in “Features”, add:-

* Richardo von Nestor becomes Perceptive. (-1)
* Richardo von Nestor is Lightly Wounded if he is not Perceptive. (+2)
* Richardo von Nestor becomes Agile. (-2)
* Richardo von Nestor is Grievously Injured if he is not Agile. (+3)

Thursday, June 10, 2021

Proposal: Dangerous and Repulsive

Reached quorum 9 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan, but doesn’t update any gamestate as it’s not stated where Denizens are tracked.

Adminned at 10 Jun 2021 18:20:48 UTC

Add the follow rule, called “Crypt Denizens”:

A Crypt Denizen is an NPC inhabitant of the Zahndorf Crypt. Every Crypt Denizen has a name, which is flavour text determined by the Vampire Lord that spawned it; two numerical stats, Brutality and Cunning, which both default to 1; a Trait list which defaults to blank but can contain the names of any Denizen Traits whose effects are outlined in the Ruleset, separated by commas; a Location which is a text string that defaults to blank; and a Sycophancy which defaults to “None” but can contain the name of any active Vampire Lord.

When a new Crypt Denizen is created, its Location is set to the room whose effect spawned it. If a Crypt Denizen’s Location is ever any value that is not the name of a map cell, it is slain. When a Crypt Denizen is slain, it is removed from the game and gamestate.

The following Denizen Traits can be held by Crypt Denizens:
* Evasive: The first time the Denizen would be slain during each Enter the Crypt atomic action, it instead changes its Location to a randomly-selected explored room that is orthogonally adjacent to its current Location.

Add a Crypt Denizen named “Laughing Gargoyle” with Brutality 0, Cunning 2, the “Evasive” Trait, the Location “Shattered stairway”, and the Sycophancy “None”.

how do we feel about dungeon monsters (and potentially minions)?

Proposal: Dracula ‘Slayer

Fewer than a quorum not voting against. Failed 1 vote to 7 by Kevan.

Adminned at 10 Jun 2021 17:47:14 UTC

Add a new rule entitled “Unlife” as follows:

A Vampire Lord may be Revenant or Dust. While a Vampire Lord is Dust, their Puissance is 0, and may not be increased above 0.

Proposal: Richardo von Nestor is the Sigilist

Reached quorum 7 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 10 Jun 2021 17:46:05 UTC

If “A warning about danger” does not pass, this proposal does nothing

Add the following to “Sigils”

Sigils may be Active or Inactive and are by default Active. An Inactive Sigil is denoted by having a * next to the Vampire Lord’s name in the list of Sigils for a room.

When a Sigil in a room is destroyed, the corresponding Vampire Lord’s name is removed from the list of Sigils in that room.

A Vampire Lord may destroy one of their Sigils engraved in any room at any time

Add the following as the second step of the atomic action in “Richardo’s Journey”

* Set all Inactive Sigils to Active

If “Architecture and Immorality” and “Energizer Bunny” both pass, add the following to the list of Features

* Richardo von Nestor gains 1 Energy for each Active Sigil engraved here. Set all Sigils engraved here to Inactive. (+1)

New Mentor Reveal

Phil will be mentored by Clucky.

A

Can someone unidle me?  I’m not on desktop rn so I can’t do it myself

A note on Imperial style and direction for this dynasty

This is a voluntary but nonbinding outline of how I will be approaching this dynasty, emperorship-wise.

I anticipate that to some extent the dynasty will revolve around creating an economy for the Vampire Lords to buy powers to put into rooms to torment poor young Richardo von Nestor. For the most part I will be staying out of that aspect of the game. It will be up to the Vampire Lords to determine how much of their blood power they want to spend on spike traps vs flesh golem refineries vs trick chandeliers, and to respond accordingly when tall poppies start emerging on the basis of specialised setups. I won’t even get too involved in creating boundaries for the strength of the effects they can have; if you want to kill off Richardo then I’m sure his cousin Pablo will be ready to take up the whip and shield.

To the extent that I do vote on proposals that only set up Vampire Lord powers it will be to nudge the shape of the overall ruleset rather than out of a desire to control the pace or integrity of the game.

I’d like to avoid too much secret information; processing Richardo’s meanderings will be enough GMing for me. At some point we might follow through on the stub rule where Vampire Lord loyalties can secretly drift, but anything more than that is probably too much for right now.

Bloodthirsty

Could someone unidle me? I’m dying to play this round.

Back from my own dark cave

As a new dynasty has arrived I would like to be unidled.

Proposal: A warning about danger

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Seven votes in favour. Ahahaha. Zero votes against. Ahahaha. The motion passes. Ahahaha.—Clucky

Adminned at 10 Jun 2021 17:06:53 UTC

Add a new subrule of The Crypt of Dracula titled “Sigils”:

Each room may be engraved with up to one Sigil from each Vampire Lord; the subset of Vampire Lords that have engraved Sigils in a given room is tracked in the room legend, and defaults to none.

Add a paragraph to the end of “Lair Actions”:

Engraving a Sigil is a Power Action with a cost of 2. The Vampire Lord carrying it out may select a room and add their name to the list of Vampire Lords with Sigils engraved in the room.

Add to the Effect of “Shattered stairway”:

Each Vampire Lord with an engraved Sigil here gains 1 Puissance.

If “Architecture and Immorality” enacted, add to the list of features:

* Each Vampire Lord with an engraved Sigil here gains 1 Puissance. (+2)

Introduction

Greetings everyone.
I would like to formally express my desire to become *checks notes* Vampire Lord.
I look forward to playing the game and spending some time on blognomic.

Proposal: Under New Management [Appendix]

Enacted 9-0. Josh

Adminned at 10 Jun 2021 13:29:27 UTC

Replace “Dracula’s Layer” with “Zahndorf Crypt” throughout the ruleset. Move the content from the former wiki page to the latter without changing it.

The map page is still usable as-is, but the apostrophe is causing an unexpected problem that breaks the sidebar embed script.

Proposal: Energizer Bunny

Enacted 10-0. Josh

Adminned at 10 Jun 2021 13:23:33 UTC

Replace the atomic action in “Richardo’s Journey”  with

* Set his location to be the room labelled Crypt Entrance and set his Energy, which is a integer, to be 6
* Reduce his Energy by 1. Secretly randomly select an explored room that is orthagonally adjacent to his current room and move into it, applying any effects of that room as he does so.
* If his Energy is greater than 0, repeat the second step of this atomic action. Otherwise, move on to the next step of this action
* Richardo von Nestor retreats; set his location to ‘none’.

Add the following to “The Crypt of Dracula”

When Richardo von Nestor is Grievously Injured by an Effect, his Energy is reduced by 10. When Richardo von Nestor is Lightly Wounded by an Effect, his Energy is reduced by 1.

Right now, its impossible for Richardo to get to the corners of the map. We’ll need to be careful not to allow infinite loops, but I think this provides a better framework to enable stuff that lets Ricardo get further into the crypt.

Proposal: Architecture and Immorality

Reached quorum, 7-0. Josh

Adminned at 10 Jun 2021 13:21:32 UTC

If the proposal “Bare Bones” failed, this proposal has no further effect.

In “Lair Actions”, replace “and an effect of “none”.” with:-

and any number of Features as its Effect (or “none” if it has no Features), in an order of the Vampire Lord’s choosing. A Room may not have more than one copy of a Feature.

Replace “Exploring a Room is a Power Action with a cost of 5.” with:-

Exploring a Room is a Power Action with a cost of 5 plus the total Darkness scores of the Features being placed in that Room’s Effect (to a minimum cost of 1).

Add a subrule to The Crypt of Dracula, called “Features”:-

The sentences in the list below are Features that Rooms may possess, with their Darkness scores given afterwards in brackets:-

* Richardo von Nestor is Grievously Injured. (+5)
* Richardo von Nestor is moved back to his previous location. (+1)
* Each Vampire Lord gains 1 Puissance. (+1)

If the proposal “This is not a place of honor” enacted, add a Feature to the list:-

* Each Vampire Lord with an engraved Sigil here gains 4 Puissance. (+2)

In Richardo’s Journey, replace “applying any effects of that room as he does so” with “applying all effects of that room as he does so, in the order they are listed”.

Making the cost of a Room dependent on what terrible things are in it.

Proposal: This is not a place of honor

Self-killed. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 10 Jun 2021 06:58:40 UTC

Add a new subrule of The Crypt of Dracula titled “Sigils”:

Each room may be engraved with up to one Sigil from each Vampire Lord; the subset of Vampire Lords that have engraved Sigils in a given room is tracked in the room legend, and defaults to none.

Add a paragraph to the end of “Lair Actions”:

Engraving a Sigil is a Power Action with a cost of 2. The Vampire Lord carrying it out may select a room and add their name to the list of Vampire Lords with Sigils engraved in the room.

Add to the Effect of “Shattered stairway”:

Each Vampire Lord with an engraved Sigil here gains 4 Puissance.

In which Richardo pays the blood price, to us.

Proposal: Bare bones

Reached quorum 7 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 10 Jun 2021 07:00:56 UTC

Add a new rule called Vampire Lords:

Each Vampire Lord has a Puissance, which is a publicly tracked non-negative integer that defaults to 10. Power Actions always require that their Cost be paid from the Puissance of the Vampire Lord carrying it out.

Each Vampire Lord has an Allegiance, which is secretly tracked and which defaults to Loyal.

Add a new rule to the ruleset, called Lair Actions:

Exploring a Room is a Power Action with a cost of 5. The Vampire Lord carrying it out may select a room and set it to Explored, giving it a name and a description, and an effect of “none”.

Proposal: Down into the dark

Reached quorum 7 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 10 Jun 2021 06:49:53 UTC

Add a new rule to the ruleset, entitled The Crypt of Dracula:

[[Dracula’s Layer]] contains a publicly tracked map of the known layout of the crypt beneath Zahndorf Cathedral. Each cell of the table that comprises that map represents one room of the lair, and so the terms “cell” and “room” are interchangeable throughout the ruleset. Rooms can also be referred to using their grid reference.

Unexplored rooms have a background colour of #998877 and have no text inside them, while explored rooms have a background colour of #666666 and contain a room name. Room names must be unique and may be used to specifically refer to the room that carries them; otherwise, they are flavour text.

There is a list of explored rooms which is publicly tracked, showing - for each room - the name of the room, a brief flavour-text description of its contents, and its effect on Richardo von Nestor when he enters it.

Add another new rule to the ruleset, entitled Richardo’s Journey:

At any time but not more than once every 48 hours, Richardo von Nestor may Enter the Crypt, which is an atomic action with the following steps:

* Set his location to be the room labelled Crypt Entrance
* Secretly randomly select an explored room that is orthagonally adjacent to his current room and move into it, applying any effects of that room as he does so. If carrying out the effects of a room results in his being Grievously Injured then he must retreat; ignore the rest of this atomic action.
* Repeat the second step of this atomic action five additional times; after the sixth room has been entered and its effects applied, move onto the next step of this action.
* Richardo von Nestor retreats; set his location to ‘none’.

Set the wiki page Dracula’s Layer to have the same contents as this page.

The idea here is that Richardo von Nestor will move through the map in semi-predictable ways, while the denizens will be arranging the crypt to stymie him, and direct him at their foes, to their own ends and glory.

Ascension Address: Zahndorfvania

Child, draw near me before I exhale my final breath, for I have wisdom that I must pass on to you lest this world should slip into ruin.

When our ancestors settled here, millenia ago, this land was a jungle, and it housed unimaginable horrors. They were wise and they were mighty and they chained those horrors deep below the ground. We forgot about the monsters and we forgot about our wisdom but the monsters did not forget about us. They are merely waiting.

The cathedral at the centre of the metropolis of Zahndorf hides the entrance to their grotto. I believe that the monks who service the sepulchre have known about the evil beneath their feet and have been in communion with it. I believe that through this portal the corruption of the city has begun.

Child - my Richardo, last child of the great von Nestor family - you are young but soon you will be an adult. It falls to you to enter the crypt and slay the great demon who lives in its centre. Here, take from my faltering hands the whip that bears our family crest and the shield with the device of brilliant sunlight. Look upon it when you are in the dark places closest to evil and you will know that you are not lost.

Throughout the ruleset, change the term “Broker” to “Vampire Lord” and the term “Collector” to “Richardo von Nestor”. Change the Dynastic Tracking page to [[Dracula’s Layer]] and set the rule The Traitor to inactive.

Wednesday, June 09, 2021

Post Dynasty Discussion

How did the dynasty go?

I’m especially interested in people’s views on how the No Collaboration rule effected gameplay. Was it harder to be engaged?

Also curious how people felt the round structure went. Did people like the “do this around a certain time every day but don’t make it a strict 24/48 hours later thing so we don’t get drift” mechanic?

Call for Judgment: [Special Case] Yes Collaboration

Reaches quorum, 4-1. Enacted by pokes. (Corrected from 4-0; didn’t see Clucky’s against before enacting.)

Adminned at 08 Jun 2021 17:09:34 UTC

Set “No Collaboration” to inactive.

So that Kevan can privately suggest something for the Installee.

Declaration of Victory: Welcome to the National Museum’s new building, the Josh Wing

Passes 6-0—Congrats Josh!—Clucky

Adminned at 09 Jun 2021 04:27:13 UTC

As per the round 14 Round Post, I am Star Broker and have thus achieved victory.

Round 14

There is no theme for this round, as it is not less than or equal to Round 12

These are the round scores for the previous round:

Josh (BOTC and The Simulation Hypothesis Dynasty) - 22
Kevan (Heavy Meta, Loot Box and Too Soon?) - 20
pokes (At the end of Expression Engine, Blognomic: Mafia and Round One (Again)) -10
Raven1207 (In Beta Phase) - 9
Jason (It’s bound to happen eventually…) - 4
lemonfanta (The Tower) - 3

(still gotta do this for some reason) The expiration date for Round 14 is Thursday, June 10th at 15:00 UTC

With a total of 35 Kudos, Josh is the Star Broker

Proposal: All Ears [Appendix]

Reached quorum 4 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 09 Jun 2021 13:35:19 UTC

Remove the words “on request” from “Numbers and Variables”.

Per Lemonfanta’s observation on Eyes Only.

Monday, June 07, 2021

Call for Judgment: Fixing Favours [Special Case]

Reaches a quick quorum, 4-0. Enacted by pokes.

Adminned at 07 Jun 2021 15:21:41 UTC

Amend the Special Case rule entitled “Favours” by replacing

While this rule is active, Brokers can grant one another Favours via the methods defined in the Dynastic rule called “Granting Favours”, if such a rule exists.

with

While this rule is active, Brokers can grant one another Favours via the methods defined in Dynastic Rules.

Uphold all the gaining of all Favours under the Dynastic Rule “The Bulletin Board” that would have been legal but for the sentence changed by this CfJ.

Apparently the Favours special case rule demands a specific title for the dynastic rule that allows the creation of favours. The favours might still work due to Prioritisation, since “The Bulletin Board” would take precedence over “Favours”‘s restriction on creation, but it seems like a good idea to just remove the restriction entirely.

I apologize if this isn’t CfJ worthy and should have just been a normal proposal, since this is the first time I’ve submitted a CfJ.

Proposal: The Bell

Self-killed. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 08 Jun 2021 15:15:16 UTC

In Rounds, replace “If the current time is after the Expiration Date of the previous round (or that has been no previous round this dynasty), the Collector may start a round.” with:-

If the current time is after the Expiration Date of the previous round (or that has been no previous round this dynasty), and if no Favours have been gained during the previous 12 hours, the Collector may start a round.

This may not enact in time, but let’s at least try to head off any last-minute trading chaos from the one mechanic that doesn’t operate on the 48 hour clock.

Sunday, June 06, 2021

Proposal: Last orders

Reached quorum 5 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 08 Jun 2021 15:03:08 UTC

Add the name of any Broker or Collector whose EVC on this proposal contains the word “me” to the Installer Directory.

Gallery 12 -  Sneak Peak At A Future Blognomic Dynasty Theme

This is the gallery page for the last gallery, Sneak Peak At A Future Blognomic Dynasty Theme

Round 13

There is no theme for this round, as it is not less than or equal to Round 12

Round scores from the previous round:

Josh (The Place Where Anything Goes) - 13
Jason (Everyone’s favorite category) - 13
Kevan (Goes and Businessman tearing paper) - 12
pokes (But Does It?) - 8
Raven1207 (The Musical) - 8
lemonfanta (No art submitted) - 0

Gallery 12 -  Sneak Peak At A Future Blognomic Dynasty Theme is open for your viewing and voting.

The expiration date for Round 13 is Tuesday, June 8th at 15:00 UTC

Proposal: No Ringers

self killed—Clucky

Adminned at 08 Jun 2021 06:15:55 UTC

Add the following to “Submissions”

If an Artist was never an active Artist at some point between the start of the current dynasty and Sunday 06/06/21 00:0:00 UTC then all of their submissions are invalid

Feels like we should prevent people from unidling just to throw the final results.

Sunday, June 06, 2021

Proposal: Covering some bases

self killed—Clucky

Adminned at 08 Jun 2021 06:15:10 UTC

In “Ballot Submissions” after

A Ballot Submission consists of the titles of three different pieces of art from the gallery for the previous round, ranked, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, signifying which pieces they wish to praise. The Collector encourages Brokers to take into account creativity, originality, artistic beauty and adherence to the theme when determining which pieces to praise. A ballot submission may not include the title of a pieces of art which were submitted by the Broker making the ballot submission.

add

If there are fewer than three pieces of art from the gallery for the previous round which were not submitted by the Broker sending a ballot submission, that Broker’s ballot submission may include fewer than three items. In order for it to be valid, every piece of art from the galley for the previous round which was not submitted by the Broker must be included, and they must fill the highest ranks possible (with 1st being the highest, so for example, if there were only two such pieces of art, in order for the submission to be valid they must rank one of those pieces of art 1st, and the other one 2nd, but do not need to rank anything 3rd).

Hope this doesn’t actually come up, but occurred to me that it could and would rather just cover stuff now than have to CfJ something tomorrow if it does come up.

Proposal: Eyes Only [Appendix]

Timed Out. Passes 4-1—Clucky

Adminned at 08 Jun 2021 06:14:40 UTC

Add a bullet to “Numbers and Variables”:-

If a piece of information is described as being tracked secretly or privately by the Collector (including secretly random selections), then that information may only be revealed by the Collector when the ruleset allows it. If a Broker should already know such a piece of information (in that the Collector has already told them it, or vice versa, and there is no way that the information could have been changed since then), the Collector may repeat it to them on request.

This came up earlier in the dynasty with Clucky considering processing a Round early despite this revealing private information, and commenting that there’s nothing that actually limits sharing that information at will. Which has struck me before: if we make something “privately tracked”, should we explicitly say that the Emperor can only reveal it according to the rules?

We presumably all agree that the Emperor shouldn’t shout things out for fun, but there will be subtler cases (like Clucky’s early action, or a player asking for their own private role to be revealed willingly to a third party) where one Emperor would consider it okay, and others wouldn’t.

Proposal: What Goes Around

Reached quorum 5 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 06 Jun 2021 13:37:12 UTC

In “Totaling Votes”, replace “Order all Brokers by their Round Score in descending order, breaking ties secretly randomly” with:-

Order all Brokers by their Round Score in descending order. When totalling votes for the “Anything Goes” artworks, break ties secretly randomly; for all other Rounds, break ties in favour of whoever was ranked lower in the previous round (or at secretly random if neither Broker was ranked last round).

A fairer tie-breaker, to be introduced after the current round.

Friday, June 04, 2021

Proposal: Tree In The Forrest

Reached quorum 6 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 05 Jun 2021 08:15:58 UTC

In “starting a round” replace

Appreciate the art in all collections

with

Appreciate the art in all collections other than the Collector’s Vault

We never did materialize getting art out of the collector’s vault. So at this point, appreciating its value just feels like busy work for me.

Proposal: On Your Bike

Reached quorum 4 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 05 Jun 2021 08:15:05 UTC

Repeal “Courier Submissions”.

Remove the bullet point from “Starting a Round” that begins “For each valid Courier Submission”.

Maybe it’s time to remove this from the equation, as nobody’s been using it.

Gallery 11 - Anything Goes

This is the gallery post for round 11

Round 12

The theme for this round is Sneak Peak At A Future Blognomic Dynasty Theme

Round scores from the previous round:

Kevan ( The Suber Tablets and Hopelessness) - 18
Jason (A 10 pixel by 10 pixel rendering of the number 10) - 13
Josh (10 and This person is called Ten) - 13
Raven1207 (Ten years ago, today) - 6
pokes (Ten Trillion Dollars) - 4
lemonfanta (no art submitted) - 0

Gallery 11 - Anything Goes is open for your viewing and voting.

The expiration date for Round 12 is Sunday, June 6th at 15:00 UTC

Thursday, June 03, 2021

Proposal: Exit Through The Gift Shop

Reached quorum 7 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 04 Jun 2021 15:43:21 UTC

Enact a new rule, “Installation”:-

The Installer Directory is a list of Brokers, tracked publicly. Brokers on this list are called Installers. Any Broker may add themselves to the list at any time before Round 13 begins, if they are not already on it.

If the current Round is 14, the Installer(s) with the lowest Kudos should arrange for some kind of physical copy of a piece of art from the dynasty to be delivered to the Installer(s) with the highest Kudos.

An opt-in physical prize. Imagine owning your own piece of stock savannah photography, or an original Keith Haring.

Wednesday, June 02, 2021

Proposal: Hyperdeflation

Self-killed. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 04 Jun 2021 15:33:39 UTC

To “Submissions”, add a paragraph:-

The piece of art submitted with the title of “Ten Trillion Dollars” shall instead be considered to have a title of “Zimbabwean Banknote”, for the purposes of all rules other than this one, and all of this rule’s subrules (although the piece of art may be referred to by either title in Ballot Submissions).

Gallery 10 - Ten

This is the gallery post for round 10

Round 11

The theme for this round is Anything Goes

Round scores from the previous round:

lemonfanta (this is theme-relevant in that my gf is moving and i was too preoccupied to make good art bc of that. and moving cross-state is a voyage, u see. also theres a boat in the picture
) - 13
Josh (J. M. W. Turner’s Snow Storm - Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth, 1842) - 11
Kevan (Road Trip) - 10
pokes (Amazing Stories) - 10
Jason (The 2022 Chrysler PT Cruiser) - 9
Raven1207 (Another adventure in space) - 1


Gallery 10 - Ten is open for your viewing and voting.

The expiration date for Round 11 is Friday, June 4th at 15:00 UTC

Tuesday, June 01, 2021

Proposal: Proving the Rule [Core]

Self-killed. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 03 Jun 2021 17:20:14 UTC

To the bullet list in Fair Play, add:-

* A Broker should not deliberately and knowingly break a rule.

As raised in the Uphold discussion: should a player be able to deliberately take an illegal action, and expect others to play on from that, on the grounds that a fix is pending that seems very likely to retroactively make their action legal? Or should they wait for the action to become legal before taking it?

I thought obeying the rules at all times was a given from “This is the Ruleset for BlogNomic; all Brokers shall obey it.”, but maybe we should be more explicit about what that means. Or see what fun can be had on the forking paths of “may claim to have taken an illegal action if it seems likely to become retroactively legal in the future” if the majority see it that way.

Proposal: To Have And Uphold [Appendix] [Core]

Fewer than a quorum not voting against. Failed 1-5 by Kevan.

Adminned at 03 Jun 2021 08:40:46 UTC

Remove the entry for “Uphold” from the Appendix.

Remove the line “When a DoV is enacted then all game actions that led up to it are considered to be upheld” from the ruleset.

Per a discussion on Slack. Key argument from Kevan:

[...]some players have been leaning into “no problem, I’ll just take this illegal action and we’ll uphold it afterwards” lately. I think there’s always a big, implicit rule of BlogNomic that players shouldn’t - or can’t - ever knowingly and deliberately break a rule. “This is the Ruleset for BlogNomic; all Players shall obey it.”

I don’t have a complete view on this yet but think we should discuss whether we want to bring ruleset gameplay, rigorous proposal drafting and exploitation of unintended interactions back towards the centre of gameplay.