Saturday, July 03, 2021

Proposal: A Nudge is All It Takes

Timed out and failed, 2-5. Josh

Adminned at 05 Jul 2021 17:45:21 UTC

Add the following after the second paragraph of “Treasures”

Some Treasures have a group. When the contents of a chest are randomly determined, Richardo first randomly selects a group which is available for that type of treasure or an available treasure without a group (with all groups and groupless treasures being equally likely to be selected). Then, if he selected a group, he randomly selects an item from that group.

Add the following to the list of Average Treasures

Northbound Compass (Group: Compass): If the room to the North is Lit and the North Exit of Richardo’s current room is not Blocked, change Ricardo’s room to be the one to the North and he then ceases to hold this item
Eastbound Compass (Group: Compass): If the room to the East is Lit and the North Exit of Richardo’s current room is not Blocked, change Ricardo’s room to be the one to the East and he then ceases to hold this item
Southbound Compass (Group: Compass): If the room to the South is Lit and the North Exit of Richardo’s current room is not Blocked, change Ricardo’s room to be the one to the South and he then ceases to hold this item
Westbound Compass (Group: Compass): If the room to the West is Lit and the North Exit of Richardo’s current room is not Blocked, change Ricardo’s room to be the one to the West and he then ceases to hold this item

Comments

Josh: he/they

03-07-2021 17:43:30 UTC

arrow

Janet: she/her

04-07-2021 02:02:11 UTC

for

Raven1207: he/they

04-07-2021 02:17:47 UTC

for

ais523:

04-07-2021 03:33:51 UTC

What’s the timing on this? The Secret Passage Map simply specifies where Richardo goes next (which works fine). With this, though, it seems like Richardo moves while he’s in the middle of resolving a room, which means that, e.g., Richardo can get Grievously Injured in one room, but that activates a Glyph in the room to the north and not in the room he’s currently in.

This probably wasn’t intended, and it leads to potential scams in which you can deactivate someone’s Glyph by placing a derandomized chest (Compass group) in the same room.

There’s also some ambiguity about what “current room” means when Richardo encounters a “Richardo is moved to his previous location” effect and a Compass during the same room encounter – we might need a CFJ to work out how those two effects interact with each other, because neither “previous location” nor “current room” has an obvious unambiguous definition in that situation.

This proposal might be worth voting for anyway – the implications are weird but not necessarily bad for gameplay – but I’m concerned that it’ll lead to a lot of non-obvious behaviour, which could lock out people who are going by what the Ruleset seems to say rather than what it actually does say.

ais523:

04-07-2021 06:17:02 UTC

…actually, I initially missed that you can derandomize specific Compasses, bypassing the group mechanic entirely.

This proposal would therefore let you place a Glyph next to someone else’s room, and use a Compass pointing at it in order to steal all the Influence they would get from it, which is a very non-obvious side effect of the rule.

against

ais523:

04-07-2021 06:18:03 UTC

(FWIW, I think the idea of using items to derandomize Richardo’s movement is a good one. It’s just that this wording has some really weird implications.)

ais523:

04-07-2021 06:29:08 UTC

Actually, I’m wrong – the Glyph in Richardo’s old room would activate even though he’s moved (because it’s that room that gets Pacified.

There’s still a lot of weirdness, though: a Compass moves Richardo into a room without actually activating any of its effects, or any Denizens there, which surely can’t be what Clucky intended. (Among other things, putting a Compass in a room that points towards a dead end would cause Richardo to evaluate the effects of that room twice.)

ais523:

04-07-2021 06:35:58 UTC

…and if you nudge Richardo into a Sepulchre it probably doesn’t collapse, although there’s some ambiguity there and it’d probably need to be fixed by CFJ.

Kevan: he/him

04-07-2021 08:02:51 UTC

against These also all check only the North Exit.

lemon: she/her

04-07-2021 13:16:21 UTC

against

Brendan: he/him

04-07-2021 14:58:13 UTC

against

Janet: she/her

04-07-2021 15:10:26 UTC

against CoV