BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

Needless to say it’s going to be a no from me. Apart from anything else that change was only made 4 days ago, and you voted for it, so I’m not sure that it’s bedded in long enough for your volte face to make any sense.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but my vote was cast on the misunderstanding that Safety Checks had little to no value in themselves, which was a misreading of the ruleset (they can still be spent to reroll Build dice). I read Jonathan’s proposal as just simplifying the Specialisation process and tidying up some of the larger numbers, which seems to be how it was pitched.

If it had been made apparent before or during voting that the proposal was capping everyone’s rerolls at around a dozen for the rest of the dynasty, except for one player who would still have several million, I would have voted against it.

I don’t think we need any cautious “bedding in” to see how much this may or may not affect the game.

I like this idea, but I have a feeling that even if this Proposal passes, we’re going to have a hard time reaching quorum unless somehow every active person except Josh authorises each other in the multiple Review Boards that would follow.

We’re having a hard enough time just reaching quorum for the fairly innocuous authorising of the two new players, which shouldn’t be controversial and yet are not getting much traction. How are we going to manage it after this passes?

I think the terms “If a number of Responses equal to Quorum” need to be reverted back to “If a simple majority of Responses”.

[Jonathan] I expect we’ll be able to unionise and agree to support each other’s Boards, but yes, the Review Board process would benefit from some iteration generally. The 48 hour timeout (rather than being closable at quorum) may also be discouraging immediate support, if it makes no difference how quickly a player responds to one.

No-one signed up to play Munchkin.

I am performing an Inspection

[Josh] Credit to you and embarrassment on us for having voted through a rule change that reduced our available Checks from seven million to a few dozen, but like any regretted change to the ruleset, we can vote to roll it back. We can change our mind while voting on a proposal, and we can (if we have enough time to get another proposal through) change our mind after enacting it.

Munchkin is a cycle of living and dying by the same sword. And you’re right, we aren’t playing it: a CfJ to bump you down to second place fails (I suspect) in the awareness that voters don’t want to be facing the pointy end of that same sword later in the game, having helped to forge it, and talked about what a great and fair sword it was.

But I’m happy to die by the sword of “someone spotted my loophole and reverted it before I could use it”, were this to happen the other way around later on. That is the game I signed up to play.

I’m just not sure that I see the distinction between “Josh did a clever scam and has an advantage” and “Kevan played well and has a big lead”, but I guess we’ll see how the proposal does to erase your advantage next time the shoe is on the other foot. From experience I’m not sure that you would be happy to die on that sword; there are certainly enough examples of your very skillfully and dilligently arguing against it.

There’s not that much distinction. I think the bigger one is chronological: “Josh performed a clever scam and gained an advantage” versus “Josh created/spotted something and the advantage will become apparent later”, where even your first comment here seems to be playing down the idea that players losing access to 7 million SC could make much difference.

Heading off an as-yet-unused loophole should be the bread and butter of Nomic, and this form of it - immediately repealing a bad idea straight after enacting it, before anyone has done anything with it, and not attempting to do anything retroactive to make up for lost time - seems as mild as persuading people to change their votes while the original was pending.

Again, I will admire your dedication to that point when you gracefully accept a future proposal that strips you of a rightfully earned lead.

What “rightfully earned lead” is being stripped from you here?

Everyone had access to 7 million SCs. The majority imprudently voted through a rule change to remove their (but not your) access to those SCs. Then one of us noticed the ramifications of that, and suggested changing it back.

What “rightfully earned lead” is being stripped from you here?

Everyone had access to the dosh distiming action. The majority used that action inefficiently, hurting their total on this, the last day of the dynasty. Then one of us noticed the ramifications of that, and suggested evening it out.

Reckon the second Gostak dynasty is going to be loads of fun

”...suggested evening it out with their few remaining dosh distimming actions.”

We were late to realise this, but whether we were we too late still seems completely within the bounds of the game.

Safety Checks clearly have a use, and I would love to get some more.

Also worth noting that this is literally the worst possible way of resolving the issue, as a game design matter. Imagine what the game looks like if every player can essentially ignore the risk of collapse: does the game just become a timing issue, where whoever Inspects last wins? Who here is confident that they would win that game?

(Much better as a game design matter to strip my SCs away, which Kevan isn’t doing because it makes the munchkinning too explicit.)

Very much agree that it’s not a great piece of game design, but it was the game we had in place a few days ago, so I’m suggesting that we take a small step back to it and work from there.

If we’re going with confidences of winning, most players would have better odds under that timing game than under the current ruleset (where we’re playing “see who can roll the lowest numbers on some DICE250s over the next few days, where Josh gets a million rerolls and everyone else gets five”).

My vote cannot be considered controversial since the Work Permit proposal was passed before I became a player.

While I think you both make pretty compelling arguments, and I do totally agree that going back to the previous rules are not great game design; I have agree with Kevan on this one. We as a group made a mistake by enacting a policy to give you and even greater lead under a bad assumption and you have played well to try to take advantage of that, but I also think in exactly the same spirit of Nomic we should be just as inclined to reverse a previously made, bad (for us) decision