Thursday, August 20, 2020

Proposal: Action Completion [Appendix]

Timed out 4 votes to 2. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 22 Aug 2020 12:01:18 UTC

In “Representations of the Gamestate”, replace:-

If a Pathfinder feels that a representation of the gamestate (such as a wiki page) was altered such that it no longer matches the gamestate (such as by performing an action which was against the Rules as they were at the time of the alteration, or by any other means), they may simply undo the effects of that alteration. Instead of repeatedly reverting and re-reverting a disputed alteration, Pathfinders are encouraged to raise a Call for Judgement instead.

with:-

If a Pathfinder feels that a representation of the gamestate (such as a wiki page) does not match the gamestate, they may either:

* Undo the effects of any alteration that led to it, if that alteration did not follow the rules at the time it was made.
* Alter the representation to match what they believe to be the correct application of an incorrectly-applied alteration. This may include completing incomplete actions on behalf of the original Pathfinder, if doing so would not require the correcting Pathfinder to make any decisions on behalf of the original Pathfinder.

Instead of repeatedly reverting and re-reverting a disputed alteration, however, Pathfinders are encouraged to raise a Call for Judgement.

This follows on from this comment regarding an illegal action: if someone gets an action wrong and creates invalid gamestate, there’s some uneven precedent for just fixing that up where possible - the boundary line probably being whether any further decisions are required from the action’s performer, or whether we’re just tidying up.

(If I pick an apple but forget to decrement the tree apple count, it feels equally acceptable for other players to either undo my action, or to complete it on my behalf in the only way it could be completed. If I pick an apple but forget to say whether I’m picking it from my own tree or Cuddlebeam’s tree, and fail to decrement either, other players shouldn’t step in and decide which tree I meant, and can only undo it.)

posted by Kevan at 20 Aug 2020 10:51:00 UTC Comments (12)

Comments

derrick: he/him

20-08-2020 12:09:38 UTC

This is mostly just formalizing what we do anyway, isn’t it?

Kevan: he/him

20-08-2020 12:21:43 UTC

Pretty much. We seem to have a varied attitude to it, so I think it’s worth reflecting that - particularly that both undoing and completing are valid responses.

Raven1207: he/they

20-08-2020 13:35:59 UTC

against

Kevan: he/him

20-08-2020 13:53:41 UTC

[Raven1207] This proposal makes it explicitly clear that players are allowed to correct your game actions if you get them wrong, where doing so doesn’t require them to make any decisions on your behalf.

Bais:

20-08-2020 15:50:40 UTC

Regarding the specific cases of correcting someone else’s mistakes, I’m mildly worried about this proposal not clarifying a clear way of involving the player who was originally mistaken.  This could lead, e.g., to situations where player X (mis)performs an action, player Y fixes player Y’s mistake (without raising the issue in other channels, and without notifying player X), player X then also realizes their mistake, does not notice player Y’s intervention, and re-fixes the mistake, possibly making the representation of the gamestate broken again, but this time in a much subtler way.

Riggdan: he/him

20-08-2020 16:56:17 UTC

Shouldn’t this apply to every dynasty? Like a change to the core rules instead

Kevan: he/him

20-08-2020 16:58:46 UTC

[Bais] That certainly wouldn’t be ideal, but I think it’s a wider issue that’s everywhere in the game: it can already happen if someone undoes a player’s action without telling them, or takes a surprising gamestate action very quietly with no edit summary.

[Riggdan] Yep, “Representations of the Gamestate” is part of the Appendix.

derrick: he/him

21-08-2020 15:58:28 UTC

for

Aname:

21-08-2020 16:01:46 UTC

imperial

Madrid:

21-08-2020 16:26:43 UTC

for

Josh: Observer he/they

21-08-2020 17:57:39 UTC

Hm. Making this discretionary does make it possible to use tactically, in the sense of deciding which path to take on the basis of self-interest. I wonder if it would be possible to codify the situations in which you can appropriately use judgement rather than being compelled? Probably more trouble than it’s worth.

Soft rhetorical against but I might change my vote if this looks anything like actually failing.

Kevan: he/him

21-08-2020 19:03:29 UTC

That option’s already there: if you announce that you’re launching a nuke but fail to decrement your missile count, the appendix already gives me the option to “correct the representations to comply with the Gamestate” or “simply undo the effects”. This proposal makes it explicit that it could go either way, while expanding it to cover unfinished but unambiguous actions.

Codifying guidelines would be nice if we could manage it, but I could see us leaning towards generously completing unfinished actions - and that leading to an era where (as has happened a bit in some past dynasties) lazy players fire off half-written actions and leave others to tidy up the gamestate.

(And this doesn’t even address the bigger, darker third option of “refrain from pointing out an error until several weeks later”...)