BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

I think its good but:
- I think the Emperor would make the best mentor at any given time because they have no stake in the game and already have the connotation of caretaker of the game.
- I think this would be best as an off-Ruleset initiative, because more wordiness to the Ruleset is counterproductive to making the game more accessible to new Players.

(But even if the Emperor would be ideal, having a player be it isn’t too bad either, I just find the Emperor a bit preferable)

I suppose it depends on how many new players there are at any given point… The Emperor has enough work as it is; a single mentee might be manageable, but it would depend on the circumstances.

“Could a profile tag be used for mentor availability?”

Heh, like a taxi sign?

Notes so far:

1) Please correct “the approach prospective mentor” (“approached”).
2) “The Director should make a post to the blog whenever a new mentor/mentee relationship is established.” A bit vague… Perhaps “Whenever a new mentor/mentee relationship is established, the Director should announce it in a blog post.”
2a) Even better, let’s name this relationship a “Mentorship” for convenience: “A relationship between a mentor and a mentee is a Mentorship. Whenever a new Mentorship is established, the Director should announce it in a blog post.” (Same with “Mentorship system” instead of “mentor/mentee system”, etc.)

I disagree - if you want to give a new player an on-ramp into the game then putting them in a situation where they can potentially be involved in actual gameplay seems better. I personally like the idea of a middle-of-the-pack player getting a mentee and working with them to do better; it makes the game more dynamic and gives the new player an exciting worked example to get involved with.

I’m not sure where the idea that ruleset chunk was what was turning new players off, but mentors are I think a more effective way to handle that than slimming the ruleset down arbitrarily, and in any case the fair play stuff needs to be ruleset-enforceable.

@Duke - thanks, changes made.

And yes, exactly like a taxi system!

I think we might need to return to that thought about collapsible sections… Ruleset length might not necessarily be the defining factor, but a newcomer might not even ask for a mentor if they’ve already been scared off by the apparent difficulty of the game.

It’s a good point about the mentor’s identity though: an emperor is usually above the cut-and-thrust of the game, therefore not the best way to learn the game as it is normally played.

On the other hand, there’s this clause in the proposed rule: “If a mentor achieves victory with support of their mentee then they should, if the mentee wishes it, pass the baton to the mentee.”

I can see a case for giving a newcomer a share in the spoils, but isn’t it a bit early for actually wielding such power? Creating a dynasty that won’t break down within days, never mind one that people enjoy playing, isn’t as easy as it looks; I’m not sure I feel ready to do it myself. Judges in common-law countries must have a certain experience as lawyers, after all…

I dunno, I guess I don’t think that the Emperor is be-all and end-all. In many dynasties, dynastic rules are driven more by players than the Emperor, and it’s a great way to get a feel for the inner workings of the game. The Emperor doesn’t have loads of power and tends not to abuse it (#6 and #115 both tested the limits of the imperial Emperorship), and I’m more up for a dynamic approach to new ideas than I am for creating rarefied status.

Having this as ruletext is good for showing that the community voted it into place and supports its continued existence. It also gives us a process for tinkering with it over time.

“The Director should wherever possible take care to consider game balance when selecting a potential mentor.” is fair but feels vague. If everyone was a mentor right now, who would it be unfair to select?

Profile tags might be overkill if the only time they need to be checked is when the Emperor needs to pick a Mentor, but a tickbox in the profile would be a good way to opt in and out.

Emperor as Mentor gets difficult in a secret information dynasty, or if there’s a sense (as there seems to be these days) that the Emperor should avoid discussing or pointing out gameplay loopholes. The second of those is something a Mentor would probably want to talk about.

@Kevan - “The Director should wherever possible take care to consider game balance when selecting a potential mentor.” is fair but feels vague. If everyone was a mentor right now, who would it be unfair to select?

Great question. I did wobble a bit over the wording of this. I think I’d expect the Emperor to avoid giving a mentee to a frontrunner or main competitor, but I eventually left it vague because I want it to be subjective. Players can decline if it’s not in their interests, but I really don’t want Mentorships to be a broadly exploitable mechanic, so leaving it to Imperial judgement feels like the safest bet.

Profile tags could also be used to highlight current mentee relationships (Mentor to X, Mentee with Y for example).

Profile tags are a new “thing”, so I can understand the desire to explore their possibilities, but we must be careful not to overload the blog with them.

I still think it would be more educational to have a roll of the dice at the end of a dynasty, to give the mentee a chance to become emperor, that to simply ask them: this is what actually happens in many dynasties.

Looking at the Fair Play stuff I’m not entirely sure about “should not seek to influence the mentee’s impression of other Individuals”. Any mentoring is likely to discuss motives behind proposals and player actions - that a proposal could be a scam, that rivals could be working in an alliance, etc. Can that kind of discussion be had eithout influencing impressions?

“seek to have a personal relationship with the mentee outside of the game” feels out of place. If a Mentor and Mentee find that they share an interest elsewhere, or want to follow each other on some social media, that seems fine.

How should The Traitor rule interact with Mentoring, if somebody draws the Traitor as their Mentor?

@Kevan - Looking at the Fair Play stuff I’m not entirely sure about “should not seek to influence the mentee’s impression of other Individuals”. Any mentoring is likely to discuss motives behind proposals and player actions - that a proposal could be a scam, that rivals could be working in an alliance, etc. Can that kind of discussion be had eithout influencing impressions?

It’s aimed more at “Don’t do a deal with x, they’re a dick” - is there a better way to word this? Or should it come out all together?

“seek to have a personal relationship with the mentee outside of the game” feels out of place. If a Mentor and Mentee find that they share an interest elsewhere, or want to follow each other on some social media, that seems fine.

After the Mentorship is over all bets are off, but I think a bit of caution to protect new players isn’t a bad thing.

How should The Traitor rule interact with Mentoring, if somebody draws the Traitor as their Mentor?

I’ve not considered that at all. I think that that falls under game balance in terms of Emperor selection of a mentor, but can still happen if eg no-one else is willing or if the dynasty changes mid-Mentorship. At the very least, being the Traitor shouldn’t interfere with any of the Must actions, so it might just result in a light-touch Mentorship.

@Duke - Interesting about the dice roll, but I prefer that it default to the mentee just as a way of disincentivising mentors from cynically using their mentee to achieve victory. Individual mentorships can have their own standards (this is advisory / best practice, after all, and not really enforceable) but having a dice gets complicated if there are additional cabal members, or any other situation that would result in something other than a 50/50 split.

“I prefer that it default to the mentee just as a way of disincentivising mentors from cynically using their mentee to achieve victory.” I’m sure such a cynical mentor could suggest in various ways that “you can do that but it’s a bad idea”, so I don’t know how much of a safeguard this is.

Not sure about better wordings for the seeking-to-influence. I’d hope that a general “be polite and present BlogNomic in a good light” was implicit in the context of introducing a new player (as the wider ruleset has never bothered to say it).

Perhaps I’m missing something on the interaction-caution thing, but I really don’t get the angle, given that it doesn’t apply to other players of the game, and that the whole Mentoring process is about two players chatting privately. What are we protecting them from?

Ok, I’ve removed those two - they can always be added back in later if they turn out to be important.

This proposal is currently one shy of quorum. Any reason for the against votes? Problems with the rule as written, or a broader dislike of the concept?

The latter.

On what grounds?

Both for me. I don’t think it should be formalized in the Ruleset until we try it out informally, and I don’t like the “must"s, especially attached to soft things

I should also have said both for much the same reasons, although I’m not sure the process should ever be formalised in the rules.

I’m starting to wonder about what ought to be included in the ruleset in general… We’ve so far avoided rules about conduct, haven’t we? Apparently they were judged unnecessary, because the player community kept things under control. Perhaps there is such a thing about overregulation.

* I meant to write “such a thing as overregulation”.

The reason why I think this needs to be a rule is to prevent a blurred line existing between mentoring and sock-puppeting.

About two weeks ago I recommended that a friend take a look at the game. If they had, and I’d oh-so-generously offered to steer them the right way, then this dynasty would have ended differently.

If one of the new players who joined and then left during the last few weeks of the dynasty had done so in a time where there was an informal agreement that players could mentor nebies, then it would have been a feeding frenzy.

Essentially what I’m getting at here is: 1 reliable vote is a powerful mechanical weight, and if mentoring is informal then it will be used as such. If the Core and Appendix rules have a purpose in BlogNomic then it is specifically this, to define and delineate which bits of the gamestate should not or cannot be allowed to become mechanics that can be manipulated for dynastic advantage. If we did have a tradition of mentoring new players and that tradition became routinely used to manipulate the outcome of dynasties - which it would, because no weapon goes unused - then that would be bad for both the new players and the existing ones. Maybe the rule as written is too long - I went for managing edge cases, not brevity - but this is still an area where come measure of public codification and definition would benefit both the subjects of the rule and the ongoing player base, and that ultimately is what that bit of the ruleset is for.

I voted against because it seems overly formal.

Though I’m looking over the rule again, and I’m noticing a lot of pitfalls I was worried about are properly covered.

I like it, but I’d prefer it as an off-Ruleset thing

Josh makes a good case. If we want a mentor system with some guidelines about how mentors should be assigned and what they should and shouldn’t do, we need to write that down somewhere so that we’re all on the same page and the mentor has a clear idea of what’s expected of them. And we’ll probably want to change those guidelines over time, so we’ll need some way to measure levels of agreement on those changes. Perhaps some sort of… majority vote. Etc. The ruleset is the obvious place for it.

CoV

Sorry to see the self-kill, this could have been a good one to have ready for the new dynasty. Hope to see it back in some form before long.