Saturday, December 02, 2023

Proposal: Arranged Marriage

Timed out, 1-2 with 2 DEFs. Failed by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 04 Dec 2023 18:23:58 UTC

In the rule “Marriage” add a subrule named “Intent to Marry” with the following text:

A blog post with the Story Post category where the title of the post begins with the text “Intent to Marry: ” followed by the name of a Prospect to which no Heir is Married is known as an Intent to Marry. A Propsect in an Intent to Marry may not be the Prospect in another Intent to Marry within a 96-hour period. A Dowry is a number associated with an Intent to Marry, with a default value of 0.

If an Heir with a Spouse set to None has not done so within the past 48 hours, they may make an Intent to Marry with the name of the Prospect they want to have as their Spouse, provided that they meet the Requirements of that Prospect. This Heir becomes the Intended for that Intent to Marry.

Within 48 hours after an Intent to Marry has been posted, any Heir whose Spouse is set to None and who meets the Requirements for the Prospect of that Intent to Marry may comment on that Intent to Marry with the text “I challenge this marriage with a Reputation of X”, where X is a positive number between 1 and that Heir’s Reputation at the time of the commment and X is larger than the current Dowry for that Intent to Marry. If such a comment is made, the Dowry for that Intent to Marry is set to X, and the Heir making this comment becomes the Intended for that Intent to Marry. Any comment meeting this requirement is known as a Challenge for that Intent to Marry.

If at least 48 hours have passed after an Intent to Marry has been posted, and it has not yet been done for that Intent to Marry, the Intended for that Intent to Marry should perform the Arranged Marriage action, which is an atomic action with the following steps:
* For each Heir posting at least one valid Challenge for that Intent to Marry, determine the highest value of Reputation mentioned among that Heir’s Challenges in that Intent to Marry and subtract this value from their Reputation.
* Perform the Marriage atomic action with the Prospect of that Intent to Marry as the Prospect being chosen for the Marriage atomic action.

If the Intended for an Intent to Marry does not perform the Arranged Marriage action within 96 hours after the posting of that Intent to Marry, that Intended is known as a Cad. If it has not yet been done to a specific Cad in this dynasty, any Heir may perform the Punish Cad action by subtracting 4 from that Cad’s Reputation. A Cad may never post an Intent to Marry nor comment on an Intent to Marry.

If we start having Prospects with Benefits and Gifts, there will be an unfair advantage for Heirs who happen to be online to first notice the list of Prospects and can snag the most favourable one. This rule gives a 48-hour window for other Heirs to compete for the right to marry a particular Prospect if they so choose.

I also tried to make sure that an Heir can’t just block Prospects by creating a bunch of Intent to Marry posts or by not following through with the Marriage atomic action. They have 48 hours to act or they lose their right to marry.

Comments

lendunistus: he/him

02-12-2023 18:12:05 UTC

“the author of the Intent for this Prospect and any Challenger for this Prospect may secretly communicate to the Old King an amount between 1 and their current Reputation at the time of the communication”

this lets you spend negative reputation FYI

Kevan: he/him

02-12-2023 18:17:37 UTC

Vovix said in their Ascension Address that their Imperial Style would be hands-off (“would prefer all game actions to be left to the players”), which sounds like it rules out complex and secretly-tracked Imperial actions like this.

lendunistus: he/him

02-12-2023 18:19:03 UTC

also:
1. Dowries should be associated with Intents to Marry, not Prospects
2. there’s still nothing preventing you from opening Intents to Marry if you don’t go through with the marriage
3. “The Heir named in the Marriage Arrangement for this Prospect” is a bit vague, should be made clearer that it’s the person with the highest Dowry

JonathanDark: he/him

02-12-2023 18:33:43 UTC

I’ll fix these issues in a bit. I forgot about Vovix’s Imperial Style statement, so we’ll have to do open wagering of Reputation instead, which will require a fair bit of tinkering with the proposal.

Vovix: he/him

02-12-2023 19:55:20 UTC

I would prefer to avoid doing a lot of tracking, yes. Though I suppose a single blind-bid to collect and then announce isn’t much work.

JonathanDark: he/him

02-12-2023 20:25:21 UTC

No worries. I think I addressed all of the issues mentioned above, and now the Heirs are responsible for managing the Intent to Marry.

SingularByte: he/him

03-12-2023 06:49:00 UTC

Just to check, this doesn’t actually stop you from marrying via the normal atomic action? Is there a reason a player would use this system above the more reliable one?

JonathanDark: he/him

03-12-2023 07:51:25 UTC

@SB: it’s the reverse. Currently, nothing allows you to perform the Marriage atomic action. The action is defined per “Marriage is an atomic action”, but does not specify when it can be done. This Proposal puts the mechanics in place to allow it.

SingularByte: he/him

03-12-2023 09:11:31 UTC

imperial
It feels quite long-winded, and I’m half thinking I might propose turning the prospects into something more like prospect archetypes where multiple people can marry a given archetype.

Kevan: he/him

03-12-2023 16:04:36 UTC

against per SingularByte and in favour of their Jumping Straight Into Marriage proposal.

Josh: he/they

03-12-2023 16:23:00 UTC

against I like a lot of this, but it is a lot of words for what it does. There’s also an irritating wrinkle with Challenges, in that the optimal move is to wait for the exact last second of the Intent to Marry’s 48 hours timespan and snipe it, leading to irriating timing-based gameplay. Also I think that being a Cad may be an orphan variable.

JonathanDark: he/him

03-12-2023 17:20:39 UTC

All fair comments. I was actually trying to avoid timing issues, but it seems inevitable given the current method of selecting Prospects. I think SingularByte has a promising idea that would address my concern of some Heirs taking the best Prospects before others had a chance.

4st:

04-12-2023 17:08:59 UTC

imperial