Proposal: Autonomous Beast
Withdrawn. Failed by JonathanDark.
Adminned at 09 Aug 2024 14:27:21 UTC
Replace the entire text of the rule “Blackwater Beast” with the following:
There exists a Blackwater Beast that has the following publicly-tracked variables: Next Movement which contains a date and time (defaulting to the current date and time plus 48 hours), Last Known Location which is either empty or a Cell (defaulting to empty), and Possible Locations which is a series of Cells that may be duplicates and are contained in {} brackets and separated by commas (defaulting to an empty {} brackets). The Blackwater Beast is also known as Beast and the two terms are synonymous.
If the current time is after the Beast’s Next Movement, any Fishing Contestant or the Elder Judge may perform the Moving the Beast action, and it is the only dynastic action which Fishing Contestants may take other than Sight Disturbances.
Moving the Beast is an atomic action with the following steps:
* Set the Beast’s Last Known Location to a random non-Shore Cell if it is empty
* If the Beast’s Possible Locations is empty, select all non-Shore Cells orthogonally adjacent to the Beast’s Last Known Location and add them to the Beast’s Possible Locations, separated by commas
* Randomly select 4 Cells from the Beast’s Possible Locations (keeping any duplicates from the random selection), or if there are 4 or less Cells to choose from simply select all of the Cells, and call these the Future Locations for this instance of the atomic action
* For each Cell in the Future Locations, select all non-Shore Cells orthogonally adjacent to that Cell and add them to the the Beast’s Possible Locations, separated by commas and adding the Cells even if any are duplicates of existing Cells in the Possible Locations
* Roll a DICE2. On a result of 1, the Beast Bellows.
* If the Beast Bellows:
** Randomly select a Cell from the Beast’s Possible Locations using the {} and its contents directly in the Dice Roller
** Set the Beast's Last Known Location to that Cell and publicly track it in that Cell on The Sea Chart
** Set the Possible Locations to empty {} brackets
** Each Fishing Contestants that is on or orthogonally adjacent to the Beast’s Last Known Location, except for Fishing Contestants in a Shore Cell, is Affected by the Beast’s Bellow. Add 2 to the Madness of each Affected Fishing Contestant.
** Make a Story Post on the blog that the Beast Bellowed using any flavor text of the author’s choosing in the title, and a body that contains a list of Fishing Contestants that were Affected by the Beast’s Bellow
* If the Beast did not Bellow, set its Last Known Location to empty and remove it from public tracking on The Sea Chart
* Set the Beast’s Next Movement to the current date and time plus 48 hours, rounded down to the nearest hour, then roll DICE24 and add the result of this roll in hours to the Next Movement.
Removing the burden of Moving the Beast from darknight and putting it into the hands of the Fishing Contestants. Similar to Sight Disturbances, once it’s time to perform Moving the Beast, all Fishing Contestants’ dynastic actions are blocked until it’s done. The cycle is 48 hours + a random 1-24 hours, so hopefully this won’t be a burden for anyone too often.
This looks like a lot but isn’t actually that complicated, just wordy.
This is also a great time to re-evaluate if we even want the Blackwater Beast at all.
While I don’t mind the Beast being updated communally, I think this is a bit too complicated. I think the simplest way would be to make that Bellow roll first, then whenever the Beast Bellows we update its position by however many times it failed to Bellow previously.
SingularByte: he/him
I do worry that overloading the sight disturbances action will put people off doing it. This is pretty much doubling the action, and includes having to parse a whole new system, with mistakes potentially invalidating people’s future actions.