Monday, June 14, 2021

Proposal: Bats in the Belfry

Vetoed. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 16 Jun 2021 18:03:34 UTC

If the proposal “Blood money” passes add the following to the list of Threats, if it does not pass add it to the list of Features

A new Denizen is spawned here with name “Bats”, 1 Brutality, 0 Cunning, and trait Roaming. (+2)

Add the following to the list of Denizen traits:

Roaming: After Richardo von Nestor retreats, as part of the Enter the Crypt action, the location of each Roaming denizen is to set a randomly-selected explored room that is orthogonally adjacent to its current Location.

Add a new sub-rule to “Richardo’s Journey” called “Ricardo’s Secrets”

Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all random occurrences that are performed as a direct result of the Enter the Crypt action may be done secretly.

Bats + a clause that stops us from having to keep saying “secretly random” plus fix a few areas like Secret Passage Map or Evasive that aren’t currently secret.

Comments

Josh: he/they

14-06-2021 18:52:51 UTC

Bats specifically needs it’s darkness cost to be in brackets

Josh: he/they

14-06-2021 18:57:54 UTC

I’m also not sure that “as part of the Enter the Crypt action” works as intended, as Enter the Crypt is an atomic action; atomic actions are defined pretty strictly as the contents of the list and injecting into the action from outside the list feels iffy. Maybe keyword it?

Clucky: he/him

14-06-2021 19:42:02 UTC

The rules are clear you can’t take other actions during an atomic action, but seems fine to me to include knockdown effects.

Josh: he/they

14-06-2021 19:59:14 UTC

Okay: I don’t accept that interpretation (“When a Vampire Lord performs an Atomic Action, they must complete all its steps; they must complete them in order; and they may not take any other dynastic action, or achieve victory, until all the steps are complete” to me rules it out completely, as what you are adding is not one of its steps and does not respect its order), so will not be carrying out any non-step in the atomic action as part of carrying out that atomic action.

Brendan: he/him

14-06-2021 20:05:43 UTC

Josh, does that mean the Evasive effect is currently ignored?

Josh: he/they

14-06-2021 20:10:59 UTC

I’ve not thought about it hard as it’s not come up yet, but looking at it, it wouldn’t be ignored but it wouldn’t fire as intended. It’s not injecting itself into the Enter the Crypt action but I can’t break the Enter the Crypt action to perform it, either; so either I pause the EtC action to let someone else move the evasive minion and then carry on once they’ve done so, or I have to move it after the EtC action completes, which could get messy. It’s a CfJ waiting to happen, from where I’m sitting.

It would be much neater to add a “include any denizen response actions” clause into the EtC action somewhere, which doesn’t seem like a heavy lift.

Clucky: he/him

14-06-2021 20:26:31 UTC

But its not a dynastic action. Its just an effect that happens and a trigger that indicates when it happens

If we had a rule saying “Whenever a Vampire Lord becomes Dust, their Influence is set to 0” I don’t think that would need to be explicitly part of an atomic action. Silver-Tipped Stake would simply both make them dust, and then set their influence to 0 because that is what happens when you become dust. and this influence-to-zero would happen as part of the atomic action, it wouldn’t be a thing that gets evaluated after the atomic action is finished.

The trigger here is “Richardo von Nestor retreats”, I think it should function in the same way a “becomes dust” trigger would function which means happen as part of the any atomic action where “Richardo von Nestor retreats” occurs

Josh: he/they

14-06-2021 20:37:19 UTC

Okay, but you’re making it “part of the Enter the Crypt action”. You can’t say it’s not an action when the proposal literally makes it part of the action!

More to the point: you’re setting up a distinction between actions (which are defined things that a player can do) and things that just platonically occur, and all a human does is update the tracking. That would be fine (or maybe not; I’m not conceding that platonic events occur ever, for the record) but the thing being defined in this proposal is still directly requiring me to do something: randomly generate a location. It strains credulity a bit too much to say that I’m just updating the tracking to reflect something that has become platonically true, and the dice roll I’m having to make to determine what that platonically-occuring thing actually is is just a part of the background noise of the universe.

Josh: he/they

14-06-2021 20:38:42 UTC

I wonder whether the comma after the word “retreats” is actually part of the problem here - it does change the meaning of the sentence substantially.

Clucky: he/him

14-06-2021 20:46:32 UTC

Isn’t that distinction already there? A dynastic action has choice behind it.

A trigger occurring and its effect being applied isn’t a dynastic action. Claiming that sometimes it is feels to me like its introducing a lot of grey area where now we need to understand when a trigger/effect is a dynastic action and when it isn’t.

Clucky: he/him

14-06-2021 20:48:40 UTC

The comma there (and the whole “as part of the Enter the Crypt action” clause) is there to ensure it happens as part of the action, and not something that happens a day later when someone goes “Well its after Richardo retreated…”)

Josh: he/they

14-06-2021 20:50:58 UTC

I don’t think I agree with your definition of “action” - I think that if a human is needed to determine the outcome then it can’t be called a platonic effect - but either way, as written, your effect is clearly making itself part of the Enter the Crypt action, so it’s academic.

Clucky: he/him

14-06-2021 21:33:39 UTC

yes. part of the enter the crypt action. so not its own action that someone can perform, just something that happens when you perform another action

Josh: he/they

14-06-2021 21:36:24 UTC

I feel like you’re being obtuse. “Part of the action” is not the same as “triggered by the action”.

I’ll note here for the sake of interest that no part of the Entering the Crypt action requires me to make a choice or judgement of any kind - so this addition fails to be distinct from any part of it on that basis.

I’ve said my piece on the matter and you don’t seem convinced - I’ll back off and let others have their say but as it stands I’ll probably have to veto, as I don’t want to have this conversation again every time I don’t do it when carrying out the EtC action.

Clucky: he/him

14-06-2021 21:43:31 UTC

really confused by what you’re trying to argue now

its part of the action. its not distinct in any way from the rest of the action on the basis that it doesn’t require you to make any sort of choice or judgement…. but somehow its also its own different action?

Clucky: he/him

14-06-2021 21:46:59 UTC

I don’t understand how the “When Richardo approaches a treasure chest” step is okay to tie random dice tolls to, but the “When Richardo retreats” step is not okay.

Josh: he/they

14-06-2021 21:51:46 UTC

“When a Vampire Lord performs an Atomic Action, they must complete all its steps; they must complete them in order; and they may not take any other dynastic action, or achieve victory, until all the steps are complete” to me rules it out completely, as what you are adding is not one of its steps and does not respect its order

From the fourth comment in this thread.

Clucky: he/him

14-06-2021 21:53:49 UTC

So treasure chests also break the rules?

Josh: he/they

14-06-2021 21:57:20 UTC

Maybe. Haven’t thought about it as a separate issue.

Anyway, bedtime. Night!

Clucky: he/him

14-06-2021 22:07:52 UTC

Something else to consider: we had this line in the last dynasty:

> When Totaling Votes for the current round, after round scores are reset to 0, the round score of the named Broker is increased by 1

That feels like a very similar trigger—when this step of an atomic action occurs, this following knockdown effect also occurs. And we had no problems running it as intended. I’m sure we could find similar results in past dynasties.

To me it seems clear that treasure chests should get explored, evasive monsters should randomly get moved after they poofed, and roaming monsters should be able to roam freely because none of those are individual dynastic actions you perform they are all just effects of the one big atomic action

Clucky: he/him

14-06-2021 22:08:44 UTC

anyways explicit for to stop the new edit rules from slowing stuff down too much

Josh: he/they

14-06-2021 22:11:01 UTC

(I think probably not? As the explicit call to action [apply the effects of features] is present as a step in the AA.

Maybe it would help to regard this as a courtesy request: at best, this change is bad drafting, as it establishes that little bits of the AA can be dotted around the ruleset in ways that can and will get frequently missed as they’re not referred back to in the AA’s actual steps. I don’t want to have to remember all the things I’m missing every time I do it; so for me, anything that needs to be done with, by our as part of the AA needs to be called from it’s bullet points. Whether your change here legally works of not can be a thing we’ll never agree on.)

Josh: he/they

14-06-2021 22:11:30 UTC

Ah okay cool you voted.

veto

Clucky: he/him

14-06-2021 22:19:11 UTC

weird how you tried to veto this but not any of the other already passed rules that make you perform additional actions part of the as part of the Enter the Crypt action

at least it’ll mean some fun CfJs

Josh: he/they

14-06-2021 22:27:13 UTC

Sure, I’m figuring stuff out as we go as well, and some stuff might need patching along the way.

This really was an easy fix though, I’m not sure why it was a hill that the proposal needed to die on.