Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Call for Judgment: [Pressing] Because we’ve been Lighting Rooms all wrong

Passes 5-0. Enacted by Brendan. Note that it is no longer possible to change the text of “My Songs Know What Richardo Did In The Dark.”

Adminned at 15 Jul 2021 19:36:05 UTC

Uphold all attempts to Light a Room (or Explore a Room) that failed purely because the room’s Features/Effects were added to, or used to replace, its Effect on the dynastic tracking page, rather than being marked as part of the room’s Effect. Remove any markings on Features/Effects within the ruleset that specify that they are part of the Effect of a particular room (without actually removing the Feature/Effect from the Room’s Effect).

Change the paragraph in “The Crypt of Dracula” that starts “Lighting a Room” to read:

Lighting a Room is a Power Action with a cost of 3 plus the total Shadow scores of the chosen Features. The Vampire Lord carrying it chooses a Dark room, a name, a description, and a set of Features (no two of which may be the same as each other); that room becomes Lit, gains the chosen name and description, loses all its Features and gains the specified Features, and becomes Newly Furnished. When this adds a Feature with the string ‘[x]’ in its description to a Room’s Effect, the Vampire Lord adding it must replace [x] with their own name.

with “Feature”/“Features” changed to “Effect”/“Effects” if “Creature Feature” was enacted.

If “My Songs Know What Richardo Did In The Dark” has not enacted, change “chooses a Dark room” to “chooses a room” in the new text, then amend the text of the proposal “My Songs Know What Richardo Did In The Dark” to “In ‘The Crypt of Dracula’, replace ‘Lighting a Room is a Power Action with a cost of 3 plus the total Shadow scores of the chosen Features. The Vampire Lord carrying it chooses a room’ with ‘Lighting a Room is a Power Action with a cost of 3 plus the total Shadow scores of the chosen Features. The Vampire Lord carrying it chooses a Dark room’.”.

Lighting a Room, as written, requires marking the Features in that room as being part of the room’s Effect (rather than altering the room’s Effect to contain those features) – see my comments on Clucky’s CFJ. So the dynastic tracking page’s list of Effects is all wrong, and Josh’s cleanup proposal accidentally removed every Feature from every room (which in turn means that the gamestate is nothing like we think it is because all the Puissance, Influence, etc. values are wrong). We definitely need a fix for that.

This upholds all the non-scam attempts to Light a Room, and refund’s Clucky’s (under this interpretation, it wouldn’t do what Clucky wanted it to, and Clucky probably doesn’t want to waste the Puissance).

This also fixes the Lighting a Room action, making “My Songs Know What Richardo Did In The Dark” redundant, so it refunds the proposal slot Clucky spent on that.

Edited to remove the interaction with Clucky’s CFJ, now that that’s passed. Also makes the scam work, given that we’ve decided that it does.

Comments

Clucky: he/him

14-07-2021 19:51:39 UTC

“uphold all the actions I like but not the one I dislike”

...

if we’re gonna say the lighting rules were wrong, we should uphold all of them not just the ones you like

Clucky: he/him

14-07-2021 19:52:18 UTC

also not a huge fan of using a CfJ to rush the closure of the dark room loophole. Let people have some fun and abuse it for a bit!

ais523:

14-07-2021 19:54:43 UTC

@Clucky: the votes on your CFJ determine whether to uphold your action or not. If your CFJ already passed, this doesn’t revert the passing of your CFJ (meaning that you get the effects of your action regardless). If it didn’t, it reverts your action, but edits your CFJ into something that re-applies the effects of your action.

Josh: Observer he/they

14-07-2021 19:56:21 UTC

Revert Clucky’s attempt, at 18:18, 14 July 2021‎, to Light a Room that was already Lit; however, if “Too lazy to come up with a proper title” was already enacted, remove the Puissance that Clucky attempted to spend on that action. If “Too lazy to come up with a proper title” is still pending, edit its text by appending “Clucky loses 3 Puissance.”.

How is this compatible with Clucky’s CfJ? It reverts the action, even if Clucky’s CfJ passes. Any why does Clucky owe 3 Puissance?

ais523:

14-07-2021 19:56:48 UTC

I’m not going to go out of my way to uphold an action that I think didn’t work the way you wanted it to; however, I did go out of my way to a) make sure that it continues to work if people decide that it did work, and b) refund the Puissance you spend if we decide that it didn’t work.

ais523:

14-07-2021 19:59:40 UTC

@Josh: Clucky’s CFJ would remove the Effect from Blinding Cave (which was the effect of Clucky’s action), and also refund Clucky 3 Puissance. If we decide that Clucky’s action worked, then this edits Clucky’s CFJ so that it re-applies the action, removing the effect, and un-refunding the 3 Puissance that Clucky was refunded.

ais523:

14-07-2021 20:01:19 UTC

Like, Clucky’s CFJ unconditionally sets Blinding/Living Cave to have no Effect even if Clucky’s action failed (which makes sense, we want to have consensus about the gamestate). So this CFJ needs to make sure that Clucky spent the Puissance for that if he’s getting the benefits from the action, but that he didn’t spend the Puissance for that if he isn’t.

Clucky: he/him

14-07-2021 20:02:48 UTC

if my CfJ passes first, this reverts my action which included setting the room effect to none, meaning the old room effect gets applied

if my CfJ passes second, the room is no longer called the “Blinding Cave” and thus my CfJ does nothing

Clucky: he/him

14-07-2021 20:03:47 UTC

this also reverts my rename. which was unquestionably a legally performed loophole even if there is debate over what should’ve happened with the effects.

ais523:

14-07-2021 20:04:40 UTC

Hmm, “revert” is ambiguous here. I meant it to not revert the changes that had been made by CFJ subsequently. I’ll edit to make that clear.

I’d already fixed the room name issue by the time you made that comment.

Josh: Observer he/they

14-07-2021 20:06:06 UTC

So two issues: the pending-case clause for the Clucky para is busted as it changes the name of the room away from Blinding Cave, meaning that Clucky’s CfJ would not do anything as it targets the room by name. More broadly, I think reverting the action even if the other CfJ passes is petty; if the other CfJ passes that that signals that quorum people think that the action was valid, so no need to revert it.

Honestly, this CfJ trying to be a broad fix to lighting while also grappling with Clucky’s action might be too much; I’d suggest removing that paragraph and setting up a separate counter-CfJ that deals specifically with the Blinding Room issue.

I’m not sure that “Set the status of “My Songs Know What Richardo Did In The Dark” to Enacted rather than Pending (but without actually enacting it)” works; setting the proposal’s status to Enacted makes it closed per the EE software but not per the ruleset, which has proposal status as a subservient property of enactment, so I think technically it would still be open for voting and would just legally pass after holding up the queue.

Josh: Observer he/they

14-07-2021 20:06:54 UTC

Ah I note that the pending-case clause was edited while I was typing.

Clucky: he/him

14-07-2021 20:07:58 UTC

why are we reverting the change?

If my CfJ passes, everything is properly upheld. The room effects get set to none.

If my CfJ fails, the game state is preserved. The room effects stay what they currently are listed in the gamestate.

In either case, I don’t think we need more.

also what happens with Lemon or Kevan or Chiiika decide to light an already lit room before this passes?

ais523:

14-07-2021 20:08:25 UTC

“Enacted rather than Pending” was meant to explicitly change the core-rule-defined state “Votable Matters can either be Pending, Enacted, or Failed.” Can you think of a clearer wording to do that?

ais523:

14-07-2021 20:10:03 UTC

@Clucky: because if your CFJ passes, that doesn’t mean that your action worked. The CFJ doesn’t uphold your action, it just unconditionally sets the room’s effect to ‘none’.

I think your action failed, and I don’t want you to be able to set the room’s effect to ‘none’ without spending the Puissance on it. That’s what your CFJ does, from my point of view: you just wait for it to set the effect to ‘none’, then point out “actually, my action didn’t work, I’m going to give myself back the Puissance I spent on it but I still get the benefit from the CFJ”.

ais523:

14-07-2021 20:10:42 UTC

Also, I think the game state is currently badly broken, so we need a CFJ to get it back into shape.

Josh: Observer he/they

14-07-2021 20:11:59 UTC

By using the word “status” you are (deliberately or not) evoking

The oldest Pending Proposal may be Enacted by any Admin (by updating the Ruleset and/or Gamestate to include the specified effects of that Proposal, and then setting that Proposal’s status to Enacted)

from the rule Resolution of Proposals.

I think I would go with something like

If it has not already been enacted, remove all of the text from Proposal: My Songs Know What Richardo Did In The Dark and then enact it.

 

Clucky: he/him

14-07-2021 20:12:18 UTC

sure but why not just go with “Uphold all attempts to Light a Room (or Explore an Unexplored Room) that failed purely because…”

Josh: Observer he/they

14-07-2021 20:13:33 UTC

I think your action failed, and I don’t want you to be able to set the room’s effect to ‘none’ without spending the Puissance on it. That’s what your CFJ does, from my point of view: you just wait for it to set the effect to ‘none’, then point out “actually, my action didn’t work, I’m going to give myself back the Puissance I spent on it but I still get the benefit from the CFJ”.

That’s not a terrible point but by far the cleaner approach would be “If CfJ: Too lazy to come up with a proper title was enacted then Clucky’s Power Action at 18:18, 14 July 2021‎ is upheld.”

ais523:

14-07-2021 20:15:48 UTC

@Clucky: Ah right, that does work. Let me clean up the wording a bit.

@Josh: I changed the “My Songs” fix to just enact it (it’ll have no effect if enacted, given the other changes in the CFJ).

Clucky: he/him

14-07-2021 20:37:01 UTC

fyi I’m abstaining on this until My Songs passes/fails because I think upholding the actions taken is probably a good thing, but changing it so that you cannot light lit rooms doesn’t feel like something that needs to be urgently fixed to me, and it instead feels like a strategic move from someone who doesn’t have the resources to pull off any lit room lightings to prevent other people who do have those resources from pulling off lit room lightings before they get a fair chance.

ais523:

14-07-2021 20:39:58 UTC

The Lighting Rooms rule needs to be urgently fixed because Lighting Rooms doesn’t work properly at the moment, either in the scam or non-scam version.

I guess you could argue that I should be fixing it to a version in which the scam works, but we’d need to define exactly what we wanted the scam to do in that case.

It is quite possible that there will be another Expedition before My Songs passes, and I think it’s quite pressing to sort out the gamestate by then, so I think there is actual urgency here. (I did forget to put a [Pressing] in the title, though. Maybe I should edit that in.)

lemon: she/her

14-07-2021 23:17:33 UTC

i’m still not convinced that this is a problem…? like, we can interpret the sentence as being, give the features to the room, and we clearly have been doing so for some time

ais523:

14-07-2021 23:45:29 UTC

The point of a CFJ is to convince everyone that it isn’t a problem. If there isn’t a problem, this CFJ doesn’t do anything other than make the wording of the rule a bit clearer, whilst causing the players who think there is a problem to agree with you on what the gamestate is.

lemon: she/her

15-07-2021 00:19:26 UTC

oh, u’ve removed the parts that interfere w/ other rules? in that case i think my vote’ll be def, once i place it

lemon: she/her

15-07-2021 03:49:59 UTC

imperial

Lulu: she/her

15-07-2021 08:19:49 UTC

  for

Josh: Observer he/they

15-07-2021 08:24:48 UTC

“Remove any markings on Features/Effects within the ruleset that specify that they are part of the Effect of a particular room”

I don’t think I know what this means. What would it remove in the current ruleset?

Kevan: he/him

15-07-2021 16:02:01 UTC

This appears to be silently removing “A Room may be considered to have any property implied by an effect (e.g. a room can be said to “have a Glyph”, “be blocked from the north”, “be Daunting”), although the text of the Effect is sovereign for determining such properties.” from the ruleset?

If we’ve decided that it’s more fun to write “if the Room has a “This room is Familiar” effect but not a “This room is Daunting” effect” out in full every time, there are still bits of rules that just use the adjectives. If we’ve decided that the sentence is unnecessary and of course these properties are implied, fair enough, but I missed that.

Kevan: he/him

15-07-2021 16:03:06 UTC

Ah, I see now that this CfJ was written while Creature Feature (which added that clarification) was pending.

ais523:

15-07-2021 17:31:17 UTC

Just in case my comment on Slack didn’t count: I consent to Chiiika’s Enthralling of me.

ais523:

15-07-2021 17:40:42 UTC

@Josh: The previous wording of the rule required you, when Lighting Features, to put markings on those Features. Those markings may platonically exist (either in the ruleset or as orphaned variables), so the CFJ removes them just to be sure.

Josh: Observer he/they

15-07-2021 18:08:03 UTC

for but we should probably add the implication clause back in.

Kevan: he/him

15-07-2021 18:41:55 UTC

imperial