BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

I think you might have to clarify what a Feminine name means. I assume you mean a name from the Feminine list on the Medieval Names wiki page, but it should probably be stated explicitly.

Now we definitely need some way to change one’s age if being a Parlamentarian requires at least age 40

Nb that being a parliamentarian is still very weak! I’ll definitely support things that move statistics, give other routes to influencing Parliamentarians to non-Parliamentarians, or change the criteria

@Desertfrog: also NB that there are likely additional requirements, as “King Alan the First” is likely to be enacted and all players will have Masculine names, eliminating any Heir from being a Parliamentarian at the moment. I wouldn’t get too wound up about the Age requirement.

Vovix, the reading of this proposal I shunt unto thee!

So how does this shake out - SingularByte, JonathanDark, redtara, Desertfrog and Josh are the only Heirs above 40, and if the random Aspects enact perhaps only a lucky three of them will have what it takes to enter Parliament.

From there, each week those players can put forward one item of Business each, and (until we add a mechanic that allows non-Heir Parliamentarians to support or oppose anything) it only requires two or three of them to agree on an item for it to pass. And the strongest change they can pass is Disown - which is significant for being able to easily bring down a leading player, but it will be a long way off.

[Jonathan] The Masculine name clause of King Alan only applies if Thou Who They Is Maidenless passed - which it didn’t. Players will be free to choose to roll their name from either list.

“it only requires two or three of them to agree on an item for it to pass”

The intent is that we’re each 1 of 120 - so at enactment our votes would be essentially pointless - we could not conspire to push anything through.

not sure why I’d vote to give five players who aren’t me, one of which is the author of this proposal, extra power.

@Clucky What power??? This is as powerless as I can physically make it

[Josh] In practice “how many non-Heir Parliamentarians support it and how many oppose it” is going to be zero and zero until we add a mechanic to say how their votes are decided, though, at least as I understand it. So the “calculate whether more Parliamentarians support it than oppose it” step is only going to be counting the Heirs.

@Kevan Is “the Old King should secretly randomly generate” that result not sufficient?

Ah, perhaps. So each item pushed through has a 50/50 chance of passing or failing - harder for a group of Parliamentarians to push something through but easier for a single one.

Pretty much, initially. Also worth considering that it will only happen probably 4 times in the dynasty, and the first time will be impotent as there’s no seeded Existing Matters.

Scouts honour, I made this as blank a canvas as I could.

Oh I read the end wrong and thought it modifying claims with needing to be over 40 rather than modifying the over 40 clause with needed the estate.

But still, getting the power to contribute new business is pretty massive as they basically have a 50/50 chance of going through.

Overall I like the idea, but gating it on age seems unfair and problematic

It seems impossible to avoid tying mechanics to some randomly generated metric, but again: the first one of these won’t have an actual impact for another 11 days, plenty of time to tinker with all of the variables.

(I’ll note that Drama of Documents would also have met that complaint, but has sadly failed…)

I am also no longer a beneficiary of this, and still stand by it.

If you mean your Aspect, you’ve still got a fair chance of being back in the running by pushing for an extra Aspect and Flaw.

Gating some power to specific players is all good thematic political fun, and I do like the general mechanics going on here, particularly the use of the Forenames. But it is going to be a hard sell to the Heirs who have already been ruled out.

Always is. But it’s so early in the dynasty, and being a Parliamentarian is so powerless, that I think evaluating one side of the coin as ‘better’ than the other - in a nomic! - is a mistake. I would guess that not being a Parliamentarian may end up better, if we end up with robust tools for manipulating the other non-Heirs.

Technically I think I’m out of the running too. It says you need one of the features, and I got two before I thought to double check the outstanding proposals.

Still, I’m interested in seeing where this is going. 

It would definitely be nice to change that to “a Parliamentarian must have at least one of” at some point.

That said, 

So as things stand this morning Desertfrog, JonathanDark, Redtara and SingularByte will become Parliamentarians, and Josh has better-than-chance odds of joining them if he reveals a second Aspect later today.

Clucky, Forest, Lendunistus, Snisbo, Zack and I cannot become Parliamentarians without a rule change. The Parliamentarian faction may oppose any such rule change, and would be able to use the promise or threat of their Endorse/Denigrate/Disown powers to persuade some non-Parliamentarians to support the status quo.

as I’m not swayed by Josh’s observations that maybe this power he proposed to give himself and knowingly exclude half the Heirs from may actually be a bad thing. Any additional ability is valuable in Nomic, particularly when it’s so strongly gated that some players won’t be able to use it at all without a rule change.

I like the idea and no obvious instant-win scams are standing out (there’s some give in the fact that Tyngwall posts only “should” include the Agenda for that Meeting, so can be written with any content, but I can’t see that it would allow invented Business to be created), but I have no assurances that the Parliament’s power would be checked once they were installed.

@Kevan It’s very early for nomic paranoia, isn’t it? But: I’m not planning on getting a second Feature today, so if I haven’t by the time my 24 hour clock ticks over, will you recoonsider your vote?

Also, no, for the record, as written literally only redtara will be a Parliamentarian (as SB notes above, there’s a bug in the rule; it says a Parliamentarian ‘must have one’ of the Features, so anyone with 2 is out of luck.)

Never too early to check a proposal for game-ending loopholes, or to consider how a near-quorum power imbalance might play out.

I think “must have one of” could be read either way and might go to a CfJ if it enacted, so any vote I make here would have to factor both outcomes.

Always happy to reconsider a vote based on new information and commitments to future behaviour, but “do you want some opponents to have a power that you don’t have” is still a hard sell.