BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

I think the root of the problem may be the Slack rather than the blog itself; I think it would be preferable to temporarily shut that down (instead or as well as the dynastic gameplay).

In particular, having less gameplay is likely to lead to more off-topic conversations (due to there being fewer on-topic things to talk about), and those are probably more likely to go south than discussion about the actual gameplay.

It’s also probably a good idea to have a stated end date for the Hiatus – if you have an indefinite Hiatus, then people will have to keep checking back so that they can vote for the CFJ to end it (meaning that it won’t be a proper break), whereas if there’s a stated end date, people will be able to safely disengage entirely.

@jumble prolly needs to either be automatic or explicity demand that it has to be performed during a hiatus (see the hiatus rule in the appendix); if that’s done i’m on board if other ppl are, altho from now until august 10th feels a lil on the long side

@ais i think u in particular have some nerve to be conjecturing about what the root of the problem could be

(@jumble read the hiatus rule again, it’s very specific about what dynastic actions can be performed in a hiatus)

the root of the problem isn’t slack or the state of the game, the root of the problem is certain players who are doing things like accusing people of trying to sneak scams into their proposals on one of the first days into the dynasty, despite the fact that there is no scam there.

that problem isn’t going to go away if we take a short break

@Clucky: I don’t want to spread that argument to yet another thread. However, you’re effectively accusing me of making bad-faith accusations, and I feel like I need to respond to that accusation, even though the fact that people keep making accusations that demand responses is a primary cause behind the mood turning so sour in the first place. (The alternative, of not engaging, is likely to lead people with a bad impression of me due to being misinformed; at least when I engage, any bad impression people have of me will be based on my actions.)

So here’s an explanation as to what’s happening:

- you know whether or not you’ve put a scam into your proposal, but
- everyone else doesn’t know whether or not you’ve put a scam into your proposal, and
- CFJs at BlogNomic are sufficiently opinion-based that it’s hard to know whether or not a minor flaw in the wording of something is exploitable or not.

Thus, the only way for people to be sure that they aren’t being scammed is to err on the safe side, especially when context clues indicate that a scam may be present.

If you see “people are suspicious of my actions sometimes, even when there’s nothing actually going on there” as a problem, then I agree that that probably isn’t going to go away. There isn’t any reason it should necessarily have to sour the mood, though – people looking for scams in each others’ actions is part of what nomic is about, and has been a part of BlogNomic for years (Kevan, for example, has won several dynasties through proposals with intentional loopholes in them, due to people failing to catch them).

I tried to get in touch with Kevan about a concern I had with a proposal. I couldn’t do it privately due to the no collabs rule, so instead I messaged him about it in the public slack while there was still a chance he’d be online.

You responded to that message by claiming I was “trying suspiciously hard to try to get my version passed” and that I was trying to force some made-up scam through that wasn’t even valid

If that isn’t a bad faith accusation, I don’t know what is

Trying to sneak scams into dynasties in the first couple of days is no fun and rather rude to the people running the dynasty. I know I would never intentionally do that, and I would look down upon anyone who did. The early part of a dynasty should really be about building out what you think might be a fun, interesting game. If everyone is making proposals that go ‘lets do this thing to make the game more fun’ you’re gonna be likely to wind up with a fun game. If everyone is making proposals that go ‘lets do this thing that make the game easier for me to win’ you’re gonna be likely to wind up with a game that is easier for some people to win. Yeah, sometimes early scams sneak through but they are rarely ever intentionally put there.

The point of Blognomic is to have fun. There is room to try and win too (after all, winning is fun) but your main goal should be to have fun as you aren’t always going to win. Thus the overall atmosphere of the game needs to be “a bunch of people trying to have fun”

By accusing players of trying to sneak scams into early proposals you’re shifting the atmosphere from “a bunch of people trying to have fun” to “a bunch of people trying to win at all costs” (because you’re both accusing the other person of making a move that is more in the “trying to win at all costs”, and you’re also really making a move that is more focused on you winning than simply having fun)

And there in I guess lies the problem that I don’t think a hiatus is going to fix.

If everyone else wants to play a game where the primary purpose of the game is to win, then I should probably just go idle too.

If everyone else wants to play a game where the primary purpose is to have fun, lets do that and can it with the bad faith arguments that really just serve to sap away other people’s fun.

(that being said, if we need time to press pause so people can figure out what kind of game they want blognomic to be… then I guess the hiatus might help there)

My accusation was in good faith – getting involved enough with a success or failure of a proposal that you’re prepared to send personalised messages to people trying to get them to change their vote for a reason specific to that person seemed like a disproportionate amount of effort to expend on one proposal for the early stages of the dynasty. That’s the sort of extreme action that I’d only consider if a) the proposal was likely to cause lasting effects beyond the dynasty (e.g. a core rules fix I thought was buggy), or b) it was somehow tied into making a major change to peoples’ victory chances. It isn’t the sort of thing that I’d expect from someone who’s just trying to have fun in a dynasty’s early stages. So it immediately made me suspicious.

I think there’s a bit of a false dichotomy in your post – trying to fix loose wording and to spot scams is a way in which I have fun in the early stages of a dynasty, before there’s much dynastic gameplay in place. There are other people for which trying to slip scams past people, or to get proposals passed despite known bugs or bias in them, is part of the fun. I think part of the issue is therefore that you’re mistaking actions that people can reasonably do while trying to have fun for actions that are locked into a “win at all costs” mentality, and it’s making you perceive actions as being in bad faith when there are other explanations.

y’all Did Not need to have this here. nowhere in this proposal does it say this will solve all of our problems; u two brought the conversation about “the root of this” here. this is a proposal suggesting we take a break bc its wise when things are frustrating to step away and return after some time w/ a cooler head. i know i would appreciate a short break, bc this is all v frustrating.

clucky, i agree w/ u that we should all be aiming to have fun here, but i’m a little upset that u keep taking ais’ bait like this! it feels inescapable to see u two arguing in circles and it is *certainly* not constructive

Huh? I think the conversation here has been fairly productive so far. It’s clear that there’s some sort of disconnect/misconception between me and Clucky, and this conversation has helped to pin down where it might be. I’m not (intentionally) trying to bait Clucky – just to respond to accusations.

@lemon I agree with you to some extent. I just don’t think “take a break” is going to fix anything without discussing why we need to take a break. Otherwise, the same problems are going to pop up when we come back because I don’t think the problems are simply due to heat that’ll go away if we wait a couple of days

that being said, I’ve already said all I have to say on the matter of why I play blognomic and definitely see no value in going in circles by discussing it more and am totally fine going   to help you and Jumble get a little break and get back in the right headspace for running the dynasty and apologize for the role I played in getting you out of the right headspace

I don’t really go on the slack all that often (kinda curious how that got started, anyway, discord seems like it would be a better platform), so I’m just gonna go and try and stay out of all the arguing as much as I can.

Just realized that because this’ll get added to the dynastic rules, Jumble and Lemon will be unable to end the hiatus. But I think we can fix that with a different CFJ

and .