BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

I like the idea of Scoops in general, but the mechanics don’t feel quite right:

* You can Scoop an event even if another Editor already ran a non-Scoop on it
* Journalistic Integrity makes sense, but why would it reduce Skeletons?

Why would it affect skeletons?

Because it’s useful to have a mechanic that reduces skeletons, and I’m a firm believer that thematic sense comes second to mechanical usefulness.

Mechanics might come second to theme, but theme shouldn’t be actively sacrificed to get there. If a game concept gets too thematically mangled, there’s a danger it will start to atrophy because nobody’s quite sure what to do with it any more.

(It’s also a bit thematically odd that newspapers can’t run scoops on stories that they happen to have taken a stance on. But I appreciate that making the rules unintuitive is a perfectly valid tactic in Nomic.)

In terms of raw mechanics, though, first-to-post Scoops give an unfair advantage to players who check in the most regularly, and/or share a timezone with the Mogul.