Wednesday, August 08, 2012

Declaration of Victory: Champion BELT

Open for more than 12 hours, quorums 4-0, the Demon voted FOR. — Quirck

Adminned at 09 Aug 2012 10:26:37 UTC

Per rule 2.8.1 Exorcism Attempt I have achieved victory.

Comments

quirck: he/him

08-08-2012 22:02:33 UTC

for

Spice:

08-08-2012 23:41:57 UTC

for

I’m against the speeding up (even though nobody could stop you now), but you’ve still figured out the word.

Josh: Observer he/they

09-08-2012 06:45:29 UTC

Idle AGAINST: The whole thing rests on Clucky having won HAMMER. I idled at 8.36pm, the ruleset states that all hunts take place at 8.30pm but Quirck didn’t actually perform the change until 8.46pm.

I think there’s a big problem with rules that are worded in this way, especially rules that require some kind of actual action to take place - it’s all very well to say that these dice rolls took place platonicly at 8.30pm, but they didn’t actually take place until later, so there’s a big disconnect between the theoretical truth of the ruleset and the actuality of the gamestate.

So given that HAMMER - as the amulet representing the last letter - is essential to the victory I would be inclined to go against this, with the acknowledgement that it’s a crappy rule rather than an illegal or unworthy play.

quirck: he/him

09-08-2012 06:55:45 UTC

Actions took place at 20.30pm, it’s me who delayed updating GNDT to represent the new gamestate.

Josh: Observer he/they

09-08-2012 07:04:04 UTC

Well they didn’t, you needed to take DICE rolls and they’re timestamped at 8.46 in the GNDT.

quirck: he/him

09-08-2012 07:15:28 UTC

These DICE were rolled by heavens long ago, in GNDT they appeared a bit later :) Though it’s an interesting question whether I would have got the same numbers if I had done actions at the ideal time.

Josh: Observer he/they

09-08-2012 07:23:20 UTC

Which is what I’m talking about. Dice can’t be rolled by heaven because heaven’s not a player, and by established principle BlogNomic tends not to have platonic effects that are not reflected by actions in the gamestate.

Kevan: he/him

09-08-2012 10:30:27 UTC

To be completely literal - yes, the dice would have rolled different numbers had they been cast sixteen minutes earlier. The GNDT doesn’t queue up precalculated die rolls, it just makes a “rand(x)” call at the time of the roll, which is affected by the server’s system clock.

Platonic effects can be confusing and are best avoided, but having dice that are rolled by no specific player and seen by no human eye is a particularly strange one. There’s no way to know what a die cast at exactly 8:30pm yesterday would have rolled - rolling a fair die in its place is an obvious and common sense solution, but since this is a Nomic you’d have to formally agree that you were going to use that solution.

Clucky: he/him

09-08-2012 14:02:17 UTC

So there is an hour where the gamestate recorded in the GNDT doesn’t line-up with the actual gamestate. While I agree its best to avoid this, the ruleset is fairly clear that it all happens at 20;30.

Kevan: he/him

09-08-2012 14:28:38 UTC

Except that the rule effectively says “a die is rolled by nobody in a dark room and nobody sees the result”, so we can’t know for sure what the actual gamestate was. Deciding that it’s okay to just roll another die and use that one instead requires a leap beyond the ruleset. (Although it’s fine for this DoV to be that leap.)

Having said that, there’s a great big “then” in the fourth bullet point of 2.7.1 (“let N be the number of Victim’s Staying Manuls, then DICE(2N) is rolled”), which could be read as “N is set at 20:30, and the die is rolled at a point in the future after that”, in which case the 20:46 roll would be the real one and Josh’s objection would stand.

Clucky: he/him

09-08-2012 16:01:24 UTC

“The Demon should update the GNDT to reflect these changes within one hour since the specified time.”

The rules are pretty clear that the Demon is updating the gamestate to reflect the changes, not actually causing the changes to happen.

Dice are random numbers. The meta concept that their value depends on when you roll them is irrelevant to the dynasty. If your objection is that a dice rolled at 10:45 is different than a dice rolled at 10:30, you need to stop any time someone does multiple dice roll actions in one comment as well.

Like I said, I agree that it was bad there was a disconnect between gamestate and the gamestate shown in the GNDT. But that should’ve been corrected *before* I won.

Also I hope we can all agree going idle just to prevent someone else from being able to win goes against the spirit of fair play. All it would’ve done is delayed the game a few more days while I convince Quirck to let me pass a “I have all the amulets there just isn’t enough info to let me win, so let me win anyways” proposal.

Kevan: he/him

09-08-2012 17:08:02 UTC

Tactical idling is fine, it’s clearly part of the game, and the four-day timeout balances it (this DoV may well pass as a direct result of Josh being unable to vote on it). If your dynasty gets messed up because it’s possible for someone to idle out carrying an important object, then your ruleset needs fixing.

I think multiple dice rolls are fine under the definition of what a die roll is. And it’s not just that we have a rule of “at 20:30, Clucky gets Josh’s Amulet even if nobody updates the GNDT”, the problem is that we literally have a rule saying that “a die is rolled by nobody, then the gamestate is updated based on that specific roll”. There is nothing in the ruleset allowing the Demon to step in and make that roll (unless, perhaps, he posts the GNDT roll dead on 20:30:00), and nothing that allows a proxy roll to replace it later.

I’m beginning to think that the “then” pauses that sentence until the die roll is actually made, though.

moonroof:

09-08-2012 17:17:48 UTC

for Not because I’m convinced this win is valid, but I want to move on to another dynasty.