This should probably be “gamestate solely defined by dynastic rules”, because when dynastic rules override or modify a core rule (which happens quite frequently), they end up partially defining parts of the core gamestate.

We made that change to “dynastic action” a while ago, and it’s been beneficial at least once, whilst I don’t think it’s had any detrimental effects yet.

All that said, maybe it would be better for Recusants to not be able to change parts of the core gamestate if it’s been modified in a dynasty-specific way?

[ais523] Afraid I don’t follow what you’re saying here, what would an example be of core gamestate being “modified in a dynasty-specific way”?

Dynasties with two Emperors come to mind – as long as there’s a dynastic rule saying that there are two Emperors, the concept of being an Emperor is no longer an entirely Core concept. Likewise, some dynasties may have special sorts of votes beyond those defined in the core rules, which would mean that a Recusant proposal wouldn’t be able to alter votes even if they were the core votes rather than dynasty-specific ones.

I think I wasn’t concentrating very much on what this proposal actually does when I wrote that, though – it’s very rare/unlikely for anyone to alter the sort of core gamestate that gets partially defined by dynastic rules via proposal or CFJ, meaning that my concerns are unlikely to ever be relevant. (We change the Emperor by proposal on rare occasions, although I don’t think that’s happened for years now – but arguably Recusants shouldn’t be involved with that anyway as it’s usually a dynastic decision.)

Now that ais has explained the objections, I don’t find that they are that objectionable.

I would definitely be astonished if a Recusant ever attempted to reappoint the Emperor. At the very least, I would expect it to get voted down.

There is maybe a concern to be had about dynastic gameplay that assigns some effect to any proposal, even if otherwise non-dynastic, passing (e.g., rewards in some kind of points system). That would tend to block Recusants altogether. But the existing rule already does that, so I’m not particularly bothered (and it’s not come up, so we could just cross that bridge if we come to it).

I love the word “Recusant”, by the way. It’s so fun to say. Kudos to Josh for that one.

@qenya Thank you! I spent a long time looking for it

This does have one small fringe side effect: under the existing rule it’s possible to use recusant votes to fix the game if it’s hard-locked, by passing an appendix rule that appoints enough active players to fix the issue conventionally. This change would make that a little more complicated as creating active players also creates dynastic gamestate in most cases. It’s not enough of an issue for me to change my vote - I think it’s a niche concern - but worth flagging, I think.