Picking a name from a list on The Encyclopedia That Anyone Can Edit and writing it into the ruleset is, of course, extremely scammable.

Are we sure this interacts okay with past usage of “Portal” to mean “thing that splits the ruleset when created”? I think we’re okay as the split is clearly framed as being “two universes now exist” rather than “an additional universe now exists”.

The name doesn’t go into the ruleset, just into the Scientists page of the wiki, but I take your point. I’ll move the list over to our wiki and make it gamestate.

I have a few questions arising from the portal, actually, like: what happens to the existing rules? Nothing says how they are tracked as separate rulesets, who is responsible for tagging everything as [alpha] and [prime], basically what happens when divergence occurs… That’s a subject for a follow-up proposal.

Amended to a different name list as I’m afk and the 2hr deadline is looming.

I love the idea of a co-operative dynasty.  also Josh, what made you pick the term ‘mindflaying’? it’s a very grotesque and gothic term hehe!

Crisis on Infinite Earths reference?

nice

@Cuddkebeam I don’t know what that is

It was a big in-story Marvel event.

The Josh Curse continues of pulling references without intending to lol

Strong personal preference against “nobody wins, metadynasty” failure states. Whether or not metadynasties are a good thing, if there’s a “nobody wins” button within reach (whether by a stretch of gamestate or a scam), it can become a tempting option when someone else is about to win.

@Kevan That’s a fair objection. Anything even hinting towards co-op needs to have a fail state, though, and it’s hard to see what that would look like if not a rule reset of some kind.

We can have the fail state be that Duke wins

We’ve also had a fail state of a player secretly chosen at random earlier in the dynasty winning, before.

[Josh] It’s more that I’m uncomfortable with it being possible for a player to crash the dynasty if they realise they can’t win it, whatever that failure outcome might actually be. We often have scrappy scams in our back pocket: if that scam happens to allow you to force the fail state, then you have a handy reset button to stop any rival’s victory with, when you’re left with no other option. The wiring here (failing if X is zero or Y is 50, maybe with a side order of “as the last player in the Prime Universe, I Idle”) feels like false jeopardy that will only realistically be tripped by a scam - if the game gets to 999,999 Crisis through natural gameplay, why wouldn’t we all agree to halve it by a (perhaps very thematic and mechanically clever) proposal?

For now, on Kevan’s argument. I’ll propose to amend the fail state.

I agree with kevan’s failstate objection, but that’s something that can be ammended.

I think there’s maybe a fundamental problem with making a co-op dynasty that “everyone loses” can only really be balanced by “everyone wins”. If you balance it with “one player wins”, then if the fail state ever becomes genuinely threatening (and why have it if it doesn’t), it also means that a losing player can grab the wheel and crash the dynasty into it.

I’m trying to think of co-op boardgames that have a single formal winner, and can’t remember any. I think they even shy away from giving any kind of “most valuable player” award: you always win as a group.

Castle Panic, Archipelago, Betrayal at the House on the Hill, and Legendary all Spring to mind for that brief, Kevan.

Hmm, I only know Betrayal from that list, and I thought it was “traitor wins” or “everyone else wins as a group”. A frustrated third place player can only throw the game to the traitor.

I haven’t heard of Archipelago, but reading this review that casts the fail state as a catch-up mechanic is interesting: that there’s strong pressure on the lead players to pay to avoid the fail state (because they want to win) and much less pressure on the back players (who don’t care so much). Maybe there’s some mileage there.

CoV to see where this can go.

I’m a bit suspicious of this, teetering between DEF and AGAINST… But let’s see how it goes. It does seem to create more of a losing condition than a winning condition, but I think I have an idea about that.