I’m not sure that it’s the Emperor’s role to define an argument that players must play out during the course of a game - my feeling is that argumentation is an emergent property of play rather than something that should be programmed in.

Hm, a fair critique. I do appreciate the emergent quality of the argument as a natural progression of the gamestate rather than something enforced by the Emperor. That presents this proposal as a bit zealous, interpreted in that manner.

However, I do like having an initial non-random query that players must eventually address in their proposals; not enforced by the Emperor, but by the gamestate itself. The Emperor would simply serve as the architect, rather than a dictator.

I like the idea of Emperors being encouraged to pose some unanswered questions about their dynasty’s theme or mechanics, as a creative prompt. I’m not sure that needs a further debate club level of telling players which side they have to argue for, though.

I do think “direct competition by which resolution must be decided non-randomly” is there implicitly, when players are already competitors. Although victory conditions generally don’t get proposed until midway through a dynasty, in BlogNomic, “eventually there will be one winner” is almost always expected, and even in the most dice-based dynasty, we can’t get there without proposals and votes.

Agreed that this is a bit heavy-handed. It takes some experience with dynasties to get a feel for the right amount of Emperor pressure on the dynastic content, and even then, it can vary per Emperor or per dynasty, as explained in Imperial Styles

I feel that it is better to allow arguments to occur naturally, instead of forcing them. I feel as though it can cause some tension between players when they are forced into an argument they do not wish to have.