BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

It’s almost as if no one should be allowed to mess with an object of such power. If only there were some kind of… containment we could put them in? A really secure one, I mean. To protect us.

In Slack Kevan suggested that this could be a fun tension for the dynasty - Researchers trying to lock Artefacts away and prevent their (mis)use, Collectors trying to break them out and see what they do when smooshed together.

I sort of resent the use of CfJs to get us out of this kind of situation, especially when at present it doesn’t so much prevent the game from continuing as just slow me and Cuddlebeam down for a couple of days while a proper proposal fixes it. Toying with a CoV but I do have proposals I want to write…

I resent that I feel like I’m playing more against Kevan than actual players, again

This didn’t seem like a big deal - with the Gin active, players are very strongly discouraged from both playing the game and making proposals. Making this CfJ a proposal instead would just have given the game a day or two of proposal silence, and not made much difference otherwise, I think?

@Kevan - it wouldn’t have even had that effect - proposal resolution order would mean that any proposals made subsequent to this would have been effectively protected by it, as neither the gin nor the googles would have had an effect when those proposals were resolved. That’s the problem. If there’s no difference between it being a proposal and a CfJ then why should it be a CfJ at all?

I have an ideological problem with using CfJs for transactional or even partisan outcomes. It makes the CfJ a less “honest”, or perhaps credible, tool for genuinely game-wrecking problems if it’s wheeled out for every overstated booboo or, worse, to specifically target players to gain marginal advantage.

I might have a think about how to reform the CfJ process in this dynasty as it seems to me that it is not currently working as it ideally should.

It gives a window of uncertainty where players don’t know if it’s safe to make or vote on proposals, and I’d say narrowing that window should be a priority. We should always be making and voting on proposals, and I think it’s a core part of the Emperor’s role to keep their dynasty moving.

If this was a proposal, I’d have expected players to wait (potentially 48 hours) for it to enact in black and white before resuming proposing and voting again. There’d be a non-zero chance of another scam or human error on my part rendering a fix proposal ineffective, and players who aren’t wearing Googles wouldn’t want the remainder of the queue to be quorum-approved and ready to enact at that point.

I’m reading this more as a broken rule than a scam-in-progress - converting other people’s proposals to “I win” is an impressive gun to wave around, but all it means is that nobody will vote for anyone’s proposals, and I can’t see that a proposal-based voting break while we fixed it would have granted anyone an advantage. Maybe I’m missing part of the picture.

CfJ reform would be great to see. I know we’ve said for years that CfJ should really support multiple choice responses somehow, so that it’s not always “proposed fix or status quo”.

“playing more against Kevan than actual players” is an interesting point. Should the Emperor be a neutral referee, rather than someone who can impact the gameplay? What do players expect the Emperor to do if they notice a broken rule, or a scam, or someone sneaking into a good tactical position?

In my opinion, while you’re in your full right to have your own Imperial style/policies, its hard to make Emperor interference fair.

The Emperor has no stake in the game. That alone makes their relationship with scams wildly different:

- You can’t negotiate a scam with an Emperor. For example “let this scam pass and I’ll 50-50 the win for us”.
- The Emperor won’t be silent to try to steal the scam for themselves. For example, in Josh’s case, as a player, I was deliberately silent to steal his scam. The Emperor has no motivation to steal a win and be silent for it.
- The Emperor’s attention varies. Its frustrating when its up to that kind of luck for a scam to pass undetected or not. I actually tried to weaponize this by distracting you with a lot of other things during the Moby Dick dynasty, which largely contributed to my feeling of “I’m playing against the Emperor”.

Emotionally, when I get hit by an Emperor for a scam, it feels a lot worse. It’s not “oh, that dastardly player blocked my slam dunk, fair”. It’s “Oh, the referee is dribbling the basketball for us now…”

I do immensely agree with having the Emperor state their opinion on interpretation matters though. There’s always some concern that players could be dishonest about how they’re reading the rules for their own interest (either for or against the scam), and having someone neutral - even if you don’t always agree with them - is a very appreciated by me. Like that time Pokes clarified the Annual/Leap Action scam you and I did back in their dynasty.

“Attention varies” feels like the important one (some regular players won’t negotiate scams or risk trying to steal them either), but I’d say it was more scope than luck.

An Emperor is likely to look closely at an unusual proposal which includes or implies something like “player X wins immediately”, “freeze all actions for ten days” or “repeal the core ruleset”, and prioritise keeping their dynasty running and fair. I’d assume this was what DEF voters expected from an Emperor, and that there’d be some mild booing if a “my cabal of quorum-minus-1 win the game” proposal got a shrugged Imperial DEF.

And an Emperor will probably give less scrutiny to a gamestate-level proposal, in the awareness that whatever happens is passing through the filter of gameplay. Although there were very plainly some victory-strength scams available in the Gin proposal, it didn’t seem player-specific and I DEFfed it through to see what players would do with it.

I agree with that it was easily detectable, but I disagree with that it was necessary for the Emperor to police it then commit to a CfJ to fix it. If it was really that obvious then anyone else could’ve proposed their fix, no?

After a point I’d be OK with the Emperor dislodging the dynasty if it got stuck, but not so interventionist where being actively concerned about the Emperor’s policing becomes key to one of the big three of win types. I’m not in favor that needing to dodge the Emperor becomes part of competitive play.

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Also, about the point of CfJs that Josh brought up. This is… actually just the way that I’m used to having them be used. Like, every time I did a mid-dynasty scam it was promptly patched up by some CfJ. If a scam doesn’t immediately end the dynasty (which, had it been successful, this one would have), it generally doesn’t work because it just gets patched immediately afterwards as if it has never happened.

I’m not familiar with a different culture of CfJ, but I’m very curious about what you’re alluding to.

If anyone can fix it, the Emperor might as well, surely? I always see the role as somewhat janitorial, sparing players from having to use their own proposal slots on the boring stuff.

If it’s a CfJ to unfreeze the game, all the more reason to get it done immediately. We’ve seen in the past that it doesn’t take much uncertainty or silence to nudge a dynasty over a tipping point from which it never really recovers. I think Emperors need to be a bit proactive about stopping that, rather than waiting for the dynasty to become well and truly stuck before doing anything about it.

As for CfJs and patching: there is another big, significant aspect to that in they can’t be self-killed. If a player pulls a scam and another player proposes a fix, we have to trust the second player not to yank the fix proposal before it enacts.

It still feels bad to have the Emperor point it out and do it though, for me personally. Even if you said that you’d wait to see what happened with it, you didn’t give it a chance to work and pointed it out and patched it promptly instead of the dynasty perhaps being won and ended. It looms on me that the same against a future thing may happen.

I read the scam as missing its chance and being dead in the water after your first attempt to use it, when Josh revealed that they’d written it intentionally and “seeing as how I can’t have it, I suppose no-one should”. At which point I’d said nothing, only questioning your interpretation of the Damage cost.

I didn’t move to close the loophole until after your second attempt in Wreck Over - where I thought my first comment seemed obvious, you yourself pointed out that the same issue held for accomplice players, and it didn’t seem a huge revelation for me to add that the Magic Gin That Makes Everyone Drunk Even If They Don’t Want To Be Drunk also held for non-accomplices.

Hm, alright. True that, a lot has happened. Thanks.

If it’s a CfJ to unfreeze the game, all the more reason to get it done immediately. We’ve seen in the past that it doesn’t take much uncertainty or silence to nudge a dynasty over a tipping point from which it never really recovers.

Not to be too pointed, but - aren’t we already there? The majority of players this dynasty have yet to take a game action; Cuddlebeam is one of the few who have. Stripping out mechanics does not strike me as a game-positive move.

(This is especially pertinent because there is in fact a mechanic, quicker than this CfJ, that could have resolved this - the pencil - had anyone wanted to use it!)

I dunno. Part of me also thinks that there has to be an element of moral hazard to the sloppy passage of flawed proposals, and that BlogNomic would be a better culture if proposals were scrutinised more closely, and that a bad proposal can in fact be an interesting spur to creative solutioneering - but also I’m a scammer at heart, and not all of my scams are mega subtle, so maybe BlogNomic’s slightly looser culture suits me better anyway.

btw