Thursday, June 02, 2022

Proposal: Early Bird Gets The Worm

Timed out 4 votes to 2. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 04 Jun 2022 16:53:16 UTC

Add a new rule called Artifacts, that reads

Artifacts are items which a Guardian may hold. A guardian’s held artifact is publicly tracked and defaults to none. When a Guardian activates an artifact, they must change their held artifact to “none”. The list of artifacts is as follows:

*Altar - When a guardian activates this prize, they gain 2 piety.

Add 2 new bullet points in the subrule “Declaring”, immediately after the point “Optionally Conduct Trade between two different Buildings they own in adjacent Districts” that reads:

*Optionally change their held artifact to any artifact no guardian has picked up since the last auguring. This is known as picking up an artifact.
*Optionally activate an artifact

Add a new bullet point in the subrule “Auguring”, immediately after the point “If there is more than one Embassy, swap the ownerships of those Embassies in a secretly random manner, so that each Embassy changes ownership.” that reads:

*Add or remove artifacts from the artifact list such that there are the same amount of artifacts as there are active Guardians. If adding new artifacts, the oracle may choose the effect and name.

Comments

Kevan: he/him

02-06-2022 17:15:23 UTC

Reminder that the rule “The Queue” no longer contains that bullet list, it’s been moved to a subrule called “Declaring”.

“may activate an artifact that they hold at any time” gets a mild timing frown from me, for creating the possibility of situations where the best time for someone to use an artifact turns out to be between two other players’ turns, while the artifact holder is asleep. I’d rather see everything kept on the same game clock if possible. Could this be part of the Declaring action as well?

I’ll take “the oracle may choose the effect” if players want me to (I guess I should also be choosing a name, there?), but do generally find that kind of dungeonmastering a bit hard to work with, from either side. Am I expected to create perfectly neutral artifacts, or to add catch-up mechanics, will people be entertained or annoyed if I accidentally create a game-ending loophole, etc.

Kevan: he/him

02-06-2022 17:16:34 UTC

Two subrules, in fact, with the Oracle action: “Declaring” and “Auguring”.

Snisbo: she/they

02-06-2022 19:56:44 UTC

Subrules are still considered a part of the larger rules, though, so I think it should be fine, right?

Snisbo: she/they

02-06-2022 20:02:42 UTC

Regardless, it’s fixed now. As is “May activate an artifact at any time”

As for you choosing the effect, they don’t need to be balanced necessarily (The point of this is to incentivize going early and choosing the ones you want from a full list, anyways) and I, at least, trust you not to break the game, at least not in an uninteresting, obvious way.

Kevan: he/him

02-06-2022 21:08:52 UTC

I think we might have changed it last year, but the Appendix says that “Rules and proposals that refer to a rule do not also refer to its subrules, unless otherwise specified.”

Gozherd:

03-06-2022 09:46:42 UTC

imperial due to the extra work

Josh: Observer he/they

03-06-2022 09:59:15 UTC

for

Darknight: he/him

03-06-2022 11:57:29 UTC

imperial

Raven1207: he/they

03-06-2022 13:15:49 UTC

for

Trapdoorspyder: he/him

03-06-2022 16:09:49 UTC

against I have two issues with this. One, while this does seem interesting, I’m personally against introducing such a seemingly major mechanic this late in the game. And two, anybody else remember what happened when we let the Emporer have free reign with new text entering the ruleset?

Kevan: he/him

03-06-2022 18:22:08 UTC

imperial

Gozherd:

04-06-2022 08:24:07 UTC

Per Trapdoopspyder’s point, and because the Oracle invalidated my deferential vote,

against (changed)