Saturday, June 05, 2021

Proposal: Eyes Only [Appendix]

Timed Out. Passes 4-1—Clucky

Adminned at 08 Jun 2021 06:14:40 UTC

Add a bullet to “Numbers and Variables”:-

If a piece of information is described as being tracked secretly or privately by the Collector (including secretly random selections), then that information may only be revealed by the Collector when the ruleset allows it. If a Broker should already know such a piece of information (in that the Collector has already told them it, or vice versa, and there is no way that the information could have been changed since then), the Collector may repeat it to them on request.

This came up earlier in the dynasty with Clucky considering processing a Round early despite this revealing private information, and commenting that there’s nothing that actually limits sharing that information at will. Which has struck me before: if we make something “privately tracked”, should we explicitly say that the Emperor can only reveal it according to the rules?

We presumably all agree that the Emperor shouldn’t shout things out for fun, but there will be subtler cases (like Clucky’s early action, or a player asking for their own private role to be revealed willingly to a third party) where one Emperor would consider it okay, and others wouldn’t.

posted by Kevan at 05 Jun 2021 18:31:00 UTC Comments (8)

Comments

Clucky: he/him

05-06-2021 21:55:30 UTC

Probably good to formalize this, but is this enough? Its quite possible for the emperor to accidentally reveal something, and there isn’t any guidelines here to help say what should happen if that does occur.

Kevan: he/him

05-06-2021 22:29:30 UTC

I don’t think there can be a standard procedure for how to handle it when it happens accidentally, it’s always going to be complex to unpick.

Janet: she/her

06-06-2021 03:11:42 UTC

for

Josh: he/they

06-06-2021 07:08:40 UTC

for

lemon: she/her

06-06-2021 08:21:20 UTC

the “may [only] repeat it to them on request” bit is unpleasant imo bc it means that, for example, the emperor can’t have a simple private conversation about hidden info with a broker who already knows it? making someone act like a vampire asking permission to enter a home in the middle of a conversation is clumsy & unnecessary

but otherwise, for

Kevan: he/him

06-06-2021 12:41:29 UTC

[Lemon] Good point: it’d also make it illegal for the Emperor to send a “can’t remember if I already said this, but” message, if the ruleset only allowed the message to be sent once. So this could use another iteration.

I did want to get “on request” in there somehow, though, to make it clear that asking the Emperor to repeat stuff was fine.

pokes:

06-06-2021 15:04:42 UTC

against Unenforceable, and it adds a lot of words to re-describe the definition of ‘secretly’ or ‘privately’ that I would think everyone already expects.

Kevan: he/him

06-06-2021 15:40:17 UTC

Sure, it’s as unenforceable as “don’t break the rules”.

And actually I’m mixing up what Clucky said earlier this dynasty: checking the Slack history they were just talking about whether an Emperor could give an informal favour to another player (“like there are no current rules stopping me from privately informing a player who entered which piece of art”).

I think there are some grey areas of privacy and secrecy that we may as well clarify. I’ve definitely had moments in past dynasties where I couldn’t remember what order I’d submitted to the Emperor, and decided that since there was no rule under which I could ask them to read it back to me, kept quiet and hoped for the best.