Why ?

Via Bad News, Scholars+Cultists can potentially make a tyrannical majority (Scholars voluntarily become Cultists) to force a Cthulu instawin (there is no need to continue the game/make a subgame to have us compete between ourselves, we’ll all win as a collective).

However, that can be screwed over if people are lying right now with their “soft” claims that they’re Scholars/Cultists in the Bad News proposal, and this prevents that from becoming a problem for the scam.

(Lying to bait and then switching their vote later, for example)

Not sure how this will interact with self-killing or vetoing.

Can’t see that “Scholars voluntarily become Cultists” makes any sense as a concern. Any quorum of players could push through a “game ends, nobody wins” proposal at any time in any dynasty.

CoV since Sphinx has been gone 3 days.

@Kevan: For usual victories, yes, but cultists have a gimmick victory - “Create a Cthulu Dynasty”. Individual cultist merit and inter-cultist competition doesn’t matter. The cultists are effectively a “Super-Explorer”, with multiple bodies, votes, etc.

If converted to be a Cultist, it would be entirely reasonable to the newly converted to strive for that goal as a new appendage of the “Super-Explorer”.

And if that “Super-Explorer” gets big enough, it would be entirely reasonable for that Super-Explorer to just proposal a win for Cthulhu. Victory’s assured. There is no need to quarrel with further mechanics to “compete”, because inter-Cultist competition doesn’t matter. You’re the “Super-Explorer”. You can just immediately get your win.

It’s really weird lol, but I love it, because from a pragmatic point of view, it makes sense (from this view), but it somehow conflicts with the idea that there should be a “game” to be played, but via a novel kind of backdoor, it seems to be able to trump that ideal entirely.

(It kind of plays into the idea of ‘coin-flip victory’ too, as a shortcut to ending the game and increases your chances to win, but the goal-redefinition part is what makes this case so interesting to me. It’s not splitting a victory. It’s redefining what ‘winning’ should mean for you.)

You seem to be assuming that “wins” are entirely fungible, here, but I don’t think they are for most players. A single-player victory through clever gameplay or scamming is more rewarding (and confers higher status) than a coin-flip one, and much more than having been one of many supporters of a let’s-say-everybody-won proposal.

We never see mid-dynasty “game ends, a random player who voted for this proposal wins” proposals, because not enough voters will that feel their odds of winning are low enough to risk throwing the game away. And the Cthulhu endgame is even weaker than that.

Yes, I very much agree with that its so. I find Nomic to be very perspectivist.

(Just the nature of a game whose “hardware” is people and the idea of “fun” or “merit” or what its supposed to be is granted by those people themselves)

I don’t believe I have understood a word of this “soft claim” business.

It’s wording from EpicMafia (http://epicmafia.wikia.com/wiki/Claim)

“A soft claim is a subtle gesture that indicates a person is likely a certain role, such as a power role.”

So like a claim but not a super hard and obvious one. A soft one.