Proposal: I Smell a Rat
Add a new rule named “Accusations” with the following text:
An Accusation is a Story Post - Votable Matter with a title that starts with the text “Accusation:” followed by the name of an Agent. The author of an Accusation is the Accuser for that Accusation, and the Agent named in an Accusation title is the Accused for that Accusation. Members of an Accusation are the set of all Agents (including the Accuser) whose type (Guard or Burglar) are the same as the Accuser.
If the current Phase is Planning the Break-In, any Agent may post an Accusation if all of the following criteria are true:
* That Agent is not a Civilian
* The Accused is same type of Agent (Guard or Burglar) as that Agent
* There is not a Pending Accusation whose Accuser is the same type of Agent (Guard or Burglar) as that Agent
* There have been less than 2 Accusations posted since the most recent performance of Breaking InWhen determining an Accusation’s Quorum, Popular, or Unpopular status, only the Members of that Accusation are included. Votes on an Accusation by Agents that are not Members of that Accusation are treated as invalid.
The oldest Pending Accusation may be Enacted by any Admin if all of the following are true:
* It is Popular.
* It has been open for voting for at least 24 hours.
* It has not been Withdrawn.The oldest Pending Accusation may be Failed by any Admin, if any of the following are true:
* It is Unpopular.
* It has been Withdrawn.When an Accusation is Enacted, the Admin Enacting it must change the type of that Accusation’s Accused to Civilian.
In the rule “The Break-In”, after the text “If every Agent has a complete Route,” add the text “and there is no Pending Accusation,”
I think we need something more interactive to jazz up this dynasty. Everything is secret info and there’s not a whole lot of excitement while folks are planning their routes.
Since it’s on-theme for Guards and Burglars to betray their side and cooperate for mutual benefit, how about a way to rat out the traitors?
ais523:
The problem with this is that there’s basically no advantage from actually successfully voting for a traitor with one of these. Say that I’m a guard, and are worried that one of the other guards will betray me. The main way in which they can carry out the betrayal is to submit a route other than the route they claim they’re planning to submit, thus allowing a hole in the plan which criminals they’re cooperating with can sneak through. Now suppose that they’re removed from the set of guards altogether; this is even worse for the guards because now there’s no chance that they’ll end up catching a criminal other than the one they’re colluding with by accident. It’s marginally more useful for criminals (who can choose to actively hurt their team via trying to intentionally pick up an artifact and get caught holding it) but this seems like an unlikely form of betrayal in practice.
There is a marginal advantage from doing this – you prevent someone on the same team from profiting when the team succeeds, meaning that they are less likely to beat you later in the dynasty. But if someone is in the habit of betraying their own team, they’re unlikely to succeed regardless (and are unlikely to be a threat to win the dynasty) because they’re already actively sabotaging their own victory chances to help someone else. In general, though, reducing the victory chances of one other specific player without benefiting your own is nearly always a bad idea (I think we learned a lot about the dynamics of that sort of thing last dynasty).