Thursday, July 06, 2023

Proposal: Initialising, Phase Two

Reached quorum 5 votes to 1. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 08 Jul 2023 10:41:03 UTC

If the rule “Initialisation” exists, add the following as a subrule of it called “Initialisation Phase Two”:

The purpose of Phase Two is to provide every Machinist with three Agendas, which will determine their win conditions for this dynasty. If the rule “Initialisation Phase One” exists in the ruleset, the rest of this rule is flavour text.

Each Machinist can and should Send a Schematic to the Great Machine exactly one time. Sending a Schematic consists of writing between 2 and 5 Agendas (inclusive) and sending them privately to the Great Machine. When an Initialisation Key appears in one of these Agendas, it should be bolded.

After receiving a Machinist’s written Agendas, the Great Machine must add them to the list of privately tracked Agendas, but may edit their wording or grammar slightly to fit in with the other existing Agendas so long as their meaning is not changed.

The Great Machine can and should create up to 10 Agendas; these Agendas should, when feasible, include the Initialisation Key(s) which appear in the fewest existing Agendas.

Once each active Machinist has Sent a Schematic and there exists a number of Agendas greater than four times the number of active Machinists, the Great Machine can perform the following atomic action:
* Delete Agendas until there exists a number of Agendas that is exactly four times the number of active Machinists, prioritising firstly the deletion of Agendas that include the Initialisation Key(s) which appear in the most existing Agendas, and secondly the deletion of Agendas which the Great Machine judges would be unfairly easy or difficult to Fulfill.
* Secretly randomly assign Reserve Agendas to Machinists until every Machinist owns exactly three Agendas.
* Privately inform each Machinist the full text of the Agendas which they own.
* Make a Story Post indicating that Initialisation is complete, and also listing every Agenda that was deleted in step 1 of this action, the and the reasons for those Agendas’ deletions.
* Repeal this subrule.

each player will have a small handful of hidden goals: things that they want the Machine to be or do. you’ll all be playing a tug-of-war, adjusting and tampering with the machine, but the main thing i care about mechanically is that no-one owns a specific part of the machine. it’s all neutral ground, but different people are trying to do different things with it!
i also intend to propose a mechanism for providing newly-unidled Machinists with selections from the Reserve Agendas, but that’s out of scope for these initial proposals.

Comments

Josh: he/they

07-07-2023 08:22:33 UTC

for

lendunistus: he/him

07-07-2023 11:29:09 UTC

for

Kevan: City he/him

07-07-2023 12:07:34 UTC

against Free text Agenda creation seems a bit too mysterious and abusable, unless I’ve missed something. It seems easy to write ones that only the writer could ever fulfill.

JonathanDark: he/him

07-07-2023 12:59:24 UTC

@Kevean: the Great Machine should be able to address that already. “the deletion of Agendas which the Great Machine judges would be unfairly easy or difficult to Fulfill.”

JonathanDark: he/him

07-07-2023 12:59:36 UTC

for

Raven1207: he/they

07-07-2023 21:18:41 UTC

for

lemon: she/her

07-07-2023 22:50:36 UTC

@Kevan that’s an understandable concern — would you like to propose some stricter guidelines? i wouldn’t be opposed to that.