Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Proposal: Justified True Self-Knowledge

Timed out and passed, 4-2 with one unresolved DEF. Josh

Adminned at 16 May 2020 08:49:10 UTC

Add a new rule to the ruleset, entitled Epistemic Knowledge:

As a weekly action, an Amnesiac may Confront the Past Memory by sending them a Private Message, detailing the single Role that they think they have and the justification for that belief.

If the following are all true:

  • The named Role is the Role held by that Amnesiac;
  • The justification for their belief is internally logically consistent;
  • The justification for their belief is entirely based on information given to that Amnesiac by the Past Memory, or given to that Amnesiac by another Amnesiac who was given it by the Past Memory;
  • The justification for their belief leaves no possibility for their Role to be anything other than the Role named in the private message:

Then the Past Memory should change the Community page to note that that Amnesiac’s Role is Remembered, and set their Posture to match their correct Role.

An Amnesiac whose Role is Remembered may not change their Posture.

Kinda awkward? Basically, if you can prove that you know what your role is, then you have Remembered.

Comments

Kevan: he/him

14-05-2020 09:27:43 UTC

I like this a lot, I’ve always been a big fan of the “prove your opponent can’t win this column” mechanic in Knizia’s Battle Line, and this is good for removing all possibility of a lucky guess.

It does leave some gaps, though: information passed privately between players can’t be verified by the Past Memory, and this proposal doesn’t consider deduction made from the nuts-and-bolts rules of the game (if a new Role is added today then we’ll all logically know that it can’t be our Role, since ours were assigned earlier, but this proposal won’t accept that) or from working out other player’s Roles (if I can prove that someone else is the Sheriff, it might follow that I can’t also be the Sheriff).

Josh: Observer he/they

14-05-2020 10:30:31 UTC

Battle Line is exactly the inspiration for this! One of my all-time favourites.

We’re out of the two hour edit window, but from a pass-and-fix perspective, it’s better that it’s too restrictive then too permissive, I think.

On information passed between players, the Past Memory can still verify the info if they’re the ultimate source of it (“You told Steve that he recognised Hannah, and I know that Hannah is a greengrocer because of my own recollection, so Steve must be a butcher and therefore I must be a baker”) but you’re right, at the moment this doesn’t consider information sources that don’t involve the Past Memory at all.

Kevan: he/him

14-05-2020 14:00:03 UTC

for for now.

derrick: he/him

14-05-2020 15:14:41 UTC

imperial

I really don’t like the fixed posture though.

On the other hand, all criminals should probably posture as something else and still be able to take their role actions.

Clucky: he/him

14-05-2020 15:49:35 UTC

I agree with a lot the other concerns raised:

Not being able to change your posture, and having your posture change, means even if you 100% know your role your better off not doing this because all you’re really doing is taking information that only you know, and making it so that everyone else knows what information

More importantly, I think the mechanic is actually a bit busted and forces naught to evaluate the truth of something they can’t actually know:

Say Kevan tells me that Josh told him. Technically, I can’t use that information. But Naught doesn’t know where I actually got my information from. So they have no way of knowing if it was actually “given to that Amnesiac by another Amnesiac who was given it by the Past Memory” and thus are stuck unsure if they can change the action or not.

against

ayesdeeef:

14-05-2020 19:50:21 UTC

against

What if I got it from another Amnesiac, who got it from another Amnesiac, who got it from another Amnesiac… (I’m honestly not sure if this is what Clucky meant with his last paragraph, but that’s what it made me think of)

Also, per Clucky, this seems like a punishment rather than a reward.

Also, this doesn’t work with reputation at all.

Basically I would have liked something that allows us to take risks based on how sure we are of our role, rather than forcing us to be 100% sure of our role. I guess I’ll make a competing Proposal.

Darknight: he/him

15-05-2020 14:31:05 UTC

for

Trigon:

15-05-2020 18:32:07 UTC

for