What does “new” mean here? Players who enter dynasties late are typically at a disadvantage, new or not.

I think we’ve struck fair compromises in the past - so long as there’s a route to trade resources or work together, latecomers can get a lot done by allying themselves with existing powers. And given that we’re playing Nomic, it’s not too hard for them to turn the late game in their favour by adding rules which give newcomers a little more agility than those already invested in other tactics; I’d hope that would be enough to self-balance things. In terms of the mechanisms I’d encourage personally, I’d try to ensure that it wasn’t ever possible for a player to get too far ahead through simple stockpiling - any resource that could be gathered over time should have an in-built cap, so that an older player could never be more than a week or two ahead of a newcomer.

It’d be up to the players how Mornington Crescent would actually be played out, but it’s definitely an encouraging theme for latecomers, because you only have to do one simple thing to win - make a move of “Mornington Crescent”. There’d obviously be some buildup to that to prevent anyone making an early win, but I think the theme (that of a fictional, complex boardgame) would be comfortable with a latecomer taking a win through light-footed ingenuity rather than slow-and-sure groundwork.

The issue at stake here is one of fairness, but I think that the question is too uncriticical of how fair it is that a player can join, or unidle into, a dynasty halfway through and win. There is certainly the alluded-to problem of whether it is satisfactory to have a situation in which players, who have been steadily working through sometimes complex gameplay for months, should be gazumped at the last hurdle by a newcomer leveraging some generous defaulting rules. But there are also matters of broader fairness; whether it’s desirable to have new players being able to win without ever having played through a full dynasty, or whether we want to allow for situations in which idle older hands sit idle for the bulk of a dynasty looking for the most opportune moment to tactically unidle and sweep a win.

The question states that “both extremes are bad”; I disagree. I think that one of those extremes is bad, but the other is an integral part of how games are played. You can’t join a Monopoly board at the end of the second hour and expect to be given an equal share of the other players’ hotels and title deeds. I agree with Kevan that, ultimately, it’s up to the players how this matter is resolved - the emperor can influence the issue to an extent but can’t dictate every aspect of how this dynamic plays out. There is a calibration distinction, as well; a player unidling on the second week of an eight-week dynasty should not be harshly penalised, and equally a player joining on week seven should not be in contention for victory unless they pull off some ingeneous play. If elected I would favour mechanics that kept the advantage with those who had been playing for longer.

Vote for Joh, vote for change etc etc

According to the rules, everyone gets a comment, yes? In that case, would the Leaders please consider answering this question: would proposal-making or game-playing be more important in your Dynasty, and why do you believe this?

As my dynasty would be based mostly on the rules rather than the actual gamestate, new players would not be at a huge disadvantage. However, I agree with Joh when he says that it would be an annoyance to have someone join at the last minute and win, so maybe our ruleset could have some sort of time limit (“you can’t win if you’ve unidled within the last week”).

Also, there will be no grind. I’ll be doing an ais on it and vetoing grindy proposals.

Anonyman: I stand firmly on the side of proposal-making. In my dynasty, a proposal would be the sole input method.

I think Joh is a pretty cool guy. eh mispelled his own name and doesn’t afraid of grinds.

Anonyman: Both would have equal importance, but pretty much entirely in the scope of the rules.

Darth: a vote for Joh is a vote for chnage.

Note that Kevan has been an Emperor of a recent played Dynasty (Josh, too.. but Josh did not need to deal with the Newcommers problem in his last Dynasty); this could be used as a reference. The Victory mechanism was not that good, every normal player had a 50% chance of win by saying “foo, foo and foo” were the murderers.

Well, both Josh and Kevan have leaded lots of Dynasties, this can be looked up easily ;)

Generally, I assume this point is up to the players. I like mechanisms like “Newcomers have fun, but could not win really” (as in ais523 last Dynasty)

[Keba] I’m not sure you mean 50%, there - a blindly guessing player would have had to correctly identify which of thirty-odd players had been murderers at some point in the dynasty, which would take a huge amount of luck. Although there was some guesswork at the end, this was after a group of collaborators (including a self-confessed murderer) had worked together to narrow the suspects down to a small handful.

I’d like to think the close ending of the Murder Mystery dynasty meant that it had decent victory conditions (the murderers were identified a few hours before one of them would have inherited the fortune, having murdered his way to the front of the queue), but it did have the potential to randomly hand the win to an inactive player, which I’d watch out for in future.