Proposal: Make the Slug of Death deadlier
Timed out, 3-0 with reduced quorum due to Jury voting DEF. Enacted by JonathanDark.
Adminned at 01 Jan 2025 19:15:44 UTC
In the rule “Races”, after the sentence starting “A Racing Snail”, add the following sentence:
As an exception, if the Slug of Death is on the Track, any Snail on the Track that is behind the Slug of Death does not count as Racing, and that Snail can be moved to the Bucket by any Snail.
In the Slug of Death’s Movement Rules in the rule “Slugs”, change
If there is an Ongoing Race, and it has been at least 25 hours since the Slug of Death last Crawled, and it has been least 25 hours since that Race began, any Active Player make a comment in that race saying “The Slug of Death Crawls” and cause the Slug of Death to perform the Crawl Play for that race.
to
If there is an Ongoing Race, and it has been at least 25 hours since the Slug of Death last Crawled, and it has been least 48 hours since that Race began, any Active Player may make a comment in that race saying “The Slug of Death Crawls” and cause the Slug of Death to perform the Crawl Play for that race.
We currently have a standoff in which at least one player has no incentive to do anything, and in fact I think with optimal play the current race would never end. The problem is that the Slug of Death, which is designed to give players an incentive to move, doesn’t necessarily do that when items are involved. This is the easiest way I can see to ensure that races actually end eventually (and it also breaks up the currently optimal strategy). The wording is chosen to work regardless of whether or not Defensive Proposterous passes.
Per Josh’s feedback, delay the Slug of Death’s first move so that this doesn’t lock people out of the race due to not checking every day.
Josh: Mastermind he/they
We actually moved away from this fairly recently, as it was too easy for the SoD to move early on and lock someone out of the Race entirely before they even knew it had started.