BlogNomic: The Ninth Dynasty of ais523

It seems like either everyone would become a Bud or no one would, since probably we all want to be part of the creature with the most organs.  I’d be more in favor of something that randomly selected six organs to be part of the new creature, and had mechnasims for rebalancing when people join and go idle, etc.

NOPE

This can easily create unbalanced “factions” and thats gameplay I won’t endorse

We might want to specify that the new creature can’t be called Eve, but since Cuddlebeam voted on it already I guess that’s out.

I’m fervent about not having unbalanced faction-making mechanics like this (because it’s cheap and not interesting gameplay fmpov), and this is clearly one of them (because there is no balance, just “opting in” or not opting at all).

My “No Monopolies please” proposal is very clear at what I want to avoid, and this proposal is straight up that.

And yet you make proposals to give people unfair advantages.  Just face it, no one else here wants to make the game unfair the way you do.

The Hypertrophy proposal (https://blognomic.com/archive/hypertrophy) was bait to get comments from people saying that they’re against unfairness like this. Since I’m not very popular as it is, it’s the least harm if I pull off something like this, so that unfairness in the future can be avoided from those people, by showing that they were against it in that proposal.

Why do you need this verified?  Proposals that are blatantly unfair pretty much always fail already.  This isn’t necessarily unfair, though I’d like some clause to prevent creation of a creature with only like one or two organs.

It’s not clear to me that unbalanced factions are an inherent badness in gameplay. Can you expand on why you think it’s “cheap” or “uninteresting”? Games like Werewolf where (in some variants) there’s a smaller faction with different goals and abilities aren’t “uninteresting”. It’s also not necessarily the case that immediately after a split, the game becomes competitive between the two Creatures.

Werewolf is interesting because the trade-off for less vote count is more mechanical power.

And creating a voting faction for your own benefit is as interesting as calling for a bunch of people from outside the game to join and vote for what you want. It’s the same thing, except for from where the pool of people is taken from.

It CAN be interesting, but as it is laid out now, with everyone having 1 vote and no major differences in power (nutrient count is negligible), distributing that unevenly will just be unbalanced (as your proposal could do, unless heavily reworked).

I mean, it’s not the same thing, because in one case everyone in the voting bloc benefits, and in the other case only one person does.  But I don’t think anyone is going to be passing proposals that favor one creature over the other, so it’s irrelevant to the current situation.

It is. Here’s a simple example:

-Eve: [-][-][-][-][-][-] <-6 voters
-Adam: [-][-][-] <-3 voters

A player from Eve proposes that all Eve players get Hypertrophied.
Potential vote outcome:

-Eve: [For][For][For][For][For][For]
-Adam: [Against][Against][Against]

Adam players are helpless against the Eve bloc (as they would be against any other sufficiently large bloc, like one spawned from external help). It’s not interesting because it kills players off from the game with a very simple and uninteresting mechanic (just getting enough people to agree). In other cases you have to dredge through the ruleset and figure out your scams and loopholes, in the other, its just a popularity contest.

No one will vote for that proposal.

Well, alright. At least we can agree on that it should be balanced regardless.

“At least we can agree on that it should be balanced regardless.” Who’s agreeing on this? In the Eve vs. Adam scenario it’s not the case that every pro-Eve proposal passes 6-3.

I’m not agreeing with Cuddlebeam.  I’m saying this proposal should have stipulations to prevent there from being a creature with less than three organs.  Like “at least three organs are Buds, and at least three organs are not Buds” should do it.  Not because I think voting will be an issue, but just because a creature with less than three organs might have some trouble.

I agree on that point. A two-Organ Creature would be not good.

What’s the purpose of dividing the Creature, pokes?

Fun

Well.

I believe the creature will divide and I am unconcerned by an imbalance in size.
This however seems slightly chaotic in execution, cataclysmic flailing may ensue in the GNDT.

Maybe next time, pokes.

Seems fine apart from using a Wikipedia page as input (which could be edited seconds prior to enactment).

(Or edited later by an accomplice who isn’t playing BlogNomic.)

S/K. In the general case, would a link to a specific revision of a Wikipedia page becoming official gamestate be unobjectionable?

I guess the atomic action could work, although I’d prefer it to be triggered by a blog post and tracked after.
Lock down names and I call it balanced enough.

[pokes] Usual practice is to link to a specific revision, or to copy the contents of the page to the BlogNomic wiki (usually trimming it down to be a plain text list).