Saturday, November 23, 2024

Proposal: Moving is the Key to Victory

Invalid proposal, posted while the game was still in Interregnum. Flagged by Kevan.

Adminned at 23 Nov 2024 14:19:08 UTC

In the rule “Position”, replace “publicly tracked” with “privately tracked”.

Add the following new rule, titled “Moving”:

At any time, a Snail may Move, which is an action with the following steps:
* make a comment on the Ongoing Race (If there is one), specifying a verb, written with capital letters, and the Snail(s) the verb applies to. (different Snails may be related to the verb differently)
* if the verb has not been used in this Race, privately tell the Jury what specific action the verb they have used corresponds to.

The actions defined in Moves must not have any effects other than the following:
* Changing the Position of one or more Snails

Moreover, the actions may not refer to Snails by name or any property that does not depend only on the comments on the Ongoing Race. Note however that this doesn’t apply to the actual comments, only the actions defined.

Some examples:
“JUMP” could mean “move the jumping Snail 10 cm forward”, and “I JUMP” or “The leading Snail JUMPS” would be valid Moves.
“ZWURBLE” could mean “The zwurbling Snail is moved to the Zwurbled Snail”, and “I ZWURBLE [some player’s name]” or “Everyone Zwurbles themselves” would be valid Moves.

Add the following new rule, titled “Items”:

Each player has a list of Items, defaulting to an empty list.

Add the following new rule, titled “Banning”:

At any time, a player may Bribe the Jury by performing the following atomic action:
* Remove one of their Items
* Make a comment on the Ongoing Race in which they unambiguously describe a type of Moves they are Banning

Such a comment is considered illegal if any of the following is true:
* There exists a hypothetical but game mechanically possible situation in which one or more players are unable to Move
* It is logically impossible for one or more Snails to ever reach the Finish Line

Add the following to “Races”:

The Jury should Check Everything every now and then, especially whenever they think it might result in a Snail crossing the Finish Line. Checking Everything is an atomic action with the following steps:
* Set the Position of all Snails to zero
* Go through the Moves on the Ongoing Race, from first to last, and do the following for each of them:
     * Check whether the Move is Banned by a legal comment on the Ongoing Race
     * If not, perform the corresponding action
     * If a Snail’s Position is after the Finish Line, cease performing this action and perform the Award Ceremony

I do see potential problems in this direction.
After (or during) the first Race(s), if it looks like this won’t really work, don’t be afraid to propose repealing some or all of the things in this proposal.

Comments

Josh: he/they

23-11-2024 10:16:41 UTC

I don’t think I can bring myself to be on board with positions being secret information.

What’s to stop everyone from doing “I BLOINGLE” and then defeining Bloingling as teleporting to the finish line?

Desertfrog: Jury

23-11-2024 10:44:23 UTC

Actually, positions wouldn’t technically be information at all (which isn’t necessarily any better…)

Bloingling could be stopped by anyone saying e.g. “no one may move more than 10cm per Move” BUT actually there should be more restriction for when the Check can be done

That said, I won’t be disappointed if this doesn’t pass, and it would probably be better to do something less experimental

Desertfrog: Jury

23-11-2024 10:48:55 UTC

(well I might be mildly disappointed just because I’m curious as to what would happen in practice with these rules)

Josh: he/they

23-11-2024 10:59:14 UTC

I do like most of what’s happening here, just not the private tracking of position.

Banning being locked to Items means that it’s likely that there will be fewer Bans available than Moves, which makes the game punish the leader at best and popularity contest at worst.

Some of that stuff can be amended but I’d vote against on hidden gamestate.

Desertfrog: Jury

23-11-2024 14:08:32 UTC

I’ll just withdraw this against

It’s easier and more fun to turn simple things into something complex than to try to fix something that’s already complex

Desertfrog: Jury

23-11-2024 14:13:57 UTC

I have a new proposal ready and will propose it as soon as the first one is resolved

Kevan: he/him

23-11-2024 14:18:05 UTC

Per my comment on Ready, Set, Go they were both invalid because the game was still in Interregnum. I’ll close them now.