BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

How is the line going to track Hot/Cold status?

I don’t know, but it’s not that different to the situation we’re in now, where the ruleset says that we have “a list” of Machines and that each of those Machines “has a publicly tracked Heat status”.

I took the liberty of changing the Factory Layout’s one-line-per-machine Owner/Status table into a one-line-per-Worker table to better fit the existing requirement that “Workers have a list of Machines”, but perhaps I’m reading the idea of a list differently.

I don’t like the way that this basically enshrines into the ruleset the idea that “bigger box = better” – a Spin machine is now only useful if it rolls a 6 or higher, because otherwise you could have used Press instead. So this means that we can’t really create machines that give advantages for rolling low numbers, and thus makes the dynasty more luck-based.

Maybe Press machines should always roll a 5?

I’d assumed this would set up high numbers being powerful (they’re already better in the Clink) but unpredictable, while low numbers were weaker but easier to reliably produce. That seems a clearer path to explore than, if Presses were locked at 5, both high and low extremes being unpredictable and powerful, while 5s alone were weaker but reliable.

i like this proposal!

I agree with you about the likely effects of this proposal. However, if you set up a trade-off between “consistent strategy” and “strategy with random effects” in a nomic, then almost all the time, the best way to win is to use the random-effects strategy and get lucky. That isn’t automatically a bad thing, but I was hoping for a less luck-based play style.

Oh, and one other issue: this mandates the cost to buy a Machine is the same as the cost to activate that Machine, which seems like an odd restriction to have. I guess we can change that later if necessary, though (and it’s kind-of fun that you can use your low-numbered boxes to buy Clink machines).

why not just cut out the middle step and give everyone a Spin?

wait nvm

wait what about new joiners?  don’t they have to deal with not getting a free energy?

I threw the +1 Energy in so that this didn’t become a timing issue where players were under pressure to generate a box before the proposal enacted and made it more expensive.

I don’t think we need to maintain “generate two random boxes upon joining” as an inalienable right forevermore.

You could fix things for new joiners by making the default for Machine lists “Clink, Spin”, but it probably isn’t important ­– registering slightly earlier would have a similar effect in practice.