Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Proposal: Moving the target further away

Popular at 6-0. Enacted by Brendan.

Adminned at 29 Jan 2025 14:19:14 UTC

In “Teams and Targets {I}”, change:

If a Mastermind ever does not have a Target, or if their Target is the same as any other Mastermind, any Participant may set that Mastermind’s Target to a random EFF Word, specifying which Mastermind it is when making that random selection, and discarding the result if the EFF Word from that random selection appears anywhere in the ruleset at the time that selection was made.

to

Each Mastermind can perform the following Atomic Action while the other Mastermind does not have a Target: randomly choose three EFF Words (rerolling any choices that appeared anywhere in the ruleset at the time the choice was made), then set the other Mastermind’s Target to one of those EFF Words. Masterminds are encouraged to perform this action at their first reasonable opportunity after it becomes possible, and should not unreasonably delay performing it.

The average EFF Word seems to be slightly too easy to get into the ruleset. So this is a way to bias Target selection away from the average.

Comments

Josh: Mastermind he/they

28-01-2025 15:53:07 UTC

I think there’s an instruction missing in the middle of this.

ais523: Mastermind

28-01-2025 16:05:19 UTC

Indeed – I’ve added the missing word. I’ll just pretend I was using the phrasing used for safety-critical communication in aviation (which omits “to” and “for” from sentences whenever the meaning of the sentence can be guessed without them, lest they be mistaken for the digits “two” and “four”).

JonathanDark: he/him

28-01-2025 16:06:24 UTC

Don’t forget that “It Can’t Be That Easy” just enacted and changed the ending of the sentence you’re trying to replace. Please try to keep the intention of not selecting an EFF Word that is already in the ruleset, in case by pure unluck a Mastermind randomly selects 3 EFF Words that are all already in the ruleset.

ais523: Mastermind

28-01-2025 16:09:45 UTC

Fixed, I think – this rerolls any words that are in the ruleset already, meaning that there are always three positive-difficulty words to choose from.

JonathanDark: he/him

28-01-2025 23:10:08 UTC

for

Brendan: he/him

28-01-2025 23:28:32 UTC

imperial I’m not sure why the restriction to only Masterminds rolling each other’s words.

ais523: Mastermind

29-01-2025 00:01:07 UTC

@Brendan: The point is to pick a difficult word, so you need the person rolling to have an incentive to pick a difficult word rather than an easy one. The only person with such an incentive is the other Mastermind, as they’re guaranteed to be on opposite teams – other participants could pick an easy word in the hope of ending up on the same team.

SingularByte: he/him

29-01-2025 06:47:52 UTC

for

Josh: Mastermind he/they

29-01-2025 08:38:23 UTC

for

Habanero:

29-01-2025 14:12:49 UTC

for