Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Proposal: My Soul for a Dividend

Timed out 4 votes to 7. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 20 Dec 2012 10:35:27 UTC

Create a new rule “Enlightenment”, reading:

As a weekly action, the leader of a Cult may attempt an Enlightenment by Command which:
* Begins with the text “My brood is most well!”; and
* Names a cult they lead and the number of Believers that belong to it.

Upon processing such Command, the Auspex should deem it successful if:
* There is a cult with fewer members than the sender’s cult; and
* The sender’s cult contains less Believers than Quorum.
Otherwise, the Auspex may deem the Enlightenment unsuccessful.

If the Auspex deems an Enlightenment successful, he should:
* Reply to the Enlightenment with a confirmation of its success; and
* Increase the Blessings of its sender by twice the number of members in their cult.

When the Auspex deems an Enlightenment unsuccessful, he should make a blog post exposing the Enlightenment which:
* Names the sender, but not the name or size of their cult; and
* Chastises the sender for their hubris.

Create a new rule “Sacrifice”, reading:

At any time, any Believer may transfer any number of Blessings less than or equal to the number of Blessings they possess to any other Believer.

Create a new rule “Repentance”, reading:

At any time, any Believer may cease to be a member of any cult by making a post to the Blog beginning with the text “I repent”

Here are the problems I hope to address here:
* There is currently no incentive to being in a cult.
* Most methods would encourage either giant or tiny cults.
* Our ruleset is already expanding, and we need a dynamic and fluid system that involves a small number of concepts and mechanics.

This proposal aims to:
* Encourage medium size cults.
* Create a market between leaders and believers modeled on dividend stock market investing.
* Continue the emphasis on trust, deception, secrecy, and betrayal.

I understand this concept may be suspicious to many, who believe that it will only benefit a cult’s leader. Allow me to show why this is not true.

The leader will not be able to keep all the blessings he gets. They will likely only be able to keep a few. A leader will obligated by his members to sacrifice most of these blessings to them. If a leader becomes rich and does not pay their members, the members now have to options of leaving and joining or creating another cult. Creating your own tiny cult won’t work, because you cannot earn blessings if your cult is the smallest.

You might ask, “why not just have the mechanism pay the members directly?” In this case, doing so would expose the members of a cult. The leader will have to sacrifice blessings in a strategic way, sacrifing them gradually, and perhaps sacrificing some to unaffiliated members to avoid exposure. To stay competitive, the leader might even sacrifice blessings earned through say, separate inquisitions they participated in.

Both sides will have to trust each other in an imperfect market. Both sides will betray each other. Let the games begin.

Of course, vote how you like; but if you vote against, please tell me why, and keep an open mind until your sure you’re opposed. Thanks for hearing me out!

Comments

Josh: he/they

18-12-2012 18:35:15 UTC

against

scshunt:

18-12-2012 18:42:39 UTC

for

Argon14:

18-12-2012 18:43:34 UTC

for This will help with cult control, and we can add props later that a member has to pay a price to leave.

Kevan: he/him

18-12-2012 18:45:02 UTC

Isn’t this just free points for any Cult with at least two people, if the main condition is “another Cult must exist with only one person”?

The Repentance mechanic is also problematic, as it allows a Believer to remove themselves from a Cult without necessarily telling the Auspex the name of that Cult.

(And trivially, making one-sentence rules seems untidy, particularly when “Blessings” is already languishing as a one-sentence rule.)

Sphinx:

18-12-2012 18:45:15 UTC

for

Purplebeard:

18-12-2012 18:45:39 UTC

against

Sphinx:

18-12-2012 18:53:12 UTC

An idea to fix the free-points problem might be to include that the cult needs to be the only cult with that amount of believer.

Sphinx:

18-12-2012 18:54:19 UTC

Also we could make sacrifice a sub-rule to Blessings / an addition to Blessings

southpointingchariot:

18-12-2012 18:56:03 UTC

@Kevan, yes, its a free weekly income. I suppose that could be problematic considering people can be in multiple cults.

As to repentance, I tried to fix that, but people commented to quickly. I see I have been outmaneuvered.

I’m open to ideas about reorganization of placement.

quirck: he/him

18-12-2012 19:20:39 UTC

against Why not separate proposals…

Clucky: he/him

18-12-2012 19:59:21 UTC

Its probably better to phrase it as “As a weekly action, a cult’s leader may”

I’d argue the first the first lets each cult leader perform the action once a week, but if the leader changes the same cult could perform the action again and this action seems better suited for “each cult can do this once”

Also I dislike the way that this encourages medium sized cults. Quorum can easily fluctuate, and so you could find your cult too big through no fault of your own.

Furthermore, there should be room for big cults, small cults and medium sized cults. But this loses appeal if small cults exist as anyone with a medium sized cult can probably assume the “There is a cult with fewer members than the sender’s cult” will hold, so it just becomes a matter of keeping your members as close to quorum as possible and including “Members may not be members of any cult I lead” in the list of secret requirements so you can easily kick people out.  against

Igthorn:

18-12-2012 20:39:41 UTC

imperial

Cpt_Koen:

18-12-2012 21:38:35 UTC

>>At any time, any Believer may cease to be a member of any cult by making a post to the Blog beginning with the text “I repent”
Does that mean you leave all Cults you belong to, or just one but nobody (not even the Auspex) knows which?

Kevan: he/him

18-12-2012 21:58:07 UTC

against Because it’s just a simple, ongoing payout once you’ve recruited a single follower, and that makes it a reason to avoid joining anyone else’s Cult.

Cpt_Koen:

18-12-2012 22:19:32 UTC

BTW, a point I’d like to clear in general: when an action can be done “at any time”, is it possible to perform two or more of those actions at the same time?

For instance in the case of a transfer, you can only transfer the amount of cash you currently have, but if you could perform two transfers simultaneously, couldn’t you transfer twice your total amount of cash?

RaichuKFM: she/her

18-12-2012 23:40:53 UTC

against Dislike the mechanic.