Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Proposal: Oh, there’s where that Silver Key went

Timed out 4 votes to 3. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 23 Jun 2017 07:36:18 UTC

If “Handy Land” did not pass, this proposal has no effect.

Repeal the rule “Ascendance”.

Enact a new rule, “Artefacts”:-

Each Explorer carries zero or more Artefacts, and this is tracked privately by the Expedition Leader. Whenever an Explorer gains an Artefact, the Expedition Leader should privately inform them of this.

An Explorer may give an Artefact they are carrying to another Explorer in the same Location by privately informing the Expedition Leader of this. An Explorer who is not a Cultist may destroy an Artefact they are carrying by privately informing the Expedition Leader of this; upon doing so, the Explorer stops carrying it.

If a Cultist has a number of Artefacts equal to a quorum of Cultists, and is at the Mountain Camp, and is not at Gunpoint, then that Cultist has achieved victory.

If three Artefacts have been destroyed, then the Explorer to have destroyed the most Artefacts (breaking ties in favour of the Explorer to have destroyed an Artefact most recently) has achieved victory.

Give each Cultist one Artefact (but the Expedition Leader need not inform them of this gain).

A copy-and-paste re-proposal, conditional on Handy Land.

Comments

Madrid:

20-06-2017 22:31:25 UTC

Insta-win for cultists if Quorum or more of them are already in communication but, praise Cthulu. imperial

Madrid:

20-06-2017 22:31:46 UTC

(quorum of their cultist numbers)

Publius Scribonius Scholasticus: he/they

20-06-2017 23:43:16 UTC

for

card:

21-06-2017 06:41:00 UTC

against

Kevan: he/him

21-06-2017 07:56:04 UTC

for

Sphinx:

21-06-2017 08:26:21 UTC

against
“A quorum of cultists” could be as low as one, if there is only a single cultist, leading to an instant victory. In any case it’s too low in my opinion.

Kevan: he/him

21-06-2017 09:15:36 UTC

A lone Cultist would have to be very confident about the absence of any other Cultists. If they get it wrong and nothing happens when they arrive at the Mountain, they’ve given themselves away.

Sphinx:

21-06-2017 10:02:15 UTC

Of course. I mainly wanted to point out that it’s enough if possibly much less than quorum cultists know about each other.

Madrid:

21-06-2017 11:17:17 UTC

CoV because I like Contraband, which requires this to be enacted for

Cpt_Koen:

21-06-2017 14:23:47 UTC

against

Repeal the rule “Ascendance”.

So achieving Victory would become completely individual. This pretty much removes all incentive for an Explorer who is carrying an Artefact to give it to someone else.

Sphinx:

21-06-2017 14:49:52 UTC

Also, in combination with “Contraband” this is an instant win for the first cultist who knows about at least (quorum of cultists - 1) cultists.

Kevan: he/him

21-06-2017 15:29:10 UTC

[Cpt_Koen] I think it increases the current incentive, although not by much. With Ascendance, all the Cultists could do would be to start a metadynasty with a probably meaningless rule about the previous dynasty’s Cultists (even the ones that didn’t do anything) being “Loyal”. Without Ascendance, they could pick a winner and agree amongst themselves that only the collaborating Cultists would be rewarded next dynasty.

It gets more interesting if we have other ways to gain and lose Artefacts. (The hot potatoes of Contraband seemed promising, loophole aside.)

Kevan: he/him

21-06-2017 15:32:06 UTC

[Sphinx] What do you mean by “enough if possibly much less than quorum cultists know about each other”?

Sphinx:

21-06-2017 15:37:46 UTC

[Kevan] I just wanted to point out that the “quorum of cultists” that this rule requires could be much less than quorum. I think it’s too easy to reach the cultist-quorum.

Sphinx:

21-06-2017 15:38:27 UTC

In addition, this makes it easier for the cultists to win, the less cultists there are, which seems counterintuitive.

Kevan: he/him

21-06-2017 16:16:40 UTC

Not sure that last bit’s necessarily true. If there was a group of five communicating Cultists, they’d know that taking between three and five Artefacts to the Mountain would win the game, irrespective of how many other Cultists were out there. If there’s a group of just two Cultists, they won’t know how many Artefacts they need to win - there might be a couple more Cultists out there who they haven’t been able to open a dialogue with (in which case there’s no way for the two-Group to win with the Artefacts they have).

Sphinx:

21-06-2017 16:33:25 UTC

I meant, the less cultists in total there are, the easier it is for them to win, from a general rules perspective, not regarding the current situation.

Kevan: he/him

21-06-2017 16:48:39 UTC

I’m speaking from a general rules perspective there, I have no idea how many Cultists we have. (There was speculation that we had anywhere between 2 and 6, prior to one player idling out and another joining.)

A lone Cultist with perfect information about all players has the edge over five bickering Cultists with that same information, but it’s also much harder for that lone Cultist to gather that information.

Madrid:

21-06-2017 19:03:12 UTC

Given Sphinx’s fears stated here and that other proposal, I think we dont have a lot of cultists.

Purely a conjecture though, but I feel like its so.