Tuesday, February 04, 2025

Proposal: One Second-To-Last Score

Add a new rule entitled “The Chop {I}” as follows:

A Chop is a Heist Action that is a Weekly Action and a Daily Communal Action and which can be performed by a Participant if and only if they have the Retired Characteristic. A Chop Heist Action cannot be performed via the use of Identity Theft or the Double Agent role.

When making the Heist Action DICE48 roll for a Chop, the Participant making that roll must name in the roll comment a number of distinct Participants in alphabetical order, all of whom must have at least one Triumph. The Payout Point for a Chop is equal to the sum of the Triumphs of all Participants named in its Heist Action roll, unless only one Participant is named; in that case the Payout Point for the Chop is equal to that Participant’s Triumphs multiplied by 1.5, rounded down.

If the result of a Chop Heist Action roll is greater than the Payout Point for that Chop, then that Chop Heist Action fails. If the Payout Point for a Chop is greater than the “previous X hours” for the Participant attempting it, as defined in the rule “Heists {I}”, then that Chop Heist Action fails.

If the Chop Heist Action succeeds, and if multiple Participants were named in its roll comment, the result of its roll also selects one of that Chop’s named Participants as its Winner when making that roll. The selection of said Winner is as follows:

  1. In alphabetical order by name, each Participant named in the Chop is assigned a range of contiguous integers for that Chop from X to Y, inclusive.
  2. For the alphabetically first named Participant in a Chop, their X is 1; for each subsequent named Participant in that Chop, that Participant’s X is equal to the the Y of the previously named Participant in that Chop, plus one.
  3. For each named Participant in a Chop, their Y is equal to that Participant’s number of Triumphs, plus their X, minus one.
  4. If the result of the Chop Heist Action roll falls within the range of one of the Participants named in that Chop, then that Participant is that Chop’s Winner.

(In other words, in a Chop between hypothetical Participants who in alphabetical order have 2 Triumphs, 3 Triumphs, and 1 Triumph respectively: a Chop Heist Action roll result between 1 and 2 would select the first Participant in that Chop as its Winner; a result between 3 and 5 would select the second Participant in that Chop as its Winner; and a result of 6 would select the third Participant in that Chop as its Winner. Any other result would mean that the Chop Heist Action failed.)

If only one Participant is named in a Chop Heist Action’s roll comment, and that Heist Action succeeds, that named Participant is its Winner.

The Winner of a successful Chop Action, as defined exclusively in this rule, has achieved victory in the current dynasty.

Reproposal of my last bounty attempt with ais’s concerns about scaling addressed and habanero’s 0-Triumph bug patched.

Comments

ais523: Mastermind

04-02-2025 17:58:21 UTC

This needs to restrict the victories to only Chops that are made using the Chop action defined in that rule, not potential competing Chop actions that might be defined in other rules (currently it doesn’t exclude the possibility of multiple sorts of Chop being defined).

I think this is interesting now – once you retire you can gradually attempt to win via attempting a dice roll every week, and once two players retire they can (if they wish) cooperate to try twice as often.

However, there is a scam buried in this (which I’m really curious about whether it was intentional or not) – the dice roll for the chop (success and who wins) should be different from the dice roll for the heist action (randomized timer). If they are the same roll, then if the action is performed early, it will succeed only if the participant who would be selected comes early in alphabetical order. That means that if there are two Participants cooperating to retire, it’d artificially boost the chance that the selected Participant has a name that comes alphabetically early (like, say, “Brendan”). Making it two separate rolls avoids that issue.

Brendan: he/him

04-02-2025 18:24:51 UTC

I do love a good alphabetical-order scam, but I couldn’t even get away with that in Trapdoorspyder I. Patched both.

ais523: Mastermind

04-02-2025 18:28:10 UTC

I think you forgot to specify to actually make the chop roll – the rule refers to it now but doesn’t seem to give permission to make it. (Perhaps it should be a different size from DICE48, to make clear which roll is which.)

JonathanDark: he/him

04-02-2025 18:36:46 UTC

As long as the Chop Roll is identified by name when mentioning DICE48, it should be easy to distinguish from the Heist Action DICE48 roll.

JonathanDark: he/him

04-02-2025 18:42:00 UTC

Is it intentional that the Participants named in the Chop Heist Action are not required to be Retired? If a non-Retired Participant is selected and achieves victory, they are still bound by:

A Participant may only declare Victory, when otherwise permitted, if they have the Retired Characteristic $$$$$.

This could allow a second Retired Participant to perform a Chop Heist Action, then a Chop Roll, and produce a second, different Participant who achieves victory. Among the Participants who achieved victory, the first to either Heist away the $$$$$ or successfully become Retired would be able to legally declare victory and have it upheld, negating the other Participants’ victories.

Again, if this is all intentional, that’s fine. I just wanted to highlight the possible scenario.

Brendan: he/him

04-02-2025 19:33:09 UTC

I chose to retain the single chop roll because I’m trying to keep this proposal from diverging too far from the original—the more it changes, the more readers have to scan it for scams. I addressed the “early roll” scam ais mentioned by adding the “previous X hours” clause.

And yes, JD, that option was part of the original and this version as well. The idea is that you can push your luck by spreading out the chances of achieving victory even if you’re not eligible yourself yet, but of course then you also risk handing it to someone else.

You must be registered and logged in to post comments.