BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

I’m open to any changes people might want to make to this while the edit window is still open.

One change: Giant Salt Shaker should only be useable when you have a Position greater than 10cm, to avoid someone being able to use it at the Start of the Race after the 24 hour Discaed timer. You should have to do some work to match another Snail’s Position, in my opinion.

On the other hand, there are similar Items which can already be used this way, so maybe it’s unfair to restrict just this one. I don’t want to over complicate this by requiring all such Items to change in this way.

I can’t vote for a fame cost reduction while you still have a massive fame stockpile, this makes your advantage greater, not smaller!

Added in a reduction of my Fame to a more reasonable amount. I’d be at 12 Fame right now if it weren’t for the scam (4 in Race 1 + 6 in Race 2 + 2 from the passage of A Boost for All Snails). Willing to reduce my Fame to 10 in exchange for this.

I don’t like the theming of Giant Salt Shaker but I don’t really have any issues with the rest of the proposal. I’ll defer to the group on this one unless I say otherwise near the end of this proposal’s voting period.

Actually: I agree with Josh.

Question to Habenero, Josh, and CyberStella:

How much Fame reduction is fair?

If we’re just going to say “it’s not fair now” with no attempt at a fair counter offer, none of this is going to get anywhere.

I’m not sure that flat reduction is the way to go.

But asking me to counteroffer myself is unreasonable, and not how negotiations work. I’ve thought about the issue and set out what I see as the most direct solution that’s practical in the current milleu; if anyone else has a better solution then I’ll hear it but I don’t consider it my job to design an alternative solution. My pitch is public, I posted it eight hours ago.

I don’t really have any preferences or plans. I still don’t really know what I’m doing. I just think Josh’s comment was well-reasoned.

Well, I think a reduction to 10 like I’ve updated this Proposal to contain is more than fair (per my last comment, I’d be at 12 Fame if none of my scams happened). Really, if enough people agree that my earned advantage from the scams should be eliminated completely instead of tamped down to a reasonable level, there isn’t much I can do. I’m alright with playing things out like that. I do expect others to die by the same sword, though.

An alternative would be that I buy some equipment right now at the high prices before this passes and drops them, if people don’t like a flat Fame reduction. I dunno, it’s probably too late to get any feedback on that with the edit window almost up.

Mm, the reduction to 10 also feels a bit off. I mean, if the argument is “it’s a fair scam, I deserve to be rewarded” then why are we overshooting, when reverting the scams only gets you down to 12? I guess it’s because you really want Fame and its associated bonuses to stay on the books; as the current Fan Favourite your earning potential is much greater than everyone elses in a way that’s supported by being able to buy Equipment to maintain the status quo, so following that thread I should vote against just on Golden Rule principles - this hurts Josh more than it helps Josh so why should Josh support it with his vote?

I guess I think that Habanero does deserve a payout for a good scam, but not a huge one - ultimately it was a scam that wasn’t connected to anything useful and the time, and thus became fool’s gold, and while he did succeed in plugging it in to something useful after the fact it’s still the case that he hasn’t made use of it before someone came and took a hard look. I’d support maybe a small consideration in terms of Medals - maybe a Fame-to-Medal purchase situation at a rate of, say, 10 Fame to one Paper - but nothing that upends the game too drastically. A nudge, not a boom.

I don’t think my advantage after this proposal is quite as large as you make it out to be. All it’d take is one failed Race to set me back to nothing and place someone else as the new Fan Favourite, and Spotting Danger at the right time is a very easy way to effect that. It would be very difficult for me to maintain the status quo as you lay it out. Two players have already died in this race, and more will likely die, especially if the Danger Level hits 6 and the Hawk Flocks start to come out. I’d think being the first to benefit from Fan Favourite status is not all that big an advantage, and it’s likely I die at some point either this Race or the next (Billboards and shell wraps will make the next race very deadly I suspect) and pass it on to someone else. Regardless, I’d still be the Fan Favourite even without the scam, so eliminating Equipment entirely and subsequently making Fame useless is also removing some of the advantage I’ve gained from playing the dynastic game scam-free.

Of course, when people vote for this they’re doing so entirely against their interests and to uphold some far-off ideal of “fairness”. I think opening up Equipment to others and giving them more tools to tear me down via dynastic gameplay while also lowering my Fame so I can’t just replace my Equipment forever is a fair compromise. It’s also more interesting than a straight removal IMO.

To answer your question, I don’t have all that sinister of a motivation for choosing 10 instead of 12; the truth is that I forgot about the passage of A Boost for All Snails when calculating my scam-free Fame and was too lazy to go back and edit the proposal again to 12. Weird, I know. :P

In “Keep a Loose Grip” it was mentioned that there’s an alternative to stripping out Equipment entirely. This Proposal seems to fit the alternative, absent any effort to hammer out any other alternative.

I’ll take the effort over blanket nerfing, as I’d prefer to encourage trade-offs among players than ultimatums, even if it works against my own interests at the time. It’s the environment I’d rather play in.

@Habanero I do agree that the risk of getting squished is a fine counterbalance, but it’s worth remembering that the whole Fan Favourite mechanic is also a part of the artifice constructed to give your Fans lead additional value - and when you’re working odds, risks be damned, you’d still rather be the fan favourite than not, especially if you can goose your Crawls a little bit too make your movement 20% more effective.

The principle of fairness here is best served by ensuring that the rest of the dynasty from this point is played on a level playing field, rather than building in inherent biases that continue to distort outcomes into the future. As I was saying before JD had his awesome moment, I’m happy to negotiate a flat, single effect bonus that acknowledges your scam but doesn’t have ongoing distortative impact; if we can do that then you’d have my vote.

I don’t see the difference between an ongoing impact whose days are numbered and a one time boost! If I were to receive, say, a Silver Medal in exchange for having Equipment removed, then 5 or 6 Races down the line I might have 31 Track Record to your 25 and win earlier than I otherwise would. The one time boost has distorted the outcome very far into the future. There’s little difference between that and me turning a Silver Medal into a Gold one due to my bigger crawls before dying and handing off Fan Favourite to someone else. Once I have died (which will happen eventually with all the targeted items, I’m almost certain), everyone is on a level playing field again. In fact, you’re probably next in line for Fan Favourite, so once that happens you’ll benefit from the exact same machinery that benefits me right now.

My counteroffer here levels the playing field not by eliminating my pre-existing advantage, but by giving me further to fall (making me lose my Equipment on death) and making it easier for others to knock me down (opening up Equipment to others as well and giving them Items to remove mine for some Fame if they can’t afford it). This is way more interesting than a flat boost, and I believe similarly fair.

I simply disagree I’m afraid. I think that as soon as this passes you will spend all of your Fame on Equipment, leaving yourself out of the Fan Favourite firing line, and giving yourself way more options to avoid getting mashed by predators.

Sadly it looks like the Turkeys are voting for Christmas anyway, so I guess we’ll get to see how it plays out over the course of the next month or so.