BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

This scam is going to hinge a lot on the interpretation of “when” – the rule doesn’t prevent your position changing as an Idle Snail, so the scam could work if the move to the Bucket happens after the unidling, but necessarily fails if the move happens during the unidling, and the ruleset doesn’t clearly support one view over the other IMO.

The second part is also controversial, especially because the ruleset contains rules explicitly setting the Plays count to 0 (which implies that that’s something that can be done and is not automatic).

Incidentally, the “increase the plays by 1” CFJ was a CFJ, and thus can’t be overridden by dynastic rules. Assuming that your interpretation (that the Plays definition is a definition, rather than a variable, which can’t logically be changed) is correct, it’s unclear what that means for the CFJ; most likely it would have to be interpreted as “change the history of the gamestate as though every Snail had made a Play”. But I’m not sure your interpretation is correct.

Ah, I’ve figured it out:

- Rule “Idle Snails”: “When a Snail is unidled, if they went Idle in the same Dynasty, their personal gamestate retains the last legally endowed values it had, if they are still valid.”
- Rule “Position”: “When a Snail unidles it is moved to the Bucket. “

These clearly have the same trigger as each other and therefore happen simultaneously. They also contradict each other, so the dynastic rule wins by Prioritisation part 2 – you are unidled in the Bucket rather than retaining the same position (and this is not a change in position, so the “position cannot be changed” never triggers – rather, the core rule is unable to restore your position upon the unidling).

Idle Snails aren’t Snails, so I don’t think the move can happen before I unidle, otherwise I wouldn’t be a Snail for “when a Snail unidles it is moved to the Bucket”!

I agree the second part is a little more controversial. I don’t think that any instruction which explicitly sets plays does anything. At the very least Clucky, who is also now idle, would agree with me per his comment on the proposal where I introduced the tracking. Everyone’s plays happen to become 0 when a Race becomes Ongoing anyway under this interpretation as well, so it doesn’t actually change anything and the clause is entirely redundant.

Oh sorry, I didn’t see your comment. I really need to get in the habit of refreshing the page before commenting, this comment was in response to your first.

Your point about the CfJ makes sense though, so I do concede that the CfJ probably just considered every Snail to have made one more play in the race and is still legal.

Re “When a Snail is unidled, if they went Idle in the same Dynasty, their personal gamestate retains the last legally endowed values it had, if they are still valid.” - I would think that this clause doesn’t set my position at all, it just causes it to retain the previously set position. I don’t see any contradiction between the two phrases you put out; the first causes my Position to remain as it was immediately before I unidled and the second is the only one to explicitly set it (it would, anyway, if I wasn’t after the Finish Line).

No, it sets your Position. Idle Snails don’t have a Position.

I also can’t see any rules-based reason why it would set your position before the move to the bucket. It would work just as well to apply it afterwards (where the last legally endowed value would be the Bucket), and it triggers on the same event as the move to the Bucket (an Idle Snail Unidling); in fact, it works better, because that means you don’t get a contradiction between rules. Even if you consider both interpretations reasonable, we have to pick the one in which the dynastic rule wins.

I meant “before I idled”, not “before I unidled”. My bad there, I agree with you that Idle Snails don’t have a position. I’d still hold that my position is not set by Idle Snails, but kept the same as the value it held before I idled. That’s what “retain” means after all, “to keep the same”.

The rule doesn’t say it retains the value from before you idled, though. It says it retains the last legally set value, which could be the value (the Bucket) set by dynastic rule as a consequence of unidling.

Right, but if you agree that my position is not set by Idle Snails then you must also agree that there is no contradiction between the two clauses you set out (as the contradiction would arise from my position being set to two different values at once). You yourself say that the setting and the retainment happen simultaneously. Thus my position is clearly retained as the one before I idled, since for the last legally endowed value to be the Bucket I would need to be moved to the Bucket before my position is retained (“retained” meaning “considered to be kept the same as”, not “set”).

It can’t be “kept the same as” because it didn’t exist while you were idle. Your argument is basically “when a Snail unidles, their Position is retroactively considered to have been a gamestate variable all along”. That may be how people commonly think about the situation (e.g. there is a core rule which allows proposals to apply to Idle Snails named in them if they idled while the proposal was pending, which seems to have been written based on that viewpoint), but I don’t think the viewpoint is actually supported by the rules (meaning that the core rule in question is broken, at least under the current ruleset).

Thinking through this some more…

The ruleset is placing four requirements on the admin that unidles you:

1. they must set you to unidle;
2. they must allow your Position to retain the last legally endowed value it had, if it is still valid;
3. they must set your Position to the Bucket;
4. they must not change your Position to the Bucket if it is past the Finish Line.

Your argument is that the admin must perform 1, then 2, then cannot perform 3 because of 4. I just realised that doing that would make the unidling action as a whole illegal (because the admin would have failed to perform step 2, which is part of the unidling action; restriction 3 says that step 2 cannot be performed, but doesn’t say that step 2 can be ignored if it part of a larger action).

My argument is that the admin may legally peform the unidling action by performing 1, 3, then 2, with 4 not mattering. After writing it out, I’m not totally sure that that’s a legal order either, because arguably 2 isn’t something that can actively be done at a specific time.

As such, it’s possible that you can’t legally be unidled in the current gamestate. (There doesn’t seem to be a rule saying “if the unidling procedure can’t be done in full, do as much as possible” – instead, we have a rule defining requirements for an unidle to be legal, and the “obvious” process for doing so doesn’t appear to meet them.)

Anyway, I still don’t understand why, if 2 and 3 are in conflict because of 4, 2 is performed and 3 is ignored – 3 is a dynastic rule and 2 is a core rule, so 3 should take precedence if there is a conflict.

Re “can’t be kept the same as” - I’d disagree with you there. The dictionary definition I see for retain (and the only applicable one out of the 4 I see) is “continue to have (something); keep possession of”. I believe that “retains the last legally endowed value” thus means “continues to have the last legally endowed value” from the moment I went idle, even retroactively.

For this reason, I also don’t think the core rule you mention is broken. When the Snail is considered Unidle, their gamestate is immediately and retroactively retained, and hence can be modified by proposal.

As for your list of four requirements, you mention earlier on that 2 and 3 need to happen simultaneously, citing that they are both triggered by “when a Snail unidles”. I agree with this and hence think the admin can’t perform 3, then 2. Instead I think the admin must perform 2 and 3 at once, they are not in conflict at all, and 2 retains my position (retroactively per the above) rendering them unable to perform 3 because of 4.

You do make a good point about the unidling as a whole being illegal because it can’t be carried out in full though. I agree with you there and think that ruins my scam. Maybe I should post a CfJ unidling me and setting Position and Plays to 0 as a temporary bandaid?

I think this is going to require a CFJ one way or another, so we may as well post it and see what people think. (As established earlier in the dynasty, though, you can’t post CFJs while idle; so I’ll make it for you.)