BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

So Brendan was the traitor, right? I took his initial Traitor ability proposal as maybe just an innocent Battlestar-style take on a mechanic he hadn’t encountered at BlogNomic before, but the second ability (which was in addition rather than instead of the first, in a way that looked accidental but was never fixed) seemed very deliberate. And he voted down both attempts to remove the powers, making easy DEFs under the cover of TyGuy6’s AGAINSTs.

Whatever that was about, it backfired by making me feel that I could trust Pokes enough not to betray me over a coin flip (and I assume vice versa). Pokes and I were at a stalemate where both of us could gain 2 SP per day from plants in the Clearing, and could probably continue that even if someone uprooted them. The longer that went on, the closer a rescue roll between us would approach 50/50. I couldn’t tell what Brendan and Thunder were planning by hunting for Mac instead of eating plants, but in case it was something that would bring them victory, I suggested to Pokes that we quickly end things - a coin flip being very slightly better for me than a 30/35 rescue roll against Pokes, and certainly better for me than someone else’s surprise combo DoV involving Mac.

(The Gordian Noose proposal was partly a decoy to make me appear impatient to end the dynasty without help, when I knew Pokes and I already had the means to end it at any time.)

Oh, looking at it I suppose Brendan and Thunder had no way to get onto the Island without asking me or Pokes to bring them ashore, so they didn’t have many options for their date actions. (I hadn’t actually noticed that Brendan was missing from the Island, but he disappeared when the Jungle was revealed to be a hallucination.)

My initial traitor ability proposal was before I was named Traitor—I suspect that either someone else was chosen and then idled out, or that TyGuy6 only chose after it seemed there was a group interest in a traitor mechanic. Regardless, I never got to make use of any of the relevant abilities, nor could I successfully propose anything more interesting—obviously, it’s impossible to do so without arousing suspicion unless there’s a Zahndwolf-style puppet.

Thunder and I had no plan, I’m afraid. After we pulled off the initial triple-hunt food-sharing thing, I didn’t take the initiative to coordinate further. I had nothing valuable to offer mechanically once hunger ceased to exist, and I couldn’t make a believable run for SP/coin-flip once I was significantly far behind. The repeated Illusion repeals and inability to make the traitor setup into anything interesting took the wind out of my sails. As it were.

Well-played, Kevan/pokes! I can confirm Brendan as traitor, of course. It was another intentionally late assignment, and Brendan soon after submitted https://blognomic.com/archive/i_dont_wanna_waaaste_my_time to maybe throw people off track. His next Proposal included some comments promising some concessions to the traitor.

It was interesting to watch, though I was of course wishing I could see the teams/conspiracies better all game.

From how this went it seems like the Traitor mechanism is probably best left uninteresting: I think it’s naturally tempting for other players to propose to dismantle any additional Traitor abilities once they’ve accepted that they themselves aren’t the Traitor (and although a good bluff, the “don’t wanna waste my time” proposal helped us all realise that we weren’t). In most cases the Traitor would even have to nod along with such a dismantling proposal, so as not to blow their cover.

It’s not something that I’d want to do often but I really liked hallucination repeals. It’s unfortunate that the archived ruleset won’t have all the hallucinations. I didn’t fully appreciate until around the time I strategically idled how powerful they made HSR, and thought the chance of getting punished for idling was worth the upside of potentially having 2 less than everyone else. As it turns out, strategic idling is both noticeable and unpopular!

What’s up the sleeve of the Mac searchers? What would have happened when Mac was found?

I didn’t have much of a plan for Mac, but on the off chance I’d found him, there’s a clause in the rule that allows one to move to his cave only if he’s found; I would have gambled on a rules interpretation of “since I have found him, I can move there, because of rule-specificity precedence,” allowing me to get back on the damn island from no-location purgatory.

I didn’t even notice when two people got booted from a repealed location. The Jungle, was it? Kevan just pulled them onto the beach at the end and I was like, “Hey guys, you’re all together now!” lol.

I threw some comments and such on the wiki page, and created a copy of ruleset 170. Would be nice to have a few more posts of interest added, perhaps by someone with alt-tab capabilities?
https://wiki.blognomic.com/index.php?title=The_First_Dynasty_of_TyGuy6

I’ve literally played this entire dynasty on a smart phone phone, lol.

With three players in the sea and only two on land, a simple “move everyone from the sea to the beach” proposal would surely have passed.

Thanks for all the posts of interest someone added!