Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Proposal: The Zilla in Manilla

At 1-4, has fewer than a quorum of players not voting AGAINST. Failed by Brendan.

Adminned at 11 Jun 2015 18:23:57 UTC

If Proposal: Top of the Mothras failed or did nothing, this proposal does nothing.

Add a new rule tot he ruleset, entitled The Lab:

All Kaiju may possess any number of Secret Abilities. These are tracked privately by both each Kaiju individually and the Attendant.

At any time, provided that they are not currently participating in another Lab Challenge, a Kaiju may expend one Lab Token to make a Lab Challenge post.

Optionally, a Kaiju posting a Lab Challenge may name one other eligible Kaiju to participate in the Challenge. A Kaiju must have at least 1 Lab Token to be eligible to included in a challenge, and when a Kaiju posts a Lab Challenge they must reduce the Lab Tokens of any included Kaiju by 1. The named Kaiju then has 24 hours to indicate that they accept their inclusion in the Challenge. If they do not then that Lab Challenge ends immediately and no other actions included in this rule are taken for that Lab Challenge.

Kaiju participating in a Lab Challenge should make a response to the Lab Challenge post detailing what Special Abilities they will be aiming to receive. This response should include the following:

  • The name of the proposed new Secret Ability;
  • The number of times it can be used before it is Expended;
  • Who can be targeted by its use;
  • How frequently it can be used;
  • What effect it will have when it is used;
  • What cost its use will have.

Once all Kaiju have made such a response, the Attendant should evaluate the Lab Challenge as follows:

  • Each proposed Secret Abilities should be given a grade out of five, to represent how powerful that Secret Ability is and thus how hard it is to spontaneously develop through Nuclear Genetic Modification. These scores should be announced. If there is more than one Kaiju participating in the Lab Challenge then the grades of all Secret Abilities are increased by 1. The Attendant may give a Special Ability a grade of * if they deem its impact on the game to be too great to allow; any Special Ability with a grade of * may not be learned. The grades given to Secret Abilities should be consider past and anticipated future Secret Ability grades, but are not required to be absolutely consistent and the Attendant’s decision is final.
  • The Attendant should then announce how they will evaluate the success or failure of the genetic alteration process. The Attendant may chose any method of determining this that they chose, provided that the method is principally random. This method may, but is not required to, take into account differences in difficulty grade between competing Kaiju. The method may change from one Lab Challenge to the next.
  • The Attendant should then resolve the success or failure of the Lab Challenge as detailed in their own post and announce the outcome.

This deliberately omits anything about using powers so that bugs can be dealt with before anything gets turned on.

This proposal is a homage to the second dynasty of Kevan, which I realised with some horror was nearly twelve years ago.

Comments

Kevan: he/him

10-06-2015 20:41:22 UTC

The token gauntlet is interesting, but this all gets a bit too subjective and undefined at the end. Does “success [of] the genetic alteration process” just mean that you get the ability you were “aiming to receive”? Can you receive an ability even if it “may not be learned”?

imperial to keep things moving, but “Attendant grades your work subjectively and then unpredictably decides whether it worked” is a too gamesmastery for me.

Sylphrena:

10-06-2015 21:36:26 UTC

against Too subjective.

Darknight: he/him

10-06-2015 21:58:02 UTC

imperial

Josh: Observer he/they

10-06-2015 22:30:16 UTC

On the subject of subjectivity - it’s a holdover from the original version of this mechanic. It was the core mechanic in the first dynasty that I played, and is also still one of my favourites - it worked really well at that time.

There are definitely bugs though, so I accept that this would need healthy patching if it were to be the direction the dynasty went in.

Sylphrena:

10-06-2015 22:48:02 UTC

After a reread of the rule, I think that a responsible Attendant could make this mechanic very fun. My vote stands for now, but it is subject to change depending on what Brendan says.

Kevan: he/him

11-06-2015 08:36:28 UTC

[Josh] Huh, I hadn’t realised the old Moreau combat mechanic was so similar. That seems hugely scammable in retrospect, once players were allowed to moderate each others’ fights and be as biased as they liked in the resolution system (“I give my friend the stronger creature the advantage of ‘always wins’”). A more innocent time.

Brendan: he/him

11-06-2015 16:58:15 UTC

I do like very much the idea of players creating abilities competitively, and of these criteria for defining an ability. I’d prefer to see their eligibility defined by all players through standard proposal resolution rather than leaving it up to me to decide arbitrarily, though. I suspect that sort of resolution is more robust than it was twelve years ago.  against