Monday, March 21, 2022

Thoughts of a hundred parallel dynasties

Post-dynastic discussion thread

Comments

Josh: Observer he/they

21-03-2022 08:46:18 UTC

So this dynasty didn’t work at all, and that’s my fault.

The labour overhead of learning about parallel dynasties was way too much, and a bunch of mechanics got proposed that never tied together into a coherent game experience.

I’m very pleased that MadisonSilver and SingularByte were both working scam angles.

The thing I’m taking away from this for next time is that it’s okay to vote down or even veto mechanics that add ruleset bloat for no real purpose.

Kevan: he/him

21-03-2022 16:53:30 UTC

As a player who had to leave this one early, this did feel like a dynasty for big text injection scams, where everything else was just going to be a restriction on how quickly you could get to one. (And it may even be that this creates ruleset bloat: if someone has a specific scam in mind, then a new mechanic which doesn’t immediately get in the way of it will provide useful cover, so they might as well vote it through - or even propose it.)

I had my eye on various gaps in the gamestate which were exempt from being flavour text - I was half-planning something where I’d define a parallel dynasty’s player term as “Currents”, and argue that this could plausibly be referred to as “the current dynasty”, etc, but I wasn’t making much headway and brought out the Toestub proposal to close it off before anyone else could use it.

I liked the theme a lot, the glimpses of parallel histories were a good use of the GPT. Worthy successor to Dynasty 100.

Brendan: he/him

21-03-2022 17:06:33 UTC

I for one am incredibly proud of my mentorship.

TyGuy6:

21-03-2022 17:13:09 UTC

Been doing other things more, lately, and found the early mechanics a bit too awkward to catch my interest. I didn’t idle, but I wasn’t very involved. (Did anyone feel like my not voting held up proposals? I could idle myself next time that occurs.)

Josh: Observer he/they

21-03-2022 17:22:35 UTC

@TyGuy6 My opinion on this is extremely not universal but I tend to think that if you’re not playing to win then you should probably be idle

Thunder: he/him

21-03-2022 21:50:17 UTC

I would like to unidle before the next dynasty.

Josh: Observer he/they

21-03-2022 22:41:48 UTC

Welcome back, Thunder; you are unidle. Quorum remains 6.

Bucky:

22-03-2022 05:15:53 UTC

Now that the dynasty’s over, what was the vector for injecting the scam text?

SingularByte: he/him

22-03-2022 06:16:08 UTC

MadisonSilver’s vector was essentially to use Fiddler to intercept the requests to the javascript which generates the text on the Paralleliser and replace it with custom javascript code which makes custom text.

My own vector was just going to be to abuse the fact that the rules didn’t define generating text as an action with any restrictions so I could just generate pure text of “SingularByte wins” in my own time. The rules also didn’t check how pure text got into the gamestate so I was just going to use it as the title for a dynastic history page or maybe as my disguise text.