I don’t agree that that’s where we are. I’m agnostic about whether it’s where we should be.

I’ll go further and say that each Drafter might be more Guided in their approach to their hypothetical dynasty, thus extra rules are needed to show the direction in which that Drafter would nudge their dynasty if it were to be chosen.

If a Drafter wants to leave it open, so be it, but often the first two Proposals aren’t enough to indicate the hypothetical Emperor’s desire to shape it.

That said, I’d support simply adding the following text after “the early stages of that dynasty”

, and contains a description of how much and in what areas that Drafter would try to control the direction of that hypothetical dynasty if they were the Emperor of it.

That should satisfy the design space issues.

per JonathanDark, and also because, thinking about it, this sort of thing could reasonably be expressed as a Mandate.

I’m not seeing much difference between “Drafter pitches a Draft, hopes people like it” and “Emperor posts an Ascension, hopes people join the dynasty” - especially when one becomes the other. If the winner here makes some strong directional pledge in their Draft, wouldn’t they also want to mention that in their actual Ascension?

Maybe, but a concrete statement to that effect outside of the AA would make it more clear. Sometimes the AA is literally only the functional items listed in the rules. Not everyone puts commentary in their AA (though most people do).

I feel like we’d be short-changing the actual players of the next dynasty (who will likely differ slightly from the current players of this dynasty) if there were secret Draft pledges like “although this starts as a city builder I want to make the second act about a street, and the third act a single building” and the Emperor didn’t mention this at all in their Ascension Address or opening proposals. If they’re writing that down in a Draft, why not repeat it in the actual AA?

per jd

@Kevan @JD I actually disagree with both of you: I’m not sure I think that the Emperor gets to have a particularly deified opinion about what happens in the second act, or even past their second proposal. I like that some of the Drafts have given some thought to the design space that their ideas entail but any Emperor going into a dynasty with a strong conception of what its act 2 is going to look like is liable to be disappointed, and may in any case want to remind themselves of why we play Nomic in the first place.

In any case, the Drafts don’t go away when the dynasty ends: future players will be able to plunder them for ideas if they wish, and vote against the Emperor when they don’t.

I think I’m shifting to a purely , with an encouragement to players to put Imperial Style notes into their drafts.

As we now have a mandate encouraging the same thing.

[Josh] Oh, I agree with you on that not being healthy Nomic. If someone posted a Draft that included strong, vague directional views I’d rank it down in the same way I wouldn’t join a dynasty where an Emperor said that in their Ascension Address. I felt uneasy that a review was asking me to “flesh out” some skill-demonstrating example Rooms in my Draft, when that’s something I’d rather the dynasty’s players got to do, if it ran - dynasties work well when they start with almost nothing and everyone gets a say in building them.

We’ve now enacted a Mandate to include a “description of how an Emperor leading the proposed Dynasty is suggested to act” in all Drafts, which is essentially an Imperial Style. I think we’re almost at “write a regular Ascension Address and two proposals”, and would be happy to lose the idea that Drafters should also include some extra, presumably-binding thoughts that wouldn’t normally go into an Ascension Address.

I’ll let this fall, I’m not going to repropose it asking players how they would “try to control the direction of that hypothetical dynasty”.