Tuesday, December 05, 2023

Proposal: Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears a Crown

Reached quorum 6 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 07 Dec 2023 13:46:49 UTC

In the rule “Transition of Power”, after the text “When the Old King becomes Perished,”, add the following text:

if it has not yet been done this dynasty, any Heir or the Old King may perform the Legitimize atomic action, which is to perform the Appraise atomic action for every Claim. When the Legitimize action is complete,

In the same rule, add a subrule named “Health of the King” containing the following text:

There is a publicly tracked integer named Old King’s Health that defaults to 200 and a publicly tracked number named Old King’s Stress that can range from 5 to 10 inclusive and defaults to 5. If the Old King is Ill, as a Daily Communal Action, any Heir or the Old King should subtract the Old King’s Stress from the Old King’s Health and then set the Old King’s Stress to 5. If the Old King’s Health is 0 or less, the Old King is no longer Ill and becomes Perished.

If the Old King is Ill, any time an Heir gains or loses a Claim through any dynastic action, the Old King’s Stress should be increased by 1 for each Claim gained or lost as a result of completing that dynastic action, setting the Old King’s Stress to 10 if it would be increased beyond 10.

Here’s a bounded range for the dynasty to end, dependent somewhat on player activity through gain/loss of Claims. The worst case scenario is if at least 5 Claims are gained or lost every Day (unlikely), in which case the dynasty will end in 20 days. If no Claims are ever gained or lost (also unlikely), the dynasty will end in 40 days. More likely, Claims will be gained or lost in 1s and 2s with the occassional higher burst, resulting in closer to 30 days left in the dynasty after this would be enacted, but still adjustable through player action.

Thematically, this is the Old King worrying about who the next Heir will be and getting Stressed every time a Claim is gained or lost and the landscape among Heirs changes.

posted by JonathanDark at 05 Dec 2023 13:54:00 UTC Comments (7)

Comments

Clucky: he/him

05-12-2023 19:44:44 UTC

for

Zack: he/him

05-12-2023 20:16:44 UTC

for Is it intentional that it’s there’s technically no requirement to update the Old King’s Stress or Health? It just says it should be updated.

Josh: he/they

05-12-2023 20:32:54 UTC

against per Zack.

I also think that this is a mechanic still searching for game design. It doesn’t really do anything - just a sort of variable timer that enables no further interesting decisions or gameplay. I’d rather have a predetermined cutoff tbh.

JonathanDark: he/him

05-12-2023 21:16:07 UTC

The funny thing is that I originally had “must” and then though, “well, everyone will complain that they can’t complete a dynastic action with a must-do step attached” so I changed it to “should” to allow some flexibility.

I don’t think this should be rejected on that alone, as it’s easy enough to change “should” to “must” and doesn’t have any dynasty-breaking consequences in the gap between such a change.

Regarding the pre-determined cut-off, that’s my next proposal if this one fails. Josh and I both have tried offering something with a little variability, but if that’s not what is really wanted, then a fixed cut-off date it is.

Desertfrog:

06-12-2023 07:45:45 UTC

for

Kevan: he/him

06-12-2023 09:28:14 UTC

Would be wary of fixed end dates, they have a history of making the game feel a bit drab and fatalistic as the deadline approaches.

for

SingularByte: he/him

06-12-2023 18:55:20 UTC

for