BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

That’s a slight misquote of Ais: they were talking about using a mini-dynasty to answer “who should take the next dynasty, what the theme should be” rather than “who has won”. This was said after a contentious DoV had passed when it maybe shouldn’t have (possibly Ais felt that they didn’t really deserve the win), and the subsequent dynasty was a free-for-all rather than a strict tiebreaker of the previous one.

I’d enjoy seeing where “two teams, one sometimes the size of quorum, attempt to crown a winner” went, but ending the current dynasty as “dunno, no winner” feels wrong when it could be continued.

@Kevan I acknowledge that you are making general points that I broadly agree with about this game and it’s culture, broadly defined, but there are specifics to the way that this dynasty ended that make some of the general points specifically unsuitable.

I’ll also add that I don’t think that there’s anything particularly precious about dynasty breaks; I don’t find there to be much difference between “continue this dynasty for two weeks to determine a winner” and “have a two-week tiebreaker dynasty to determine a winner”, especially when - and this going back to the point about the specifics of the end of this dynasty - a full mechanical reset is involved either way.

Oh, yes, keeping things general from the cheap seats, it’s not my place to comment on events of the dynasty while I’m idle. I’m only sticking my head in from the next dynasty, as a player who was waiting for that to start, if it’s now being proposed as a game where only Brendan or TyGuy can win.

The line being crossed is that you’re sounding the new dynasty klaxon, which usually means “game has reset, great time to join” to lurkers and idlers, and does bring along all the baggage of “should be quite complex, will probably last a month” unless you’re very clear that it won’t. I’m not really sure what noise this particular klaxon will emit.

You’re right that it could use an explicit statement that it’s intended to be a short, sharp campaign rather than a full-fat month-long dynasty in the traditional mould. Sadly we are now out of the edit window, so if this is agreed to be the best way out of the current mess then perhaps the enacting admin could include that as a comment to the requisite AA.

All the outcomes of the metadynasty feel unnecessarily weird from a historical perspective, though, to me. You’ll either be recording that nobody won the First Dynasty of Trapdoorspyder (making it look superficially like a washout, when it wasn’t), or proposing to retcon that whoever wins the Metadynasty also wins the Trapdoor dynasty (making it look impressive that a player pulled off two wins in a row, when they didn’t).

Anyway, I’ll get back in my time machine to a future dynasty.

Just flicking back through previous dynasties that led into metas, and none of them seem to record a clear winner:

* SatyrEyes 1 is an incomplete history
* Josh 2 ended with no winner because of the first Switch
* Elias IX 1 was a chaotic competing DoV situation that was made a meta by CfJ
* Yoda 2 was steered into a meta tactically to prevent Rodlen from winning (that’s as close as we get, really)
* Darth Cliche 1 ended in a contusion of CfJs
* It’s unclear what was going on in Bateleur 1
* Skju 1 went to a meta after the game all-but died
* Cuddlebeam 2 went to a meta after the dynastic game stalled out
* naught 1 was a secret-info dynasty where all the secret info was lost when the Emperor went idle

So heading into a meta is actually, historically, the correct way to handle a situation where a winner can’t be cleanly determined; I think this dynasty fits in that lineage.

this is intriguing!! personally, i like the things that are weird about this one. we’re in a unique circumstance, n considering that this is all just a game it can’t hurt that badly to experiment a bit!

i think it’s good sportsmanship to choose tyguy rather than urself as the representative of the win-by-RP side of this conflict, considering they’ve got more.

I’m unidling (quorum unchanged) to

I’m ready to rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrumbllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllle

although personally I’d have made the contribution score bit a separate rule so the next emperor can just not repeal it, but we can sort that out later.

[Josh] “So heading into a meta is actually, historically, the correct way to handle a situation where a winner can’t be cleanly determined” - I think this is what the History of Victories‘s “Other” ending criteria is basically counting, and of the 33 Other endings, only nine went into Metadynasties. (13 were quick straw poll Elections, 6 were randomly selected based on scores, 4 were selected at pure random and 1 was an NPC winning.)

Hmm. I’m wavering on a CoV but I’m not going to make it yet. Voting DEF for me here is basically a reflection of the reality that Trapdoorspyder’s vote has decided most things about the endgame so far and is likely to decide this one too, one way or another.

It’s hard for me to shake the presumption that a metadynasty is a break-glass-in-emergency failure state, and I don’t think this is a failed dynasty. It is certainly a dynasty that has ended, and I don’t agree with Kevan that the current rules could be carried forward. But two existing CfJs to assign victory by fiat are still active and viable as of the timestamp on this comment. I would like to see one or the other of them pass.

That said, I truly appreciate that Josh is going to some lengths to spin up a theme that is among my interests (even if it is potentially a gambit to make sure he doesn’t have to sit through a FULL wrestling dynasty), and that he is—in wrestling parlance—“putting over” myself and TyGuy6 rather than himself. I’d be a fool to reject that out of hand. So that’s the context of my vote—not so much “eh, let’s go for it” as “let’s see where the remaining chips fall, first.”

Why TyGuy6?

He had the most RP at the end of the dynasty.

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

This seems the least controversial method of ending this dynasty. As long as this doesn’t lead to this dynasty being viewed as a failure (unless y’all really think it was) I’m in for the ride.

Honestly quite struck that non-controversiality is the overriding priority! Different worldviews, I suppose.

[Brendan] I haven’t been watching this dynasty very closely, but if “repeal all rules and play a metadynasty” is a valid way out of whatever uncertain-winner conundrum you’re in, so is “everyone is now in Hell, players in Hell can’t take actions under rules 2.1 through 2.10”, without sounding the new-dynasty klaxon.

This is mostly aesthetic and social confusion: the final stage of this dynasty is a separate dynasty, and I can unidle into it, but I can’t win it, and unidling might be as impolite as unidling to vote for a regular end-the-dynasty CfJ. I’ll see if this enacts before trying to work that out. I wouldn’t want to squash the first shoots of BlogNomic Legacy, anyway, if that’s what’s potentially emerging here.

The one thing I will add is that this proposal is sort of just an ad-hoc, slightly extreme implementation of Medallions; it skips the whole me-winning bit and gets straight to TyGuy and Brendan duking out their second-place medals. If you consider it a proof-of-concept of that then it might make more sense.

@Brendan I chose to say that as the easiest way to express my opinion about the matter. In addition to the majority of people seeming to be to some extent in favor of this, as well as the fact that Josh seems to be okay with, in fact, not winning this dynasty(?), I believe this does settle the issue in a fair manner that everybody is okay with. Plus, the theme sounds at least semi-fun.