I’d later bring up that the Escape Action makes me do the action of Achieving Victory, so even if the act of me Escaping is erased by that CFJ, I’ve still done the act of Achieving Victory, that “image frame” of the video tape of time hasn’t been erased, even if the one before it has.

But yeah, there’s a concerning pattern I’m finding as a very frequent scammer. If I somehow establish a degree of intimacy/friendship with someone (usually PMs or whatever), they’re way more accepting of them. I’ve had two cases where, after telling a method to an Agora co-conspirator (and them seeing it and accepting it without much feedback, they just saw it and found it cool and agreed), and then having it fail, them getting so pissed that they suggested to get other Agoras to invade (but never did, they were just pissed), because they couldn’t believe how the other side could disagree with the method without being dishonest and just not wanting the “enemy side” to get away with it. Like, how? Did me establishing intimacy with that Agoran co-conspirator, who I believe to be people who try to be honest and impartial, somehow magically made them totally convinced that I was right regardless?

A very similar thing happens with pointing out loopholes in tabletop rpgs (in the Spanish community, at least, much less so in the English one). My friends easily follow and then agree to any hijinks I find, but once posted, they get loads of comments that it’s “impossible” or that I’m deluded, with my friends not believing why the other posters would say that unless it was to protect some kind of pride for the game.

So, it makes me think that getting scams through or not has a large subjective component when it comes to this. I don’t want to win or get benefits just because I’ve befriended the right people, especially in regards to trying to pull cool formal stuff.

It bothers me a lot, but after playing this game for a year, it just keeps on happening, and it makes me sad.

“because they couldn’t believe how the other side could disagree with the method without being dishonest and just not wanting the “enemy side” to get away with it.”
Maybe they need to practice seeing things from multiple points of view; was that in reference to that one person trying to win through a game of bloggsball or the one where you tried to win by turning all of the hyphens into bullet points (which wouldn’t have worked because a proposal can’t pass with only one vote on it anyway)? Maybe they didn’t apply some critical thinking when they thought you would have known the rules better.

It could be the same thing with those RPG forums; try asking people you’re not friends with or who supposedly know more about the system than you. At any rate when you actually play an RPG the rules, actions and characters are at the discretion of the DM so most loopholes are of little consequence.

From what I’ve read in the wiki and past blog pages, people on blognomic usually try to remove whatever let them make the scam if it wasn’t in the dynastic rules and achieve victory as a second priority. Otherwise your scams have always relied on some sort of ambiguity in the ruleset where people can take more than one interpretation. On your most recent scam that ambiguity was whether you could alter a post in that way.

[Cuddlebeam] I think the further you reach into the weirder corners of language and interpretation to get a scam, the more you risk running into subjective and surface “common sense” reactions from other players who just aren’t as interested in thinking about the rules that deeply. It’s a matter of judging the group to see what level they’re playing at - it varies from Nomic to Nomic, and from dynasty to dynasty depending on its players and the tone that its Emperor sets. If a visiting mathematician knocked us all dead with some complex, specialist-field negative-number proof which none of us could follow in the slightest, I expect even you would shrug it off.

Both the situations you describe sound like a smaller group arriving in a larger one with a different common sense threshold, and encountering resistance. It’s natural enough for a group of friends who’ve been cementing their opinions for a while to think that the outgroup might be acting with bad motives.

Since I’ve joined Blognomic last september I can’t say I’ve seen anyone supporting your rule interpretation scams Cuddlebeam, except for the comment on my last post which incidentally I made because I had the feeling your captured-immunity scam was overlooked by us players because we were a little annoyed at your frequent rule-bending attempts, and so less prone to agree with you. In that sense I would say players might have a tendency to go one way or the other in how they react to your scams. We enjoy seeing a friend winning, even if deep down we know it’s not merited, but if it’s not a friend it’s a competitor and we will find every excuse not to let them win.

Also I would say the players you befriended are probably, consciously or not, supporting you in hope that your “alliance” will benefit them someday. Your comment about being bothered by their behaviour reminds me a lot of a friend of mine who frequently finds himself in this sort of situation and I know (for having discussed it with him) that what really annoys him is knowing he will not return the favour, simply because he always acts in his own interest.

(or to word it better: what annoys him is that the other thinks he will return the favour)