Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Proposal: You’re The Man Now

Fewer than a quorum of Hackers not voting AGAINST. Failed 1-5 by Kevan.

Adminned at 13 Aug 2015 11:28:33 UTC

Replace “Each Hacker has a Corp Name and any number of Codenames. Their Corp Name is the same as their BlogNomic account name, and is public.” with:-

Each Hacker secretly funds the work of a number of Codenames.

Then, replace “Hacker” with “Corporation” throughout the ruleset.

Then, replace “Corp Name” with “Corporation” throughout the ruleset.

Then, replace “Codename” with “Hacker” throughout the ruleset.

Then replace “As a daily action, a Corporation may, on behalf of their Corporation, Investigate a Hacker” with “As a daily action, a Corporation may Investigate a Hacker”.

Then replace “own Corporation and no other Corporation” with “own name and the names of no other Corporations”.

Then replace “the Corporation must expend at least 1 from the Defence Score of their Corporation” with “the Corporation must expend at least 1 from their Defence Score”.

Then replace any sentence beginning “At any time, a Corporation may reduce its Corporations’s Defence Score” with “At any time, a Corporation may reduce its Defence Score or Secrets by 1 to gain any Security Measure.”

Right now we’re all Hackers who have a strong link to a single Corp with the same name as us, and we secretly control several Codenames. It’d probably be simpler to say that we’re all Corporations who secretly control several Hackers. (I’ve been tripping over this a bit when trying to write rules.)

I think this catches all the odd wordings.

posted by Kevan at 12 Aug 2015 12:39:00 UTC Comments (6)

Comments

Josh: he/they

12-08-2015 14:06:08 UTC

Tepid against - it does make more logical sense as far as the ruleset is concerned, but thematically I’m not so into it.

(Something that made it clear that we’re playing in effect two different characters - a hacker and a corp - who don’t have any in-fiction link would be more my cup of tea.)

Winner:

12-08-2015 14:15:43 UTC

imperial

Kevan: he/him

12-08-2015 14:45:42 UTC

Hmm, I did think about other takes on the theme, but the fact that a player would never want to damagingly Hack their own Corp Name (unless they were bluffing) made it hard to think of the Corp and Codename as being unconnected.

If we’re all playing the game with the mindset that a Codename will avoid damaging its own Corp, it seems better if the theme supports that rather than straining to tell a different story, or to avoid telling a story. The question “Why hasn’t Enthalpy ever Hacked JoshCorp?” is better if it has a thematic answer: “JoshCorp are secretly funding them” rather than “they are both controlled by the human player Josh in this game”.

There’s still room for all kinds of narrative and strategy where a Codename bites the Corp that feeds it in order to achieve whatever a Hacker Victory might be, or a Corp sells out its own Codenames for profit.

Purplebeard:

12-08-2015 18:03:46 UTC

imperial

ShareDVI:

12-08-2015 20:55:10 UTC

imperial

Darknight: he/him

12-08-2015 22:05:04 UTC

imperial