Imperial Styles

These are the styles of intended behaviour that an Emperor might announce at the start of a dynasty.

Proposal style

• Designer (will attempt to build and maintain a playable game, balancing it accordingly)
• Provocateur (will tend towards proposing new mechanics and elements rather than focusing on fixes or balance)
• Guide (has an end goal in mind, and will try to steer the dynasty towards it, but will not interfere if the players propose to go in a different direction)
• Gardener (will keep the dynasty tidy but try not to influence its direction too much)
• Onlooker (will let the dynasty become what it becomes)

Player protection

• Protective (when taking any actions - including voting - will try to be fair to all players, including potential future players)
• Preservationist (as Protective, but may also veto proposals that they feel would invalidate too much of the gameplay so far)
• Laissez-faire (will not consider fairness when making such decisions)
• Libertarian (will generally abstain from matters of player balance, allowing players to resolve such issues between themselves)
• Dungeonmaster (will target leading players, or support aggressive moves against them, if they feel this makes the game more interesting)
• Adversary (will propose, vote and take game actions in a way that is actively hostile to some or all players, generally or selectively)

Desired workload

• Powerhouse (happy to process frequent, complex game actions and track secret information)
• Casual (happy to process a moderate level of game actions, and simple tracking)
• Hands-off (would prefer all game actions to be left to the players)

Attitude to scams

• Kingmaker (may initiate scams with an intent to win; is open to working with other players for a share of mantle-pass percent)
• Scam-Friendly (won’t remark on or move to close loopholes in proposals or the ruleset; will gladly assist a player’s scam if privately asked to)
• Scam-Mundane (may cooperate on scams, but only as a regular player / regular admin; will not use Emperor powers to assist in scamming)
• Scam-Neutral (won’t remark on or move to close loopholes in proposals or the ruleset; may assist a scam if the rules allow them to)
• Scam-Averse (will alert players to any loopholes they notice; will veto major scams; will only assist a scam if the rules require them to)

Information sharing

• Servile (will correct errors in the gamestate, and may give informal alerts about imminent deadlines, or discuss game information which is only tracked implicitly)
• Guarded (will correct errors in the gamestate, but otherwise only give notifications or gamestate summaries when the ruleset requires them to)
• Oblivious (will not always correct errors in gamestate, nor say anything the ruleset does not require them to)

Predictability

• Methodical (will carefully consider their own track record and will aim to be as consistent and predictable as possible in their decision-making)
• Instinctual (will generally make decisions in the moment, and regards predictability and consistency as being emergent from their own decision-making process rather than an end to be pursued)
• Wildcard (may actively choose to defy predictability and may vary their style without warning)

Desired game style

• Proposal Separatist (asks players to interpret proposals and votes as separate from the dynastic game)
• Solitaire (asks players to avoid creating potentially cooperative mechanics, may veto them if proposed)