The First Dynasty of pokes
April 14, 2017 - May 21, 2017
Contents
Ascension Address
Centuries ago, a group of teenagers in Pays-Loups, a small country near Zahndorf, decided to settle a small quibble by hitting various things and each other with sticks. They had so much fun doing this that they decided to do it more often, and other people had so much fun too that over time Bloggsball became not only the national sport of little Pays-Loups but a favorite pastime of neighboring countries as well.
As the Manager of a local International Bloggsball Association-affiliated Bloggsball team, this has so far meant big business for you. But a recent contract dispute has led every IBA player to quit right before this upcoming season. There’s only a few weeks to fill out your team, and maybe win some games, before crowds expect to see which team wins this year’s championship belts.
. . .
Throughout the ruleset, rename “Organ” to “Manager” and “Statolith” to “Commissioner”. Keep the “Atomic Actions” rule.
Players
The following players were active at the start of this dynasty:
arthexis*, card*, Cuddlebeam, derrick*, Matt, Maldor, Oracular rufio, orkboi, pokes*^, Quincunx, Ryntai, Sphinx, Viv
And at the end of this dynasty:
card*, Cuddlebeam, Matt, Oracular rufio, pokes*^, Sphinx
- denotes admins, ^ denotes Commissioner
Posts of Interest
- Bankroll Created Cash and Starting Cash
- Recruitment Created bidding for Bloggers, a named entity that has a level, and limited how many bloggers a manager could employ
- The Underdog Made quorum one less for the purposes of enacting proposals for managers with the least starting cash
- Bloggers Made bloggers have stats brains brawn and balls
- Conferences Made managers have conferences
- Steroids Made performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) that could be bought by a manager
- Play to win the game Defined a full team as having 3 bloggers. Defined matches between full teams
- Playing Time Limited how many games a manager could play relative to other managers. Tracked how many games a manager has played.
- Sports is big business Gave managers cash when they play a game
- Supply And Demand Limited how many Bloggers a manager could buy. Mane it explicit that bids are positive integers.
- Unemployment Fixes auctions so that they can close if nobody has bid on them
- Tools Made tools, made them equippable to Bloggers, allowed managers to carry any number of them and defined some starting tools
- Go West Young Manager Allowed managers to change their conference. Made it so that the commissioner can only oversee a match between two full teams of the same conference.
- Make PEDs compatible with Causality Made the buying of PEDs logical
- PEDs Mechanics Made cops investigate managers with PEDs. Also some mechanics for having PEDs in a game
- The Test & Drugs Made PEDs count as a diminishing return and added to the level of a blogger for one game. A 10% each time that a blogger is tested.
- https://blognomic.com/archive/manager_image Manager Image] Made a manager image that's an image of one of the stats. A blogger when added to a team of the same image as their highest stat gains a level, losing one otherwise.
- Non-free Anything Made it clear that spending something deducts it from the manager's cash.
- Amendment to Core Rules Moved "Atomic Actions" to the core rules, which had been kept by the previous Emperors for the past 4 dynasties
- Going Twice Made auctions last 48 hours instead of 24.
- The Numbers Game Made a blogger's stats randomly decided, instead of their default 5 value
- Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen Removed the match PED rules from the "PEDs Mechanics" proposal.
- No More Zero Underdogs Made the underdog rule apply to managers that don't have $0 for their starting cash.
- Team Friction Allowed managers to attempt to boot a blogger off their team
- More Tools Made levels and stats decimal numbers. Also added ~17 more tools.
- Lord, bless these Managers’ hearts Made certain bids invalid.
- Eager Eyes Added Pick Up Players, which are badly statted players which could be bought for a set amount
- The Time Machine Added a Time Machine that could change a manager's starting cash
- Minimum bid increment Made it so that the minimum bid that's still valid has to be at least 10% higher than the previous bid
- Bidding Disaster Enacted "Lord, bless these Managers’ hearts" out of order and fixed some auctions which couldn't be closed
- Training and Trading Allowed trading and training of bloggers
- Re Roll Rerolled Blogger's stats which were created before "The Numbers Game" passed
- Debt Allowed managers to go into debt
- Named PuPs Allowed PuPs to be named
- Going Once Cleaned up the cloned auction rules
- More Game, No More Work, This Time with Fairness Allowed people other than the commissioner to play games
- More than Just Skill Made stats do something the a teams power
- Starting Sticks Allowed managers to get tools
- Reimaging Gave precedence to stats
- Revenue Bonus Gave extra cash to the winner of a match
- Random numbers change by Default Reversed some actions that had resulted in lvl 17 PuPs
- Combo: A Rebirth Reintroduced the combo idea from the previous dynasty, allows a large series of actions to be documented and performed.
- Most Bloggers Play With Just A Stick Added blogging averages and let bloggers increase their level by playing matches
- Spring Cleaning Removed PuPs, made bids of value $0 invalid
- Manager STEPS IN Allowed managers to join a team as a blogger. It was never utilized.
- Early Dismissal Allowed the commissioner to not create an auction for a given blogger when created in the gndt
- No More Clones Stopped matches where a team can play against themselves
- Better Tools Allowed managers to upgrade their tools
- Great SCOTT Changed some of the functions of the Time Machine. Also attempted a scam via a sentence with unstated scope.
- Slowing our Rolls Limited managers to only 3 bids for a given auction
- Freezebullet Scam Explination of said scam
- SILENCE! Made silent auctions. This was never utilized.
- Final Bowl Made a victory condition.
- Rinse and Repeat Adds tags, which defaults to a limit to the scope of proposals unless there is a tag giving a different scope
- Faustian Deal Allowed immediate increase of cash at expense of a larger increase of starting cash (which was the condition for victory at this point)
- Purchasable Experiences Auctioned the overseeing rights and the time machine
- Final Bowl unclogging + 13 limited what managers could participate in the final bowl and made 13 rounds standard
- When’s a Stick not a Stick? made it explicit what can be upgraded
- The Final Bowl is now Ready An attempted scam that could've worked if the scammers followed the rules
- Fixing A Critical Issue Limited the length of die which can be rolled in the GNDT
- Summoning Closing Ceremony Another attempted scam that failed because the scammers didn't follow the rules
- Hands Off Our Bears! Undid the arguably illegal killauctions
- Let’s settle this with Bloggsball Reverted some gamestate stuff and froze bloggers' states.
- -Un-limited power Removed the image level up.
- Unscammy Final Bowl Made the first dice rolled in the gndt for a match count for the final bowl instead of any subsequent ones
- The Closing Ceremony Gave the final merit tally
- An end to the madness
- Atomic Actions 2: Reloaded Was created before the ascension address but didn't pass until the next dynasty
Ascension
Took a while and was a bit of a mess. Cuddlebeam won the auction giving them the right to oversee all of the Bloggsball matches in the Final Bowl.
(1) Immediately beforehand, Cuddlebeam traded players back and forth with Publius Scribonius Scholasticus repeatedly to create players with Level 10^31 or so; they then played a game with these players to generate essentially infinite cash. With the infinite cash, they trained other Managers' players' stats to engineer the Final Bowl point totals they wanted. The games between other Managers were determined to be illegal since their stats couldn't have gone above the cap of 10.
(2) Players belonging to Managers other than Cuddlebeam and PSS were then removed from them via trading the players to PSS, who then auctioned them off. This left only Cuddlebeam and PSS with full Bloggsball teams. A CfJ undid this and restored the teams. Another CfJ gave Cuddlebeam 52 points for winning their four Final Bowl matches and rescheduled a Final Bowl between everyone else.
(3) This next Final Bowl involved Cuddlebeam overseeing some half-matches: A match/game was an atomic action that starts with rolling dice; if the dice looked to be unfavorable to Cuddlebeam, they wouldn't finish the atomic action and let it time out after an hour. The more favorable dice would have given Cuddlebeam victory; yet another CfJ made the games use their first rolls, giving Sphinx the most Merit.
Final Ruleset
Commentary
Commissioner's Commentary: The rules for distributing players via auctions were part of the initial proposals, but I didn't anticipate the auctions becoming even more of a grind than just a daily grind. Managers would improve upon bids by the minimum amount ($1, then later 10%) thus making auctions less about who had more money and more about who sniped them better. It sort of got fixed later by limiting the number of bids and allowing for silent auctions (never used) but by then the damage was done; several Managers had idled and no auctions got to the same dollar amount as before, even for great players. --Pokes (talk) 22:44, 22 May 2017 (UTC)
More Commissioner's Notes of Potential Interest: I'm not much of a sports fan; I'd call the dynasty's initial theme "assembling a team efficiently within a limited budget", inspired by Michael Lewis' Moneyball. --Pokes
I'll definitely give a full commentary later but: DYNASTIC QUOTA OF A RESOURCE TO PERFORM ACTIONS: S U P E R B MECHANIC. Such as having limited games and cash. Everyone starts the same, newcomers aren't boned and you can still do stuff if you want to and have good strategic play when you happen to be active. Daily actions cancer: never again. Dynastic quotas are the cure. (Daily actions basically make "IRL Time" that quota and that sucks balls, because not everyone would have that same amount, either because they join later or they just forget to grind. Hail Dynastic Quotas!) --Cuddlebeam (talk) 22:54, 22 May 2017 (UTC)
Three years later, here's the additional commentary. Inspired by an infinite loop scam that was only possible by two collaborating players during the last dynasty, this the first dynasty that I got involved in a Pooling play. I asked PSS to have us pool our money together to give one of us (decided by a coinflip, it landed on me) the biggest chance to win. The one who lost the coinflip would surrender all of their assets early in the game and play the rest basically as a meat puppet, which I was definitely open to do, because it seemed like the most reasonable play. From then on, I've been pooling shitloads, it just very often seems very strong to me. Sheer mechanical power of Pools aside, I believe that having another player with me along the way contributed a lot to how fun I found the game as well.
I had a lot of fun in pulling so many scams here. I MASSIVELY regret not having double-checked my scam sequences more thoroughly, because I gave PSS my sequence and myself PSS's, which ended up in the scam failing. Had it worked (and it was fairly unanimous that it would have), I would've won. But I fucked up. Still, having so much ammo in the chamber and just pulling so many scams, one after the other (three in the endgame!!) was very satisfying and thrilling. Plus that I already figured out another small one (kill auction) was extra gratifying.
That was what I was referring to with a "full commentary" - that my commentary was notably missing out my input on how the gameplay went, I did a lot, and this was my favorite dynasty. I hope to live another dynasty like this one sometime. ---Cuddlebeam (talk)
Other
On the nature of errors in Nomic: This was brought up in this CfJ and illustrated as an "Illusion" versus "Sticky". continuum (Summarized into a picture: here). This issue has been also discussed in Agora's theses "Breaking the Rules" by Steve Gardner and to a smaller degree in "Pragmatism and Platonism: Two Approaches to Nomic" by Don "Vanyel" Blaheta, which may be of interest for anyone into a more in-depth exploration of the problem.
