Imperial Styles

Kevan proposed an Imperial Styles draft in July 2021, that:

The [Emperor] may announce their Imperial Style for a dynasty, to inform [Players] of how they intend to behave during it. An Imperial Style is a list of any number of keywords from the following lists, such as “Protective, Designer, Casual, Scam-Neutral”. It puts no constraint on the [Emperor's] behaviour, and simply serves as a guide.

It failed, with some players saying this should be written in an unregulated manner on the wiki instead, so here it is. The text below is based on the original proposal with modifications by whoever may have modified it since: it does not reflect what a majority or even a quorum of players have agreed upon as representative or useful.

For some more historical context, the idea of clearly regulated Imperial Styles possibly first arose in February 2020, with a proposal from Kevan based on a conversation with the Duke of Waltham.

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)