The Eleventh Dynasty of Kevan
December 14, 2012 - January 21, 2013
Contents
Ascension Address
A cold night at the tail end of the Mesoamerican Long Count’s 13th b’ak’tun. Cryptic flyposted photocopies spread wide across the city, fluttering on lampposts and building-site hoardings, their cheap, close-set prophecies growing illegible in the rain. Tents and placards cluster outside the cathedral, the city museum remains closed and dark after a burglary in its antiquities wing, and high on the hill behind the city, against a blank grey sky, the observatory is in flames.
Rename “Crook” to “Believer” and “Mastermind” to “Auspex”.
Players
12 Believers were active at the end of this Dynasty:
Cpt_Koen, IceFromHell, Josh*, Kevan*, Klisz*, Larrytheturtle, nqeron, quirck*, RaichuKFM, robo1995, scshunt*, thingnumber2
Final Ruleset
Posts of Interest
Ascension
Scshunt achieved victory by having the greatest amount of Insight when the world ended.
Post-mortem
I think the big issues with this dynasty were: first, the inordinate amount of advantage conferred on the leader of a cult with many members and second, the lack of advantage to being a member of a cult.
In particular, the rules regarding artifacts were, in conjunction, rather powerful and entirely biased towards cult leaders, since only they would know how many artifacts their cult had and thus would be able to milk them for maximum value. Additionally, the loophole that Kevan closed relating to the same inquisition multiple times was added due to my use of it,
The other way I gained influence—-and the cause of my victory—-was an interesting play mistake of RaichuKFM’s. In an attempt probably to abuse the artifact or trait rules, he enacted a Secret Requirement requiring everyone in the cult to go to The Library, then kicked me out when I hadn’t done so (I didn’t see the first PM from Kevan informing me of the requirement until I was out). In doing so, though, he made it so that I was able to look through the GNDT logs and identify the membership of his cult, which I used twice with Klisz’s help (though I was surprised when he included me on his Inquisition)
However, this dynasty suffered the normal issue of an early victory condition, compounded with the fact that I (and probably others) was reluctant to submit or vote for proposals lest they inadvertently help someone other than me, since I had no way to judge what their effects would actually be.
All in all, I think that the secrecy mechanic fundamentally worked, and Kevan did an admirable job of replying quickly. The dynasty was fundamentally undermined by poor power distribution.
The next time a secrecy dynasty gets tried, I might suggest that a mechanic to experiment with would be having perfect information except for not making it known who controls which actors in the game (and randomness). This would allow for players to have a better idea of the relative strengths of all players, without letting them know who their opponents actually were.
-scshunt
