The First Dynasty of Diabecko
December 11, 2017 — January 18, 2018
Ascension Address
“This is head of security sir. There was an, um, incident this morning.”
“Again ? We can’t afford to lose staff members at this rate. It’s growing increasingly awkward to justify this, and—”
“—Not to worry. No-one has died yet. It appears we have experienced an act of sabotage or something of that nature. Whoever it was managed to penetrate the building undetected and proceeded to override the cell-locking system.”
“Oh for Pete’s sake please tell me none of the specimens got away.”
“Quite a few actually, but fortunately all of them were due for termination this week. No financial loss on this one.”
“Some good news there I suppose. Send out a team and fix the problem on the spot before someone gets killed, or worse, they find out what we’re doing here.”
“Already on the field.”
“Perfect then. What about the specimens ? Are any of them dangerous ?”
“Hard to say. The lab chief assured me they are quite harmless. No psychokinesis, no invisibility, nothing of that sort. I think one of them grows some kind of fruit on its back, so discretion might be an issue. In any case predictability isn’t their primary asset, particularly in an uncontrolled environment, so who knows what could happen.”
“Just don’t give them enough time for the hunger to kick in.”
Change “Master” to “Director” and “Tesserer” to “Failed Experiment”. Repeal all dynastic rules, and change the status of none of the Special-Case rules.
Players
The following players were active at the end of the Dynasty: Axemabaro, card*, Cuddlebeam, Diabecko, Kevan*, PineTreeQ, pokes*
*: denotes admins
Final Ruleset
https://wiki.blognomic.com/index.php?title=Ruleset_154
Posts of Interest
- (This list of significant dynastic events is currently incomplete.)
Ascension
"Cresting the hill in a stolen station wagon, I speed out into the open country, a dozen more unrevealed mutations swirling beneath the surface of my humanlike skin, and a thousand clones of myself in a box on the back seat." - Kevan claimed victory after successfully escaping the area.
Commentary
Quite enjoyed the endgame on this one, despite it being a bit pedestrian. Card and I were the only two in the running after Cuddlebeam seemed to give up, and we just had to traverse the game area twice to win. By chance, I had a slight edge on the timing (being able to use two consecutive weekly actions to travel on the road), but was playing it a little carefully to avoid the concealed danger of not being able to reset a diet after death. --Kevan (talk) 20:00, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
I conceded once I started to feel unmotivated by the prospect of the menial effort needed to win or fix the game - and I was already ahead of Kevan, the main competition, when timing was crucial - and tragically, timing the only thing that mattered in the end (I can time actions at 00:01 UTC every day no problem for perfect grinding while he seems to be bound by a more normal schedule). Mindless grind for days is bleh and there was already too much momentum in the wrong direction for the design of the game so I just opted to wait for a more arousing dynasty instead.---Cuddlebeam (talk) 11:32, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
- I admired the legal run you were giving the game for a while there, of exploiting insufficiently watertight CfJs and sluggish enactment to leap out of the path of a fix before it could hit you. That doubling down can leave you stuck if it doesn't get you all the way to victory, though, and I read your concession as being that - it's much harder to propose "okay, put me back at Distance 15km and we'll play on" after you've spent a few days deliberately dodging other players' initial attempts to do just that. And it'd be even more difficult to propose putting yourself back in a fair position, with some extra movement to cover the time you missed.
- Timing didn't matter at all. It would only have been an issue if two players could have crossed the line on the same day - I was at least a day ahead of Card, but we ended up privately agreeing that if one of us crossed the line with the other one also being able to, they'd hold off on the win and toss a coin for it. I did draft some proposals to resolve ties within the ruleset, but it seemed too risky to bandy around victory-related clauses and exceptions towards the end of the game. A big lesson from this one, for me, was that we should always include tiebreakers as early as possible. --Kevan (talk) 23:09, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
