The Second Dynasty of JonathanDark

March 2, 2023 - March 29, 2023

Ascension Address

It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue. Then again, maybe you'll be fine. You don't really know. You can hear the mumbling of other voices off in the distance, but you're not sure where they're coming from, or whether they are friendly or hostile.
A clear voice right next to you says, "It's time to play Hide-and-Seek. But who are the Hiders and who are the Seekers? Maybe it's others like you. Maybe it's something else. You'll find out soon enough, on the count of ten.". You realize that the voice is coming from some sort of device strapped to your left wrist. The device, previously dark, now lights up with a random pattern of dots and lines, and you can see that it looks something like a digital touchscreen watch, although the touchscreen is a bit larger and is not displaying the time. Blue-hued lines fade into view around you, forming a square around you. Aside from the glow of those lines and the screen on your wrist, you see nothing else.
Next to the random lines and dots, the number "1" is displayed at the same time the voice from the device says, "One".

The dynasty's theme shall be "The Grid".

Repeal all dynastic rules.

Set the synonym for Player to "Runner" and the synonym for Emperor to "Gridmaster".

Change the gamestate tracking page to "The Grid".

Set the Special Case rule No Collaboration to Active.

Sci-Fi theme, as you can tell. I'm giving the No Collaboration rule a try with the theme.

My Imperial Style will be: Gardener, Protective, Powerhouse, Scam-Neutral, Guarded, Methodical.

Players

The following players were active at the beginning of this Dynasty: Benbot, Brendan, Chiiika, Darknight, Habanero, JonathanDark, Josh, Kevan, lendunistus, Misty, Raven1207, SingularByte, Trapdoorspyder

The following players were active at the end of this Dynasty: Habanero, jjm3x3, JonathanDark, Josh, lendunistus, Misty, Raven1207, SingularByte, Trapdoorspyder

Final Ruleset

Ruleset 212

Gamestate

The Grid

Posts of Interest

Pretty Little Rows and Columns - Format of the Grid
See How They Run - Movement in the Grid
Memory Management - Disks, Stacks, and Activation
A Whole New World - Features added during the loading of a new Stratum
This Electric Stream - Introduced the concept of Derezzing, and more importantly, voluntary derezzing, which became an import part of the primary strategy for achieving victory, for those who realized how it could be used
Preprocessing - Attempted to better-define "in", "move", and "contain", but inadvertently opened up a scam where the meaning of an Empty cell was rendered such that no Cells could be considered Empty. Only SingularByte noticed and attempted to use the scam, making the Gridmaster aware of it at the very last minute.
Locked In - The win condition, proposed by SingularByte, which secretly contained the second part to SingularByte's scam when it specified that spending Power on Number-Crunches was divided by 4 when the Runner was in a non-Empty cell. Since SB knew that no Cells were technically Empty, he was the only Runner who knew that all Runners spending Power for Number-Crunches would most likely have that Power divided by 4. To get the most Number-Crunches, he had to ask to be derezzed, thus not occupying any Cells at all, then spend Power on Number-Crunches to avoid the divide by 4.
Shutdown Sequence - Finalized when the check for the highest Number-Crunches of the Runners in the Exit should be made

Ascension

This one was complicated by the fact that SingularByte knew of a scam that even the Gridmaster was unaware of, so at the time, Misty was in the lead for Number-Crunches. Once SingularByte revealed the scam, he was in the lead.

The scam is described by SingularByte as follows:

“If a Cell’s Value is not “-”, it is said to “contain” an instance of that Value.” - By this rule snippet, no cell can ever be said to contain “-”, due to that value specifically being excluded.

“A Cell containing “-” is considered to be Empty.” - By this rule snippet, combined with the above, no cell can ever by empty due to never being able to contain “-”.

“though if that runner is in a non-empty cell, this increase is divided by four (rounded down to the nearest integer).” - By this rule snippet, and the above two rule snippets, any Runner in any cell, irrespective of its contents, will always have their number crunch gain divided by four then rounded down.
Please also note that if a Runner spends power on number crunches while not in a cell, they do not trigger the third snippet, and therefore do not have the division applied. By this logic, I have 5 number-crunches as I spent 5 power while I didn’t have a cell.

However, a second attempted scam was revealed when SingularByte mentioned that he had Activated multiple Disks simultaneous in an attempt to carry out their Effects in a specific order and acquire more disks. This action was key to allowing him to later destroy the disks for Power and spend it on Number-Crunches while derezzed, apparently giving him the winning amount of Number-Crunches. Since this attempt at multiple simultaneous actions was determined to be illegal, he retroactively lost those Disks and their corresponding Power and Number-Crunches, putting Misty back in the lead despite her Number-Crunches having been diminished by the first scam.

After this whole scenario played out in the CfJ Null Pointers, it was determined that Misty achieved victory.