Difference between revisions of "Talk:History of victories"

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"Other" would at least recognise that victories happened in these cases: it's not really true to say "Victory: None" when an "achieved victory" was - I think in every case - assigned, and a DoV made. --[[User:Kevan|Kevan]] ([[User talk:Kevan|talk]]) 22:28, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
 
"Other" would at least recognise that victories happened in these cases: it's not really true to say "Victory: None" when an "achieved victory" was - I think in every case - assigned, and a DoV made. --[[User:Kevan|Kevan]] ([[User talk:Kevan|talk]]) 22:28, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
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:Following on from this, is a weighted-on-merit die roll a "None" or a "Conventional" (or a weirder "Conventional + None")? There's always some implicit conventional play in there, if the merit is measurable. --[[User:Kevan|Kevan]] ([[User talk:Kevan|talk]]) 11:01, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Revision as of 11:01, 6 March 2020

Pooling victories

I'd class The Second Dynasty of Pokes as a conventional victory, given that its "pooling" mechanic was out in the open: I think everyone understood that the UN voting system was there so that a slight minority of strong players could push an otherwise unpopular proposal through. For my money it was one of the most nomiclike dynasties of the last few years. --Kevan (talk) 08:02, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

I sip air through my teeth at that. You are right that it was in the open, but it wasn't a victory via an explicitly established dynastic victory mechanic which is how I think is a good guideline to denote Conventional wins. I'll make it Conventional + Pooling for now. Maybe we can call it Dynastically-supported Pooling? I don't know. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 09:04, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
True. And I suppose the group made the decision to support a 25% victory split rather than infighting a little more to get it up to 33% or 50%, so it was mostly a matter of pooling. --Kevan (talk) 09:22, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
Yep. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 12:03, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

The tiniest scam

What's your low bar for something counting as a scam? Addressing some of the question marks in the table, I remember this DoV as Brendan using a rule in plain sight that I (and maybe the third player) had certainly seen before, but which wasn't uppermost in our minds. You ask whether that's a "late reveal scam" or not - is using an overlooked clause a scam?

A counterpoint would be this DoV (where I used a clause that Brendan had forgotten about), which you classified as Conventional. --Kevan (talk) 18:24, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Good point, and I'm not entirely sure myself but maybe we can figure something out together. I've been thinking about something very similar to that too in regards to the Werewolf situation of 20th of Kevan (IIRC, everyone except Viv themselves forgot about that proposal that made her a Werewolf lol). But, I think a scam could be when you bring up an interpretation that is different from what is at first interpreted from ruletext by the consensus, and then the consensus accepts the new interpretation. Just using a forgotten clause doesn't involve interpretation. However, there are times when you can pull some kind of infinite combo or some other cool trick but with no need for interpretation gimmicks and it seems very scam-like (for example, if card's "a stable population" proposal passed, we would've had an infinite combo in plain rule-reading). Is that a scam too? --Cuddlebeam (talk) 06:27, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
Maybe a scam is a strategy that a layperson would miss in a thorough but unimaginative reading (and playthrough) of the ruleset? Player consensus isn't quite the measure - if you pull a scam and everyone else throws down their cards because they were going to pull the same scam and hoped nobody else had spotted it, it's still a scam. --Kevan (talk) 08:49, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
I think that is a better definition, yeah. Just so that it's clear, that would mean that just forgetting rules wouldn't mean that it's a scam - it's just player negligence, yes?. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 15:41, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
Better but still needs work: a brilliant chess opening probably isn't a "scam", even though a chess novice would never think of it. But a broken Magic the Gathering combo (to the point where the publisher puts out errata or bans the card) seems like one. Maybe it's the difference between "that's clever" and "that's clever but we should fix it". --Kevan (talk) 15:58, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, I agree. I think that line is when it causes enough damage to the original spirit of the game made (or how healthy games in general are supposed to be like) starts to feel subverted. I think just plain obscurity (to an informed observer) defines a scam, it was "deep enough" in complexity, interpretation, etc to remain hidden or expected to not be obvious. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 16:18, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Assisted Conventional

What do you mean by calling a couple of victories "Assisted Conventional", User:Derrickthewhite? Is it the same as "Conventional + Pooling"? --Kevan (talk) 15:51, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

I think it refers to that at times, minor alliances are made but there is no outright plan to force a win of one of them. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 10:37, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
To put an example, players who deliberately try to synergize or trade for mutual benefit (trading information in a secret information dynasty for example) but there is no plan for one of them to just give up winning for the other. This feels a lot like just normal nomic play, you often have to interact with people positively or negatively, but I guess it's worthwhile if the dynasty's win relied on it notably enough. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 11:03, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
That does seem normal in most cases - if we counted that as "Assisted", any win in a dynasty with trading would fall under it. The First Dynasty of Derrick ended with what might have been one player stepping back to let another win (which seems like just another negative-but-equivalent version of Pooling Actions), the First of Trigon ended with what looks like straight kingmaking (which seems to definitely be Pooling Actions or Resources, depending on what the rules were). --Kevan (talk) 11:13, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

End the dynasty and elect a player as winner

Having the crowd vote for a winner (because the dynasty can't continue for some reason, such as the Emperor leaving) seems to be pretty common. It doesn't feel like the same kind of victory as the others because the dynasty didn't get to play out, but it has happened often enough that it seems to merit a name. What should we call it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cuddlebeam (talkcontribs)

"Election"? Feels like there's some overlap with pooling because it'll sometimes involve a group of confederates agreeing to block-vote for one of their number, but it's very hard to know whether or not this happened, in a long-forgotten dynasty. --Kevan (talk) 07:21, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
You've added this as "[E]" - are you intending it to be a subtype of Pooling, or Conventional? --Kevan (talk) 08:11, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
I added it as an "Other" type. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 08:13, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Core/Dynastic Scams

I think it's relevant to classify the scams as Core (non-Dynastic?) or Dynastic. Small reminder for myself or if anyone else wants to try it out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cuddlebeam (talkcontribs)

Question mark question

Does the question mark mean "the player who added this wasn't sure and would appreciate clarification" or "we can't be 100% sure what happened, from available game history"? --Kevan (talk) 07:29, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

The first one lol --Cuddlebeam (talk) 08:13, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Pooling actions

Have added a new subtype of Pooling (and swapped colours to fit), for situations where no resource is traded and one or more players take actions which lead to another's victory - does that seem like a useful distinction to draw? It arose from http://blogspot.blognomic.com/2004/06/declaration-of-victory.html, which seems to have been one player triggering an alien attack which handed their confederate the victory. --Kevan (talk) 10:36, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Yeah I think that's a good one. Actions themselves can be considered a dynastic resource too though, but I guess it's a lot less abstract to just refer to the action. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 10:39, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Read-as-Written

Does the "Read-as-Written" scam type imply a read-as-not-written type which (from the looks of the table) never happens? Would that be where a player successfully declares victory according to the spirit of the rules? Or when a scam uses an unusual wording which players are persuaded to support (or does that just become "as written", if a quorum agree that rule X means Y)? --Kevan (talk) 08:35, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

This hurts right in my rule Platonicism but you’re right. Sometimes people just agree to a scam out of apathy or whatever, which disappoints me. Oh well. We should probably call the “You thought it meant this, but it actually means this!” scams something else. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 08:53, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
I can vaguely remember a case or two where a scam didn't quite work due to some miscalculation on the part of the scammer, but players awarded the win anyway for being close enough. --Kevan (talk) 09:09, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
I guess we can replace the RAW term as just "Rule-lawyering". It would cover the cases where people are persuaded or just let it happen out of leniency/apathy/etc I believe. What do you think? --Cuddlebeam (talk) 12:03, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Have just hit a not-really-as-written scam at The First Dynasty of Aaron - something about a player who is better at spelling being able to take an action, and the scammer arguing that they are better at spelling than an idle player, because the idle player does not exist. That seems outside the realm of "as-written", but it worked (although the discussion during the DoV is not recorded). --Kevan (talk) 09:20, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

I don't get why it wouldn't be a RAW attempt. Was it a rule? Unspoken convention? --Cuddlebeam (talk) 12:03, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
I can't tell exactly, I didn't play the dynasty and it's hard to follow what happened in retrospect. But even in a hypothetical case of a rule saying "a player wins if they are better at spelling than the Emperor" and the Emperor idling, would it be read-as-written for someone to argue "the Emperor does not exist, therefore I am better at spelling than him"? It sounds like a situation where the game becomes ambiguous and somebody tries to resolve the ambiguity in a way that means they win, in the hope that a quorum will go along with it. (We probably see more of this in failed DoVs than successful ones.) --Kevan (talk) 14:38, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
Yeah I agree with that there could be situations that it seems bullshit but people just go along with it but I while I personally can have (and do have) very strong opinions on what is supposed to be real RAWing and not, I think it would be pretentious of me to start to classify which were just snake oil and which not, especially in the more ambiguous cases. I guess if they explicitly say enough stuff like “yeah Im bored, lets just pass this” then sure, though.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Cuddlebeam (talkcontribs)
I'd expect to find cases where there was a straight 50/50 ambiguity where someone DoV'd on the grounds that one interpretation would let them win. Even if 100% of voters agreed that the rule was ambiguous but that the given interpretation was the fairest one, that feels significantly different from a "rules as written" loophole victory, where it was black and white. --Kevan (talk) 15:31, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Victory: None

Does "None" just mean the same as "???" here? Surely these dynasties were all won in some way. --Kevan (talk) 18:38, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Could use a better name admittedly. “Other”, perhaps? “Meta” maybe, because they’re related to issues concerning the dynasty itself and its not really play within in? Like, giving up on a dynasty and just electing a winner (which has a “None”) feels a lot different than the Conventional/Pooling/Scam victories where the dynasty is actually played. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 23:24, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Multiple victories in a dynasty

This is currently only listed for The Twenty-Second Dynasty of Kevan, but very probably applies to some old uncharted dynasties where multiple people hit the same victory condition independently (and maybe even raised rival, valid DoVs, only one of which enacted). Should we be listing all of these as "victories", or should we focus on the single DoV that enacted? --Kevan (talk) 15:11, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

For completeness I'd like to list them all, but highlight the DoV that was enacted. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 15:19, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Victor column

Should this namecheck the whole team, for pooling victories? --Kevan (talk) 16:56, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

I'd love it, although I don't know a good format for it. The person who technically actually achieved victory should be highlighted anyways imo. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 17:02, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
The person who posts the DoV feels kind of arbitrary from here. If it mattered, people would be negotiating it into the mantle roll ("Will you make that 50/50 a 40/60 if I can post the DoV?") or agreeing a pre-pool die roll to decide who gets the pile of gamestate for the DoV (which would be much neater, as there's no need to mantle-pass, and is definitely something that happened in the old days). But it feels like that's not even occuring to anyone in a lot of these: they're pooling on the grounds that somebody, anybody, will win and roll for the mantle. --Kevan (talk) 17:10, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
From my point of view, achieving victory is the victory. Mantles have their worth for sure, but it's (the "mantle is the real victory" thing) not a concept that I believe is unanimous, especially for a newcomer who just comes and goes "oh, I should win, how do I win? *reads* Oh OK.". But then later on someone comes and says "nope, achieving victory isn't actually winning" and the newbie gives them a funny look and then the guy says "what you actually want, is the mantle". But then the newbie says "but it says 'victory' right here" and then the vet shakes his head while being amused. I mean, we also have that you believe in the Traitor rule, while I don't, despite it - like the victory rule says it makes you win - says that you have a sort of license to betray. I don't think there is one unanimous interpretation for how the Ruleset should motivate you, even if it says things plainly like, "this makes you win" or "this allows you to betray". For some, winning is that, doing what the Ruleset says that makes you win. For others, not. For some, the Traitor rule does what the Ruleset says, that it allows you to betray. For others, not. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 17:24, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
We should probably just try to format things as detailed but unbiased as possible and let people draw their own conclusions from the plain data.--Cuddlebeam (talk) 17:26, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
As soon as there's endgame collaboration in a dynasty, it becomes very hard to say who actually "won" it: if this fresh-faced newcomer asked me who won the last dynasty, I'd probably say "a cabal of players, led by Cuddlebeam and Card, and they drew straws to pick a third team member, the Duke of Waltham, to lead the next dynasty". That a DoV can only be raised on behalf of a single player and can never be shared feels like a sometimes misleading quirk of the game's historical rules: it might be interesting to allow DoVs to be made on behalf of a group. --Kevan (talk) 18:02, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
I'm quite a bit more perspectivist on this, and it's perspectivism what I believe to be key. It really depends on the individual motivations of the players, I believe. I view it that the others took bribes (mantle% is better than leaving the dynasty with nothing), but that they also believed that the bribe itself was "winning" - and I'm OK with that. They might believe that I'm wrong for thinking that the Ruleset's definition of winning, is winning. The concept that the end goal should be the mantle and not plain victory is still very alien to me (and I suspect it is too for any newcomer who doesn't get intervened and convinced otherwise by an existing player) and I didn't realize it was even a thing for vets until I played a few dynasties. Still, mantle% is very valuable to me (it's better than leaving a dynasty with nothing), but not my main goal. I think it's not outlandish to believe that what the Ruleset says is victory, is victory.
I mean, would you think it would be poor sportsmanship of me to go down to 0% mantle via deals, yet honestly aimed to formally achieve victory because that is what I believe is actual victory? Did I throw the game? --Cuddlebeam (talk) 18:15, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

This conversation moved to Slack to bring more players into it, and included a survey at https://blognomic.slack.com/archives/C084BDQ90/p1581099586139100 which had the following results:

Curious about opinions on this, after a wiki discussion of who the "victor" of a dynasty is, in a cabal-based win. Thinking back over the last dynasty, if someone casually asked you who "won", what would you say? You may vote for multiple options.
  1. Cuddlebeam won it, as they posted the DoV (3 votes; Cuddlebeam, Jumble, Derrick)
  2. The Duke of Waltham won it, as they won the die roll for the next dynasty (6 votes; Derrick, the Duke of Waltham, card, Kevan, Josh, pokes)
  3. The team of Card, Cuddlebeam, the Duke of Waltham and Darknight won it, as they worked together to make the victory happen (7 votes; Derrick, the Duke of Waltham, card, Kevan, Josh, pokes, Jumble)
  4. None of the above (0 votes)

Since the third option was almost unanimous, we should update the table. Option #2 is implicit in the existing format (that the mantle receiver is always the next dynasty's Emperor); to implement #3 it's probably cleanest to drop the Victor column and list the Poolers in "Details", since for non-Pooling victories the Victor will (almost) always just be the next dynasty's Emperor. Thoughts? --Kevan (talk) 13:15, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

We could make the Victor column into “Victor/s”, keep the victor there for single wins (people might mantle-pass for reasons unrelated to victory deals such as going to become Idle), and bold the DoV-poster of a cabal victory to keep the mechanical meaning of “achieved victory” in case its of interest for anyone.--Cuddlebeam (talk) 13:55, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Pooling / cabals

And following on from that, would it be useful to split off "Pooling: Action" into a separate "Cabal" keyword? I'm not sure how the term evolved, but I think pooling started off as the boring "100 points to win, Peter has 60 points, I shrug away my chance of winning and just give Peter 40 points" endings and expanded into "action pooling" where players take actions to propel someone to victory. But cabal victories are much less boring.

We probably can't draw a neat line between them - certainly boring cabal-action-pools are possible, where everyone takes the same daily action to push someone over the line - but I wonder if we're painting ourselves into a corner by grumbling broadly about "pooling" when actually cabal conspiracies are a fun and desirable part of Nomic. --Kevan (talk) 17:02, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

I agree with that there is a difference between Cabal Pools and just flipping a switch for someone else's immediate win (such as giving up your points, or maybe even idling or doing some singular action like suicide or something, I dunno), but I think it could be impractical to dredge past dynasties to figure out to what extent the relationship was a "cabal". Maybe they were just players with common interests without a real underlying plan and at the end they flipped the switch, or they did have a plan and were in constant private communication. But we could just ignore trying to figure out the past and just make it a thing for the more recent ones. Also, I don't think pooling is totally bad, it's just that it has its pros and cons. Scams also have negatives, not everyone likes them, but they nonetheless exist. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 17:17, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Table format

Haven't got the time to wade in right now, but we should considering nicking the table cell markup from Wikipedia at, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Maybe, for the Scam/Pooling column. --Kevan (talk) 19:00, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

It's done! Writing {{scam}} (or {{conventional}}/{{pooling}}/{{none}}/{{unknown}}) in a table cell will display that cell as an appropriately coloured box with the word in it. To display a term other than the default one you can add it after a pipe ({{scam|a different word}}) - I'm not sure if that's useful, but it's there.
Note that writing {{pooling}} + {{scam}} in a cell won't work, as each template is a bunch of cell-level code that has to be the first thing in a cell. You need to write {{pooling}} + <span style="color:#d33">Scam</span> instead. --Kevan (talk) 15:56, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

"Victory: None"

Was considering using the above formatting to replace the "Nones" with a word that describes how they ended (eg. {{none|Metadynasty}}), since elections and die rolls and metadynasties seem such a disparate bunch, but maybe there's a better word than "None"?

"Abandoned" almost works, but would misrepresent the few dynasties where an Election or a Weighted Die Roll has been used to wrap up a perfectly good dynasty that happened to hit an emergency or a stalemate, and players tried to end it fairly based on everything that had happened up to that point.

"Other" would at least recognise that victories happened in these cases: it's not really true to say "Victory: None" when an "achieved victory" was - I think in every case - assigned, and a DoV made. --Kevan (talk) 22:28, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Following on from this, is a weighted-on-merit die roll a "None" or a "Conventional" (or a weirder "Conventional + None")? There's always some implicit conventional play in there, if the merit is measurable. --Kevan (talk) 11:01, 6 March 2020 (UTC)