The First Dynasty of Diabecko
December 11, 2017 — January 18, 2018
Contents
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
- Initial Mechanics created Failed Experiments with Hunger and Discretion, and potentially belonging to Groups
- Abilities allowed Experiments to spend Discretion to gain mutation-style Abilities
- Health and Healing created HP
- Metabolism added more Abilities
- The Worse Part of Valour flipped Discretion around to be "Suspicion"
- On the Run gave every Experiment a Distance in kilometres from the laboratory, with certain stretches of that mileage being Forest or City
- United States of America added Death and Capture situations
- Abilities added five more Abilities
- Treasure Hunt added an NPC who had hidden Treasures at particular mile ranges
- Location Abilities added special actions to stretches of the route
- Man's Reach limited some action effects to Experiments at the same mile marker
- Glarsh Zero added three more Abilities
- Screaming for Icecream sent excessively Hungry Experiments bezerk
- Dead Wood added a reset mechanic
- Group Spirit allowed Groups to transfer their Hunger, Suspicion and Abilities on a slow weekly basis
- Lone Wolf added an Ability
- A Bigger Net simplified some unintuitively easy escape rolls
- A Big Coat allowed Abilities to be bought gradually
- Tourism Drive added more things to do in the city area
- Persistence allowed a diceless escape for players captured for 72 full hours
- Three Final Acts, take 3 gave a victory condition: Understand the Truth (at distance 50km), Save your Family (back at distance 0km) and finally Escape (at distance 50km again).
- Cuddle Skips Victory: Cuddlebeam argued that "official post may be altered by its author if it is less than six hours old" allowed players to post a DoV and alter it to having been enacted. (Normally restricted to admins, the recent Orphan Variables rule allowed Cuddlebeam to change it as a non-admin player?) Card used the same loophole to post and enact a CfJ reversing its effects.
- Spring Clean took out three elaborately-worded mechanics from Cuddlebeam on the grounds that they might also be parts of a scam
- I Understand the Truth - Cuddlebeam claimed to be at Distance 54, on the grounds that an admin illegally changed their Distance during a proposal enactment, while they were Captured (which meant that other players couldn't change their Distance)
- Return of the Cleanup Crew was a CfJ to clarify Cuddlebeam's Distance and undo their Understanding of the Truth
- Saving Family - Cuddlebeam returned to the Lab, acknowledging that this action may have been invalid
- Experiment Number Six added three more Abilities
- yolo - Cuddlebeam claimed to have Escaped, but, even though "Performing this action makes you achieve victory", did not declare victory
- Understand the Truth - Kevan reached the 50km mark
- There and Back Again added more checks to the victory condition, after two days wth Cuddlebeam still not claiming victory for Escaping (and nobody else taking much action)
- I Understand the Truth - Card reached 50km
- No Dice At All replaced all die rolls with Hunger costs, since the finish line was near and "it’s always a bit dull when an endgame comes down to the result of a single die roll, rather than who was playing best"
- Save Your Family - Kevan made it back to the lab
- Saving the Family - as did Card
- Escape - Kevan passed the 50km border and escaped
Core Changes
- Minimum Viable Nomic brought back the Dormancy mechanic as a Special Case rule
- Orphanage added a Special Case rule covering Orphan Variables, which was later repealed with Cuddlebeam saying "I admit I made it only for the hax lol"
- Orphanage II: Stomp Harder brought back a variant of the Orphan Variable rule
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)
