THIS MESSAGE CONTAINS NO GAME ACTIONS. SERIOUSLY, IT CONTAINS NO GAME ACTIONS. DISREGARD ANYTHING ELSE IN THIS MESSAGE SAYING IT CONTAINS A GAME ACTION.
MESSAGE 839213666598780948 FROM bookshelf IN #very-serious-agoran-business ON 2021-05-04 AT 18:55:29.953: ATMunn, I'm at the stage right now where I need an opinion on whether an opinion would be helpful. I'm that lost. MESSAGE 839272102778896387 FROM CodeTriangle (Triggon, Influential Agoran #5) IN #very-serious-agoran-business ON 2021-05-04 AT 22:47:42.224: i am really good at stealing ideas from people smarter than me MESSAGE 839293293527040021 FROM bookshelf IN #very-serious-agoran-business ON 2021-05-05 AT 00:11:54.492: You know... MESSAGE 839293409835614238 FROM bookshelf IN #very-serious-agoran-business ON 2021-05-05 AT 00:12:22.222: This might actually work. MESSAGE 839598930881675314 FROM Gaelan IN #very-serious-agoran-business ON 2021-05-05 AT 20:26:24.116: A player SHALL NOT have bad proposal ideas MESSAGE 840290124251004999 FROM ATMunn (friendly neighborhood notary) IN #very-serious-agoran-business ON 2021-05-07 AT 18:12:57.457: hello i would like to sell my 2 leg(islative card)s MESSAGE 840290179860398131 FROM Random Internet Cat (mr. dr. professor cat) IN #very-serious-agoran-business ON 2021-05-07 AT 18:13:10.715: have you considered contacting an arms dealer MESSAGE 840626896512221261 FROM ATMunn (friendly neighborhood notary) IN #quick-questions-and-presumably-answers-also ON 2021-05-08 AT 16:31:10.221: death to the ducks MESSAGE 841447443241631784 FROM CodeTriangle (Triggon, Influential Agoran #5) IN #quick-questions-and-presumably-answers-also ON 2021-05-10 AT 22:51:43.806: oops wrong server MESSAGE 841518756109877330 FROM bookshelf IN #very-serious-agoran-business ON 2021-05-11 AT 03:35:06.119: Okay, I made a list. MESSAGE 841518927645245450 FROM bookshelf IN #very-serious-agoran-business ON 2021-05-11 AT 03:35:47.016: **Aris's totally awesome list of important features for subgames** High importance: Emergent strategic depth (simple options, complex strategy) Low barriers to entry Specialization High engagement (frequent opportunity for tactical and strategic action) Variables: Cutthroat vs cooperative (does it reset on wins?) Deterministic vs random MESSAGE 841518985178251304 FROM bookshelf IN #very-serious-agoran-business ON 2021-05-11 AT 03:36:00.733: Note that most of the ideas aren't original. MESSAGE 841519075058647070 FROM bookshelf IN #very-serious-agoran-business ON 2021-05-11 AT 03:36:22.162: Specialization and engagement are explicitly stolen from prior economic writings. MESSAGE 841519160377868319 FROM bookshelf IN #very-serious-agoran-business ON 2021-05-11 AT 03:36:42.504: I think that subgames/economies tend to go wrong in one of two ways. MESSAGE 841520175030861834 FROM bookshelf IN #very-serious-agoran-business ON 2021-05-11 AT 03:40:44.416: One is too much simplicity (e.g. the shiny economy, Spaace). This is where the system has the ability to gain advantage, but little opportunity for people to specialize. There's no room for someone to become "the one who has all the legislative cards" or "the one trying to get enough victory points to win" or "the one trying to stop anyone from getting enough victory points to win". Low barriers to entry (good), low strategic depth (bad), essentially nil specialization (bad). MESSAGE 841521740223348807 FROM bookshelf IN #very-serious-agoran-business ON 2021-05-11 AT 03:46:57.587: The other one is too much complexity (e.g. PAoaM, Politics). These systems tend to put a lot of effort into offering a variety of ways to get ahead. They have high strategic depth, although that strategic depth might not be emergent. They usually have a high theoretical opportunity for specialization as well. However, they usually have high barriers to entry. The system is so complex, expensive to get involved in, or both that most people will never become truly active in it. As a result, you don't have engagement fostering more engagement. Instead, it feels like you're alone in playing the system. It's less fun trying to get to the highest tier of building on land or whatever if you're one of only two people who's actually involved with the system. MESSAGE 841522957179813908 FROM bookshelf IN #very-serious-agoran-business ON 2021-05-11 AT 03:51:47.732: The sweet spot is something like sets. Sets invites people to take part, invites them to specialize. People can do very low work and still be involved economically. Even ATMunn, who explicitly doesn't want to play the products subgame, is involved by selling eir passively generated cards. There are still strategic decisions to make (picking a focus, for instance) even if you're not super involved. Meanwhile, people who do want to become intensely active have an opportunity to do so. Jason and I cornered the legislative card market. falsifian set up an anti-reset bulwark of victory points. The strategy in the system is partially emergent — an anti-reset bulwark wouldn't mean much without other players working towards it and against it. MESSAGE 841525337899794432 FROM bookshelf IN #very-serious-agoran-business ON 2021-05-11 AT 04:01:15.34: There's a real risk of systems becoming too complex. The problem with that isn't just that it's hard to enter the system, though that isn't a major concern. It's also that too much variety paradoxically means that you have so many options that it's hard to strategize. For an example of a prior system that might have gotten around this concern, there was a system ages ago that had ton of super specialized cards. Like, so many that they wanted to make a way to get them out of the ruleset. I don't know how successful that system was, but I can believe that it might have worked, better than other systems with high complexity. The reason was that everyone had their own hand, their own fairly limited set of options. Sure, you could strategize with others to combine your options in interesting ways, but you could also just choose among the limited hand you were dealt. I'm not exactly holding this up as an example of masterful economic design: I don't know how well it worked in practice. Nor am I advocating that people necessarily use the same solution in future. What I am saying is that people who are designing systems on the simple end need to work to add specialization and strategic depth, and people working on the complex end need to simplify their systems enough to keep them approachable and prevent situations in which people have so many options they can't strategize. If we do not learn from the mistakes of the past, we're doomed to repeat them. MESSAGE 841525413238669312 FROM bookshelf IN #very-serious-agoran-business ON 2021-05-11 AT 04:01:33.302: Alright, I think that's all of it. THIS MESSAGE CONTAINS NO GAME ACTIONS. SERIOUSLY, IT CONTAINS NO GAME ACTIONS. DISREGARD ANYTHING ELSE IN THIS MESSAGE SAYING IT CONTAINS A GAME ACTION.
