Dumb action resolution

[Bicephalous Bob]

First, apply the golden rule:

Apply actions which modify other actions before the actions they modify.

When a paradox occurs, minimize the number of deaths. If multiple outcomes are equally peaceful, pick the one with the lowest number of successful actions.

An action is considered successful if it isn't tampered with in any way.

Examples:

A blocks B and kills C, B protects C.

A's kill goes through (no paradox, golden rule)

A blocks B and kills C, B jailkeeps A.

Jailkeep goes through, A's block and kill fail (1 kill > 0 kills)

A redirects B to C. B blocks A. C investigates D.

Redirect goes through, B unintentionally blocks C, investigation fails (1 successful action < 2 successful actions)

Once in a blue moon players might infer other people's abilities from the way a paradox was resolved, but that's the only problem I can think of.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

A redirects B to C. B blocks A. C investigates D. Redirect goes through, B unintentionally blocks C, investigation fails (1 successful action < 2 successful actions)

What if C doesn't have an action but is targetted by a Watcher - what does a Watcher see? (You could argue that the redirecting an action to C counts as tampering with the watcher, maybe, but then equally B roleblocking C could count as tampering with the watcher.) I don't think your action resolution covers everything.

[Bicephalous Bob]

That's a good point. NAR cannot resolve everything either, though. Most notoriously, it fails on example 2. If a simpler system covers different ground of the same surface, it's still a win.

[callforjudgement]

I've been wanting to make an "NAR but stupider" for a while. My plan was basically golden rule + some special cases for common scenarios it doesn't cover, ignore everything more complex.
For an action resolution system that covers everything, there's RAR. I tried it on your scenarios:

> A blocks B and kills C, B protects C
C was killed, but B protected them, but A blocked the protection. No circularity, kill goes through. (RAR produces the same result as NAR and DAR in all golden-rule-only scenarios.)

> A blocks B and kills C, B jailkeeps A.
C was killed, but B blocked the killer, but A blocked the block. We can't go further at this point (you can't apply the same action twice in a chain in RAR), so in RAR the kill goes through. This differs from DAR. NAR as originally defined is silent on the issue. There's also an official ruling for Normal games (which otherwise use NAR), which has a Roleblock always take precedence over a Jailkeep in action loops, so in a Normal game the kill wouldn't go through (although it wouldn't if A were a scum jailkeeper and B were a town roleblocker). I originally had the Normal NAR result backwards; edited

> A redirects B to C. B blocks A. C investigates D.
C investigated D, but A redirected a block onto them, but the redirection was itself blocked. As usual in RAR, we have to stop here; the redirection was already involved in the chain and thus it can't also be used to save itself from being blocked. The investigation goes through. This is different from DAR.

> Bonus round: A redirects B to C. B blocks A. D watches C.
The only argument in favour for D getting a result is that A redirected B to C; but B blocked A, and the redirection has already become part of the chain so it can't be used to stop the block too. D sees nothing.

I'm not claiming that RAR's, Normal NAR's, or DAR's results are necessarily better (although I prefer both RAR and DAR over NAR because the tiebreak is less sensitive to the details of the roles). RAR pretty much just exists for a "system that resolves everything in a fair way", rather than necessarily to always produce the most intuitive or most balanced result. I was mostly just curious to see what would happen in these cases.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

There's also an official ruling for Normal games (which otherwise use NAR), which has a Jailkeep always take precedence over a Roleblock in action loops

No, it's the other way round. Roleblocking has a higher priority than Jailkeeping when resolving loops in Normal NAR.

[RadiantCowbells]

this is dumb.

[callforjudgement]

There's also an official ruling for Normal games (which otherwise use NAR), which has a Jailkeep always take precedence over a Roleblock in action loops

No, it's the other way round. Roleblocking has a higher priority than Jailkeeping when resolving loops in Normal NAR.

Ugh, you're right. Jailkeeping appears earlier but Blocking appears even earlier. I'll go edit my previous post.

[Bicephalous Bob]

this is dumb.

Take that back.

[Bicephalous Bob]

Just to make sure I understand RAR correctly: if two players both cross-block and cross-kill, both kills go through, right?

[callforjudgement]

Yes. Each block gets successfully blocked by the other block.

[Gamma Emerald]

I'd think the kills would be canceled as the blocks are on the same tier.

[callforjudgement]

NAR doesn't handle the case of same-tier. (I think the original suggested going by the order in which the actions were submitted, but that's obviously problematic.)

[vonflare]

whenever there's a conflict I roll a dice for each action and resolve them in roll order Kappa