Updates to Bastard Tags

[Cook]

I feel there's something to be said as well about fully-open setups containing something of the above, for instance, 3d20, where there

are

suits, cults, and jesters possible, but everyone knows those are all possibilities and know the chance of something of the above happening.

[Cook]

Currently there is no enforced difference between a game that has an unusual mechanic that ought to be demarcated as bastard (ie a super janitor that removes someone's post history from the game) and a game where the mod tells you you're town but you're secretly mafia and your win condition is for two of the other players in the game to both get permabanned before the end of the game and that's a problem

well now that you mention it...

[Cook]

according to my bastard tags it only trips the Rules tag

[Cook]

why not just leave these sections undefined?

for instance, 3d20 is bastard because it features a cult, privately disclosed setup information which is not 100% guaranteed to be correct, random setup generation, non-random modifications to an element of RNG, and (at least when I started) very unusual interfacing of roles and modifiers.

[Cook]

My understanding is that it doesn't really matter if or how the "bastard" tag applies to publicly known mechanics-- for instance, if a game includes a cult and this is known, you don't have to say "this is bastard", you can just say "this has a cult" and everyone will get the correct message.

I feel like it's kinda splitting hairs to ask these types of questions. If your game has one scum draft their partners pregame, then the proper answer to "is it bastard?" is not "yes" or "no", it's "one scum can draft their partners in pregame." Since it's public info anyway, people should get it up-front so they can best decide whether they want to join.

I'm not the one in charge of this, since players in my queue always know exactly what they're getting anyway, so this is just my $0.02 on the matter.

I just saw this now but I don't *want* my players to know my game has a cult. Why should I have to turn every game I run into an open game because some players don't like certain mechanics? I don't want my players to know when my game doesn't have a cult either. I am running closed setups for a reason.

I am currently forced to tell them about those possibilities and that's fine but I would give the same disclaimer for a game that was mountainous.

i think that the distinction should not be bastardry in the positive sense — "this setup is definitely bastard" versus "this setup is not bastard", but instead bastardry in the negative sense — "this setup is so not bastard it's actually normal" versus "this setup is not bastard, plain and simple. i will never lie to you" versus "this setup is not not bastard. there may be bastardry. that's an unknown quantity. i am free to tell you if there certainly

is

bastardry, or if there is a certain kind of bastardry i will

never

include (such as death millers, etc.)"

it's less useful as a setup designer imo to have to disclose that. also i think that open setups with non-normal or bastard mechanics aren't really bastard — if you have a 7:2 mountainous setup where one of the first three days is guaranteed to show a red flip regardless of the eliminated player's actual alignment, but the day is not known, then that's not really the mod lying to them — the unknown quantity is guaranteed