git ssb

As I brought up in another thread:

Regarding the palette, since the Microscope rules plan on having a set phase for negotiating what is encouraged or forbidden within the game, I think we need to decide how we're going to manage dynamically adding new players. Will they be able to add new items to the palette as they join, or will the initial set of players set the tone for the remainder of the game?

I think it might help, initially, to have a set of host players who initiate the game and control the palette

A related thought: perhaps only those host players have commit rights to the story (and more can be granted this later). That would allow us to get contributions from a broad participant group, but keep some order while we find our feet

Experiments with a fully open commit route could come later

perhaps only those host players have commit rights to the story

On git-ssb everybody can commit to all repos, can't they? I believe I once accidentally committed something to patchfoo's repo because I thought it was my own private clone.

I think we need to decide how we're going to manage dynamically adding new players.

Are we sure we want to do that? The rulebook explicitly warns against adding new players once the game has started. Shouldn't we listen to the people who have created the game and seen/experienced many games?

(I will see if I can find the exact phrasing in the rulebook.)

From the rulebook (PDF version), page 56, last paragraph:

The one caveat is that you can't add new players to an existing game. Playing Microscope requires a strong understanding of what has already happened and a confidence in your creative authority. No matter how much you brief players who weren't in the history at the start, they may unintentionally contradict established facts (leading you to correct them, which is no fun for anyone) or they may feel unsure about what fits “your” history.

@haileycoop brought up the topic of adding players because @rich said that he was interested in doing so as a bit of a social experiment (I'm paraphrasing here, hopefully nobody objects to being an experimentee).

Social experiments don't always make the best games (except perhaps for the experimenter), but I'm willing to give it a try, under certain circumstances:

1. we decide ahead of time how many rounds to play, so that the game doesn't continually expand its scope to include the entire scuttleverse
2. we play at least one alpha game to work out difficulties related to the medium before further complicating things

It's possible that in a play-by-post game, adding new players is more feasible, since everything is already documented by virtue of having been written down from the start.

On the other hand, we may find that the amount of text produced by playing is not practical for newcomers to read, or that there are other problems related to not being able to fetch all the blobs for the git-ssb repo.

Assuming @rich is still interested in joining, I'd like to hear his thoughts on the matter.

In any case, I think everybody concerned should either consent or object to this style of play well before a game starts, and I agree that the first game should not include it.

I think everybody concerned should either consent or object to this style of play well before a game starts, and I agree that the first game should not include it.

:+1:

Depending on how far the game had progressed, I'm not sure I would have the energy to collect and read all of the previously produced history. But then, of course, I wouldn't join a game ’in flight’, so I shouldn't worry if other people decide to play a game of joinable Microscope. Problem solved.

I agree with banning latecomers in the first alpha game

And, I think we should be clear about one of the drivers for why LameMage recommends this. In face to face gameplay, a lot of the story data is communicated by spoken word, as the cards are played. The cards hold only about 1% of the story data, and the rest is stored in shared player memory (usually short term memory)

In asynchronous computer-mediated play, we don't have this secondary data-stream of spoken word. We must record all text that would otherwise be vocalised. LameMage's rules are already insufficient for our context.

So while I'm fine to ban latecomers initially, I think the tensions with latecomers are somewhat reduced by the necessary increased fidelity of the written record in our game. A latecomer will be expected to read everything before contributing, which will be the main tension.

Also, I'd note that Rich was pretty lukewarm on playing. There are others though.

I'm not looking to join any time soon, I just musing that it seems scuttly to adapt the rules to account for an undefined membership.

@Drew always loves games all the time!

Thanks for the input!

I've made a new file (meta.md) which we can use to summarize some of our discussions as they come to a close. On that note, I'm going to close this issue.

I'm not sure if this is the right place to chime in, but… The rulebook requires four initial steps for each game:

1. Big picture
2. Bookend history
3. Palette — add or ban ingredients
4. First pass

How about these always be created as the first four issues in each new game repo and have to be solved sequentially?

Yes to this proposal

I can't find the posts now, but ssb-loomio has been mentioned several times in relation to decision making. Save that it may not yet be functional, does this module/app require a separate piece of software and/or an account at loomio.org?

development of ssb-loomio has been funded. it'll be completely distinct from loomio.org. the only connection to loomio is a similar data structure and ux

perhaps for now, you could use loomio.org for decisions? if a logged-in user creates a poll at https://www.loomio.org/p/new then anonymous participants can vote on it

Thanks.