Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is LIVE! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Companion Thread to D&D Survivor: Planar Dragons
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9275370" data-attributes="member: 6790260"><p>I mean, it's literally the safest possible strategy:</p><ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Pick a set of 2-4 favorites (depending on the total size of the set; if it starts with 10, 2 is probably enough).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Always either upvote one of them, or upvote something if you think doing so will draw the lightning to it.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Before (roughly) the final five, never upvote something you like if doing so would put it (further) ahead of all other options.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Before (roughly) the final five, never downvote the highest option if doing so would put something you like alone in first place.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">With the above caveats, always downvote the current leader or something that gets surges of upvotes.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">If there are no leaders/everything is too muddled/balanced, downvote the lowest-point option, as this can also draw the lightning.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Once it hits the final five-ish, try to get folks to dogpile the most popular option and to ignore any of your favorites that remain.</li> </ol><p>Follow those steps and you <em>massively</em> decrease the chances that all the options you like will get eliminated. Because things favor downvotes 2-to-1, it's always better to vote cautiously and to try to draw attention away from the stuff you like until the game is nearly over, then <em>slam</em> the most popular options as hard as you possibly can. If you've done a good enough job eliminating popular options early on, many folks will feel lukewarm about most of what remains, and thus will jump when they smell blood in the water.</p><p></p><p>Because drawing negative attention is literally twice as bad as any positive attention anything can get, playing it safe and even "baiting" attention to stuff you dislike is actually a better strategy than trying to help the things you like actually <em>win</em>. The one and only time we ever got an unequivocal runaway success on these things was Lore Bard.</p><p></p><p>This is why I would prefer a "race to the finish" model rather than an "elimination" model. Even if that preserves something equivalent to the 2-to-1 bias, a race to the finish "eliminates" options by having them <em>win</em>, not lose, and thus voters are incentivized to create an insurmountable lead, not dogpile a disliked thing until it's driven from the contest.</p><p></p><p>E.g. start everyone with 20 points, you vote +2/-1, an option wins when it reaches (say) 70. Race ends when (say) five options have won. This way, there's still some strategy, there's still the possibility of a come-from-behind victory, but aiming to keep everything blandly uniform for as long as humanly possible is counterproductive. Further, not only do you get some sense of the "order" of the options (e.g. you can actually define, to some extent, a meaningful <em>hierarchy</em> of results), but you also actually see what is well-liked, rather than seeing what folks have finagled as being sufficiently inoffensive to slip under the radar. In the limit of infinite votes (not actually possible, but for the sake of argument), the "Survivor" method allows a minimum 1/3 minority to dictate which options definitely lose. There is no equivalent to that in the "Racing" method, because options are only eliminated by winning, so nobody is ever knocked out of the race for good.</p><p></p><p>Of course, this method would be pretty unwieldy with a very large pool....but it's not like Survivors aren't unwieldy when you have 40+ options either.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9275370, member: 6790260"] I mean, it's literally the safest possible strategy: [LIST=1] [*]Pick a set of 2-4 favorites (depending on the total size of the set; if it starts with 10, 2 is probably enough). [*]Always either upvote one of them, or upvote something if you think doing so will draw the lightning to it. [*]Before (roughly) the final five, never upvote something you like if doing so would put it (further) ahead of all other options. [*]Before (roughly) the final five, never downvote the highest option if doing so would put something you like alone in first place. [*]With the above caveats, always downvote the current leader or something that gets surges of upvotes. [*]If there are no leaders/everything is too muddled/balanced, downvote the lowest-point option, as this can also draw the lightning. [*]Once it hits the final five-ish, try to get folks to dogpile the most popular option and to ignore any of your favorites that remain. [/LIST] Follow those steps and you [I]massively[/I] decrease the chances that all the options you like will get eliminated. Because things favor downvotes 2-to-1, it's always better to vote cautiously and to try to draw attention away from the stuff you like until the game is nearly over, then [I]slam[/I] the most popular options as hard as you possibly can. If you've done a good enough job eliminating popular options early on, many folks will feel lukewarm about most of what remains, and thus will jump when they smell blood in the water. Because drawing negative attention is literally twice as bad as any positive attention anything can get, playing it safe and even "baiting" attention to stuff you dislike is actually a better strategy than trying to help the things you like actually [I]win[/I]. The one and only time we ever got an unequivocal runaway success on these things was Lore Bard. This is why I would prefer a "race to the finish" model rather than an "elimination" model. Even if that preserves something equivalent to the 2-to-1 bias, a race to the finish "eliminates" options by having them [I]win[/I], not lose, and thus voters are incentivized to create an insurmountable lead, not dogpile a disliked thing until it's driven from the contest. E.g. start everyone with 20 points, you vote +2/-1, an option wins when it reaches (say) 70. Race ends when (say) five options have won. This way, there's still some strategy, there's still the possibility of a come-from-behind victory, but aiming to keep everything blandly uniform for as long as humanly possible is counterproductive. Further, not only do you get some sense of the "order" of the options (e.g. you can actually define, to some extent, a meaningful [I]hierarchy[/I] of results), but you also actually see what is well-liked, rather than seeing what folks have finagled as being sufficiently inoffensive to slip under the radar. In the limit of infinite votes (not actually possible, but for the sake of argument), the "Survivor" method allows a minimum 1/3 minority to dictate which options definitely lose. There is no equivalent to that in the "Racing" method, because options are only eliminated by winning, so nobody is ever knocked out of the race for good. Of course, this method would be pretty unwieldy with a very large pool....but it's not like Survivors aren't unwieldy when you have 40+ options either. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Companion Thread to D&D Survivor: Planar Dragons
Top