Sakkaku (not the realm)

[Kitsuki Edogawa]

This is all really well done. Thank you.

[Moto Mitsuki]

Yesterday, on Discord, there was a discussion about simultaneous bids, and how gruesome this was to do in a PbP format. Of course, it was eventually suggested to add a tool on Sakkaku to help with that. A suggestion raising a lot of interesting points and questions that I would actually like to talk about.

However, Discord being Discord, this ended up with inanities screamed on all sides several lines later, as this is just not a subject than can be summed up in two short sentences composed on the spurt of the moment. But now my brain has had enough rest to process it, I feel like it might be worth talking about, in a format that I hope will allow for a more serene explanation.

So, what would it mean to add a "simultaneous bid" system on Sakkaku?

First, the tip of the iceberg, two new public pages:

1. A detail page for each duel, showing all publicly available information for that duel (similar in concept to the detail of a dice roll), i.e. all pairs of bids that have already been revealed and some metadata (campaign, names of the characters/players, etc.)
2. A page with a paginated list of all duels (similar in concept to the list of rolls) and a "Challenge" button.

When the user clicks that button, it would start the following process:

1. The user is shown a form asking for a few information (character name, maybe an optional description, that kind of things).
2. Once it has been filled, the user is given an invitation link, to convey to the other player through whatever mean they prefer (email, Discord, PM, Facebook...).
3. At the same time, a new duel is added to the public list, with, for now , very little information (who created it and when).
4. The user is also granted access to a form where they can enter their bid for the first turn.
5. Once they've entered that piece of data, they're redirected to a page telling them to wait for the other player.
6. Meanwhile the other player clicks the invitation, is redirected to the site, logs in if need be, and specifies a few generic information as well (character name etc.).
7. Then, they complete their own bid form too.
8. Both bids appear at once on the public page for the duel.
9. The second user can see them directly.
10. The first user receives a mail telling them the bids have been revealed and they can go back to the site to see them.

Then history repeats themselves, with both players being granted access to their own "next turn bid" form, entering their bids asynchronously in whatever order, and the reveal only happening after they've both done so.

You can see I've colored some lines. Well, these lines are the only ones relevant for the feature itself.

If the feature was a sink, there would be "buying a sink at the sink shop" and "installing" the sink". Everything else is the "plumbing" required for the water to reach the sink. Things that are needed for the feature to work, but not specific to it.

For example, if the question had been about a stance prediction tool for duels, only these lines would have changed. And, important for what follows, if such a tool was added afterward, they wouldn't be required that time, since, well, they've already been done.

From that point onward, there are three strategies.

1. Deciding the sink is not worth the effort, and asking people to use a bucket instead.
2. Accepting the sink is worth it, and just do all the work it requires.
3. Building a whole bathroom instead of just a sink so the cost of the plumbing does not seem so unbalanced compared to it.

And clearly, the latest is a mindset I've fallen prey to far too often.

In the current example, that would likely be a way to track both players' strife in addition to the bids. I mean, it sounds logical, and it's just a little bit of extra work in comparison to the ones required to "just make the bids work".

Then come stances. And rolls related to the duel. And... Yeah, I don't trust myself to not feel like I "have to" code a complete "duel simulator" if I fall down that rabbit hole, through a classic sunk cost fallacy.

So you'll understand if I just put aside that idea for the moment.

[Seppun Yuzu]

I like the sink analogy and the suggestion for a system to track strife according to the setting’s time slots (heck why not include VP and Fatigue, too).

That’s a whole lot, though.

[Suzume Senseki]

Yesterday, on Discord, there was a discussion about simultaneous bids, and how gruesome this was to do in a PbP format. Of course, it was eventually suggested to add a tool on Sakkaku to help with that. A suggestion raising a lot of interesting points and questions that I would actually like to talk about.

However, Discord being Discord, this ended up with inanities screamed on all sides several lines later, as this is just not a subject than can be summed up in two short sentences composed on the spurt of the moment. But now my brain has had enough rest to process it, I feel like it might be worth talking about, in a format that I hope will allow for a more serene explanation.

So, what would it mean to add a "simultaneous bid" system on Sakkaku?

First, the tip of the iceberg, two new public pages:

1. A detail page for each duel, showing all publicly available information for that duel (similar in concept to the detail of a dice roll), i.e. all pairs of bids that have already been revealed and some metadata (campaign, names of the characters/players, etc.)
2. A page with a paginated list of all duels (similar in concept to the list of rolls) and a "Challenge" button.

When the user clicks that button, it would start the following process:

1. The user is shown a form asking for a few information (character name, maybe an optional description, that kind of things).
2. Once it has been filled, the user is given an invitation link, to convey to the other player through whatever mean they prefer (email, Discord, PM, Facebook...).
3. At the same time, a new duel is added to the public list, with, for now , very little information (who created it and when).
4. The user is also granted access to a form where they can enter their bid for the first turn.
5. Once they've entered that piece of data, they're redirected to a page telling them to wait for the other player.
6. Meanwhile the other player clicks the invitation, is redirected to the site, logs in if need be, and specifies a few generic information as well (character name etc.).
7. Then, they complete their own bid form too.
8. Both bids appear at once on the public page for the duel.
9. The second user can see them directly.
10. The first user receives a mail telling them the bids have been revealed and they can go back to the site to see them.

Then history repeats themselves, with both players being granted access to their own "next turn bid" form, entering their bids asynchronously in whatever order, and the reveal only happening after they've both done so.

You can see I've colored some lines. Well, these lines are the only ones relevant for the feature itself.

If the feature was a sink, there would be "buying a sink at the sink shop" and "installing" the sink". Everything else is the "plumbing" required for the water to reach the sink. Things that are needed for the feature to work, but not specific to it.

For example, if the question had been about a stance prediction tool for duels, only these lines would have changed. And, important for what follows, if such a tool was added afterward, they wouldn't be required that time, since, well, they've already been done.

From that point onward, there are three strategies.

1. Deciding the sink is not worth the effort, and asking people to use a bucket instead.
2. Accepting the sink is worth it, and just do all the work it requires.
3. Building a whole bathroom instead of just a sink so the cost of the plumbing does not seem so unbalanced compared to it.

And clearly, the latest is a mindset I've fallen prey to far too often.

In the current example, that would likely be a way to track both players' strife in addition to the bids. I mean, it sounds logical, and it's just a little bit of extra work in comparison to the ones required to "just make the bids work".

Then come stances. And rolls related to the duel. And... Yeah, I don't trust myself to not feel like I "have to" code a complete "duel simulator" if I fall down that rabbit hole, through a classic sunk cost fallacy.

So you'll understand if I just put aside that idea for the moment.

As the one who mentioned that idea first (I think), I greatly appreciate you putting this all here. I figured it wouldn't be easy and would need quite a lot of new code to make it work ('plumbing'), as you say. And I wholly understand the pull to go ahead and build a complete simulator instead of "only" (many quotes here) the bidding simulator.

One thing I thought of looking at is if there's any similar online tool already available (for tabletop games or whatever) that might be repurposed to simulate the bids (and maybe the predicting... ). A "bucket" of sorts, let's say. So far I've found nothing, though.

Creating something like this might be a project I'd be interested in investing some time in, but I know it'd take quite a bit of time and effort even for an experienced programmer, and doing something like this for free is by no means something that should be expected of anyone.

So... once again, thank you very much for all the work that went into Sakkaku already, and thanks for posting this here now, Mitsuki