The Weakest Link '09: The Rules

[Silfir]

The Weakest Link '09 competition is upon us, and today registration starts!

Most people will have taken a look at the Warm-up thread already, and subsequently checked out the old threads from last year's competition. Still, I think it's best to go over the rules in detail in the first official post.

This thread is restricted to questions and discussions about the RULES of the Weakest Link. All other idle chatter, especially commentary on the leagues, will take place in the General Discussion thread.

While I'll be leading the Competition, managing the threads and editing the rules if need be, I'm only filling in for Grey. Should he decide to step in during a rules debate, his word shall be law.

Goal

Become the last survivor in a gigantic battle to the death and beyond, facing the depths of the dreaded vaults of Infinity, with your rivals quietly rooting for your demise - and once the Chaos gates are open, all bets are off...

Players will be organized in leagues depending on the number of participants, though it's very likely (UPDATE: Not so likely anymore, no) that four leagues will be formed just like last year, with the two best players of each league entering the finals.

Each league will be assigned a single, randomly generated character, which they have to play in turns. Each turn consists of 2000 game turns, no more, no less. During these 2000 game turns the character must descend at least once and may never ascend! This will pit the players against increasingly difficult hordes of monsters, with no means of turning back, to their inevitable deaths...

Game Reports and Cheating

Players recount their adventures and make official reports in the league threads. These reports must adhere to the following principles:

First, make note of any significant occurence during the report. It's only 2000 turns to keep track of, thankfully... If you're in doubt whether something is significant or not, note it down anyway. Significant occurences are, for example, monsters you have eluded or ran away from, whether you heard a tension room, that you gained a level and so on...

Even with the Chaos Gate open, you must not withhold information or lie in order to deceive and hinder the other players. Violation of this rule will result in you losing any advantage you gained and then some.

The only exception is if you've died at the end of your turn. You are then allowed to withhold any information you have gained that might help the others! Them dying too is the best chance you have, so why should you have to sabotage that chance? However, it is still not allowed to lie.

This is not a strict rule, but still something I think is very important: Describe your adventures as closely as possible. The Weakest Link is a spectator sport; the people who read the threads want to know what challenges you had to go through, and providing them with an interesting read makes for about 99% of the fun to be had in the Weakest Link! Even if you died it's good sport to make cryptic hints as to why you died and still create an entertaining tall story of what you had to go through. If you died horribly after twenty turns, at least include some chosen curse words!

There is a time limit. From the moment it's your turn you have 72 hours to play and post the report. If you don't play until then, you will be pushed down the list if it's the first round, or taken out of the competition. Some players have busy lives, and that's acceptable, but pay attention to your league threads. If you are too busy to play within 72 hours, please post something to that effect. If you're friendly about it and post exactly when you will be able to play and that is not all that far away, you'll probably be given more time. If you'll be gone for a week and fear your turn might come up state that also. We want to include as many people as possible in the competition and will be patient. Just don't try our goodwill

Cheating, this most wretched and dishonorable offense, is of course forbidden. However, it's impossible for me to control what you're doing with the savegame. This challenge depends on the honesty of the players! So, don't save scum if you died, and don't make final log files, for instance by quitting, except if you really died! Final log files may contain information that would give you or others an unfair advantage. You can make short or verbose logfiles instead, since they do not contain such information.

Unless I'm presented with hard evidence, I will always make the assumption that there was no unfair conduct in relation to the savegame. The only authority you have to answer to if you're not found out is God and your own nagging conscience.

Death

Players die if they

- Have their character die before the 2000 game turns are over
- Have 2000 game turns pass without advancing by at least one ID level

Dead players are the weakest link - goodbye! They are out of the competition, unless they become reanimated.

The next player in line continues with the last "alive" savegame.

The Abyss

What if a player ends his or her 2000th turn in the middle of a horde of large spiders, with 3 HP left and poisoned many times over? Would it be fair to have all the other players die and him or her triumph by default? Who is the weakest link in this case - those who die to an impossible situation, or the one who created it?

Should it happen that players die in waves after one has finished his or her turn, he or she is suspected of having created an unsurvivable situation. There is only one chance to redeem oneself - Survival! Should this player surpass the challenge unwittingly or wittingly set by him or herself, he or she automatically becomes winner of the league by elimination. Should the character die or fail to descend one level, however, the offending player is cast to the Abyss; he or she's the weakest link - goodbye!

The Abyss rule is in force until the two league winners are decided. Once only those two players are left, the first one who dies dies and that is it.

Reanimation

If a player is cast to the Abyss, all the players that died to the unsurvivable situation he or she created will be reanimated. They will continue the descent through the ID from the last "alive" save prior to the one that contained the unsurvivable situation. Despite their now undead nature, they are "alive" players for any purpose of the term, and can die and be reanimated later as usual, with no difference in scoring.

There is, however, one tiny chance to reenter the competition for anyone, even those that have died early and have no chance of being reanimated in the way above: If an unsurvivable situation has led to a player being cast into the Abyss and the other participants reanimated, there will be a Trial: All the dead players of any league may try to succeed where the others failed and survive the unsurvivable. The first player who manages to complete the Trial will be reanimated and allowed to take the place of the one cast to the Abyss!

But beware: Only one player can be reanimated through the Trial. Though there is no set time limit, the Trial is open only for as long as the two league winners haven't been decided. Once two players are left in the league fulfilling the Trial will only remain a contest of honor.

Players that have been cast to the Abyss may compete for Trials unrelated to their being cast into the Abyss, but not the one they caused - there are no do-overs, they had their chance. The same is true for the players who already participated in the creation of the Trial through their own deaths.

And obviously, the Trial is not a Trial for the Living - only dead players can make their reappearances! This is no way to play in two leagues at once!

[Silfir]

The Chaos Gate

The Weakest Link is a competitive battle to the death - there are no friends, only opponents. That said, it is also an honorable contest of skills. During the early parts of the challenge - the first two complete rounds - it is not allowed to use "competitive" tactics. Players may not willfully cause difficult situations or get rid of helpful equipment in order to get rid of their rivals.

But once those two rounds are over, the Chaos Gate will open. From that point on you can do anything you want. Beware, however, since all other rules are still in force, including the Abyss...

As already mentioned, the opening of the Chaos Gate has no effect on the game reports. You still have to remain truthful under any circumstances. If you ended the turn severely poisoned in the darkness next surrounded by dangerous monsters, it's fine to do that while the Chaos Gate is open, but you must still describe the shit you have heaped on your poor successor in meticulous detail. If he died because of the situation, you're in the clear. If he died and information you had could possibly have saved him, you will face your punishment.

The River Rule

Some players may stumble across a river on their way down the Infinite Dungeon. Since many characters may have no means to cross this river and survive, this often means certain death. To avoid this anti-climactical and hella boring conundrum the River Rule has been created.

Basically, once the "You hear the sound of rushing water!" message with the exclamation mark is generated, you already know there is a river. Check out whether the down stairs are blocked off by the river. If not, there is no problem, just descend as usual whenever you feel you are finished with the level (or, as the case may be, you have to in order to not violate the "always descend one level" rule). If the stairs are blocked off, you can recreate the level by immediately returning to the stairs, stopping for nothing except killing monsters blocking your way, without picking up anything. You can check if you can cross the river at any point reasonably safely if you like, but be honest - if you know you'll have to recreate the level, do it without milking your side of the river for items and XP!

Scoring (updated again!)

To make this clear: The last player to survive is not the one who, by a strike of luck, was the last to die in real life (by being far down in the order, for instance). These are the rules of placement:

1. Number of rounds survived. Survival is the first and foremost goal in ADOM, and so it is in the Weakest Link. A round consists of one player turn each of the players still alive. All the players who are left alive after that round are placed before the ones who died, provided an Abyss situation doesn't throw it all over.
- Exception: If one player ends his turn alive with only one other alive player left in the game, the game enters "Duel" mode. Number of rounds survived in total is now irrelevant. What matters now is whether you manage to survive the other player by one round, i. e. if A and E are the only ones left, and E dies first, A must survive another round to get placed in front of E based on number of rounds survived. If E dies and A dies immediately afterwards, the other rules of placement decide!
2. ID level reached. If two players die in the same round, we need some sort of tie-breaker. The one truest to the Weakest Link spirit is to place players according to the ID level they reached before they died. It is influenced by Iron Man, after all.
3. If two (or more) players have left the competition on the same ID level, the one who has scored more experience with his last alive version of the character gets placed before the other. If you didn't get farther than the other, at least you took down more and harder enemies with you...
4. If ID level and experience are the same, which can happen if both (all) players have died similar deaths starting from the same savegame with killing the same monsters or without killing anyone, the number of turns passed decides who gets placed first.

Please include the ID level reached, the experience scored and the turns that have passed in your death reports; otherwise it will be very hard to place you properly!

The league ends only if all the players are dead, and the two players with the highest placement by the above criteria are the winner and runner-up respectively, and qualify for the finals.

Registration

Refer to the the sign-up thread.

The Finals (This section is not finalized. Once the number of leagues is clear this can be decided. Until then, you can be sure that the rule below will hold.)

Game rules for the Finals (and Semi-Finals) are the same as for the all the other leagues, with one exception: While there is an Abyss for players to be cast into, there are no Trials. Only the players who qualified are in, and if they die, they are out for good, unless they become reanimated in the course of someone being cast into the Abyss.

Technical Details

As of now, there are two ways planned to participate in this contest. Both need you to be registered on the forums in order to make the game report posts.

a) Participation in a non-server league: You have to use either the DOS version or winbeta version of ADOM 1.1.1. (UPDATE: The Linux version has also been tested and is compatible, which means the Linux version and ADOM Sage are fair game as well.) The savegames shall be attached to the game report posts. Only the following player and spectators from other leagues may download these savegames.
b) Participation in a server league (if there is one): jaakos' ADOM server allows players to play ADOM online, and even spectate on currently ongoing games! The way in which this will work shall be specified at a later date; questions can be asked in this thread.

Players do not have to play on the server if they don't want to!



As mentioned, questions on the rules and discussion about them will find their place here!

[Grey]

While I'll be leading the Competition, managing the threads and editing the rules if need be, I'm only filling in for Grey. Should he decide to step in during a rules debate, his word shall be law.

My, what a lovely line that is! I can't imagine getting any chance to thoroughly observe all posts and situations, but I'm sure if anything important came up the arena grandmaster might be disturbed from his slumber...

[Maul]

This just in, as an addition to the River Rule. If you get "You hear the sound of rushing water.", that's a water trap. If you get "You hear the sound of rushing water!" with an exclamation mark, that's a river.

[Grey]

I personally am not too keen on how the river rule is presented here. Last year it was just allowed to regenerate the level if you found the river to be uncrossable and the stairs on the wrong side. If you feel the river is crossable (or the stairs are accessible) then there's no reason to regenerate the level. Characters with swimming or frost bolt for instance shouldn't do too badly.

Further to that it should maybe be made explicit that if regenerating the level because of a river you must *immediately* head straight for the stairs back up, ignoring all items and monsters (even if under attack), and when you reach the stairs you should immediately do '<>' to instantly regenerate the level. Nothing should stop you from this. The idea here is that there should be no benefit from regenerating the level.

[CheatMan]

ADOM-sage use okay?

[3AM]

I'm not entirely clear on the rules, so let me sum up the basics as I see them:

Each player gets the character for exactly 2,000 turns. That player must descend at least, but not limited to, 1 level in the ID. Player makes a detailed report of what happened during his turn. If the player dies, he is out (not necessarily permanently), and is allowed to omit information in his report.

Before 2 rounds are complete, the Chaos Gate is considered closed, and players are not allowed to purposefully put their character in horrible situations just before their turns are up. If all players fail to get out of a situation that a player ends his turn on, then the player that ended his turn on that situation is deemed to have put people in an unwinnable situation, and is "cast to the Abyss" (dead, not necessarily permanently).

Anytime a player is cast to the Abyss, ALL dead/Abyss'd players from any league may take that save and attempt to survive the situation that lead to the Abyss. The first person to succeed (if anybody does) is resurrected and allowed to take the position of the Abyss'd person.

Once the Chaos Gate is open, nearly all bets are off. Players are allowed to sabotage their competitors at the end of their turns, although they still must accurately report what they've done. The Abyss/unwinnable situation rules are still in effect, however.

Do I have the basics right?

[Grey]

Yep, you've summed it up very well. The only extra I'd say is that if it gets down to the last two then I believe the Abyss/resurrection system should no longer apply, since it's wrong for a league to be hijacked once the final two winners have been decided. Overall the whole Abyss idea is unlikely to come about - only happened once last year, and was settled for the most part satisfactorally (though one player was cast into the Abyss for what was mostly poor luck). It's unlikely that some of the more obscure areas of the rules are going to crop up again, and if so the rules will be thoroughly discussed at the time to make sure that things are handled fairly.

[Silfir]

ADOM-sage use okay?

ADOM Sage use is okay. Linux saves are compatible.

I've modified the River Rule somewhat. What do you think - should it be possible to keep a river level if the Chaos Gate is open, or would that be too unfair?

EDIT: Incidentally... If the Linux saves are indeed compatible, shouldn't they also be compatible with the server savegames? In that case, all we need is the ability to upload savegames, and there won't be any need to divide server from non-server leagues since people can move server games to play on the server anyway!

[Grey]

I'm still not keen on that personally. I just don't like the word "must". Why must we regenerate the level if the player thinks it's not necessary? The river could be narrow, the char might have means of crossing, and the stairs might be on the same side anyway. There's no need to go running like a coward just because you hear a little running water. The rules last year where something like "If you see a river you don't think you can cross then you may quickly regenerate the level, but you must still descend a net of at least one level in your turns". It was a permissive rule rather than a restrictive order.

As for dividing server games, it could indeed be much more open if we had a way of uploading files. However I imagine that will be quite troublesome for jaakkos. It'd be easier to keep all the server people on the same league account.