Round 51 Note From Sly

A note on the very unfortunate controversy from Round 51. I hope to at least clear up a few things so that people are not in the dark about what transpired. I also wanted to make sure that people had what I believe are the facts, rather than rumors or speculation that was circulated during the round.

Immediately after the round I spoke to several people to try to piece together why certain people believed what they did, and how the rumors came to be. I also wanted to see if there were facts I was not aware of. What if the rumors were true, and I just didn't know? Had I wasted 47 days of time and effort? I was able to speak with several people and piece together quite a bit. This is a sort of TL;DR version, but I feel compelled to share information that will illuminate the circumstances, because it seems like everyone only has tiny pieces of what they think happened instead of the full story.

Charles, Gabbe, and Advent

The round win story shares how Charles came to join up with mris/Gabbe pack. Charles wasn't even planning to play FA as the round win story details. I won't rehash that whole story since you can read it for yourself, but it was not because Gabbe played 'PA' with Charles. Gabbe has never played PA, and is one of the most senior (in experience) members of our community going back to early rounds of Classic Dominion. I have no idea why anyone ever could've thought he was a new player from some other game. Gabbe (along with Pasi, who he was regularly packed with) actually taught me how to play in Classic when I was a kid.

Additionally, as far as I can tell, Charles has no relationship with Advent. The rumor was that Advent was also from PA along with Gabbe (what?), but there is nobody named Advent who played PA. The source of this rumor seems to stem from an AI hallucination which served to confirm the pre-existing bias of its user. The AI simply made up that Charles, Gabbe, and Advent played together in PA. There is no record of this; it is an invention of fiction. We knew Advent (4 FW) was 12-hour casting AC for many days before we managed to actually hit him. The first time he dropped it for more than a few seconds, Charles mistakenly thought he didn't have the OP to break him because he miscalculated 5:4 without AC on. The next time it required neruht in voice chat to ensure the spell stayed down and help Charles calc. Pretty deep conspiracy...

Another rumor said that Charles IS Advent, and that Charles had several multis in various realms. I have not found a source for this other than crude implications made in general chat, but the RC has stated that Charles played the whole round on a real IP (not a VPN or proxy). I assume if his IP was shared with anyone else, he would've been locked quite early, as this is very easy to catch. Finally, Charles is British, while I am fairly confident that Advent is American.

So who is Advent? I'm not 100% sure, but it is clear to me that he is not new, but rather an old(ish?) OD player. Just look at his build (prior to lock): 5% shrines, and strategically built WGs--not to mention the fact that he was able to keep up very well as a fast explorer. No new player would have this combination without serious coaching, and what I'm told by that realm is that Advent was not open to receiving feedback (or even sharing advisors until like a week in).

It also probably didn't help that Advent was so flagrant in general chat after the events went down the way they did, and I can see why people just assumed there might have been something to the rumors based on their public chats/personalities.

The Sinking of mdk

Rio also thought (initially, I believe he has since recanted) that Advent or someone must've been feeding us information because his realm (4) was gearing up to sink mdk (our FW) which could've opened up the round a bit, but mdk 'suddenly' invested in harbor and so on. It seems to me that this assumption rested on weeks of self-reinforcement of the other delusional rumors, because the facts clear this up easily. They were planning to sink mdk in early Sept, but as early as Aug 25 we were discussing mdk pumping harbor. And Gabbe identified that realm 4 was pushing spies likely to sink mdk on this date. There was a Flood that hit mdk right around when they were considering sinking, triggering him to take defensive precautions which also added to their suspicion, but this was pure coincidence by a third party.

The Rules Committee & Charles' "Multi"

Adding on to what was already being speculated was an unfortunate situation with the Rules Committee. Fett was away, and I have not been on the RC since r45. They added 2 members in the middle of the round to help but Fett is the only one with full access to the database (up until more recently, that is).

When I was on the RC, we had a standard process (that Fett ran) to check for multis, among other things that I won't detail here. I'm 'educatedly' guessing that process might not have happened at the start of the round, and was only evaluated when reports that Charles was a multi came in. I'm also guessing what transpired went something like this:

• we've received reports of multis, Fett can you check?
• info shows there are a couple obvious multis we need to address with the same IPs
• what about Charles?
• someone in Ireland made an account with his real name as the dominion name, pretty close to UK, just lock him and we'll figure it out
• locked 3 pairs of assumed multis, Charles included

There were a few problems here. If the RC had reached out to Charles they would've found out what they learned later: Charles DID have a friend who he invited to play, but the player made an account with Charles' actual name to troll him and never logged in/completed protection. I'm not sure why the RC just assumed it was Charles, and even if they did, it is not standard practice for us to lock a player in this situation without speaking with him/her first. Charles later showed the RC a screenshot of his text messages with that friend, and this is what Fett said in the later RC announcement: "We also saw screenshots of a conversation where the friend was being told about the game and they matched exactly with the timestamps of registration, etc."

Another problem was the initial communication. When the RC locked the pairs of suspected multis, people may have mistakenly believed that all accounts listed were related. But this is not the case; they were listed in pairs for a reason. Additionally, despite the unlock coming just a few hours after the initial announcement, the follow up announcement left an ominous "pending further investigation" which was not formally addressed until almost the end of the round. I'm sure now that the RC is at full strength, and with the benefit of hindsight, things will be more smooth in this regard.

Finally, it was also suggested by someone that the RC and realm 10 were in coordination, I guess to ignore the cheating for their own benefit or something. This is preposterous and anyone who said this publicly should apologize to them for it. There were 0 members of realm 10 on the RC until slz was added mid-round, after this allegation was made. Even then, it is standard practice for anyone on the RC involved in relevant realms to recuse themselves from decision-making.

Cronel's 'Investigation'

If the self-reinforcement of the paranoia and delusion from certain players was not enough, Cronel also took it upon himself (for some reason..?) to join the PA discord and ask them about Charles. Unfortunately, a great opportunity here to learn something of the truth was missed. Here is a word-for-word transcript of that text:

• Cronel: This is going to be super random and feel free to ignore me, but what is the general consensus on Charles here?
• Markb: King Charles III? I think he's alright
• Cronel: Haha Whoever used to play here named Charles.
• Rickbakara: I think he means CBA ;)
• Rickbakara: If so, no comment.
• SlingShot: King Charles III, I cba to comment on his royalness
• Cronel: Well, he is about to ruin a whole game, so just wanted to find out opinions of his previous game. :)
• Rickbakara: 100% talking about CBA then
• Cronel: Hahah Thanks, that's all I needed to know.
• SlingShot: if that other games dies then feel free to come join us over here
• Cronel: Can we bring him with us?
• Fiery (a mod): Wait, you guys didn't ask the important question. What is Charles doing to you guys? We want the tea
• Cronel: Probable cheating. Coordinating with other former players from here that play there. (Not allowed outside your realm) Being a general asshole. Claimed he wins all the time here and was accused of things here, but completely innocent.
• Fiery: lol
• Fiery: That sounds like him
• Cronel: We figured. His reaction to it all didn't sound like this was new to him. Haha
• Fiery: I'm head of Multihunting. He's been closed for cheating. Nothing innocent about him.
• Fiery: That group that went with him, we don't miss.
• Cronel: Advent and Gabbe they go by there. Not sure if there are others.
• Rickbakara: You can keep him
• Fiery: I would assume Advent and Gabbe are Cardi multis

Okay, so there's a lot here. For what it's worth, Charles said he was wrongly 'closed' and then 'reopened', and that Fiery is not friendly with him. But unfortunately due to the way this was handled and phrased, all we really know is that they don't like Charles--not exactly breaking news.

I think if you've read all this so far you can clearly see the thread: Cronel assumes (incorrectly) that he is receiving confirmation that Advent and Gabbe are former PA players. I don't know who 'that group' Fiery is referring to is, but it's certainly not Gabbe or Advent.

As I understand, Yami had already reached out an admin from PA in private to try to understand Charles' historical character. I don't know what was said. But I'm certain that Yami is not covering for Charles.

If you really want to do something like this and take matters into your own hands, here is my advice: next time, ask straightforward, probing questions--and then stop talking. Let them actually provide you with information instead of making assumptions. Questions like "What are the usernames of players Charles typically played with in this game?", "Are the players 'Advent' and 'Gabbe' known associates?", and "Has Charles been found, with concrete evidence, to have violated the rules of your games ever in the past?"

Instead, we don't really know anything from this--it was a wasted opportunity. If someone joined the discord here and asked about Charles, someone could respond "He is an asshole and was locked" but obviously that would not be enough context to understand the truth. If you wanted to prove Charles' guilt (if he was guilty), what you could've done is this: establish factually that Charles and Advent know each other, or that this 'Cardi' person played in the round and helped Charles somehow.

One more thing on this. Cronel was in realm 1, while the delusion about the 'Charles, Advent and Gabbe' group paranoia originated from realm 4. So, actually, what we can establish factually from this log is that realms 4 and 1 were in coordination. Perhaps they were merely discussing what they believed to be rules violations... But someone I trust informed me that someone from realm 4 was DMing "many people" outside of that realm spreading these theories widely, and this log seems to confirm that statement.

What Charles Did Do

I don't have any evidence that Charles had a multi, used friends to discover inside information from other realms, or anything of that nature. However, Charles did DM multiple (a bunch? seems accurate) people during the round in order to: (paraphrasing) "intending to learn from them and find locs". Justification supposedly being that the game is more fun this way, and that people outside his pack also know things he can learn from that those in the pack don't know.

This is a rules violation (the locs, not 'learning') based on the rules as they are written presently. I have not seen any of the DMs other than what Lud posted publicly. If they all look like that, my decision (were I still on RC) would've been to sternly warn both players, and any future exchanges would've resulted in both of them being locked. I assume the reason that the multi delusions were reported and the DMing was not reported until the end of the round was because people were not proud of what they did, and they shouldn't be. For far too long, a large percentage of players believe it is acceptable for them to influence behavior and exchange information in private. As long as that is against the rules, we should penalize it more severely to limit the behavior.

Parting Comments

And finally a quick comment from me. I think it's objective and fair to say that I, more than quite literally anyone else in this community, care very deeply about having rules, ensuring players follow the rules, and fostering an environment where the integrity of the game is paramount. If anyone wants to challenge that you certainly may, but I wrote almost every word of the rulebook. The Rules Committee was my idea. Enforcement largely rested on me caring enough to monitor behavior and set/enforce a set of standards for the playerbase. You may be cynical and think I'm just saying this because I was in the winning realm. You're entitled to your opinion. But know this: I would rather not play a round to guarantee it was perfectly clean, if that were a trade within the realm of possibility.

Charles should've received (at least) a warning for DMing a bunch of players asking for locs. The same is true of probably dozens of other players. It's a shame, because the DMing had no relevance on the outcome of the round, but I imagine it's still going to leave a bad taste. The community needs to decide what it wants the rules to be, and then once decided, respect them. I don't know how it would work if 'diplomacy' were legal (where is the line?), but that's not for me to decide.

And as far as reporting players who you believe are breaking the rules: please REPORT them! Don't complain in general chat while not reporting anything; that does no good. In fact, as we saw this round, it can be very toxic and do more harm than good to create controversy without a resolution. Even if you think you're in the right, why create an environment that makes people want to quit playing? The members of the RC are not pro-cheating. Their lack of a standardized process during this round was unfortunate and fueled the speculation, but there were extenuating circumstances as mentioned earlier.

A couple players have essentially said that no amount of evidence could convince them otherwise, and that I'm just wrong. There may certainly be things I don't know. But I have no idea why someone would want the worst rumors to be true. Thankfully, what seems to have happened is that a series of unfortunate circumstances collided with an AI-hallucinated paranoia. If people have hard evidence of something, I really wish you would've brought it forward (and still do). I hope in the future we can clarify the rules, follow them instead of taking matters into our own hands, and then trust each other & the RC to handle things appropriately. And I hope this provides clarity to the players who were just plain confused and annoyed by everything that went down. Thanks for reading.