Zendo Over Text

[Kappa]

Yeah, that proposed rule seems like a workable plan.

[RoboticLIN]

Sounds like a bunch of fun.

I'd really like not to remove turns. The issue with that can turn into "someone is online earlier and spends 2hours guessing 100 things, person later in the day for an hour's work can't guess anything due to catching up". Or people who can think in 20 seconds stealing all the attention and answering immediately, instead of someone who takes 40 seconds (over the other's turns) being able to win.

Basically, Throne would just out timezone us! x.x

[Unbitwise]

The non-turn-based format I know is basically what Pedro said — koans are presented and classified and guesses are made and judged (in)correct as the relevant players' schedule permits, and the the first-arriving correct guess of the rule wins. It's up to the players to be nice about not spamming. In my experience, time zones don't outweigh thinking ability (as long as the rule is not obvious enough to be solved within 24 hours, of course) but I may have had a not-very-temporally-scattered group.

One could have a rule like “Players may have at most one guess outstanding at a time, and the Master is free to decline to answer promptly.”

(But don't rearrange the game for my sake, even though I'd love to play: I have plenty of Things To Do anyway.)

[DanielH]

Timezones could also be mitigated by altering who the Master is; if this position alternates then so does the best timezone.

[pedromvilar]

Most Zendo rules are typically supposed to be solved within an hour of uninterrupted play, if we're postulating rules that take days to be solved that makes much more sense. Also I like the idea of limiting how many outstanding guesses a player may have.

Edit: I also hardly think it's fair to declare the person who gets it right the "winner" because there is enough variance in availability that in such an asynchronous game with such loose participation rules it's quite likely that an interested person might arrive at a game and not even have a chance to catch up before the rule is guessed, and since there is no turn structure nor competitive mechanisms this is more of a "everyone wins" thing imo.

[Kappa]

Hmm. Would "string consists of a correctly spelled English word" be a valid rule?

[Kappa]

... Also, I second whoever suggested that a hash is way better than encryption for verifying rules, because I am IRRESISTIBLY tempted to try to decode or extract hints from the posted rule text, not even because I want to cheat, just because it's THERE.

[pedromvilar]

"string consists of a correctly spelled English word" would be a valid rule, yes

as for the hash, well, i don't know enough about it to know how to do it, if anyone wants to do it or teach me how to feel free :P

[DanielH]

Step One: Find a site that does hashing. I chose http://www.sha1-online.com/ because it it the first that came up on Google fit sga1, a common hash algorithm. There are endless debates about what hash algorithms are good, SHA-1 often does not qualify, but it hardly matters here. You can use any algorithm (common ones include SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-512, SHA-3, MD-5, ...)
Step Two: enter “string consists of a correctly spelled English word” into the box on the site. Optional: Add some random numbers or other junk to the end. Remember what you put into the box exactly, down to punctuation and whitespace, including optional random numbers. Computer geeks doing this on the command line: make sure you don't include a newline.
Step Three: Hit the go button, if applicable.
Step Four: Copy the hexadecimal string to the forum c5eba465aae58bf0b08a433338abc1ac5538df4d
Step Five: When you are ready to reveal the rule, post the exact text you used on the forum, including punctuation and whitespace and capitalization and everything. The string I used is earlier in the instructions.

Edit: The hash function and preferably the website or tool used should be public.

[RoboticLIN]

I went to bed, and the first game was done with the [now] 2 games are already pretty progressed. Zuzuzu.

Just sayin'.