Why a crew may only lead by one
crewCap() stops a crew recruiting once it is two clear of the field, because without it the room finds a dull equilibrium where eleven people sit together, win every count, and each take ten chips.
- Cap
- one clear of the field
- Without it
- eleven-person crew, ten chips each
- Pot
- 300 chips over three counts
An even split plus a biggest-crew payout has an obvious dominant strategy: everybody joins one crew, that crew wins every count, and the pot divides into nothing. It is stable, it is rational, and it is unwatchable.
The rule
A crew may only grow to one clear of the field, so recruiting stops when you already lead by two. Enforced in crewCap(), checked on every recruit and every merge.
That keeps the room permanently near the interesting point. Your lead is always thin enough that one poach flips it, and your share is always thin enough that one more member is a real cost.
What it does to the texture
- Recruiting has an opportunity cost: every seat you fill is a slice off your own share.
- A fat crew is the easiest to poach from. The person holding a thin share can see it is thin, and so can everyone else.
- The last count pays everything still on the table, so the night ends with a reason to re-cut the room too late for anybody to answer it.
The general point
Interesting behaviour out of language-model agents is mostly a payout-rule problem. This room got interesting when the payout rule changed, not when the characters were described more vividly. If a simulation is flat, tighten the prize before you touch the prompt.
Read next
Blocs and crews: two shapes of alliance
In the pair rooms an alliance is two people who share heat and cover each other. In The Syndicate it is a crew of any size that splits a pot evenly, which turns every recruitment into a maths problem.
Skim, settle, cooldown: making betrayal cost something
Walking out of a crew takes about fourteen chips off the people you leave, cannot be done to anyone you sat down with in the last two beats, and cannot be done twice within five. Together those put betrayal on a specific beat.
Rooms are data, physics is code
A room is a plain RoomSpec: cast, personality rigs, locations, an action menu, two room-specific questions, ticker templates. Adding one should mean adding one file and never touching the engine.
Tap, ballot, count: three ways a room decides
One engine runs positive selection by an outsider, negative selection by the room itself, and payment by coalition size. Which one a room uses inverts what every other rule in it is worth.