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[syvarris]

You can flip that argument around and point out that RR shouldn't be penalized because SA has been limiting themselves excessively.  You've broken the rules just as much as us, the only difference is that we didn't refrain from looting corpses for copies, which is okay, by word of Piecewise.  Hell, we didn't even break your imagined one-copy rule until Piecewise said we couldn't haul taxidermied bodies around, and there hasn't been even a single gameplay turn since then.  The fact that you didn't taxidermy bodies, despite it being an obviously available tactic OOC, shouldn't penalize us.

Beyond all that, the relative strength of gangs shouldn't even matter.  This isn't a PvP game!  No gang has ever taken action against another, and while you may have been planning to attack RR, I can say with 100% honesty that I haven't intended to attack anyone else.  The only concessions RR has made to the ostensibly-PvP nature of this game have been purely defensive.  Yeah, maybe you want to fight and kill our characters, that's totally fine, but arguing about "fairness" is stupid.  RR's relative strength only matters because it affects how soon attacking us gets to an acceptable level of risk for you.

Finally:

Spoiler: How Magic Works. (click to show/hide)

Everyone has a "Deck" of words (Though "word" in this instance can refer to a whole phrase such as "Come from caster's hand"). How big that deck can be is determined by your memory stat. Every word in that deck is single use; if you use it, it goes away regardless of the outcome of the spell.  To use a word more than once in a spell, you have to use up that many instances of that word. Ie you can’t cast “Fire Fire” if you only have 1 Fire. Using the same word multiple times will increase the power of that word, so "Fire Fire" will be roughly twice as much fire as a single use.

When a gang is formed it gets to choose Five class 1 words, Three class 2 words, Two class 3 words, and One class 4 word. These are their permanent words. Permanent words chosen when a gang is created are always replenished after each encounter. They form the "Starting Deck" for every new gang member. They can choose to use them or not, but they're always available. If a gang member dies, any words they have are immediately offered up to their killer, who can take any words from them they want, up to the killer’s memory limit. The killer can discard words in order to make space for new ones in this case. If killed by accident or circumstance, the words remain with the body and can be looted by anyone.

I don't even see how these statements can be interpreted differently from how we've always played the game.  Yeah, it's just unfortunately poor phrasing, but RR has played 100% RAW, and even when we've done things that were ambiguous (looting and taxidermying corpses that were killed for inactivity, for instance), we made sure to get the GM's blessing first.  I don't see why we should be penalized because another team (whom we've never competed with, and don't plan to) didn't play as well.  Doubly so when said penalty is only even relevant because that other team wants to fight us!

[Devastator]

So what's the bottom line?  I'm not suggesting any massive pile of work, just that you get one set of gang words.. as it was intended from the start, and we lose all our gang words in-mission today.  That's not a huge amount of bookkeeping, you just have ten words to distribute and about thirty seconds of work for each player to bring your team in accordance with that.  You also get the advantage of not being in combat when the change occurs, and as such, can respond to it properly.

And hell, I was told dozens of turns ago that I couldn't haul around bodies with words on it.  I asked, and I took a level up in a stat I didn't want to because of that ruling.  Never you mind that your team was doing so for dozens of turns in advance, and continued doing so for dozens of turns after that.

It also doesn't matter if you want it to be PvP or not.  There have been several interactions between teams so far.  You're getting attacked because the tradesmen were cheesed off, because several gangs have been invading their territory.  There are economic interactions as well.  SA holding the bioconstructors means the other gangs can't buy biological horror creatures, just like you holding the alchemists means a general shortage of strong acids available to other gangs.  Relative strength does matter, because what one gang does affects the rest of the city and the other gangs as well.

So yeah, I want you guys to follow the rules and not sit on a huge pile of ill-gotten gains.  I'm suggesting a mode of action that doesn't take a huge amount of effort and doesn't spare my group.

[Egan_BW]

You're getting attacked because the tradesmen were cheesed off, because several gangs have been invading their territory.

A few moments before he posted this:

[20:27] <Devastator> So when is Syv going to stumble upon the idea that perhaps some of the reason RR is getting attacked is because SA heard about it and cut a deal?

So Dev lied there, or at least intentionally misrepresented.

[Devastator]

Nope.  They were attacking someone because they were cheesed off.  We then cut a deal and backed off so we wouldn't be the ones attacked.

That decision cost us something.  We didn't take the territory and didn't level up because of that decision.  It was done for PvP concerns.  We might have been able to take it and still have you guys attacked... we didn't make the attack happen in the first place, just heard about it.

[Radio Controlled]

Honestly, you guys could just keep the '1 set for all teammembers' for another mission if that's what bothers you. Heck, you people could keep it forever for all I care, since my interest in winning this thing is an asymptote approaching zero. What I do care about however, is having fun with the game and making sure other people have as well. Standing around and waiting for people to redo bookkeeping violates the former, and forcing people to redo bookkeeping rather violently violates the latter.

You can say it's not that much work, but that's rather relative. Having to undo all of our purchases, figuring out who gets which words and what new role they can play with the words available all would take time and effort, if we want to go about it with half a chance of surviving the incoming attack.

Out of curiosity, when and how exactly did you learn about the attack and that the tradesmen were getting poised to strike back?

[Devastator]

I'm not suggesting any of that.  No redoing your purchases, no looking at gear again.  Just strike out gang words people are carrying, the ones they just got now, and distribute one set.

When we were attacking the metalworkers, their leader said that a counterattack was coming, and all the extra guards loaded with weapons made me believe it.

[Radio Controlled]

Unfortunately, simply taking all those words away and distributing the one remaining set would leave us in a much weaker position than we are right now, since we were counting on having those words when we started the mission. Hell, some people would hardly have any words left if the gang word set was suddenly taken away. While we wouldn't be completely defenseless by any means, we'd still be suddenly getting gimped just before an angry technosorcerer and his merry band of metal doom comes to feed us our own entrails.

[Devastator]

Unfortunately, simply taking all those words away and distributing the one remaining set would leave us in a much weaker position than we are right now

Well.. yes.  I don't see the rules as having any meaning if you get to keep all the gains you got while ignoring said rules.  (At the very least you ignored the no corpse bank rule that used the word "Immediately.") It's no different than correcting errors in bookkeeping where people had words they shouldn't have had, or didn't have the space to carry.  In this case both of those are true.  It would be a lot of work to redo gear and other things, so I'm okay with that, and I'm not going to be unreasonable and suggest that you shouldn't be allowed to redistribute non-gang words as well.

[Radio Controlled]

For starters, simply lifting a single sentence from an argument and responding only to that is bad form, case in point:

I don't see the rules as having any meaning

Either way, this isn't about trying to 'keep any spoils' or anything like that. Like I told you over IRC, had this problem been discovered at the end of our previous mission, I would completely agree with only going with 1 set of gang words starting this mission. But it's rather too late for that now, without having to redo it all. Also remember that at most, the extra words will make the upcoming defense a little easier, but we won't be getting any real advantage from it, since we'll then have to get rid of them after the defense.

[Devastator]

I don't know, you're still in prep time, it seems like the ideal time for the words to reset.  It also means you have to lose them, and can't simply use them freely before they're lost.  Saying that you get to use all the words, instead of simply not having them, would let you guys keep the advantages of the words you never should have had in the first place.

[piecewise]

Alright. Honestly I would like it to be just one list of gang words people have to share. Its how the rules were written and I assumed how you were handling yourself.

Well lets keep things as they are. Everyone gets a full list of gang words but no multiples pulled from that list.

I'll be neck deep in studying for the next...month or so, so if you have questions, IIRC or Discord are the best ways to get a quick reply from me.

[piecewise]

Also remember, no more carrying corpses as word batteries. The words are either in you, or in the as of yet untapped banks of words from your hexes. Nowhere else. If you have any in corpses, discard them or take them.

[Devastator]

Ahh.  I think I would have preferred one set of words per gang, but I think I can live with that.  It really was going to be unfun trying to fight guys with thirty or forty gang words stored up permanently.  Many Many anything could well wipe me out regardless of what I do.

[piecewise]

I should amend that if you guys want to do it this way, there are a few changes that are going to happen.

1.No trading gang words for anything. If you want your huge supplies of words, you can't just horde and trade them away. Gang words are worthless and unable to be traded.

2. You can't trade or swap gang words between players. No, you can't just give all your words to a particular player. The one exception is looting from the dead.

3. You lose all gang words in your deck at the end of the mission. You have a full set available for each mission, but ONLY THAT SET. No saving them. That includes ones looted from the dead.

4. Also, any duplicates of gangwords you're currently holding onto MUST BE DISCARDED NOW (unless they are being pulled from corpses right now.) This next turn you should have no corpses with words and no duplicates that didn't come from corpses right this moment.

If you don't like this, then we'll continue as we are for the next mission and then immediately switch over to the single list for the next.

Your choice sy.

[syvarris]

1.No trading gang words for anything. If you want your huge supplies of words, you can't just horde and trade them away. Gang words are worthless and unable to be traded.

Aside from this, all these rules are exactly how we've been playing.  So... I'm completely fine with all of them, unless this rule means that I have to redo the bookkeeping for all the corpse-looted gang words which we just sold, in which case I'm mildly annoyed.  I'll still do it if I have to, but I really don't want to and don't think it serves much of any purpose anyway.  It's not like the words sold actually have relevance to what we can buy...