Pulse of the People

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Size	35x203
Where	Compound

Overview

A Pulse of the People is one of the puzzles from the Thought discipline.

Source

You can build one once you start the Test of the Pulse of the People.

Cost

• 300 White pliable boards
• 1000 White raeli tiles
• 1000 Black raeli tiles
• 150 Green paint
• 100 Blue paint
• 50 Purple paint
• 100 Gold Wire
• 2 Silk Cloth
• 300 Papyrus Paper
• 200 Ink

Design Interface

A designer has access to the following options on the Pulse of the People:

• Enter the Intro Text (Play Mode)
• Enter the Intro Text (Survey Mode)
• Set Allowed Misses...
• Surveys...

The first two options are self-explanatory; they set the initial message that players or survey respondents will see.

Allowed misses may be set to none, one, two, or three. If the setting is none, players get only one chance to answer each question--after that answer, right or wrong, they go on to the next question. If the setting is one, two, or three, players may continue to make guesses until they make that number of incorrect guesses, where "incorrect" is defined as a response that is not on the list.

Warning: If you set the number to 2, the pulse will move to the next question as soon as the player has made 2 incorrect guesses. Many pulse designers get this one wrong.

The "Surveys" menu has one entry for each of the seven survey questions. Initially, these options will allow you to create survey questions. Once created, each entry has the following options:

• Delete this whole survey
• Delete Responses...
• Add Synonym...
• Review Synonyms
• Format Master Answer...
• Fuse Responses...

A survey consists of a set of "master response" each containing a set of "synonyms". The master response is the name for a given response, and the synonyms are the words that a player can type in to select that response. Consider the following example "review synonyms" report:

Synonyms report for What are you wearing?:

Master Response: hat(28)
   hat
Master Response: haat(1)
   haat
Master Response: kilt(10)
   kilt
Master Response: skirt(10)
   skirt
Master response: sheep(1)
   sheep

Whenever someone gives a new answer to a survey, a new master response is created and assigned a single synonym (itself).

Delete this whole survey will remove that survey question from the pulse entirely.

Delete responses... may be used to remove a master response. For example, you could delete the "sheep" response from the above example, on the grounds that it's too random for anyone to guess.

Add synonym... will add a new synonym to a master response. For example, you could add "cap" as a synonym for the "hat" master response above, meaning that a player may type either "cap" or "hat" to select that response.

Format master answer... changes how the master answer appears to players.

Fuse responses... combines two master responses into one. First select the master response you want to keep from the sub-menu. A pop-up window will ask you to pick the response you want to fuse to the selected one. The fused response's synonyms and vote total will be added to the first response. Remember, pick the response you want to keep first.

Note that once a Pulse has been opened, the design cannot be modified without developer intervention. Make absolutely certain you have your design in the state you want before you open the game!

How It Works

The designer first enters 7 questions, then reviews and opens the survey. Teppy stated that a good example of a question would be "What is the hardest mushroom to eat fresh from the earth?" whereas a bad question would be "How many points does one start tug with?" He means that questions where an answer that can be simply looked up on the wiki are less interesting than ones that involves some knowledge of the world or an opinion of the player. In other words, questions that don't have definitive, factual answers.

The questions will appear in a random order to every player, keep that in mind when designing your survey. Also, the game box does not display questions longer than the length of the input box, and is not likely to. Teppy said it would take several days to code, and he doesn't want people to use long questions anyway. Keep your questions short.

At least 49 people must then fill out the survey before the game becomes playable. The designer is able to link answers that refer to the same thing e.g. "DP" and "demi pharaoh" and "demi-pharaoh", would be linked so that the survey records 3 answers for "demi pharaoh", or whichever version the designer chooses. These are known as synonyms, which can be matched during the game. The designer can also delete questions which are not 'going well' and add new ones. In order to open the game, all active questions must have 49 answers.

The player doesn't judge when answering the survey, but does get a Pulse of the People Token, which is used to play other Pulses of the People later. The tokens are portable items and you can use any token to play any pulse.