JJOCT7 R3M4 Jojolity

Judge Manny (Coop)

I like what both Jojolity angles are going for here, but I think both players could have executed upon them more. Although, that being said, there’s also a lot of other things going on in this match so Jojolity not being as prominent was expected somewhat.

For Chase, there are some nice narrative fragments sprinkled throughout the strategy but I’m not really seeing the mechanical implementation that much. I think “playing different roles in life” is an interesting take on this Jojolity, but none of said “roles” are ever fleshed out well enough either narratively or mechanically for them to stand out. I do like this angle, but I think more time was needed to properly execute upon it - I’ll be giving Chase a high **6**.

Vasant is in a similar boat with an interesting take that could’ve used some stronger execution. I do think it succeeds better than his opponent, with there being more explicit ties between Evergreen inspirations and tactics used but I agree with other judges that more focus on this would’ve been nice to see. Vasant will get a solid **7** from me.

Judge Crowbar (Surface)

In terms of jojolity, I do once again agree with Coop. I think the idea of Chase's strat is fun, but there's not really much mechanical integration- I could go pretty decent swathes of the strat without it ever really being much relevant. I'll give this a **6**- I do have to acknowledge that it's there, even if it's not there as often as we'd like.

For jojolity, I think Vasant's strat is definitely fairly well-thought out, but it also feels a little surface level. I think the idea is strong and the as-is execution is both fun and consistent, but there's a level of "what would he have done differently" I will cite in the sense that there's a lot of reuse and recycling and various verbs throughout each imitation Vasant does when they perhaps could have been more strongly defined. It's still a good jojolity though, and it definitely earns a solid **7**.

Judge Lilah (Logic)

Vasant’s strat embodies living and cultivation by drawing tactical inspiration from each of his fellow R4 Evergreen teammates. Assigning a member to a car makes this Jojolity thoroughly integrated into the strat, but the strength and creativity of that integration varies. For example, using Acceleration Lotuses for a Muuru-inspired strategy was a fun play, but other members have more “pedestrian” tactics that don’t result in as drastic a change in Vasant’s usual play-pattern, such as Deacon/Soichi’s “use the environment.” As a result, I found myself wanting more, either more robustly embodying each teammate or deriving a stronger “Evergreen” synthesis from this unity in diversity.  Chase’s Jojolity is found in mediating the extremes of each car and finding his own path having been affected by them, but not wholly defined by them. I think it’s a compelling enough narrative through the strat, even if no individual plays wowed me.

While those arguments push me to give roughly flat 7 and again I see the points made by the rest of the bench, this is a good time for a treatise on Jojolity jurisprudence. Uh-uh-uh, you’re already a paragraph deep; the train left the station, you’re stuck with me now.

Some have noted Jojolity’s tendency to diverge from their expectations, others have noticed its analysis tends to be orders of magnitude shorter than that of Quality, both of these observations derive from the fact that Jojolity is measured according to two axes (Creativity and Robustness) to Quality’s *nine*. Given the resulting need for detailed analysis under Quality, not only do our scores hew more closely under the much more rigorous framework, but some analysis under Jojolity would be redundant in many cases, given the “play by play” analysis many do under Quality.

This is *far* from suggesting that Jojolity is unmoored. The contemporary JJOCT constitution’s underlying ethos of “grading a strat by its own efforts” and grading Jojolity “by primarily mechanical incorporation” act as strong buffers. (This is partially why the left tail of Jojolity scores isn’t as fat as that of Quality scores.)

The fewer axes and that judicial deference actually *enable* a further breadth of approaches for Jojolity; the approach with the most caselaw has been the use of Narrative for Embody Jojolities. The constitution was partially created to accommodate such breadth, and given JJOCT is an OCT, a collaborative creative writing project, the rewarding of such Narrative has an unquestionable good for the community.

The “primarily mechanical incorporation” clause thus exists to help us properly measure and award such Narrative, resulting in two particular strands of jurisprudence: “mechanical sufficiency” and “ludonarrative.” The first strand is commonly raised with the question “when does ‘flavor text’ arise to mechanical salience.” While a full exploration of the answers is beyond the scope of this delib, “amount” and “story arc” have been accepted as sufficient. The second strand is one that I and other judges have often focused on, especially given the “primarily mechanical incorporation” clause: how is the Narrative reflected in the gameplay decisions.

While Judges, focusing on the “objective” communicative aspect of strats, generally analyze according to these strands, while Players, focusing on the “subjective” artistic aspect of strats, generally write and interpret (Embody) Jojolities according to the strat’s story itself. I say “generally” because our 10s, which are often framed as “transcending” the rubric despite the strat’s shortcomings, often highlight those more artistic, emotive elements. Although Judges can and do disagree about when and why such 10s should be awarded, the number tends to stick in the audience’s mind, hence my hypothesis that here is where I think the divergence between player expectation and Judge analysis begins.

I don’t think this divergence is “to be solved” given it is a consequence of the accommodationist aspects of the constitution and is buffered by judicial deference, but I do scratch at it when I see CMD’s praise of the Jojolities and this bench’s analysis. It’s a matter of differing foci.

Which leaves me with my scores. I think back to other 8s I’ve given, namely Ruby R2 and Markov R2, and I see my emphasis on ludonarrative. That’s not to say there is none here, but there isn’t quite the same thoroughness, development and adhesion of a narrative through the gameplay. However, my actual and hypothetical 9s, which I’ve framed as “going beyond a 8,” have done narrative analysis, often praising narratives in conversation with those beyond the immediate strat and match, and even raising similar lines of reasoning in other delibs. See also Helena R2, Helena R3.

Both strats express such intertextuality and judicial deference encourages me to give grace again here. Vasant and Chase play their tourney-long stories of growth off of and in reflection of the experiences that led them to this match themed around such growth, and the thought behind such narratives is apparent. Although I maintain that I would have liked to see more prose or more narrative expression through gameplay under those strands of Embody Jojolity jurisprudence, just as I envisioned those 8s as sitting alongside 9s for a bench showing a range of judicial thought, I sit in counterbalance to and concurrence with my colleagues.

As one of the few on Joint with a proactive interest in wuxia and cultivation stories (as this long-winded meditation may have suggested), I would have liked to see more, but I do like what I see. Flat [8]s on balance.