Kurenai Misuzu
2015-02-20, 09:23 PM
So winter court 4 of Legend of the Five Rings just ended. It was largely a great experience, except that at the very end two GMs decided to cheat to see their preferred outcome happen, so in the end I took it upon myself to be the one to make people informed so biased GMs aren't going to ruin big events or the credibility of innocent companies in the future.
Originally I had not planned to do this, instead I would have waited for the official tally of points to be revealed and give Megumi and AEG the chance to prove the truth of their words about openness and transparancy in the scoring of the heirs. However, with the announcement that the final tally would only be revealed in an edited form well after the game had closed and nobody is looking, I have chosen to come forward after all.
The spreadsheet tallying all gains (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dwHHMiVr7Vk8mElyAKovlCBj9rOAn9pK7LG7hBhgXx8/edit?usp=sharing) has been leaked and poring through it, the findings paint a very troubling picture. Not only does it reveal what many have realized, that the Crab and Scorpion had an easier time gaining honor, glory and XP than others, including in detail of just how much higher the gains were, it also reveals outright fabrication of suitable results in the final tally. Not just that, where one might think that the irregulrities were simply due to the amount of work involvement, they consistently favor Seiken and his supporters while undervaluing Shibtsu and his. As such there is strong reason to believe that rather than sloppiness, they seem deliberately driven to fulfill an agenda. An analysis of exactly what is wrong with the scoring can be found below:
As we've all heard by now, Seiken is the official winner of Winter Court, with the scores laid out by this spreadsheet. However, there are extremely serious problems with the scores as presented here. Problems that are serious enough, and specific enough, to be deeply suspicious.
Problem the First - Scoring Honour
Those of you who follow the WC boards may remember that factoring Honour into the final scores was a matter of cotnroversy - whether it should be scored on a 1-for-1 basis like Status and Glory (as it was originally said it would be), whether it should be scored at a discount like Infamy, or whether it should be ignored entirely. You may also recall that Megumi ultimately announced (http://wintercourt.l5r.com/viewtopic.php?p=265983&f=216#p265983) (after first saying that Honour would probably be dropped from scoring altogether) that Honour would be included in the scoring:
-we finally decided to include Honor in the scoring. As several of you pointed out, if we were going to exclude Honor, we should have said so much earlier on, and we didn't. I realize that some of you DID advocate for discounting Honor early on, but at that point, I wasn't willing to do so, because I wasn't convinced the distortion on the Honor Table in the Core Book was as serious an issue as some worried it might be. I admittedly did start to waver there at the end, but the fact that we were potentially going to change things so late in the game just didn't seem reasonable. Moreover, as it turned out, the high versus low Honor issue did, indeed, turn out to be a virtual non-issue. In fact, we were somewhat surprised by how MUCH of an issue it turned out to not be. We are going to publish the results, including some rather complex and detailed alternative scenarios developed by the esteemed Saibankan...but not just yet. That's because...
So - Honour will be scored because they said from the start that it would be and it would be unfair to change course right at end. Fair enough. Except...
The approach taken in this spreadsheet, is none of the ones that had been previously discussed. It's not even consistent. I draw your attention to the "I" column of the "Totals" sheet, which calculates the total number of points that each PC has to distribute between the two heirs, feeding into columns N and O to produce the final scores. For the Crab and Crane delegations, the formula in this column is:
=C27*10+D27*H27+E27*10+G27-(F27*10/3) (where 27 is the row I happened to select).
C27 is status gains. Multiplied by 10 so that each point of Status gain yields 1 point, nothing surprising to see here.
E27 is Glory. Same deal.
G27 is bonus XP for roleplaying, no modification needed here, all good.
F27 is Infamy, divided by 3 and subtracted from the total, per what Megumi said originally. Again, all good.
But. You will notice that I passed over one very important term: D27*H27.
D27 is base Honour gained. H27 is*base Honour gained multiplied by 10. D27*H27 is, effectively, D27*D27*10.
In other words, this spreadsheet*squares*Honour gains before factoring them into the total. This was most definitely never announced anywhere regarding scoring, and effects are dramatic, actually reducing the scoring contribution of anyone whose Honour gain was less than 1 Rank, while increasing that of anyone whose Honour gain was greater than that - increasing dramatically, for those who gained significantly more than one Rank.
But that's not the only thing. Remember what I said above? For the Crab and Crane delegations, the formula in this column is:
For members of every other delegation, the formula is:
=C58*10+D58*10+E58*10+G58-(F58*10/3) (where 58 is the row in question, once again)
So, Honour is simply scored on a 1-for-1 basis without being squared.
Ramifications
To see what effects this had, I made a couple of alternate versions of the spreadsheet, identical except for changes to the I column, to have it consistently follow one scoring approach or the other.
If all PCs use the squared Honour scoring as applied to the Crab and Crane, then the scores for personal total are 3112.84/3203.33 in favour of Shibatsu.
If all PCs use the un-squared Honour scoring, then the scores are 2455.80/2507.87 in favour of... Shibatsu.
As the spreadsheet has Seiken leading Shibatsu on goals by exactly 43 points (more on than below), either of those scenarios puts Shibatsu in the lead on overall scoring.
Either scoring approach has Shibatsu leading on points if applied consistently. Only when applied in this very strange and inconsistent manner does Seiken come out ahead.
TL;DR
The spreadsheet follows an inconsistent approach to scoring Honour in a way that specifically give the lead to Seiken.
Problem the Second - Scoring of Goals
There are further problems apparent in the way delegation objectives are scored. First of all, there's the fact that going by Megumi's post announcing the results... delegation objectives were not actually included. 2763/2586 pretty well matches the figures for personal points given in this spreadsheet (9 points down for Seiken, 4 points down Shibatsu, likely due to some minor last-minute tweaks, which we know (http://wintercourt.l5r.com/viewtopic.php?f=216&t=12462) per Megumi that they were engaging in); however, it completely leaves out the 602.5 points for Seiken, and 559.5 points for Shibatsu, that the spreadsheet gives.
But that's not the only issue. Here's Megumi explaining (http://wintercourt.l5r.com/viewtopic.php?p=244545&f=216#p244545) the scoring system for objectives:
Each objective you were assigned as a Clan, that you achieved, will gain you 50 points. There are an additional 15 points available for each objective intended to reflect how "efficient" you were. If you achieved an objective by expending an minimum of resources (or, for that matter, none at all, if you were that clever), you'd get an additional 15 points, for a total of 65 for that objective. OTOH, if you threw a lot of resources at one objective, you may only get 5 additional points (for 55), or none at all (for the base 50). The additional 15 points is at the discretion of the various Clan AGMs.
Minimum 50 points for an objective achieved. No ifs, no buts.*
Now look at the goals section of the Totals sheet (B13:I23). Right off the bat, we can see that the Crane received only 27 points for the objective "See that, before the end of Winter Court, the Throne issues a proclamation condemning the growing conflict between Traditionalist and Progressive factions in the Colonies, commanding an end to such hostilities, and requiring that any and all disputes related to this matter be settled solely by diplomatic means." Which was very definitely achieved.
The Dragon, meanwhile received only 25 points for their objective to "Prevent the Crab Clan from concluding any agreement which would diminish the Spider Clan's military forces in the Colonies, or prevent them from increasing their military forces there." Which, once again, they definitely achieved.
The Unicorn received only 35 points for their objective: "Together with the Crane, see that, before the end of Winter Court, the Throne issues a proclamation condemning the growing conflict between Traditionalist and Progressive factions in the Colonies, commanding an end to such hostilities, and requiring that any and all disputes related to this matter be settled solely by diplomatic means. However, Unicorn support for the Crane in this matter must NOT become public knowledge and, in particular, must not become known by the Imperial Families." Again, achieved.
And only 25 points for "Conclude an agreement with another clan to commit at least one full legion of military force to the Progressive side, or reduce by one full legion the military force of the Traditionalist side, in the ongoing conflict between those two factions in the Colonies."
And the Imperials received only 25 points for "Prevent any agreement among the Clans which would result in an increase in military forces in the Colonies that are engaged in the conflict between Traditionalist and Progressive factions there." which they achieved - there was no net change in military forces in the area (Traditionalist troops withdrew, a smaller number of Progressive troops moved in).
So what happens if we change the spreadsheet such that everyone received their minimum 50 points for a successfully-completed objective, plus whatever bonus points they are already being awarded?
Well, the current system has Seiken at 602.5 points, and Shibatsu at 559.5 points, for a margin of (as mentioned above) 43 points. And here we immediately run into another problem - columns K and L, which calculate the points contributed from goals to each heir, do not count points from column H (for goal #6). As only two factions (Phoenix and Imps) have goals in that column, which are worth the same number of points (25), and have opposite splits (70/30 and 30/70), this doesn't affect the final margin... until we correct the Imperial goal to be worth full points as it's supposed to (the Phoenix explicitly includes a clause for half points if it's partially completed, unlike any of the other goals).
If we correct the awarding of points for goals, such that Crane receive 55 instead of 27, Dragon receive 50 instead of 25, Unicorn receive 60 and 50 instead of 35 and 25, and Imps receive 50 instead of 25... then points contributed from goals go to 647.50 to Seiken, 692.50 for Shibatsu, making the margin now 45 points in Shibatsu's favour. With the personal points tallies as they currently are, using the inconsistent Honour scoring described above, this doesn't swing the result... but it is very strange.
Meanwhile, no such problem exists for Traditionalist goals. With the except of the Phoenix goal - which had a partial credit option explicitly written into it - every goal for a pro-Seiken faction has been scored for the full amount. Indeed, there is a Scorpion goal marked as completed:
The Scorpion generally rely on unorthodox methods to oppose other military forces in the field--particularly one as powerful as the Lion Clan. This requires the ability to maneuver forces quickly, from unexpected directions, often while employing techniques of deception and subterfuge; maneuvering forces in such a way in unfriendly territories, however, increases the risk of compromise and failure. Conclude an agreement with at least one other clan that borders the Lion Clan to allow the movement and operations of Scorpion forces without hindrance, with the clear understanding that those forces will take no direct against the lands, peoples, holdings or resources of the "hosting" clan(s).
That, to my knowledge, never saw anything remotely related to it raised on the Dais - and Megumi was always very clear that if a goal was not fulfilled by something announced on the Dais, it was not completed, full stop, end of story.
If we now remove that goal, then the scores for goals achieved become 602.5/687.5 - a margin of 85 points in Shibatsu's favour, from 45 points to Seiken. Again, not enough to actually swing the result if Honour scoring is left as it is - but the consistent weighting of points from the goals in favour of Seiken over Shibatsu raises very serious questions.
TL;DR
Goals for pro-Shibatsu factions are consistently under-scored. Goals for pro-Seiken factions are not; the Scorpion even got an entire goal ticked off that was never achieved.
So what happens if we both correct the scoring of goals and apply a consistent system for scoring Honour?
If we use the squared Honour scoring, then the scores are 3715.34/3890.83 - Shibatsu leads by 275.49 points.
If we use the non-squared Honour scoring, then the scores are 3058.30/3196.37 - Shibatsu leads by 148.07 points.
Either way, Shibatsu leads.
Problem the Third - Personal Points Awards
This is a murkier and harder-to-verify area, due to the sheet amount of data here, and I was initially undecided on whether to include it. I ultimately decided to do so in the interests of completeness; I encourage anyone who's interested to dig into the data here and see what they find. However, questions were raised on several occasions through the event about anomalously generous awarding of Honour and Glory to some PCs... and from my examination, the data in the spreadsheet seems consistent with those concerns. Some things that jump out at me personally:
- Ikoma Aimi receives a full rank of Glory and 0.2 Status for winning the Go tournament... an unofficial event never sanctioned or announced on the Dais. It was made quite clear to us*that Glory gains from events were contingent on the event being thusly recognised.
- Aimi likewise receives a full rank of glory for "ikebana placement", without further explanation, despite having already received 0.6 Glory for coming second in the ikebana contest (and a further 0.8 for having her work praised by a Shiba Artisan... which likewise strikes me as highly questionable).
- Several Crabs received Glory and XP with the only listed reason being "Clan goal". No-one else received such an award, despite many, many Clan goals being achieved this event.
- Shosuro Rin received 7 points of glory and 3 XP for "putting on a play". Were any rewards issued when the Crane put on a play a few days before? Nope.
- Aimi received separate Glory awards for "Day 2 Dais" and "Day 2 petition" despite speaking only once.
- Yasuki Aitoko receives, in addition to multiple ranks of Glory for being publicly honoured after the library fire, 23 points of Glory for "saving the lives of others". Plenty of other characters saved lives this event, some of them even died doing so... no-one else received an award like that.
- Bayushi Atsuto receives 5 points of Glory for his scripted "death" scene vs the Oni, despite the fact that due to plot armour it could not actually kill him.
And that's from a fairly cursory inspection. I don't think this is likely to likely to change the results, compared to the other issues I've raised, but I do think it further illustrates problems with the way scoring was handled here.
Having said this, I want to be clear that this is not meant as an attack on either the players who received positive attention from the GMs, nor of most of the GM staff. All players in the game simply tried to do their best to portray their characters, benefit their clans and support their heirs, any disproportionate rewards to some players are not on those people and the doubt you might feel over whether you earned it and the suspicion that others might view you with makes you as much victims as those passed over. Nor are most of the GMs to blame, you mostly worked hard to make the game the best experience it could possibly be and trusted in your colleagues to do the same. Players and GMs alike were simply hostages to people trying to bend or outright break rules to push an agenda and unless you are those people you have my sympathy and compassion.
The ones this [i]is[/is] targeted at is primarily two people, the one who above all others favored one side over the other the other and the one who made the final tally, scored the goals and set how personal totals were calculated. These people are Shi-Tien Yen-Wang, or Christopher Thomas Hand one of the three recent additions to story team, who gave the Crab far more points than any other clan, and Saibankan, who despite Megumi's claims to doing it personally handled the final scoring as well as approving gains of honor, status, glory, infamy and XP.
The listing above reveals that the differences in how Crabs, and to a lesser degree other Traditionalists, were extraordinary to the point where it is hard to not at the very least imagine real bias on the part of Hand and negligence on the part of his superiors on the GM team for not trying to enforce more consistency in awards. Apart from the evidence provided by the gains and their justification, this bias is suggested by such things as the leaked story of how Hand tried to pressure Rob Denton from story team into presenting a more pleasant face for Seiken in order to make him more appealing to the public. Similarly, Hand on at least two occasions tried to overrule the actions of other clan AGMs in regards to XP purchases and called in Saibankan to support him in doing so when challenged by the AGMs of said clans. Similarly, neither GMs nor players I have talked to have been able to find a single instance of Hand praising a player or a character who was neither a Crab nor a Scorpion and introduced weekly XP as a thing for the Crab without so much as informing other GMs. In his first official fiction as a member of story team, Hand also almost exclusively focused on the Crab and the Scorpion outside what appears to be a mandated revelation about the identity of the regent. As such, there exists a visible history of bias on his part that I imagine most GMs would be willing to attest to. The full picture is that of a man who cannot see past his own desires and preferences to remain objective, much like a roleplaying version of Joe Quesada.
However, there is also evidence that it was not simply a biased man adding a lot of gains that skewed things. The most notable of these is that a large part of the final totals are outright fabrication. These suggest otherwise in two ways. The first is the fact that Hand didn't make them, Saibankan did, so it would have had to be two biased men who skewed things in the same direction in eagerness. The other is the fact that the totals are not just biased, they're literally breaking the rules. You don't accidentally calculate honor differently for two clans or score six goals beneath the stated minimum through eagerness, especially not when those two deeds ended up flipping the final choice of heir from Shibatsu to Seiken. It gets even shadier when you realize that the system that wasn't consistently applied at the end was designed by Hand, the primary abuser of it, who later went on to try to claim credit for fixing it, as well as victim blaming those who got overlooked on at least two separate (http://wintercourt.l5r.com/viewtopic.php?p=271411&f=216#p271411) occasions (http://wintercourt.l5r.com/viewtopic.php?f=216&t=11755&start=110#p246895). The picture of something shady going on also shows in how several players from other clans have reported posting gains and having their Gms agree, only for the gains to be smaller than they had been told or fail to materialize entirely.
I cannot say what the relationship between Hand and Saibankan is. Perhaps they were allies intent on seeing Seiken on the throne no matter what, perhaps one of them persuaded the other to help them or, possibly, one was entirely deluded and didn't realize that the other was using them. Ultimately it doesn't matter. Regardless of how it happened, the two of them broke the rules of the game and pushed an agenda that was clearly not what the majority wanted despite the system as written providing another outcome. Even if it was merely staggering incompetence on the part of both of them, their actions led to the betrayal of the basic promise of winter court and damaged trust in not just the two of them, but the entire GM staff and AEG as a company.
Which brings me to my final point, that this winter court was an amazing event allowing for great story achievements and strong roleplay. I believe that it is a shame to see such a great event ruined by the blatant bias and dishonest behavior of Hand and Saibankan rendering much of that void and forcing many innocents to doubt if their achievements were their or simply handed to them by those two. I had hoped for more control after Megumi assured us that he would personally handle the final tally so that the final bit might go as smoothly as the rest of the game.
Originally I had not planned to do this, instead I would have waited for the official tally of points to be revealed and give Megumi and AEG the chance to prove the truth of their words about openness and transparancy in the scoring of the heirs. However, with the announcement that the final tally would only be revealed in an edited form well after the game had closed and nobody is looking, I have chosen to come forward after all.
The spreadsheet tallying all gains (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dwHHMiVr7Vk8mElyAKovlCBj9rOAn9pK7LG7hBhgXx8/edit?usp=sharing) has been leaked and poring through it, the findings paint a very troubling picture. Not only does it reveal what many have realized, that the Crab and Scorpion had an easier time gaining honor, glory and XP than others, including in detail of just how much higher the gains were, it also reveals outright fabrication of suitable results in the final tally. Not just that, where one might think that the irregulrities were simply due to the amount of work involvement, they consistently favor Seiken and his supporters while undervaluing Shibtsu and his. As such there is strong reason to believe that rather than sloppiness, they seem deliberately driven to fulfill an agenda. An analysis of exactly what is wrong with the scoring can be found below:
As we've all heard by now, Seiken is the official winner of Winter Court, with the scores laid out by this spreadsheet. However, there are extremely serious problems with the scores as presented here. Problems that are serious enough, and specific enough, to be deeply suspicious.
Problem the First - Scoring Honour
Those of you who follow the WC boards may remember that factoring Honour into the final scores was a matter of cotnroversy - whether it should be scored on a 1-for-1 basis like Status and Glory (as it was originally said it would be), whether it should be scored at a discount like Infamy, or whether it should be ignored entirely. You may also recall that Megumi ultimately announced (http://wintercourt.l5r.com/viewtopic.php?p=265983&f=216#p265983) (after first saying that Honour would probably be dropped from scoring altogether) that Honour would be included in the scoring:
-we finally decided to include Honor in the scoring. As several of you pointed out, if we were going to exclude Honor, we should have said so much earlier on, and we didn't. I realize that some of you DID advocate for discounting Honor early on, but at that point, I wasn't willing to do so, because I wasn't convinced the distortion on the Honor Table in the Core Book was as serious an issue as some worried it might be. I admittedly did start to waver there at the end, but the fact that we were potentially going to change things so late in the game just didn't seem reasonable. Moreover, as it turned out, the high versus low Honor issue did, indeed, turn out to be a virtual non-issue. In fact, we were somewhat surprised by how MUCH of an issue it turned out to not be. We are going to publish the results, including some rather complex and detailed alternative scenarios developed by the esteemed Saibankan...but not just yet. That's because...
So - Honour will be scored because they said from the start that it would be and it would be unfair to change course right at end. Fair enough. Except...
The approach taken in this spreadsheet, is none of the ones that had been previously discussed. It's not even consistent. I draw your attention to the "I" column of the "Totals" sheet, which calculates the total number of points that each PC has to distribute between the two heirs, feeding into columns N and O to produce the final scores. For the Crab and Crane delegations, the formula in this column is:
=C27*10+D27*H27+E27*10+G27-(F27*10/3) (where 27 is the row I happened to select).
C27 is status gains. Multiplied by 10 so that each point of Status gain yields 1 point, nothing surprising to see here.
E27 is Glory. Same deal.
G27 is bonus XP for roleplaying, no modification needed here, all good.
F27 is Infamy, divided by 3 and subtracted from the total, per what Megumi said originally. Again, all good.
But. You will notice that I passed over one very important term: D27*H27.
D27 is base Honour gained. H27 is*base Honour gained multiplied by 10. D27*H27 is, effectively, D27*D27*10.
In other words, this spreadsheet*squares*Honour gains before factoring them into the total. This was most definitely never announced anywhere regarding scoring, and effects are dramatic, actually reducing the scoring contribution of anyone whose Honour gain was less than 1 Rank, while increasing that of anyone whose Honour gain was greater than that - increasing dramatically, for those who gained significantly more than one Rank.
But that's not the only thing. Remember what I said above? For the Crab and Crane delegations, the formula in this column is:
For members of every other delegation, the formula is:
=C58*10+D58*10+E58*10+G58-(F58*10/3) (where 58 is the row in question, once again)
So, Honour is simply scored on a 1-for-1 basis without being squared.
Ramifications
To see what effects this had, I made a couple of alternate versions of the spreadsheet, identical except for changes to the I column, to have it consistently follow one scoring approach or the other.
If all PCs use the squared Honour scoring as applied to the Crab and Crane, then the scores for personal total are 3112.84/3203.33 in favour of Shibatsu.
If all PCs use the un-squared Honour scoring, then the scores are 2455.80/2507.87 in favour of... Shibatsu.
As the spreadsheet has Seiken leading Shibatsu on goals by exactly 43 points (more on than below), either of those scenarios puts Shibatsu in the lead on overall scoring.
Either scoring approach has Shibatsu leading on points if applied consistently. Only when applied in this very strange and inconsistent manner does Seiken come out ahead.
TL;DR
The spreadsheet follows an inconsistent approach to scoring Honour in a way that specifically give the lead to Seiken.
Problem the Second - Scoring of Goals
There are further problems apparent in the way delegation objectives are scored. First of all, there's the fact that going by Megumi's post announcing the results... delegation objectives were not actually included. 2763/2586 pretty well matches the figures for personal points given in this spreadsheet (9 points down for Seiken, 4 points down Shibatsu, likely due to some minor last-minute tweaks, which we know (http://wintercourt.l5r.com/viewtopic.php?f=216&t=12462) per Megumi that they were engaging in); however, it completely leaves out the 602.5 points for Seiken, and 559.5 points for Shibatsu, that the spreadsheet gives.
But that's not the only issue. Here's Megumi explaining (http://wintercourt.l5r.com/viewtopic.php?p=244545&f=216#p244545) the scoring system for objectives:
Each objective you were assigned as a Clan, that you achieved, will gain you 50 points. There are an additional 15 points available for each objective intended to reflect how "efficient" you were. If you achieved an objective by expending an minimum of resources (or, for that matter, none at all, if you were that clever), you'd get an additional 15 points, for a total of 65 for that objective. OTOH, if you threw a lot of resources at one objective, you may only get 5 additional points (for 55), or none at all (for the base 50). The additional 15 points is at the discretion of the various Clan AGMs.
Minimum 50 points for an objective achieved. No ifs, no buts.*
Now look at the goals section of the Totals sheet (B13:I23). Right off the bat, we can see that the Crane received only 27 points for the objective "See that, before the end of Winter Court, the Throne issues a proclamation condemning the growing conflict between Traditionalist and Progressive factions in the Colonies, commanding an end to such hostilities, and requiring that any and all disputes related to this matter be settled solely by diplomatic means." Which was very definitely achieved.
The Dragon, meanwhile received only 25 points for their objective to "Prevent the Crab Clan from concluding any agreement which would diminish the Spider Clan's military forces in the Colonies, or prevent them from increasing their military forces there." Which, once again, they definitely achieved.
The Unicorn received only 35 points for their objective: "Together with the Crane, see that, before the end of Winter Court, the Throne issues a proclamation condemning the growing conflict between Traditionalist and Progressive factions in the Colonies, commanding an end to such hostilities, and requiring that any and all disputes related to this matter be settled solely by diplomatic means. However, Unicorn support for the Crane in this matter must NOT become public knowledge and, in particular, must not become known by the Imperial Families." Again, achieved.
And only 25 points for "Conclude an agreement with another clan to commit at least one full legion of military force to the Progressive side, or reduce by one full legion the military force of the Traditionalist side, in the ongoing conflict between those two factions in the Colonies."
And the Imperials received only 25 points for "Prevent any agreement among the Clans which would result in an increase in military forces in the Colonies that are engaged in the conflict between Traditionalist and Progressive factions there." which they achieved - there was no net change in military forces in the area (Traditionalist troops withdrew, a smaller number of Progressive troops moved in).
So what happens if we change the spreadsheet such that everyone received their minimum 50 points for a successfully-completed objective, plus whatever bonus points they are already being awarded?
Well, the current system has Seiken at 602.5 points, and Shibatsu at 559.5 points, for a margin of (as mentioned above) 43 points. And here we immediately run into another problem - columns K and L, which calculate the points contributed from goals to each heir, do not count points from column H (for goal #6). As only two factions (Phoenix and Imps) have goals in that column, which are worth the same number of points (25), and have opposite splits (70/30 and 30/70), this doesn't affect the final margin... until we correct the Imperial goal to be worth full points as it's supposed to (the Phoenix explicitly includes a clause for half points if it's partially completed, unlike any of the other goals).
If we correct the awarding of points for goals, such that Crane receive 55 instead of 27, Dragon receive 50 instead of 25, Unicorn receive 60 and 50 instead of 35 and 25, and Imps receive 50 instead of 25... then points contributed from goals go to 647.50 to Seiken, 692.50 for Shibatsu, making the margin now 45 points in Shibatsu's favour. With the personal points tallies as they currently are, using the inconsistent Honour scoring described above, this doesn't swing the result... but it is very strange.
Meanwhile, no such problem exists for Traditionalist goals. With the except of the Phoenix goal - which had a partial credit option explicitly written into it - every goal for a pro-Seiken faction has been scored for the full amount. Indeed, there is a Scorpion goal marked as completed:
The Scorpion generally rely on unorthodox methods to oppose other military forces in the field--particularly one as powerful as the Lion Clan. This requires the ability to maneuver forces quickly, from unexpected directions, often while employing techniques of deception and subterfuge; maneuvering forces in such a way in unfriendly territories, however, increases the risk of compromise and failure. Conclude an agreement with at least one other clan that borders the Lion Clan to allow the movement and operations of Scorpion forces without hindrance, with the clear understanding that those forces will take no direct against the lands, peoples, holdings or resources of the "hosting" clan(s).
That, to my knowledge, never saw anything remotely related to it raised on the Dais - and Megumi was always very clear that if a goal was not fulfilled by something announced on the Dais, it was not completed, full stop, end of story.
If we now remove that goal, then the scores for goals achieved become 602.5/687.5 - a margin of 85 points in Shibatsu's favour, from 45 points to Seiken. Again, not enough to actually swing the result if Honour scoring is left as it is - but the consistent weighting of points from the goals in favour of Seiken over Shibatsu raises very serious questions.
TL;DR
Goals for pro-Shibatsu factions are consistently under-scored. Goals for pro-Seiken factions are not; the Scorpion even got an entire goal ticked off that was never achieved.
So what happens if we both correct the scoring of goals and apply a consistent system for scoring Honour?
If we use the squared Honour scoring, then the scores are 3715.34/3890.83 - Shibatsu leads by 275.49 points.
If we use the non-squared Honour scoring, then the scores are 3058.30/3196.37 - Shibatsu leads by 148.07 points.
Either way, Shibatsu leads.
Problem the Third - Personal Points Awards
This is a murkier and harder-to-verify area, due to the sheet amount of data here, and I was initially undecided on whether to include it. I ultimately decided to do so in the interests of completeness; I encourage anyone who's interested to dig into the data here and see what they find. However, questions were raised on several occasions through the event about anomalously generous awarding of Honour and Glory to some PCs... and from my examination, the data in the spreadsheet seems consistent with those concerns. Some things that jump out at me personally:
- Ikoma Aimi receives a full rank of Glory and 0.2 Status for winning the Go tournament... an unofficial event never sanctioned or announced on the Dais. It was made quite clear to us*that Glory gains from events were contingent on the event being thusly recognised.
- Aimi likewise receives a full rank of glory for "ikebana placement", without further explanation, despite having already received 0.6 Glory for coming second in the ikebana contest (and a further 0.8 for having her work praised by a Shiba Artisan... which likewise strikes me as highly questionable).
- Several Crabs received Glory and XP with the only listed reason being "Clan goal". No-one else received such an award, despite many, many Clan goals being achieved this event.
- Shosuro Rin received 7 points of glory and 3 XP for "putting on a play". Were any rewards issued when the Crane put on a play a few days before? Nope.
- Aimi received separate Glory awards for "Day 2 Dais" and "Day 2 petition" despite speaking only once.
- Yasuki Aitoko receives, in addition to multiple ranks of Glory for being publicly honoured after the library fire, 23 points of Glory for "saving the lives of others". Plenty of other characters saved lives this event, some of them even died doing so... no-one else received an award like that.
- Bayushi Atsuto receives 5 points of Glory for his scripted "death" scene vs the Oni, despite the fact that due to plot armour it could not actually kill him.
And that's from a fairly cursory inspection. I don't think this is likely to likely to change the results, compared to the other issues I've raised, but I do think it further illustrates problems with the way scoring was handled here.
Having said this, I want to be clear that this is not meant as an attack on either the players who received positive attention from the GMs, nor of most of the GM staff. All players in the game simply tried to do their best to portray their characters, benefit their clans and support their heirs, any disproportionate rewards to some players are not on those people and the doubt you might feel over whether you earned it and the suspicion that others might view you with makes you as much victims as those passed over. Nor are most of the GMs to blame, you mostly worked hard to make the game the best experience it could possibly be and trusted in your colleagues to do the same. Players and GMs alike were simply hostages to people trying to bend or outright break rules to push an agenda and unless you are those people you have my sympathy and compassion.
The ones this [i]is[/is] targeted at is primarily two people, the one who above all others favored one side over the other the other and the one who made the final tally, scored the goals and set how personal totals were calculated. These people are Shi-Tien Yen-Wang, or Christopher Thomas Hand one of the three recent additions to story team, who gave the Crab far more points than any other clan, and Saibankan, who despite Megumi's claims to doing it personally handled the final scoring as well as approving gains of honor, status, glory, infamy and XP.
The listing above reveals that the differences in how Crabs, and to a lesser degree other Traditionalists, were extraordinary to the point where it is hard to not at the very least imagine real bias on the part of Hand and negligence on the part of his superiors on the GM team for not trying to enforce more consistency in awards. Apart from the evidence provided by the gains and their justification, this bias is suggested by such things as the leaked story of how Hand tried to pressure Rob Denton from story team into presenting a more pleasant face for Seiken in order to make him more appealing to the public. Similarly, Hand on at least two occasions tried to overrule the actions of other clan AGMs in regards to XP purchases and called in Saibankan to support him in doing so when challenged by the AGMs of said clans. Similarly, neither GMs nor players I have talked to have been able to find a single instance of Hand praising a player or a character who was neither a Crab nor a Scorpion and introduced weekly XP as a thing for the Crab without so much as informing other GMs. In his first official fiction as a member of story team, Hand also almost exclusively focused on the Crab and the Scorpion outside what appears to be a mandated revelation about the identity of the regent. As such, there exists a visible history of bias on his part that I imagine most GMs would be willing to attest to. The full picture is that of a man who cannot see past his own desires and preferences to remain objective, much like a roleplaying version of Joe Quesada.
However, there is also evidence that it was not simply a biased man adding a lot of gains that skewed things. The most notable of these is that a large part of the final totals are outright fabrication. These suggest otherwise in two ways. The first is the fact that Hand didn't make them, Saibankan did, so it would have had to be two biased men who skewed things in the same direction in eagerness. The other is the fact that the totals are not just biased, they're literally breaking the rules. You don't accidentally calculate honor differently for two clans or score six goals beneath the stated minimum through eagerness, especially not when those two deeds ended up flipping the final choice of heir from Shibatsu to Seiken. It gets even shadier when you realize that the system that wasn't consistently applied at the end was designed by Hand, the primary abuser of it, who later went on to try to claim credit for fixing it, as well as victim blaming those who got overlooked on at least two separate (http://wintercourt.l5r.com/viewtopic.php?p=271411&f=216#p271411) occasions (http://wintercourt.l5r.com/viewtopic.php?f=216&t=11755&start=110#p246895). The picture of something shady going on also shows in how several players from other clans have reported posting gains and having their Gms agree, only for the gains to be smaller than they had been told or fail to materialize entirely.
I cannot say what the relationship between Hand and Saibankan is. Perhaps they were allies intent on seeing Seiken on the throne no matter what, perhaps one of them persuaded the other to help them or, possibly, one was entirely deluded and didn't realize that the other was using them. Ultimately it doesn't matter. Regardless of how it happened, the two of them broke the rules of the game and pushed an agenda that was clearly not what the majority wanted despite the system as written providing another outcome. Even if it was merely staggering incompetence on the part of both of them, their actions led to the betrayal of the basic promise of winter court and damaged trust in not just the two of them, but the entire GM staff and AEG as a company.
Which brings me to my final point, that this winter court was an amazing event allowing for great story achievements and strong roleplay. I believe that it is a shame to see such a great event ruined by the blatant bias and dishonest behavior of Hand and Saibankan rendering much of that void and forcing many innocents to doubt if their achievements were their or simply handed to them by those two. I had hoped for more control after Megumi assured us that he would personally handle the final tally so that the final bit might go as smoothly as the rest of the game.