Legally Distinct (Part 2)
Legally Distinct: Creating A Cult About “Horses”
Stories from the Worm Cult in Over/Under from Cody Bechberger/ HelloYesToast
Part 2: The Idea
If you haven’t read part 1 and want to get the context for this post, you can find it here.
We pick back up with me receiving a heaping helping of the consequences of my actions. Turns out that people don’t appreciate being lied to by omission in a game where trust is one of the main resources that people want to rely on. And I’m not going to sugarcoat it, that burn notice hurt. It felt like a rejection, like I had failed and the cool kids were telling me I wasn’t good enough to play with them anymore and I seriously thought that the game was over for me. 2 things kept me going though:
The cult was counting on me. They were chomping at the bit to try and do something…anything really, to try and leave some kind of weird impression on this blank canvas of an environment which we were a part of.
The burn notice had provided a sense of infamy. Worm was one of the first people to be publicly fired, and by the most select, most secret faction in the game. People instantly recognized Worm from the news and were suddenly interested in what had happened and what their next steps were going to be. So even though the cool kids had rejected me, Worm was suddenly being treated very differently by the freaks and misfits running around on the Dream.
But the question still remained: what were we going to do to earn credits?
During the first week, Worm was working in a casino that had started up. I was floored when I realized stuff like that was opening up and that people were willing to hand over their fake money and wait on a random number generator to tell them whether or not they lost it or gained more. It was terrifying. What if I messed it up, gave out too much/too little and someone yelled at me? What if they figured out I got the call wrong and got me booted out and ostracized from the rest of the community? The person actually running the club, a player going by Lachesis Quan, was always really cool about letting me jump in and out when I wanted, but ultimately the casino fell apart as the whole thing was a giant scam to begin with. It illustrated just how open this whole economy was becoming and the depth of possibility that existed within this world.
The other pivotal event was the first Battle Blocks Fighting League, which took place on the first Friday night, October 17th. Again, I saw even more fake money being thrown around at this event and we had 2 fighters from the group in the mix. This was absolutely huge, people wanted events where they could follow along and cheer, throwing money hand over fist at constantly shifting odds without any hesitation. Both of our fighters, Izzy Wizard and Scalgreave, lost their matches but it honestly didn’t matter. Izzy was a very vocal follower of the Worms, and she lost to Floyd Merkins who would go on to become THE heel throughout the station at large. Also, the art of their fight was absolutely amazing.
(A bad bad man being taken down by the worms from @nickdrawthing.bsky.social)
We knew it could work, that the community wanted events like this and would be willing to provide that sweet sweet fake currency if it was fun enough, and because I just love to make everything I do more difficult than it needs to be, I decided we needed to do horse racing with win/place/show betting. It needed to be authentic, classy even, and just different from everything else before it. And, best of all, we decided that we were going to sell off the horses to raise the capital. The following Sunday, we brainstormed the idea. Races would be run in groups of 6, which would make the top 3 positions for betting seem more achievable, and if we kept the total number of horses to a multiple of 6 it would ensure the math for the total number of races easier with a final race at the very end of Over/Under with the best racers running for a prize. So, we decided on an initial run of 12 horses sold at 2,000 credits each, which would give us a float of 24,000 credits for the final prize for the season of 20,000 credits and keep us from going bankrupt while supporting potential bets. Also, the team convinced me that normal horses were not the way to go, and thus it was decided that what we were actually going to be racing were “horses”. These horrifying amalgamations of worm and metal would become a much bigger deal than I ever could have predicted, but we’ll get there soon enough.
("Horse" racing flyer from @inkstained-art.bsky.social)
The next day just before noon, the post went live and we were sold out in less than 2 hours.
Immediately, we had people on the waitlist (blog favourite Kyle Ferrin was first on the list, though none of us knew that at the time), and someone was turning around trying to flip their “horse” for a profit. By this point, my ego was in full effect and I was having none of that and so I turned around and released an additional 6 “horses” for a full roster of 18 racers in the season. These took a bit longer to sell (about 5 hours until they were all gone), but we had done it! There was no turning back now.
Betting Structure
As mentioned above, the goal was to simulate typical horse race betting using a typical win/place/show system. Horse racing was something I was always vaguely aware of but never fully understood, making this the perfect opportunity to learn it on the fly. The different bets refer to different positions that the horse can be in at the end, with win being first position, place being first or second position, and show being first, second, or third position. Since a show bet encompasses 3 different positions, it’s inherently less risky of a bet than a show or win bet; we wanted the final payout to reflect that and as such a show bet would receive half of the equivalent payout of a win and a place one-third. Also, as illustrated in one of the pictures above, we planned to use the interactions on the race post that were used to give the “horses” a boost to help set the odds for betting on a race, with more interactions dropping the initial odds of 20:1 down to a possible 1:1. In this way, a higher boost meant that a “horse” was more likely to win, and the odds would reflect that. Betting would open 1 hour before race time once we had set the odds, and would leave them open until race time. I even built a spreadsheet to calculate the odds, potential payouts, and actual payouts in the end!
The thing that always scared me was us running out of money. I found out much later that the fight night and some of the other events were being backed by bosses of different factions, giving them access to a bigger float to play with bigger and bigger bets, but I thought we needed to do this completely on our own so taking big bets was a lot to consider. Especially dealing with some “horses” having 20:1 odds? A surprise win could destroy us and I started having visions of fake people showing up to Worm’s fake house and breaking his fake kneecaps. It was too much to bear, and so we ended up instituting betting caps and kept a close eye on our potential payout amount.
Race Structure
The next we needed was to figure out who won each race, and potentially give people an opportunity to participate. At its core, each race was simply 20d20 rolls for each horse with the bonus added at the end; the winner was whoever had the highest score by the end of the race. Neat. Simple.
“But Toast”, I hear you say, “that sounds really boring and not fun”. You’re right, the core isn’t very fun, but it’s all in the presentation. The drama. One of our members, Shekhinah, also wanted to build a spreadsheet to use, and so it would roll each of the 20 for all 6 horses one at a time, allowing the end number to fluctuate in real time until the end. Add in some commentators for humour and voila! An incredibly fun way to waste 15 minutes of your life yelling at your computer/phone.
I think I’m going to end this post here, now that everyone’s eyes have glazed over from all the numbers being thrown around. It’ll be worth it though, as my next post will look at the community response…
(Forklift Sparkling promo picture from @d20plusmodifier.bsky.social)