Board Game Arena

I'm in a 3-player game of Carcassone with two of my IRL friends, including the Dragon and Princess rules (table 451363265). A dragon walk began on my turn. My understanding is that when that happens, players take turns moving the dragon one space at a time until it has moved six spaces. With three players, that would mean we each move the dragon twice. I moved it south for my first move and wandered away (we're playing asynchronously).

A few hours later I returned to make my next move, and discovered that the dragon walk was over. I was being prompted to place a tile. Checking the log, I saw it recorded me as moving the dragon twice -- once to the south, and then later to the north.

I did not do that. That was not me. I explicitly wanted to move the dragon south. The other players are of course free to move the dragon in any direction, which is fine, but why on earth would I undo my move to the south by moving the dragon back north? I wouldn't.

As I see it, there are two possibilities for what has happened here: either it's a glitch, or my account got hacked and someone else made that move. In case it is the latter, I have changed my password and forced logout on all devices.

Should I file a bug report about this when I don't know if it's actually a bug and have no way to reproduce it? I went looking for a security reporting mechanism and did not find one. Should I report this to BGA as a security incident? If so, where would I do that?

I am deeply weirded out by the incident, and unsure how to proceed.

If I replay where the dragon was, I believe it was on the volcano tile? Then you moved south and your opponent moved it east, your other opponent north, which resulted it being on the space with the river/road and the green farmer. It had started on the space to the east (volcano) so couldn't move there (dragon cannot revisit any space in a single movement), it had come from the south so couldn't move there, it could not move east as the fairy was there, so, the only option left was to move north. Followed by east and north again. My guess is that the game moved automatically for those last three moves as no other options were available. I haven't played much Carcassonne on here, so I've not seen it myself, but things often are automated, as there's no point waiting hours for a user to come and take a turn where there is only one option.

nik592 wrote: ↑22 December 2023, 10:34 If I replay where the dragon was, I believe it was on the volcano tile? Then you moved south and your opponent moved it east, your other opponent north, which resulted it being on the space with the river/road and the green farmer. It had started on the space to the east (volcano) so couldn't move there (dragon cannot revisit any space in a single movement), it had come from the south so couldn't move there, it could not move east as the fairy was there, so, the only option left was to move north. Followed by east and north again. My guess is that the game moved automatically for those last three moves as no other options were available. I haven't played much Carcassonne on here, so I've not seen it myself, but things often are automated, as there's no point waiting hours for a user to come and take a turn where there is only one option.

This sounds a lot more plausible than someone hacking an account just to make moves in Carcassonne.

Ah! That had not occurred to me, but it does indeed make a lot of sense.

This is my first game with the Dragon in play, so I'm not as familiar with the rules governing its movement. Thank you for clearing that up.