-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MORNINGTON NOMIC Proposals for Voting on in Year Two, Week Four -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Proposal 370 - Don't Run With Scissors [Other, Multiple] { Comments: The basic aim of this Proposal is to do away with "Move Actions"; since most of the Actions' actual Rules are defined in terms of "Do such-and- such at any Station passed through this Turn", they might as well be Post-Move Actions. This is, I think, a good step to be taking, in that having Actions occur during a Player's Move is particularly hard to document without naming the Station at which they occur - if you're doing this, you might as well clear it up and have them as Post-Moves anyway. } 1. Stop Moving and Annex Neutrality [Amendment] In Rule 1.7.1 (Action Types), remove the "Move Actions" classification, and reword the timing definition of Neutral Actions from "...may be played at any time." to "...may be played as either Pre- or Post-Move Actions." { Comment: Playing Neutral Actions halfway through your Move just makes matters rather complex (if unfair, in the "Purchasing stuff from Overground Stations" case), and there's not a single one on there which wouldn't work if forced to be Pre- or Post-Move instead. } 2. Post-Moving Experience [Amendments, Repeal] Move all Actions from Rule 1.7.14 (Move Actions) into Rule 1.7.15 (Post-Move Actions), and Repeal Rule 1.7.14. 3. Throw Them Over Your Shoulder [Amendments] In Rule 1.14.3 (Token Dropping) and Rule 1.14.4 (Token Claiming), replace "" is the location of the Actioning Player's Piece. with "" is any Station which the Actioning Player's Piece has passed through, or started or ended eir Move at. and "Move Action" with "Post-Move Action". -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Proposal 371 - The Coming of Shadows [Enactment] Action: Shadowing Cost: none Duration: 10 minutes Type: Post-Move A Player may perform the post-Move Action of "[Shadowing ]", provided that "" is a Player (known as the Shadowed Player) whose Piece's location is that of the Actioning Player's Piece. Upon performing this Action, the Actioning Player's LV becomes that of the Shadowed Player, and the Actioning Player gains a single Plastic Token of a chosen colour, provided that the Shadowed Player has at least one Token of this colour. { Comments: Just to implement Shadowing, after having it crop up informally in Game Six, a few Turns back. An extremely cut-down Shunt, but one that allows the Shadowing Player to continue to tail the Shadowed Player and gain Tokens until e manages to be shaken off. Should be interesting. } ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Proposal 372 - A Little Bit Less Local Colour [Other, Multiple] Repeal Rule 1.19.2 (A little bit of local colour) and Rule 1.19.3 (Rule 783f). { Comments: Basically, these Rules:- * Give us three Stations whose Token Stacks can't be comfortably represented on the GSD. * Give us another fiddly Thing To Remember for Players who have been Shunted to Neasden (and will only be a loss of a Bronze, most Turns, anyway). * Give us an unplayable way out of a Dollis Hill Loop. * Give us a meaningless joke rule ("North is always North.") to scare the newbies and waste Ruleset space with. Fair enough that these are from the Encyclopaedia Morningtonia and thus a valid part of MC history (three of them were my own submissions anyway), but I can't see either Rule adding much to the Game. } Repeal bloody 1.19.1 (QED), as well. { Comments: "Dunx shall be declared winner of Game 3.", that one, left in from a welcomed but carelessly-worded Emergency Proposal some months back. Off with its head. } ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Proposal 373 - Abolition of Sleeping Policemen [Amendment] Amend Rule 1.12.1 (Home Stations) so that its fourth paragraph reads as follows: "If a Player's Move takes em on or through another Active Player's Home Station, the Moving Player must give that Station's owner eight Bronze Tokens or their equivalent. If the Moving Player does not have such Tokens, e may not Move on or through that Station." Amend the token table in Rule 1.4.1 (Token Gesture) so that the criterion for paying the Home Station toll reads as follows: "Moving onto or through another Active Player's Home Station" { Comment: Simple enough concept - stop Home Stations being a barrier while a Player is Inactive. } ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Proposal 374 - Kill Unnecessary Devices Of Scoring [Other, Multiple] { Comment: This Proposal is about removing the Kudos system and replacing it with something else which performs a similar function but is more directly related to the mechanics of the Nomic and is easier to administer. The mechanical roles which Kudos plays is as follows: 1. to discourage Players from Voting for eir own Proposals 2. to penalise apathy 3. to encourage Voting 4. to discourage frivolous Emergancy Proposals 5. to reward tidying up of the ruleset Kudos also incorporates an element which can be used to gauge the success or otherwise of a Player's Proposals and Voting, and eir adherence to the GSD format. These don't seem as significant, somehow: I would have thought that the Voting Results would be a sufficient barometer of Proposal success, and errant formatting can be better enforced by peer pressure. This is not to say that Kudos hasn't had more of a role in the past, it just seems to have been steadily waning in importance. I rather feel that it has served its purpose and that it's time to move on. Anyway, enough of the justification - on with the Proposal. } [Repeal: Fire One!] Repeal Rule 0.9.1 (Kudos) [Repeal: Fire Two!] Repeal Rule 0.9.3 (Credit Where Credit Is Due) { Comment: I would suggest that section 0.9 be removed from the ruleset, along with its entry in the contents page. The following enactment should fit in with the Proposal and Voting structure. } [Enactment: Truth and Consequences] { Comment: The core of the replacement approach is that a Player's conduct in one Week should directly affect eir ability to influence the ruleset in the following Week. The structure of this Rule is modelled on that for Kudos, but there are fewer events which should happen more rarely and be easier to manage. } At the end of each Week, the number of Proposals which a Player may make in the following Week is adjusted as follows: Event | Proposal Adjustment ------------------------------------------------+-------------------- Each Vote FOR one of eir Proposals, | -1 made by emself | | Voting FOR or AGAINST all Proposals | +1 besides eir own | | Failure to Judge or refuse Judgement of an | -1 Emergency Proposal within 72 hours of it | being distributed, if selected as Judge | | For each Emergency Proposal put forward by a | +1 Player which is passed | | For each Emergency Proposal put forward by a | -1 Player which fails | | { Comment: There is a weakness in this approach in that Repeals and duplicate Proposal EPs are difficult to reward. The obvious approach is to add a Proposal to a Player's quota for the following Week (which is exactly what was in this table for some time) but it's actually impossible to administer. Why? Well, it's all to do with predictability. All of the effects on a Player's Proposal quota in this table can be anticipated by the Player: e knows before Week end whether e's voted FOR one of eir own Proposals, for instance. Hence e can determine how many Proposals to put forward before hand without needing to know any of the Week end information. The problem with both the Repeal reward and the duplicate Proposal EP reward is that the Player cannot predict these rewards' arrival, and hence cannot put forward Proposals to take advantage of them. A solution would be to delay the rewards (that is, make them apply the Week after next). Whether this delay were applied to just these rewards or to all of them, such a delay would both remove the immediacy of effect and make this scheme harder to manage. I don't think either of these is terribly important, though. The Repeal reward is open to abuse through multiple proposals, whilst the duplicate Proposal EP reward is irrelevant: having the Proposal pass unchallenged seems sufficient to my mind. The rest of this Proposal is removing Kudos references. } [Amendment: Joint Patent] Amend Rule 0.4.12 (That Was *My* Idea) to read as follows: "If two or more players make separate Proposals with identical effects, the Speaker or eir nominee may disregard the separate Proposals and automatically pass an Emergency Proposal to the same effect. If any Player is unhappy with the Speaker's decision, e may challenge it by a Point of Order and the Proposals are then voted on separately in the normal way." [Amendment: Tinkerbell] Amend Rule 0.5.5 (Direct Tinkering Ban) to read as follows: "If the passing of a Proposal would directly cause any aspect of the Nomic other than the Ruleset in the Game State Document to be altered, and if it receives at least one AGAINST Vote, it may not pass. This takes precedence over all other Rules regarding the passing of Proposals." [Amendment: Are You *Sure* This Is An Emergency?] Amend Rule 0.7.2 (Emergency Proposals) so that its last paragraph reads as follows: "If an Emergency Proposal is passed, the Player that made the Proposal shall be allowed to make an additional Proposal in the Week following that in which the EP was Passed. If it fails, e has the number of Proposals which e may make in the following Week reduced by one." [Repeal: Credit Not Accepted] Repeal Rule 0.9.3 (Credit Where Credit Is Due). [Amendment: Apathy Is It's Own Reward] Amend Rule 0.10.2 (Wake Up, Damn You) so that its last paragraph reads as follows: "If a Player's Apathy Level reaches three, that Player becomes Inactive." [Amendment: It's Not Big And It's Not Clever] Amend Rule 1.1.5 (Boasting Wall) so that its last paragraph reads as follows: "The Boasting Wall shall also include a link to a copy of the final Game State Document submitted to the mailing list, for that Game." { Comment: This change probably ought to be introduced due to disuse in any case. And finally... } [Repeal: Obsolete With A Capital O] If Proposal 367 (Kudos With A Capital K) Passed, repeal it. [Repeal: Foul Fish] If Proposal 368 (Fish and Fowl) Passed, repeal it. [End of Kill Unnecessary Devices Of Scoring] { Comment: Apologies for the high-handed nature of this Proposal, not to mention its length, but the Kudos system is something I've been unhappy with for some time and this seems like a more suitable replacement. } ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Proposal 375 - Precision Movements [Amendment] Amend Rule 1.18.1 (Manoeuvres in the Dark) so that its first paragraph reads as follows: "A Player may declare eir last three valid moves (that is, the last three end of turn Piece positions) as a Manoeuvre, provided that none of the last three moves is a Pass, or a Forced Pass. E does this by performing a Declaraction action, which takes one of the two forms:" Amend Rule 1.18.2 (Gambits and Their Costs) so that the Trampoline Gambit reads as follows: "The Trampoline Gambit (1 Si, 3 Re, 2 Bk, 1 Bu) Finsbury Park -> Wembley Park -> Amersham" { Comment: The current wording is imprecise - does it mean Piece Move or Player Move? Should the Station be taken to be the Piece's position at the end of its normal movement, or its position after other manipulations? You may gather from this amendment that I come down firmly on the side of Player Move, otherwise you can't use any form of Straddle, Strile or other non-linear form of movement as the last component of a Gambit. This Is exactly what Jon did with eir Trampoline Gambit, which is why I've included a tweak to that to make it consistent with the new definition. The relevant Move sequence from Game 3 was: Jon : Finsbury Park (VC via:CL,HC,NT,VC) [LV+3] [Parks and Greens Cascade] [Collecting Hat (Verdant)] [Blocking Highbury & Islington] Jon : Wembley Park (MP via VC, PD, CL) [LV+3] Jon : Green Park (JL via: MP, JL, PD, NT, CN, JL) [LV+1] [Game Time: +0100] [Black on Green Park] [Claiming a Black token from Tottenham Court Road] [Claiming a Black token from Oxford Circus] [Striling to Amersham] [Declaring the Trampoline Gambit] } ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Proposal 376 - Rule 1.4.11 [Amendment] {Comment: At the moment, the power of Token Running as a means of gaining Gold Tokens is in my opinion too great: it's too easy to gain a lot of Gold Tokens quickly by using termini that are close together - the classical example being the East London Line or the northwestern Metropolitan. As a result, nobody bothers getting Gold Tokens by any other means, other than Shunting. Gone is the creative play with Token Stacks, and the Action of [Visiting ] is almost never used because it requires a Pass.} The following amendments to the Token Running rule (Rule 1.4.11) are Proposed: (1) Add "which is not in Zones 1 or 2" after "starts eir move at a Terminus" (2)Add "along the line that terminates there" after "and Moves away from it in the same turn" {Comment: Leaving Stratford via the Central doesn't strike me as very much moving away from a Terminus.} (3) Amend "once per Terminus per Game" to read "once per Line per Game, and not more than once from the same Station." {Comment: There are still easily enough Gold Tokens to go around - it just means that Players have to change Line to get them, possibly moving through Central London and thus interacting with other Players - which is not a bad thing IMO.} (4) Add, at the end of the Rule: "A Player may only Run a Token from a Terminus if e Moved to it, and Moves away, by a standard Move. If the Move to the Terminus, or the Move away from it, was a [Wild], [Strile], [Compass Wormhole], [Stub Link], [Walking] or [Home] move, or if e arrived by being Shunted, e may not Run a Gold Token from that station upon leaving." (5) To be fair to other Players in all currently running Games, this Amendment shall take effect only in Game 7 and subsequent games. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Proposal 377 - Line 'Em Up, Knock 'Em Down [Enactment] If a Player is Shunted to the same Location as another Player, the original Shunting Player may elect to play a Double Shunt, with the Action of [Double Shunting to ]. In this case, the player in the original Target Station (henceforth known as the Double-Shunted Player) is Shunted along the line, under the same conventions as with standard Shunts, i.e.: *The number of Stations moved is equal to the original Shunting Player's LV, or to a Terminus if it is closer. *The Double-Shunted Player's target station must be on the same Line as eir original position, the Shunted Player's target Station (though the Double Shunt may take place along a different line to the original Shunt, as under Rule 1.5.1 a Player's position is defined by Station rather than by Line), and may not be the original position of the Shunted Player. *The original Shunting Player may claim one Token or Possession from the Double-Shunted Player in addition to that claimed from the Shunting Player. The Action will thus read: : [Shunting to ] [Double Shunting to ] Example: Rushton: Victoria (with LV of 8) Garden: Euston Square Brooke-Taylor: Monument Rushton: Monument [Shunting Brooke-Taylor to Euston Square] [Double Shunting Garden to West Harrow] (The Shunt happens on the Circle Line, the Double Shunt on the Metropolitan.) Token Stacks may be involved in Double Shunts: however, a Player may not be Double Shunted by a Shunted Token Stack. Triple (or greater Multiple) Shunts may be set up and played under the same principles, but no Player may be Shunted more than once as a result of the same Move. A Player gains 1 Silver Token as a bonus for every Shunted Player beyond the first Shunt (thus, in the above example, Rushton gains 1 Silver Token.) {Comment: Should encourage creative Shunting and use of the Drone.} *Also amend Rule 1.10.1, adding the following sentence at the end: "A Player may not claim Tokens from a Shunted Token Stack, nor may e pick up a Token from a Stack in the same Turn as Shunting it." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Proposal 378 - You Don't Get Your Money Back, You Know... [Amendment] If the "Out-Of-Town Hypermarket" Proposal Passes, I'd like to add the following Amendment: "Tokens used to Purchase Possessions are not placed on the board, but discarded and removed from the Game." {Comment: This is proposed because of 2 reasons: (1) All the Bronze Tokens used for purchasing Possessions are cluttering up the Board and getting in the way of the creative building of Token Stacks. When every stack has a Bronze at the bottom, Rule 1.14.2 is practically redundant. (2) It is possible - I demonstrated this in Game 5, though I lost - to place Bronze Tokens so close to the Quadrant boundaries that they can be picked up the very next move after spending them. Hence the title of the Amendment. Besides, once you've spent money on something you can't get it back... If you need more Bronzes, get them by getting Silvers and swapping them. Any token used for a non-Purchasing action remains in the Game. } ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Proposal 379 - I've started so I'll finish [Amendment] i. Amend the table in Rule 1.4.14 and the sentence in brackets following it to read as follows: +-------------+--------------------+ | Zone 1 | 3 Bronze Tokens | | Zone x | 2 Bronze Tokens | | Zones 1-3 | 5 Bronze Tokens | | Zones 1-6 | 8 Bronze Tokens | +-------------+--------------------+ (In the above table 'Zone x' applies to single Zone Passes for Zones 2 to 7 inclusive. In performing the Zone Purchase action, the player should replace x with the appropriate Zone number) {Comment: I think it should be more expensive to buy Zone 1 passes -- not *because* it is the case in RL, but for the same reason, ie that there are more stations in Zone 1, so a Zone 1 pass is more rewarding. I've slightly increased the cost of a Zone 1-3 pass accordingly, otherwise the discount would be too much} ii. If Proposal 362 (Out-of-Town Hypermarket) passes amend the table to include the cost for a Zone 1 Pass and amend the following sentence so that 'between one and six' is changed to read 'between two and six': "When buying a "Zone * Pass", the asterisk should be replaced with a single digit of the purchasing Player's choice, between one and six." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Proposal 380 - The Grand Old Duke of York RIP [repeal] Repeal Rule 1.17.3 {Comment: the information is listed in Rule 1.17.6} ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Proposal 381 - The Man with the Golden Gone [other, multiple] 1. Goldfingering [repeal] Repeal Rule 1.4.11 (Token Running) 2. Bye Bye Love [amendment] Remove the reference to Token Running from Rule 1.7.2 3. Bye Bye Happiness [amendment] Remove the section 'Starting a Turn at a Terminus Station which is not in Zone 1' from the table in Rule 1.4.1. {Comment: I think Jonathan's plans for revising Token Running are fine, but I wonder if making it more difficult might not just make it an unnecessarily complicated procedure, and perhaps it would be better to just do away with it altogether -- OK, so it means seriously limiting ways to acquire Golds, but (a) is that such a bad thing? and (b) it forces us to start thinking new of ways to gain golds. I'm not holding out great hopes of this proposal passing, just testing the water to see what the general feeling is on the matter} ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Proposal 382 - Special Rulesets [Other, Multiple] 1. Special Ruleset Proposals [Enactment] A proposal may be of type 'Other' and subtype 'Special Ruleset'. Such proposals are deemed Special Ruleset proposals. If a Special Ruleset proposal passes, it creates a Special Ruleset; a document with the name and text of said proposal. This Ruleset is assigned a number one higher than the highest numbered ruleset currently in existance. 2. Special Rulesets [Enactment] Special Rulesets may be referred to explicitly by name, or by number in the form 'SR ' where is the relevant number. No Special Ruleset may alter the rules of Mornington Nomic, directly or otherwise. Special Rulesets have no effect on any games of Mornington Nomic other than those they are incorporated in. They may, however, be amended via proposal in the same way as any other Mornington Nomic rules. Special Rules always take precedence over the 'Plain Vanilla' Mornington Crescent rules for any relevant Special Rules games; unless explicitly stated otherwise in the Special Ruleset. Special Rules may never take precedence over the Plain Vanilla Nomic Mechanic rules. Otherwise, all Special Rules are treated in exactly the same way as Vanilla ones. 3. Special Rules Games [Amendment] Insert these two paragraphs after the first paragraph of rule 1.1.2 ("A New Game") The Speaker may, at eir discretion, declare the new game to be a Special Rules game. This game will then incorporate the relevant Special Ruleset(s), in addition to the current rules of Mornington Nomic (the 'Plain Vanilla' ruleset.) Multiple Special Rulesets may be used if their combination is deemed appropriate. {Comments: Essentially the same as before; doing it in three sections (proposal, attributes and usage, effectively) and providing an open-ended allowance for multiple rulesets. It occurs to me this could be used for anything from Chalk Farm '84 to Boardo! :) Suggestions? I'd certainly like to see Chalk Farm 84; perhaps some standardised IMCS sets (particularly 95-6); and some non-standard map games. I also think a collection of fairly small modifiers would be nice, to allow greater scope for combination. } -------------------------------------------------------------------------------