Subject: Ackanomic Research Digest V2 #60
From: [email-masked] (Ackanomic Research Digest)
To: acka-research-digest

Ackanomic Research Digest    Saturday, May 17 1997    Volume 02 : Number 060

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Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 11:44:57 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Joseph W. DeVincentis" <devjoe>
Subject: Re: Acka:  Proposal 2006

> Proposal 2006
> CV1701 Makes Good
> CV1701

Good to see new players submitting proposals -- it's the best way to learn
how to write proposals that pass.  I think your proposal is a bad proposal
for several reasons, which I describe below.  Not all players in Acka will
agree with me, because there are few things that all players agree on, but
most will probably agree with at least one of my reasons.  The purpose of
this critique is to show new players (and some old players) the kinds of
ways I evaluate a proposal.  I could have picked any of a number of other
proposals, but this one was submitted by a new player who may well not know
a lot of this stuff, and it has a lot of things I wanted to comment on.
Wow, this got long.

BTW, I'm still confused on the source of your name.  All I can figure out is
that 1701 is the number of the Enterprise on Star Trek; no idea on the CV.

> If a Proposal is said to be Modest by the author it must contain one of the
> following words: "Up" "Down" "On your head" or the current 3 word phrase set
> forth by R207.1

OK, you start with a good bit of harf.  However, the current rules are
such that submitting a modest proposal that violates this section is a
crime.  Also, the proposal would cease to be modest if this had precedence
over the modesty rule, but it doesn't.

We had a big problem in the past with rules that say something must be a
ceratin way, or that players must or shall do certain things, and the
crime package basically defined these words in the context of the game.
See rule 709 and several rules that follow it, at least up to R713, "Crime".

The rules are generally set up so that anything that is a crime is something
we really don't want people to do, but requiring all modest proposals to have
one of these words seems too strict (although it would result in a bunch
of proposals with {{[Up]}} at the end of them :-) and furthermore, the rule
seems to indicate that it expects some proposals to violate this section.

> If the Modest Proposal is passed without the proper words, the player who
> submitted it is given points using this formula:
> Let a = Current # of points for an approved proposal.
> (a+2)3 / 5 rounded down.
> 
> However is the Modest Proposal is passed with the proper phrases the player
> who submitted it is given a bounus 3 points for paying attention.

Hmm, this proposal seems to increase the points for modest proposals whether
or not they have the words.  That isn't necessarily bad, but it seems to
come under the guise of restricting the points scored in some way.

> If the player submits a Modest Proposal without the proper phrases and the
> proposal fails they are given 5 points for avoiding the complicated
> mathmatical formula described above.

And this makes it better to NOT include those words in proposals; moreover,
this happens by merely submitting proposals, so even if they fail (or are
retracted!) the player will have a net increase in their score.  You could
win the cycle by just flooding Acka with junk proposals, if this passed.

[Note: by "junk proposals" I mean stuff like {{set my score to the
magic number}} -- with no intent to have the thing pass, unless it
does so by the sheer randomness of Acka's voters]

> However if, with in the past 27 days the person has been deemed silly they
> are exempt from this rule if the month contains a blue moon or if the
> temperature has droped to -3degreesF ar above 100 degreese F.

OK... the problem with this is that you didn't say where the temperature is
measured... is it at the speaker's house, that player's house, or anywhere
in the world?  Regardless where it is, it is troublesome because it
requires somebody to check each day's weather report (possibly for a small
town on the other side of the world!) to see if the condition has been met.

Acka appreciates harf, and when it is good, fun, manageable harf I will
vote for it, but I draw the line at proposals which do any of the following:
 1) break the scoring system by making it too easy to score points
    [same for the monetary system, bonus votes, boons, or other entities]
 2) encourage spamming the list with lots of something (typically,
    proposals that are then retracted) in order to adjust one's score
 3) require a lot of work for little benefit, where the benefits are
    generally in making the game more fun to play, or making the rules
    easier to understand.
 4) are ambiguous

There may be other reasons I vote against a proposal, but these are the
reasons I will vote against P2006.

/dev/joe

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Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 18:16:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2006 

/dev/joe,

Thank you for your input. I appreciate the help. I was unaware of the crime
fules because I have not been able to read all of them due to a browser
problem. Thanx again.

CV1701

BTW 1701 is from Star Trek, and CV (Chris Vogt) are my initials.

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Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 18:39:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Acka:Retraction of Proposal 2006 

I hearby retract proposal 2006 which I submited. Sorry for the inconvienance.

CV1701

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Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 20:08:18 -0600 (MDT)
From: Aaron Humphrey <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka:  Proposal 2007

> [My reasoning is there are already plenty of awards in the game for
> playing well.  Probably too many.  PCs aren't harfy and they are a
> royal pain to track.  If acka is getting too bureaucratic it's because
> someone has to track all this *stuff* and understandably, nobody wants
> to.

I did wonder what the heck Processing Chips were for.  I forgot that they
showed up in the Chalice rules, but then I confess that was one set of
rules that made my eyes glaze over as I read them.  :-)

> The Chalice Win depends on PCs.  I changed it to trinkets for lack of
> anything better.  I also considered bonds.. if anyone has a better
> idea please don't hesitate to propose it.]

Destroying bonds would be a bad idea because as far as I can tell there is
no way to replace them...hey, maybe _those_ should be given out for
proposals instead of PCs.

> The Bronze Key may only be given to a Player possessing one or more
> Trinkets that were created by other Players.  After seven (7) days the
> Key shall transfer one such Trinket from the Player possessing the
> Bronze Key to the Player who created the Trinket.  If at any time the
> Player possessing the Bronze Key should have no Trinkets that were
> created by other Players, the Key shall be immediately transferred
> back to the Chartreuse Goose.  The owner of the Goose must then
> distribute the Key as an initial distribution in accordance with
> distribution Rules.

Are we keeping track of who created Trinkets?  I don't believe that
it's being kept track of on Malenkai's(?) web page, at least.  It might
result in trinkets being taken out of circulation of they end up back
in the position of their now-undead creators.  (If anyone's worried
about that, anyway...)

And what happens if somehow all the Trinkets get transferred back to their
original players?  Do other Chalice Key clauses have provision for when
there's no eligible players to receive them?

The other alternative, of course, is to actually come up with another
purpose for Processing Chips, like making them our Liaison to Internomic or
something.  :-)  (Can we trade them to Pumpkin Patch?)  What kinds of
things require "processing"?  The Machine That Goes *ping*?  (And whose
house is that in now that CarsesraC has declared he's too busy proving the
Earth is flat?)  Blueprints?  Maybe PCs are consumed in the making of
Blueprints or Gadgets?  They can be exchanged for Otzma Cards in sufficient
quantities?  Let me know if any of these sound at all worthwhile, and I'll
draft up a proposal.  (Or you can go ahead and do it yourself.  As has been
stated, there's no penalty for proposal poaching, which probably means that
I should give it a nicer name, like "inspiration"...)

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.terranet.ab.ca/~aaron/)
Current Album--Holly Cole Trio:Girl Talk
Current Book--Liavek:Festival Week
I had my brain digitized.  The digit was 0.

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End of Ackanomic Research Digest V2 #60
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