Subject: ackanomic digest V2 #248
From: [email-masked] (ackanomic digest)
To: [email-masked]

ackanomic digest       Tuesday, August 12 1997       Volume 02 : Number 248

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 23:56:51 -0400
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Potato

Karma has found the magic potato.  I'll get to the aliens 
shortly; the rules do not require that they be done on monday.

Malenkai

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 00:02:50 -0400
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Aliens

Rolls:

3279
4033
2344

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 00:10:17 -0400
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Prop 2263-2275 results

These are the voting results on p2263-2275.  All props not listed
below (in the range) are invalid.  These need to be checked for
quorum failure also.

- -------------------------------------------------------------------

2263 Checks & Balances

NO - Malenkai, Tammany (ThinMan 47)
YES - Alfvaen, mr cwm

2265 Burning Chrome

No - Malenkai
Yes - Alfvaen, mr cwm

2267 Get Thee Hence From My Sight

No - Malenkai
Yes - Alfvaen, mr cwm

2274 Blinding Big Brother

NO - Malenkai, Tammany (ThinMan 53)
YES - Alfvaen, mr cwm

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 00:11:32 -0400
From: Malenkai <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Parka

People have been asking me about the parka treasure.  I'm sure I
posted enough info tonite to find it.

Malenkai

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 23:33:09 -0600
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Re: Acka: Elder Nomination

>> I should point out that of the "active" players:
>> 
>> Guy Fawkes, mr cwm, and Red Barn are on Vacation.

>If they are on vacation, they are not active players.

I am filled with shame.  Of course they aren't.  So that takes them and
the on-ice folks out of consideration, and we've got plenty of votes.

One of these days I have to reread the Ruleset and really pay attention
to little details like that.  :-)

Of course, if the Nomination period had ended after the quorum failures,
there would have been over 100% participation of the Active players!

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page:http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/)
Song In My Head--Go Four 3:In My Dreams
Current Book--Steven Brust & Megan Lindholm:The Gypsy
Sorry, a fatal error has occurred.  You're dead.

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 21:44:56 -0800
From: Phil Ackley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Potato

>Karma has found the magic potato.  I'll get to the aliens
>shortly; the rules do not require that they be done on monday.
>
>Malenkai

And purposely so!  I wrote them like that so they would not add to much of
an extra burden to the person who got stuck with them.  Although, who
knows, it's poosible that not releasing them on monday is Zurjaatje
(however it's spelled).

Mr. Lunatic Fringe

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 01:39:52 -0400
From: [email-masked] (Chuck S Smith)
Subject: Re: Acka: Elder Nomination

I've heard so much about Chaos in the past few days that I will also
recommend that he be inducted into the Hall of Elders!

- --Whiz

On Mon, 11 Aug 1997 21:05:58 -0600 [email-masked] (Aaron V.
Humphrey) writes:
>
>>> 11 + 1, ends 8/11/97 00:36
>
>>Chaos is inducted into the [dangling] Hall of Elders, unless we have
>>more than 23+ active players.
>
>Okay, let me do an official count, from the Scorekeeper page:
>
>Malenkai, Niccolo Flychuck, /dev/joe, Guy Fawkes, breadbox--that's 5.
>Vynd, mr cwm, Rex Mundi, Techno, Robert Sevin--that's 10.
>Karma, Alfvaen, two-star, Atilla the Pun, AZTEC GOD--that's 15.
>CarsesraC, Red Barn, fnord, ThinMan, Dread Pirate Roberts--that's 20.
>Antimatter and Mr. Lunatic Fringe, that's 22.  No, wait, that's 23, I
>forgot Calvin N Hobbes.
>
>Now, if it is actually 11+1, that's 12, which is greater than 23/2 
>unless
>we consider that to be rounded up to 12.
>
>I should point out that of the "active" players:
>
>Guy Fawkes, mr cwm, and Red Barn are on Vacation.
>Atilla the Pun, CarsesraC, and Calvin N Hobbes are on Ice.
>And I haven't seen as much as a twitch from AZTEC GOD, fnord, or Dread
>Pirate Roberts in weeks.  (The Speaker may consider this an official
>R257 request to rattle their cages...)  So that's a pretty damn good
>turnout, all things considered.
>
>Anyone want to change that from "half of all active players" to "half 
>of
>all active non-vacationing players"?
>
>--
>--Alfvaen(Web page:http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/)
>Current Album--Daryl Hall:Three Hearts In The Happy Ending Machine
>Current Book--Steven Brust & Megan Lindholm:The Gypsy
>If love is blind, lingerie makes great Braille.
>
>

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 01:10:13 -0700 (PDT)
From: Brian Raiter <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Status Change

I am changing my player status from Non-voting to Voting.

breadbox
glad that Ackanomic doesn't have a three-strikes policy

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 13:02:49 +0100
From: "Gavin Doig" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: CFJ 437 Appeal Verdict

> CFJ 437 has been overturned to false, with a penalty to the original
> judge of one point.
What? How can you overturn this!? Next you'll be telling me the earth is
flat!
Actually, I would have said false if I'd thought of any good argument for
false, but I didn't, so I didn't.
 
> Clerk of the Courts
> trying to taste the difference between a lemon and a lime
Good and evil, and the... sorry.

Rex Mundi, Priest of Azpiazu.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 13:08:40 +0100
From: "Gavin Doig" <[email-masked]>
Subject: acka: Sanctuary

I am running to the Church of Azpiazu and I hold the Altar by the Horns for
Rex Mundi.

Rex Mundi, just in case.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 08:28:11 -0500
From: "Bollinger, John C." <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Activate!

I am hereby changing my status from non-voting to voting.

ThinMan

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 09:08:36 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Joseph W. DeVincentis" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Activate!

> I am hereby changing my status from non-voting to voting.
> 
> ThinMan

Did we get rid of the delay on this?  There used to be a 2 day
waiting period so you couldn't just switch between voting and
non-voting constantly.

In any case, if it is possible for me to do so now, I am changing my
status from non-voting to voting.

/dev/joe

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 11:25:26 -0500
From: "Bollinger, John C." <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: Acka: Activate!

/dev/joe wrote:

> > I am hereby changing my status from non-voting to voting.
> > 
> > ThinMan
> 
> Did we get rid of the delay on this?  There used to be a 2 day
> waiting period so you couldn't just switch between voting and
> non-voting constantly.
> 
My mistake.  For some reason I thought that the delay didn't apply if
the change from voting to non-voting was involuntary.  Upon researching
the matter, I have discovered that not only does the delay apply to
both the voluntary and involuntary cases, but the required delay is
now three days, rather than two.

ThinMan

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 14:06:01 -0600
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Acka: Non-Votingness

So...while the rules for quorum failure specify that the players who
involuntarily become non-voting don't lose any offices unless they stay
that way for a week, it doesn't say that while they are non-voting they
are able to get _appointed_ to any offices they may have been nominated
for.  Thus, it might take a couple of days before I can release the
results of my choices for the Functional Officers.  (It looks like I may
have to be Web-Harfer; if so, I'm going to have a heck of a lot of
assistants, and most of my pages might be on Geocities.)

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page:http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/)
Current Song--Duran Duran:Lonely In Your Nightmare
Current Book--Steven Brust & Megan Lindholm:The Gypsy
This sentence in English is difficult to translate into French.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 15:40:01 -0800
From: "Jerome Herrman" <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE:  Acka: Non-Votingness

Microsoft Mail v3.0 (MAPI 1.0 Transport) IPM.Microsoft Mail.Note
From: Jerome Herrman
To:  'acka'
Subject:  RE:  Acka: Non-Votingness
Date: 1997-08-12 15:35
Priority: 3
Message ID: 86AA75EC4612D111948C0060976638FA
Conversation ID: RE:  Acka: Non-Votingness

- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Does the involuntary non-voting status start on the day the proposal that   
failed quorum is due for release or the day it is actually released?   
 This could make a difference as to the delay before changing status.

Also, I have web space on Geocities that can be used as well.

Techno.

While an intelligent blind funny detective from another planet was with a
team of kangeroos, one cosmic Russian from Indiana stole all the air.

 ---

So...while the rules for quorum failure specify that the players who
involuntarily become non-voting don't lose any offices unless they stay
that way for a week, it doesn't say that while they are non-voting they
are able to get _appointed_ to any offices they may have been nominated
for.  Thus, it might take a couple of days before I can release the
results of my choices for the Functional Officers.  (It looks like I may
have to be Web-Harfer; if so, I'm going to have a heck of a lot of
assistants, and most of my pages might be on Geocities.)

 --
 --Alfvaen(Web page:http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/)
Current Song--Duran Duran:Lonely In Your Nightmare
Current Book--Steven Brust & Megan Lindholm:The Gypsy
This sentence in English is difficult to translate into French.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 15:36:43 -0600
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: RE:  Acka: Non-Votingness

>Does the involuntary non-voting status start on the day the proposal that   
>failed quorum is due for release or the day it is actually released?   
> This could make a difference as to the delay before changing status.

I'd rather think that all effects based on the announcement of the results
of voting on a Proposal--score changes, Electronic Potato money, etc., the
effects of the Proposal itself on the Ruleset, and the effects of quorum
failure--occur when the results are announced by the Tabulator.

>Also, I have web space on Geocities that can be used as well.

That might be helpful...

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page:http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/)
Current Album--Suzanne Vega:Solitude Standing
Current Book--Steven Brust & Megan Lindholm:The Gypsy
Careful with that silver hammer, Maxwell.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 19:08:00 -0400
From: jordan james <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: acka: land purchase

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- -----Original Message-----
From:	Aaron V. Humphrey [SMTP:[email-masked]]
Sent:	Monday, August 11, 1997 11:12 PM
To:	[email-masked]
Subject:	Re: acka: land purchase

>#transfer RexBank, Rex Mundi: 50 A$: land purchase.
>Approved.
>
>#award Rex Mundi: -50 A$: Land purchase.
>
>After withdrawing some money from the bank (and may I say what friendly
>service they provide ;-)) I am purchasing the land at L5.
>
>Next, I offer this land to the Church of Azpiazu, to further its glorious
>cause.

Bless you, my Child.  The Church of Azpiazu accepts this generous offer.
(Thinks--should kaas of land be marked in some way on the PE page?  Ick.
Prosthetic Foreheads are bad enough.)  Now all we need is A$100 to build
a nice little chapel there.  Maybe we should hold a Raffle.

I am announcing that as a recognition of his generous efforts on behalf of
the Church, both publicly and privately, I am ordaining Rex Mundi as a Priest
of the Church of Azpiazu.
Yeah!?, what about the boat I donated to the church FIRST!!I mean it's the thought that counts!
- - Karma

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page:http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/)
Current Album--Daryl Hall:Three Hearts In The Happy Ending Machine
Current Book--Steven Brust & Megan Lindholm:The Gypsy
Put your money where your foot is

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------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 19:08:11 -0400
From: jordan james <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: acka: land purchase

- ------ =_NextPart_000_01BCA753.1456FAA0
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- -----Original Message-----
From:	Aaron V. Humphrey [SMTP:[email-masked]]
Sent:	Monday, August 11, 1997 11:12 PM
To:	[email-masked]
Subject:	Re: acka: land purchase

>#transfer RexBank, Rex Mundi: 50 A$: land purchase.
>Approved.
>
>#award Rex Mundi: -50 A$: Land purchase.
>
>After withdrawing some money from the bank (and may I say what friendly
>service they provide ;-)) I am purchasing the land at L5.
>
>Next, I offer this land to the Church of Azpiazu, to further its glorious
>cause.

Bless you, my Child.  The Church of Azpiazu accepts this generous offer.
(Thinks--should kaas of land be marked in some way on the PE page?  Ick.
Prosthetic Foreheads are bad enough.)  Now all we need is A$100 to build
a nice little chapel there.  Maybe we should hold a Raffle.

I am announcing that as a recognition of his generous efforts on behalf of
the Church, both publicly and privately, I am ordaining Rex Mundi as a Priest
of the Church of Azpiazu.
Yeah!?, what about the boat I donated to the church FIRST!!
I mean ain't it the thought that counts?
- - Karma

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page:http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/)
Current Album--Daryl Hall:Three Hearts In The Happy Ending Machine
Current Book--Steven Brust & Megan Lindholm:The Gypsy
Put your money where your foot is

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Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

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------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 18:42:05 -0600 (MDT)
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2259-2262 results

> Proposal results 2259-2262, as Chaos left with me, and others
> responded to my previous message.  I apologize for not interpreting
> the quorum failure stuff.  The first one most likely fails due to
> quorum (assuming we have 11 active players), but I do not know about
> those following; as I recall, they pass as quorum is reduced.  Those who
> did not vote on 2259 become non-voting players, I believe.  I will
> interpret the effects tomorrow nite, unless someone with more time beats
> me to it, which is probable.

I'm assuming, from the previous quorum failure, that we consider the
announcements of the various proposals to happen an infinitesimal amount of
time apart, so that the quorum failure does not happen on all of the
proposals announced here separately.
 
> Proposal 2259:  Beldin's Parka's Revenge - FAILS (quorum)
> 
> YES votes:
>         Malenkai
>         mr cwm
>         two-star
> 
> NO votes:
>         Guy Fawkes
 
> PRESENT votes:
>         Alfvaen

Every active player except those listed here(and mr cwm and Guy Fawkes are
on Vacation)becomes non-voting.  So Malenkai, two-star, and myself become
the only Active players.

> Proposal 2260:  Squidging the tax loophole
> 
> YES votes:
>         Malenkai
>         two-star
>         mr cwm
> 
> NO votes:
>         Guy Fawkes
> 
> PRESENT votes:
>         Alfvaen

This passes.

> Proposal 2261:  And So The Ring Was Lost For An Age
> 
> YES votes:
>         two-star
>         Alfvaen
> 
> NO votes:
>         Malenkai
>         Guy Fawkes
> 
> PRESENT votes:
>         mr cwm

This doesn't pass.  :-(

> Proposal 2262:  Breaking The Protection Racket
> 
> Alfvaen bribed Tammany A$ 5 to vote YES.

So Tammany should be listed down there among the YES voters.

> YES votes:
>         Guy Fawkes
>         Alfvaen
>         mr cwm
          Tammany
> 
> NO votes:
>         Malenkai
>         two-star
> 
> PRESENT votes:
> 

This passes.

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/ )
Current Album--Golden Earring:Cut
Current Book--Terry Pratchett:Small Gods
It's nothing permanent, just something from the Iron Age

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 18:44:37 -0600 (MDT)
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Re: Acka: Prop 2263-2275 results

> These are the voting results on p2263-2275.  All props not listed
> below (in the range) are invalid.  These need to be checked for
> quorum failure also.

Since 2/3 of the active players voted on each Proposal(plus one vacationing
one), I do not believe any further quorum failure occurs.

> 2263 Checks & Balances
> 
> NO - Malenkai, Tammany (ThinMan 47)
> YES - Alfvaen, mr cwm

This fails.

> 2265 Burning Chrome
> 
> No - Malenkai
> Yes - Alfvaen, mr cwm

This passes.

> 2267 Get Thee Hence From My Sight
> 
> No - Malenkai
> Yes - Alfvaen, mr cwm

This passes.

> 2274 Blinding Big Brother
> 
> NO - Malenkai, Tammany (ThinMan 53)
> YES - Alfvaen, mr cwm

This fails.

Darn, I _knew_ I should have used my Bonus Vote on one of those!  I guess
the fight against the Evil Tyrannical Ruling Elite must go on...

Revised PE and score pages will be up shortly.  I'm still trying to
untangle everything.

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/ )
Current Album--Golden Earring:Cut
Current Book--Steven Brust & Megan Lindholm:The Gypsy
'Outstay' is 'stout' in Pig Latin.  It's a brand of beer made for pigs.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 18:54:37 -0600 (MDT)
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Acka: Offices

I am appointing myself to the offices of Map-Harfer and Undead-Harfer, for
which no one else volunteered.  I will appoint breadbox to the Offices of
Postmaster, Promoter, and Tabulator as soon as he becomes an Active player
again.

The Office of Web-Harfer is still vacant.  If nobody steps forward in the
next 24 hours, I will take the office myself, and scrounge up some web
space somewhere...

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/ )
Song In My Head--Platinum Blonde:Crying Over You
Current Book--Steven Brust & Megan Lindholm:The Gypsy
Bacteria: Rear entrance to a cafeteria.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 19:00:08 -0600 (MDT)
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Acka: In The Event

Should it happen that I cannot, within the Rules, delay my choice of an
appointment for Tabulator and Promoter until breadbox(who was not an
"eligible nominee" at the time the nomination period ended)becomes Active
once more, then I am appointing myself Promoter and Malenkai Tabulator, as
the only other eligible nominees.  I am announcing my intention to announce
my intention to resign as Promoter so as to give breadbox sufficient time
to nominate himself again.  :-)

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/ )
Song In My Head--Suzanne Vega:Ironbound--Fancy Poultry
Current Book--Steven Brust & Megan Lindholm:The Gypsy
You got your Pope Binoculars, to see him up close...

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 21:12:56 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Frederic Mc Coy <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Status Change

I too am changing my status to voting.

                            - Vynd

[email-masked]

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 21:53:46 -0400
From: jordan james <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re acka 

I am changing my status to active voting
- - Karma

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 22:39:25 -0400
From: [email-masked] (Chuck S Smith)
Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 2259-2262 results

>Every active player except those listed here(and mr cwm and Guy Fawkes
are
>on Vacation)becomes non-voting.  So Malenkai, two-star, and myself
become
>the only Active players.

What about the two new players?  Aren't we active?

I thought if there was a time to vote, my mentor would tell me.

- --Confused,
Whiz

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 11:48:31 -0700
From: **Alexandre Muniz <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: YAHA RFC: Responses and refinements

I meant to send this off a while back when my Yet Another Hidden Agenda 
RFC was still fresh in people’s minds, but I put it off a bit. Luckily 
this isn’t a CFJ or Phoebe. : ) Anyway, thanks for the responses; I think 
that I will start a playtest submission and bidding process shortly, after 
I put the RFC back together a little closer to proposal format. (I suspect 
this will be fairly Grandiose by the time I get done with it.)

Vynd wrote:

"Well, one problem is that we really would need something to hold out
elements that are just ridiculously easy."

I have to assume that players will act in their own self interest when 
bidding for nemesis elements. Remember that the score requirements for 
agenda elements are based on bids for NE's; higher bids (on difficult 
conditions) will cause the score requirement for the associated AE to be 
lower.   An AE with a trivially easy condition should then have a score 
requirement equal to 1/3 of the magic number, (because players would avoid 
bidding on it); if a player gets 3 such AEs eir winning condition would 
effectively be achieving the magic number. I imagine that there will be a 
wide range of condition difficulties, in fact I think that would make the 
game more interesting (variety, spice of life, and all that.)

 "The fact that you aren't allowed to get your own elements back will 
help, but there are still going
to be groups of people who decide to cooperate to give one of them an
excellent, call it hand, of conditions."

I have given my reasoning for believing that the elements should be fairly 
well balanced. But even if some are particularly easy, (due to poor 
nemesis bidding,) why would anyone cooperate to help another player 
without receiving a benefit to eirself? (And if the benefit is to receive 
something nice in trade, well, that’s part of the game.)
If any player wanted to help another player win the cycle while decreasing 
eir own chances of winning, they could issue duel challenges and 
immediately forfeit them. (of course they couldn't do it too often.) Since 
they do not do that now, I do not think that they will do so with hidden 
agendas.

 "It also won't stop people who honestly think their easy conditions are 
difficult (a new player, say).
One possibility would be to give the harfer-guy the discretion to reject
conditions, but you'd then have to put in provisions that would allow the
players who've had conditions rejected a chance to resubmit, even if it is
after the 7 day deadline.  Also, I think 7 days is too long, I know we're
big on conformit when it comes to deadlines, but I think 4 or 5 days wuld
be better, plus a few days for people who have had stuff rejected.  Cycles
don't necessarily last all that long around here, and the whole agenda
thing could get real old real fast if you have to keep starting over only
a few weeks after it started.  Finaly, I think the harfer for this should
be a completely seperate office, with its own quick and easy way of
changing the office holder.  That way the Speaker or Financier doesn't
have to miss out on the fun every time."

Makes sense, but I’d rather just set it up as an optional political 
office, as a penance to Simplicity, whom I have offended enough elsewhere 
in this RFC.

"OK, you don't say this explicitly, but the agenda nemesi(ses?) will have
the conditions for their counterparts plainly labeled on them, so to
speak?"

Of course.

 "Otherwise how will anyone know which nemsis to bid on?  Auctioning
might be more than a little bit awkward, for that matter.  We could easily
have 30 some things up for bidding, it's inevitable that some are going to
attract lots of attention while others will get no bids at all.  Perhaps
something more akin to a draft should take place.  I don't know exactly
how you coudl go about deciding who gets to choose first though, and this
method would probably be even more time consuming than an auction
(especially if some players don't bother to respond right away when it is
there turn).  I think that while this is a very good framework for an idea
most everyone seems to be interested in, that the distribution of the
nemesis thiniges is going to take some serious work."

My idea for the bidding system is this:
Each player will privately send one message to the HA-harfer, with eir bid 
for each NE in agenda credits on it. Something like:

Subject: Acka: NE bid

NE1: 25
NE3: 5
NE4: 75
NE5: 20
NE7: 30
. . . 
NE15: 8

The HA harfer will then determine the distribution of NE’s as follows: the 
NE with the highest bid will be awarded to its highest bidder, then NE’s 
with the next highest bid in turn will be awarded to their highest 
bidders, with the caveat that bids that would cause a player to have more 
than 3 NE’s or to run out of agenda credits would be ignored. Any NE’s 
that remain unbid on will be randomly distributed to players who do not 
yet have NE's. Any ties will be broken randomly by the HA harfer. When the 
AE weights are determined from the NE bids, perhaps the second highest bid 
should be used so that extremely high bids by players who misunderstand a 
condition’s difficulty will not make the associated AE too easy. I dunno.

"So long as I'm here, a few other things that might cause problems.  what
if someone deliberately creates impossibly hard conditions, since he knows
he won't get them?"

Good point. I guess the simplest solution would be to give the HA-harfer 
the ability to throw these out at eir discretion, with a penalty to be 
imposed on the offender. But there is a real grey area between impossibly 
hard and very difficult. Penalizing the creator of the condition which 
gets the highest NE bid is a possibility, but I don’t think this should 
occur if the condition is only reasonably difficult, and it might tend to 
push the difficulty level too far in the other direction. Rewarding 
creators of conditions that receive near-median bids, or that are used in 
AE’s by the eventual winner are also possibilities.

"What if, god forbid, only 1 or 2 people submit any
conditions?"

I think a minimum of 4 players would need to participate, otherwise this 
should be put on hold.

"what if someone gets mutualy contradictory conditions?"

It would then be in eir interests to trade one of them, wouldn't it?

Alfvaen wrote:

"I'm a bit fuzzy on how this is supposed to work, but...I think it might 
be
overly complicated.  It would be best, IMHO, to start out with a simple
Hidden Agendas rule, trusting the Speaker to come up with a good method to
generate Agenda Items."

This is the simplest method I can think of that allows players to submit 
agenda conditions of varying dificulties while ensuring balance in the 
actual winning comditions. I would not trust the Speaker or HA-harfer to 
come up with agenda items: for one thing, I think it would be rather 
difficult to come up with a large number of interesting agenda conditions 
that are near to each other and to other winning conditions in difficulty. 
I also think that variety would be best served by allowing different 
players to submit elements, and that many players should have the fun of 
being able to affect the HA winning conditions.
The Nemesis bid / score requirement thing *is* a bit of a kludge, but I do 
not think the simplest answer is necessarily the best.

Voting Gnome wrote:

"Re: Hidden Agendas RFC:  I like the concept,  but as Vynd pointed out,  a
lot has to do with participation.  A possible solution may be for
"Whoever it is Who's Harfing This Thing" to make up a series of truly
impossible conditions(  such as the accumulation of *all* Acka-dollars,
or to hold some mutually exclusive offices like a seat on the Senate and
the Presidency simultaneously,  or even to solve the ROJ).  Then,  if not
enough volunteers sent in sufficient conditions,  whatever was left would
be distributed.  Also,  how about, instead of Auctioning the NE's,  that
Players submitting AE's (in ascending order of score at end of the
previous Cycle)  would get to choose the NE's from the list of those
available,  in turn?  Of course,  if you failed to complete your choices
in the alloted time (36 hoursor so?),  you would be skipped,  and have to
contend with one of the randomly chosen impossibles.

One other thought,  similar to Vynd's caution about the relative length
of Cycles;  coulkd we make the destruction of AE's and NE's voluntary for
anyone who doesn't win?  If we make it voluntary to "turn in" AE's,  some
Players may wish to keep the ones they have.  This would,  of course make
it more difficult for "Whoever it is Who's Harfing This Thing"  to track
and distribute NE's,  but it *could* require less time coming up with new
conditions."

I like the idea. The problem I see is that if very few players turn in 
very few AE’s, there might not be enough NE’s to go around in the next 
bidding to make things interesting. If no player turned in AE’s, and a new 
player wanted to join, e could not do so without getting eir own AE’s (and 
NE’s) back. I think it ought to work if players are alowed to keep one AE. 
It should be required that they choose the AE to keep sometime before the 
end of cycle, so that the next agenda condition submission and NE bidding 
may begin immediately.

**two-star

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End of ackanomic digest V2 #248
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