Subject: Proposal: Timeframes

From: "Britta Koch" <[email-masked]>
Date: 08 Jun 2001 10:14:47 CEST

Add a Not so Fundamental Rule with the Title "Timeframes" and the
following text:

All spans of time are measured in DocNomic Units (duns). The length of
a dun is part of the gamestate.

Amend Rule 1:

replace "three weeks" in "In the event that Doc is absent from the game
for a period of more
than three weeks without making arrangements for his return, the
Active Players may choose a new Doc." with "ten duns".

Amend Rule 2:

replace "two weeks" in "A Player is Active if and only if e has
submitted a Proposal or
Point of Order within the previous two weeks." with "7 duns".

Add the following to the gamestate (Doc may modify the length as he
sees fit):

The length of a dun is 48 hours. 

[[This is just to have a constant unit of time and change that length,
so we can slow down gameplay or maybe speed it up easier.]]

Britta

-- 
/"\ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
\ /	ASCII Ribbon Campaign	[email-masked]
X	- NO HTML/RTF in e-mail http://www.silverymoon.de 
/ \	- NO Word docs in e-mail "My other car is a cdr."

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: 08 Jun 2001 10:23:36 -0400

> Add a Not so Fundamental Rule with the Title "Timeframes" and the
[...]

Welcome to the game -- you've been added to the Player List.

-- 
- Doc

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: 08 Jun 2001 14:05:51 -0400

> so we can slow down gameplay or maybe speed it up easier.]]

ACCEPTED. There are a couple of technical problems with this proposal
but they can be fixed easily enough.

One is: it creates a NSF rule and then amends two F rules in such a
way that they make sense only in the presence of the NSF rule. If
Round 2 were to end suddenly, we'd be left with an initial ruleset for
Round 3 in which time spans are measured in duns but a dun is
undefined. 

In general an F rule should not require the existence of an NSF rule
to make sense. Easy fix: I am allowed to assign a rule number for the
new rule which is < 1000, making it an F rule, despite the suggestion
that it should be an NSF rule.

The other is the last bit. A proposal may not propose a direct
modification of the gamestate. You may only propose new rules,
amendments to rules, or repeals of rules.

One "traditional" way to get around this is to make a rule saying
"When this rule is adopted, Doc shall set the length of a dun to 48
hours; this rule shall then repeal itself." I'm not crazy about
self-repealing rules or rules whose only effect is to make a single
alteration to the gamestate. Fortunately in this case there's a
cleaner approach: to the second sentence of your new rule add the
phrase ", and shall be equal to 48 hours unless Doc proclaims
otherwise." 

With those modifications, it's fine. Oh, but Rule 1000 still speaks
of "days"...

-- 
- Doc