Subject: Holidays

From: Britta Koch <[email-masked]>
Date: 15 Dec 2000 09:23:49 CET

Hi!

Just so you don't wonder why you aren't hearing from me: I'm going on
holiday today and will be back on the 26th. Doc, please don't let me be
sick, because I'd hate to be sick over Christmas without being able to
do anything about it! ;)

Have a nice Christmas,

Britta

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

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: 15 Dec 2000 10:37:38 -0500

> sick, because I'd hate to be sick over Christmas without being able to

OK, happy holidays...

Directive D2:

We could stand to have a rule governing vacationing players.

(And vacationing Docs, for that matter.)

-- 
- Doc

---

From: Ottis Airhart <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 11:04:16 -0600

Proposal: Vacation

See the "Intern" proposal for vacation Doc allowances.

I propose the following rule:

Vacation: Any player may declare themselves on vacation for a given period
of time and shall be noted in the gamestate. During this time, any diseases
or other ailments that player currently holds shall go into "recession".
While in "recession", the player shall not take any pills or other
treatment leading to a cure.

While on vacation, a player shall not receive any perks, prescriptions, or
other increases or decreases to their pill count[[, cash (if accepted)]],
etc. A vacationing player may be infected by new diseases or ailments, but
they shall be in recession until such time as that player returns. This
shall be noted in their gamestate.

Any Proposals or Proclamations [[Medical Briefs]] received from the player
while on vacation shall be ignored EXCEPT for a required Proclamation
[[Medical Brief]] stating that they are no longer on vacation. Upon
returning from vacation, that player's gamestate shall be modified and any
diseases or ailments in recession shall become active diseases or ailments
subject to treatment for a cure.

[[This player gamestate info should be kept in the egroups database]]

[[I thought it would be unfare to allow a player to go on vacation at a
whim without being able to contract diseases, otherwise, I would go on
vacation every Thursday during Office Hours so that I would never contract
a disease. The catch here is that all diseases are in recession (not
needing treatment) until that player returns. Any active player can have
multiple diseases at this point, so if they contract several diseases
during a long vacation (at this point it would have to be a VERY LONG
vacation), then they are not in any different boat than other players. No
vacationing player should be allowed to gain valuable assets (pills, etc)
while not being able to gain damaging assets (diseases, etc) at the same time.]]

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: 15 Dec 2000 14:07:47 -0500

> subject to treatment for a cure.

REJECTED because:

- Players can't issue Proclamations. That's a term reserved for Doc's
exercise of his omnipotence over the ruleset and gamestate. Your
first use of the term probably should have been "Point of Order" and
as for your second, "message" would be sufficient.

- You don't specify how a player declares emself to be on vacation.
(They should do so via a message to the list, of course.)

- The word "recession" should, I think, be "remission".

The above could be trivially fixed without altering the meaning, but
there are other problems:

- Players can contract diseases while on vacation. They don't have to
do anything about them until they get back -- but then they've got
potentially several weeks' worth of diseases to deal with all at
once. I understand the point about not wanting people to abuse
vacation, but there are other ways to address that. E.g., dock the
player 10 body points for going on vacation?

- The big one: Much of this rule would have no effect! E.g. "While on
vacation, a player shall not receive any perks, prescriptions, or
other increases or decreases to their pill count..." This conflicts
with existing rules that specify players do get prescriptions,
perks, etc. And any conflict is resolved in favor of the rule with
the lower number! For the rule to work, you'd have to either (1)
amend existing rules to say "active player" instead of "player"
where applicable (and define "active player" to mean "not on
vacation") or (2) use a subterfuge I used on n_omic, defining the
act of going on vacation as making one a non-player, but one with
the privilege of resuming as a player with points (pills, cash,
etc.) intact. The second approach requires care, since it then
makes the vacationer subject to *none* of the rules that apply to
players, and that might be going too far.

-- 
- Doc