Subject: The defenseless dead

From: [email-masked]
Date: 29 Jan 2001 14:15:27 -0500

I just noticed a few embarassing features of the ruleset with regard
to the vitality-challenged:

(1) Rule 11 says

If a Player's Body Points or Soul Points are zero, that Player
is Dead and may take no further part in the current Round.

However, it asserts no precedence over other Rules. So for example,
Rule 3 says:

Players may submit Proposals by sending them to the DocNomic Mailing
List.

As the ruleset stands, dead Players are able to submit proposals,
since Rule 3 has precedence over Rule 11.

Simple fix: Add a precedence override to Rule 11:

"This paragraph takes precedence over all other Rules."

(The first paragraph of the Coma disease description also claims
precedence over all other Rules. Rule 11 having the lower number, it
has precedence over the Coma description. And that's OK.)

I do so by Proclamation.

(2) There still are some holes, or at least arguable holes. For
example: Rule 2 (relating to players who remove themselves from the
game):

Their Soul Points, Body Points, and Cash Points shall be distributed
evenly to all Players

Even dead ones? If so, do they then become not-dead? (Or... UNDEAD?) 

Rule 9, discussing formulas for how many pills the Pharmacist makes:

n is the number of players in the game.

Including dead ones?

Rule 30 say the Surgeon must

Select one player at random, and one disease of type Physical or
Injury at random. The selected player has a 20% chance of acquiring
the Injury.

Including dead ones?

There are other similar uses of the word "Player" where dead players
probably were not what the proposer had in mind. Their interpretation
hinges on what is meant by "take part in" the round. One could say
getting an Injury is "taking part" and the amended Rule 11 prohibits
that. I don't know -- to me that's kind of like saying Abraham
Lincoln "took part in" an assassination. Anyway, it still leaves Rule
30 unclear -- does the Surgeon select a player at random and, if that
player is dead, do nothing? Or does the surgeon select at random
among only the non-dead players?

The fixes to these problems are less obvious, and probably should be
decided separately for each such use of the term "player". I think
the easiest thing would be to substitute the phrase "living player"
(or perhaps "active player", where "active" is defined as neither dead
nor comatose) whereever it seems to be desireable and not clearly
decided by the overrule provision of Rule 11. But that requires some
thought and decisions.

No Proclamations for this, yet. Comments and Proposals are welcome.

-- 
- Doc

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 21:22:55 -0000

> Injury at random. The selected player has a 20% chance of 
acquiring

I cannot give injury to those in coma, though, correct?

> probably were not what the proposer had in mind. Their 
interpretation

Perhaps we should revisit the alternates for player discussed 
earlier, i.e. "Patient", "Comotose Patient", and "Corpse". I don't 
really want to change "Player" to "Patient" throughout the rules, but 
it looks like we're going to have to change "player" to "active 
player" anyway......

Feyd

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From: "Martin Couchman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 14:23:40 -0000

> it looks like we're going to have to change "player" to "active 

How about defining player as meaning "active player", except where 
explicitly stated otherwise (e.g. "non-dead player")? That would fit 
neatly in my "definitions" proposal, if accepted, and would save a 
lot of unecessary use of the word 'active'.