Subject: MN: Turning my head

From: kenningd@w... (L'homme a tete de choux)
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 15:52:11 +0100

All this talk of Moves and Turns and Turn phases is quite beyond me. The
supposed problems of definition have never bothered me when playing Monopoly,
and I'm not quite sure why it's such a problem here -- as I see it, it's not
the definitions that need clarifying, but the text of the rules that needs
simplifying. There's far too much spurious 'technicalese' and essentially
meaningless jargon cluttering up the ruleset and not nearly enough getting to
the point. What Dunx suggests seems extremely contrived and convoluted to me,
and thoroughly unnecessary.

How about defining 'Move' simply as movement of the Player's Piece, and 'Turn'
as the sum of moves and actions made by a player on eir turn?

Any action related piece movement could perhaps be differentiated as a
'special' move, and a simple rule along the lines of "'Move' implicitly means
all piece movement, whether 'normal' or 'special' unless explicitly stated
otherwise" should cover all eventualities.

dave

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From: "Dunx (Duncan Ellis)" <DELLIS@U...>
Date: 17 Jul 98 16:41:30 +0100

>supposed problems of definition have never bothered me when playing
Monopoly, 
The fundamental difference between MN and Monopoly is that the rules don't 
change in Monopoly, and that meanings in MN *do* change as the rule are 
modified. 

The other fundamental difference is that the complexity in Monopoly is all 
coded into the cards so that it seems simple - it would be possible to 
deconstruct all that stuff and make some rules which describe how all the 
rents and so on are calculated. Then maybe it wouldn't seem so simple. 

(sorry, this is deliberate misrepresentation of your point, since I'm using 
an entirely different aspect of the rules of Monopoly than the one you 
mention) 

Granted that some of this is a little on the abstruse side, but then again 
we've started off complicated and are aiming to simplify. 

I'm sorry if this discussion distresses you, dave, but it has to be done. 

>simplifying. 
I agree, and it was in the process of looking at exactly that that I came 
across the confusion in terms. You can't simplify rules based on ambiguous 
words. 

>There's far too much spurious 'technicalese' and essentially 
>the point. 
Possibly, but then again a lot of the words are there to ensure that the 
intent behind the rules is maintained rather than misinterpreted. 

>What Dunx suggests seems extremely contrived and convoluted to me, 
I disagree. I picked some very bad suggested terms, though. 

But as I say, this is a prelude - whatever terms get picked will be part of 
Proposal to make sure that all the rules using them will use them 
consistently. 

>as the sum of moves and actions made by a player on eir turn? 
That is almost certainly what's going to happen. 

>otherwise" should cover all eventualities. 
That's a useful bit of description - I'll probably borrow that. 

-- 
Dunx 
IRL: Duncan Ellis, Senior Software Engineer, Business Modelers, Oracle 
<I work for Oracle, I don't speak for them>