Subject: RE: Whither Mornomic?

From: "Wayper, Paul" <WayperP@p...>
Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 09:37:16 +1000

I'm going to take the risk of replying to this initial message before I've
read the replies, to get my thoughts while they're fresh.

To start, I'd like to talk about my ongoing conversation with 'ky', who's
just recently started playing at MCiOS. She's quite intelligent, and worked
out how standard MC works, but was needing a sort of list of the conventions
of play so that she didn't play something completely bland or completely
bogus. As part of this, I pointed her to the MN site with the standard
disclaimers about Knowledge-that-man-was-not-meant-to-wot-of and
This-may-blow-your-mind.

She can now see why MC is easier :-)

I've started going through the basics with her - read Section 0, then read
Sections 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.5, followed by 1.7 and 1.4. This has got me
thinking about writing "The Newcomers Guide to Mornington Nomic - What you
need to know in seven easy paragraphs." (for arbitrary values of seven).
It's a task I'd like to volunteer for, given that my time may not be a
valueless commodity.

This, IM(NSH)O, would make the game much more understandable than either a
complete restructuring or a complete rewrite. Both of those suffer from the
problems inherent in getting one person (or a small number of people) to set
out the rules - there will always be inconsistencies where (that
person)/(those people's) (blind spots)/(natural assumptions) are. They also
take a considerable amount of time, and the process by which they are
executed is essentially simulated by the Nomic we have already played.

To my mind, MN as it stands gains its complexity not from a basic
incomprehensibility of the rules but rather their sheer number and
diversity. Any player who knows that they only need to refer to Sections 0
and 1 for the bulk of their play has already reduced their task
immeasurably; knowing that you only need to refer to a simple subset of 1.7
for the playable actions likewise cuts down your workload. Those are the
things that a new Player needs to be told.

If we lobotomise the ruleset, or restructure it to be fundamentally
different from the current procedure, we only hamper our own efforts, and we
cannot guarantee that those efforts will not be counterproductive to the new
Player. Likewise, if we lose the Nomic side of things we lose all pretense
that this is a co-operative game and reduce it to a dictatorship, or an
oligarchy, where the High Priests hand down the rules and the Mere Players
can only obey. How many people want to play something like that? We also
lose the mechanisms to bring about change as fairly as we can, and the
substitute is dangerously open to accusations of unfairness.

So, do people want to consider the third alternative - writing the Guide
Book? I'll endeavour to get a rough draft out within the week, but I can't
guarantee anything.

Have fun,

Paul Wayper -- DPI IS&S ITO Computer Systems Officer
SigClean 1.5a prevents all errors in transcription, transmission, and
reception of eMail, destroys sig and email viruses, and stops flames.
Report all bugs to the author. SigClean is FreeWare. (c) 1998-9 PJW

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From: "Snow" <snowl@s...>
Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 19:39:00 +0100

> substitute is dangerously open to accusations of unfairness.

I think some form of democratic system will be needed. But if we carry
on with the Nomic system we will have to make quorum 70-80% to make
sure the Ruleset is fairly static. And at the moment that could give
any one person a veto. We should keep in mind that we are trying to
produce a static version of the ruleset (if we decide that we are).

At the moment there's a lot of gubbins in the Ruleset that is not
directly related to playing the game, mostly Volume 0 and the Rule
concerning points in Volume 1. I think there should be a more distinct
separation. Something like a constitution to deal with which Lounges
games are played in, changes to the Ruleset (when needed) and other
bureaucracy. And the ruleset itself kept separate and unsullied by
"politics".

> Book? I'll endeavour to get a rough draft out within the week, but
I can't

If you need to refer the the ruleset it's too complicated. If you need
to write a guide to the ruleset it's unplayable. Unless your guide
could act as a ruleset unto itself I can't see the point (other
opinions are available).

Snow
-I think bureaucracy should be spelt better.