Subject: MN: Re: Year 2, Week 43 Proposals

From: "Kevan Davis" <kevan@z...>
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1999 09:28:09 -0000

>Proposal 621 - Keep the balance right. [Amendment]

As has been commented; uncomfortably worded, and fairly meaningless in that
it does nothing to cut down any huge gaps between lowest and highest Kudos,
merely offsetting them. I think the current system's fine, really.

>Proposal 622 - Reintermination [Action]

An interesting reappraisal, but it strikes me as a little superfluous when
you can get a Silver by simply Moving to a large Interchange, or passing
through a reasonable number of the things. I'm not sure I'd want to
carefully meander to some distant Terminus, when I could just zip around
Zone 1 and get two Silvers a Turn.

>Proposal 623 - Lack of Interest Declared [Resignation]
>
>Julie shall be forced to Resign.

As I think I've probably said, the dear one gave up on her Internet access
when she moved house the other month, and has no intention of regaining it.

>Proposal 624 - We're Bound for Botany Bay (not quite)

"Macdonaldtown" doesn't have too much of a ring to it, and others have
mentioned the neglections, but this otherwise seems a welcome addition. I
look forward to the first game we play abroad.

And muse about trying to get hold of one of the Tube-style route-maps that
they have on the side of Brighton buses. Or scanning in the cover of some
brain-science book we've got, that has various nodes of the brain shown as
Tube stations, on the cover. ("Associative Visual Cortex [Shunting Dunx to
Prefrontal Cortex]". Hmm.)

>All other Rules relating to British Rail stations shall be ignored.

Velocity Bombs suddenly become very, very nasty, then. I think "Interchanges
count as BR Stations" is probably better all round, even if it means having
Interchange Hats.

>Proposal 625 - Infinite Darkness... [Amendment]

Absolutely lovely, particularly the "hours of darkness" bit, but the wording
seems a touch suspect - you need to Forge twice to create a PoID, but you
gain a PoID when you perform the Action. It's not clear whether you have to
do both Actions at night, either, really - if you *do*, it'll be incredibly
easy to disrupt a Forging by slipping the clock forward an hour or two
(depending on the number of Players; more than six and it becomes impossible
anyway, since the Round is over before dawn). And suddenly having to pay ten
Blacks for a PoID seems a rather drastic extra measure (although a little
pleasing in its combination with the Morden Paradox; Crescent's "Dark
Ritual"...)

The amended implementation of the PoID seems better, though, I must say;
it's more intuitive that it should have the same effect on a single Player
when carried as it does on all Players when dropped. It'd probably be easier
to say that "If the PoID is situated at a Station, all Players behave as if
they are carrying the PoID", really.

The bit about it causing hideous damage when dropped at MC is particularly
excellent, anyway; the destruction seems far more fitting than the original
loss of acceleration. Probably just destructive enough, as well - although
it's possible to collect a couple of Tokens each Turn to sacrifice to the
PoID, it means going out of your way to do so. Good stuff.

(Two minor semantic quibbles, incidentally - "losing 2 points of LV per
Turn" is quite different from "having a total adjustment of +1 to -5", since
the Player may choose not to perform an "[LV+X]" Action. And when you say
"All Token Stacks lose 1 Token each time the Player who Double-Shunted the
PoID to MC takes a Turn.", which Token is lost?)

>Proposal 626 - A Lot of Silly Old Buffers [Multiple]

Reasonable enough, I suppose. I'm not sure how much use it'll see, though;
to pick up the analogy - if I was playing Snakes and Ladders, but could
adjust my "LV" each Turn, I'd probably not have a problem getting where I
need to go. Rebounding's only been used, to my knowledge, very rarely, but
it's been ingenious enough when it has, I suppose.

> "The [Line Change] Action may not be played subsequently to the
>Rebound, either off a Block or off the Buffers."

Superfluous, since you can't perform mid-Move Actions any more.

> The effects of a Crash are as follows:

Excellence.

> Also, expenditure of Black Tokens is permitted during Knip."

This seems a bit out of the blue. "[Line Change]" is permitted during Knip
anyway - I thought disallowing things like Wilding and Removing Bulkheads
was much the point of the thing.

>Proposal 627 - Shunting the Money Around [Multiple]
>
>"If the Shunted Player possesses the Money Belt, no Tokens may be >claimed
during the Shunt. However, the Money Belt may be taken
>instead."

Hideously, painfully counter-intuitive, but also an incredibly reasonable
way of doing things. Hmm. Maybe it should be renamed to "Token Guard" or
something?

Making it Unique renders it all rather unfair, though - Players should be
allowed to purchase Belts regardless, even if this does mean that the richer
among us can invest in more than one.

> "Token Stacks may be shunted as if they were Players, with the
>following exceptions: there is no Token cost for Shunting a Stack, the
>Shunting Player may approach the Target Station along any Line, and does
not
>reduce eir LV after Shunting a Token Stack. If a Token Stack is Shunted to
a
>station containing another Token Stack, a Double Shunt must be performed,
>otherwise the single Shunt is invalid."

Rather an odd thing to amend along with the Money Belt, but this seems like
a clever and useful implementation.

> If a Player is in a position to Shunt a Suspect Package, e may Defuse
>it instead by moving to its location and playing the Action of [Defusing
>Package]. Upon doing this, eir LV is reduced to 0 but e gains 1 Silver
>Token, and the Package is removed from the Game. E may not do this if e
>has
>placed a Suspect Package on the Board emself during eir last three Turns.

Oh, nice idea. Tanglishly worded (should I really have to go and check other
rules to see if I'm in "a position to Shunt"?), but it seems an obvious
thing to include. The clause about defusing your own Bombs seems a little
clumsy, however - I think it'd be better if there was simply no Token prize
for the act - a good deed is, after all, its own reward, and is likely to be
done to save your own skin anyway.

> Flags may be Shunted as if they were Token Stacks: but Flags may
>not be Dead-End Shunted or destroyed in the explosion of a Suspect
>Package, nor shunted to Mornington Crescent.

Well, Dead-End Shunting a Flag has no particular effect anyway, and won't be
destroyed by default in an explosion. And I quite like the idea of hiding
your own Flag at the Crescent, as a tactic - awkward to resolve, but awkward
to achieve. This amendment also removes the explanation that a Shunted Flag
is referred to as "Flag (T)", carelessly.

An incredibly sweeping and unconnected Proposal, really, that one. Some very
good bits, which I'd certainly vote for in isolation, but some very
questionable elements as well. Hmm.

Responding to others' comments:-

>[Dunx on Clamps:]
>Very sensible. However, would we be better off generalising Clamps slightly
>so that we don't need explicit references to the specific Clamp instances
in
>the Rule? I'm thinking that had the Midas Clamp passed it would immediately
>have introduced an inconsistency, and even now any new Clamps would need
>to update this Rule to mention themselves.

A wise idea, yes, with "Velocity-Bombs count as Clamps", and whatever.

>Not relevant to this Proposal particularly, but just a general observation:
>the Kudos bonus for Repeal seems a little inappropriate when the Rules are
>immediately replaced by something else. Hmmm.

It does, yes. I nearly proposed a "Sorcery" Proposal type, the other Week,
that gave a mere one-off effect, rather than using the usual "Enact this
Rule, do something and then Repeal it" approach. Repeal-and-replace is just
as unbalanced, really. Probably best to do away with it entirely; I don't
think we need to urge people to repeal dubious rules, any more.

>[Jonathan on Speed:]
>The rest of the Rule may not be entirely extraneous: when I
>originally submitted Rutts, it was possible to alter LV by up to 5
>points each turn.

It's always been three, I think. 10LV in two turns would have made for some
ridiculous games.

Kevan

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