Subject: Re: MN: 'lo

From: Duncan Ellis <dunx@d...>
Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 10:11:30 -0700

At Friday, 10 May 2002, you wrote:
>You're moving house to a _train_? You Americans are so intriguing :-)

Low blow, Wayper... low blow.

>But seriously, to my mind there are four basic sections that need 
roughing out:
>
>1) Moves and Actions and Location on the Map.
>2) Possessions and States
>3) Time and play progression
>4) Legality of moves

Well, yes - that's certainly a good starting point.

The ruleset from the last incarnation had the core of a good game 
in there, and adopting the same basic structure isn't a bad thing 
since it gives some shape to our thoughts. The caveat I would raise 
is whether this is the only shape our thoughts should be in, but 
then that's a separate discussion really.

Indeed, given the way that games tend to work played, I wonder whether 
building automatic opponents might not be a bad plan...

>There's also a meta-fifth: the Nomic, but AFAICS we can take the most 
>recent incarnation of the Volume 0 Ruleset - that worked just fine 
>IMO. The Definitions is something we all need to work on and correspond 

>over regularly.

Agreed on Section 0. It's workable, and it's simple.

The main thing I would focus on to ensure things keep moving is that 
there should not be one person who is the lynchpin and without whom 
all else falls to dust. I speak both as a tested and as a failed 
lynchpin - it's hard on the game, and it's hard on the individuals.
Federated Speakership is necessary, not because leadership is unwelcome 
but because otherwise there is just too much work for one person 
to do.

The rest, for the moment, is good - more anon.

--
Dunx

---

From: Paul Wayper <paulway@e...>
Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2002 23:21:21 +1000

>Low blow, Wayper... low blow.

I'm sorry - call me a Victorian if it will make you feel any better :-)

Seriously, I hope you and your beloved are happy and that the move is going 
/ has gone well.

>Well, yes - that's certainly a good starting point.

Which is basically all I wanted it to be.

>then that's a separate discussion really.

I think what I'm interested in - to lay my cards on the table - is being 
able to play a reasonably good game of 'Real' MC using a stable 
ruleset. In general I believe that this should be:

A) Complex enough to allow a certain level of nift in moves - finding a 
clever combination of circumstances to aid you is what the game is all about.
B) Unhurried - you shouldn't feel the need to belt out a move before your 
time expires.
C) Elegant - Simple, powerful moves over complicated, improbable moves any day.
D) Learnable - Few exceptions, more general rules to cover everything.

I don't object to spending, oh, half an hour, say, coming up with 
moves. It would, of course, be great to have simple programs like Kevan's 
old move distance calculator and other programs to take the tedious 
counting of stations and stuff like that out of our hair. After all, true 
Crescent grand masters can tell you exactly how many left-handed stations 
between Whitechapel and Baker Street without even really thinking - we 
don't have that kind of practice.

I also think it'd be good if we could construct a web page that could 
format the game in progress out of relevant text files. In general I'm not 
concerned with the actual physical representation of the game in play as 
far as 'illegal tampering' goes. I don't feel the need to encode the exact 
representation of the characters in the GSD and how it is sent and received 
in the rules. I have this great idea for a Perl script that reads text 
files and either presents the current GSD or allows modifications either by 
updating the 'numbers' directly or by encoded operations (e.g. teach it 
that 'Terminus' means 'give the player one gold').

>building automatic opponents might not be a bad plan...

How do you mean, 'automatic opponents'?

>Agreed on Section 0. It's workable, and it's simple.

The only thing that I'd essentially change is to make the first Nomic Week 
effectively infinite, and with Weeks declared arbitrarily from there.

>but because otherwise there is just too much work for one person

Absolutely. This is where I'd like to see both automated processes 
(scripts like the above) and self-run procedures (e.g. proposals where 
voting is collected and run by the proposer) put to good use. Anyone got 
any experience from other Nomics of ways in which we could reduce or 
eliminate the need for a single 'Speaker'?

Have fun,

Paul