Subject: General Musings

From: "Kevan " <kevan@s...>
Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 12:12:50 -0000

Sorry I've been fairly quiet in this discussion; I've been rather busy
lately, with my meagre free time going into the running of Genomic, 
and
my brain being too sapped by deadening work stuff to be up to writing
any terribly coherent paragraphs on anything.

To summarise my thoughts on the future of the Nomic, though - well,
firstly I don't feel there's any great need for it to be a Nomic any
more. Some sort of semi-democratic voting system might be handy to 
have
around for taking straw polls or making majority decisions on trifling
issues, but this should only be a very, very small part of what we 
spend
our time doing. As RiffRaff said, it's far better to discuss these
things to the point of unanimity. This applies both to establishing a
new-look ruleset and adding new stuff to it further down the line.

I certainly see no need to wave the "Nomic" flag from our battlements
when we've become far more of a game-design team, anyway; if people 
want
the excitement of proper, political, cut-and-thrust Nomic, they're
really better off going somewhere else, and it seems terribly
self-destructive and annoying to have new players (hello, Brown)
possibly turning up under the wrong premise, and potentially ideal
people not turning up at all.

As for the design process; I've a feeling that rebuilding from scratch
might be saner than chipping bits away from an unwieldy ruleset. The
crux of the whole thing is the nuts and bolts of gameplay, and I think
they certainly have to be penned anew rather than chiselled down from
bigger, clumsier paragraphs. Once we have a tiny ruleset that neatly
defines a very, very basic version of the game (Baker Street, maybe,
with just a bare minimum of Actions - we should, I hope, be able to 
get
something like that on one page of A4), we can look at the extra stuff
from the Mornomic Ruleset and implement it appropriately (in the same
way we've looked at the Encyclopaedia Morningtonia and couched the 
ideas
in Mornomic terms).

My feeling on the look of the finished game is one of simplicity; that
(viewing it from both real-life and email perspectives) you just need 
a
Board, a Piece for each Player, some Tokens, an assortment of "local
state" counters (Block, Maelberg, Sinkhole, etc), and a few sturdy 
bits
of cardboard with "Knip", "Spoon Clamp" and whatnot written on them, 
to
bring out when the relevant States and Possessions are in play. Simple
enough for it to be playable with a few dead matches, a pocket-sized
Tube map and a biro, but robust enough for a gold-plated mahogany-
board
edition to remain an enticing possibility. A simple Action sheet for
each Player is all that's needed, although veterans would, of course,
be able to remember most of them, which is rather pleasing.

(To tangent, incidentally, the "Zarcana" game I mentioned earlier has 
a
very neat notation for summarising how certain cards can be played - a
handful of intuitive little symbols; an upright triangle if the card 
can
only be played on an upright piece, a triangle on a rectangle if the
card can only be played on a piece that rests on a card-in-play (both
symbols if both apply), etc. I daresay the British Rail timetable
symbols could be used to amusing effect, for most things, with pseudo-
BR
stuff for the other cases.)

Admittedly at odds with RiffRaff, I'd like to see the fiddlier bits of
the game cut out completely - Game Time really is far too much effort
its minimal relevance, the Token system could do with simplification
(the "claim one of a colour of your choice if you move to an
Interchange" of MC:CG worked quite nicely), LV would probably be 
easier
to deal with in real-life play if it was a "move between one and three
Stations per turn, unless some State or Possession says otherwise"
thing, and whatnot. We can argue this properly when the time comes to
analyse the aspect, of course, and I look forward to doing so.

To respond to a few comments here and there, anyway:-

>[Paul]
>At the moment play seems to be stalled because people don't have the
>time to play. In this situation, the chances of someone actually 
having
>enough time to sit down and rewrite vast quantities of ruleset are
>slim at best.

Surely no greater time than is needed to maintain the thing in a
Nomic fashion, as Speaker, though? Particular since the editor's job
is going to be, for the most part, merely editing other people's words
together.

Good work on the Guide, anyway. I think a cross between its chattiness
and some sort of easily-referrable at-a-glance reference would make 
for
an ideal replacement Ruleset, and I trust you'll be putting in
sufficient input on the matter.

>[Snow]
>The plan I would suggest is:
>
>1) Everyone has a good old shouting match about what the game needs
>and what it doesn't. Each person can contribute bits of ruleset
>(including bits of the current ruleset).

Rather pandemonious. Wouldn't it be better to address it bit by bit,
with the editor overseeing the discussion, starting and ending topics
as he sees fit?

>2) Someone is made editor and goes off with all the bits of ruleset
>and tries to tie them up. If there are gaps either e tries to fill
>them eirself or makes a note for everyone to think about.

I suspect that writing this bit-by-bit would be easier - first 
establish
a turn-taking system, then a piece-placement-and-moving system, then
basic Action implementation, and so forth, going back to fix anything
that's later found wanting.

>4) We then start up some form of fast-track Nomic system to edit the
>ruleset.

This would be useful once the basic ruleset was in place and we just
needed to translate old Actions (and maybe add a few necessary new
ones), Possessions, and whatnot. I suppose some sort of semi-formal
voting system is all that's needed here, so that the editor can chuck
out an ordered list of submissions and we can then discuss and veto 
them
in an organised fashion, rather than having to track a load of 
different
threads.

>5) Once the ruleset is "stable" we modify the nomic system so that it
>can only be changed with a large majority.

This seems good, although - as has been said - such changes would
ideally only be made very rarely, along the lines of IMCS's monthly
amendments. (The sudden shifting-underfootness of games past was 
always
a bit of a problem, wasn't it?)

>6) We play

Bravo.

Kevan

--
kevan@s...
http://www.stormloader.com/kevan
"And will the world end in the night-time? I really don't know."

---

From: "Snow" <snowl@s...>
Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 20:44:40 +0100

I agree with everything Kevan said. Though I do think it is important
to have a well defined plan and formal voting system in place if
needed. If not then I think PaulWay's prophecy will happen of groups
who feel that they aren't having their say leaving or splintering. The
voting system needn't be used for everything only for things where
there is a major split.

I will also repeat something I said earlier. The 'politics' (voting,
game lounges and such-like) should be kept separate from the game
ruleset. They're not really connected (especially if we stop being a
Nomic) and they will just confuse the beginner.

Snow
-I can turn myself into the theme tune to Buffy TVS using only my
mind.