Subject: MN: Re: Year 3 Week 8 Proposals

From: "Jonathan Ellis" <jonathan@f...>
Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1999 02:05:15 +0100

>>Proposal 768 - Game States rewrite [Multiple]
>
>Nicely tidying. The bit about "enough Game States should be deleted
from
>the start of the line to make room for it" is a bit scary, but I
suppose
>shouldn't ever really become an issue.

Well, it's exactly the same implementation as the Disruptions box...

>>Proposal 769 - Token Stacking [Amendment]
>A necessary amendment, I think. But...
>
>> * All Tokens spent on any particular Action must be placed on
>>different Stacks. If there are not enough eligible Stacks available,
the
>>excess Tokens are destroyed.
>
>Hmm. This means that you can't create new Stacks with expended
Tokens...
>There's probably a little too much ambiguity apropos of the difference
>between "a Token Stack" and "the Tokens, if any, resting at a Station".

The rules already say that Tokens expended to perform Actions must
be dropped on a Token Stack, so this does not actually change that at
all... already the implication is that one cannot create new Stacks with
expended Tokens. So the ambiguity exists already, and this does nothing
to make it worse. In any case, single Tokens are being placed on the
board anyway, presumably defined as being Stacks of one Token after the
placement... Of course, new Stacks cannot be created if the limit has
been reached.

>> If a Station contains another entity which is listed in the Token
>>Stack table (Suspect Packages, Flags, the Podume of Infinite Darkness
>>etc.) then no Tokens may be placed there at all. However, this other
>>item does not count against the number of Stacks that may coexist.
>
>I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not, really, since it's not
>exhaustive - you can still drop a Flag on a Stack, Shunt the Podume
>onto a Stack, and so forth.

Could do with a rewording, I suppose - to say that these items may also
not be placed on, or shunted to, stations containing Stacks unless the
Stack is shunted away (or perhaps double-shunted - at the moment,
double-shunting isn't allowed for Stacks, and my proposals to introduce
it have failed twice - probably because of all the peripherals involved
rather than the act itself.)

>>Proposal 770 - Loop the Loop [Multiple]
>
>Quite a poor words-to-improvement ratio, as I read it. The return of
>the dangerously fuzzy "Move eir Piece directly" unsettles me (is this
>a replacement of the normal Move, or not?)
Yes. It is, after all, considered a Special Move (as detailed just
two lines below), which does indeed happen in place of a normal Move.
However, it cannot be blocked by anything else (thus preventing the
paradox of being unable to play Dollis Hill when in Knid.)

> the Invocation Actions
>strike as superfluous (moving to a uniquely identified Station is
>enough, I think)
But this would mean, for instance, that certain Stations can never
be entered without Looping. This is clearly not the case with any
Station except Dollis Hill - plenty of Players in real MC go to Amersham
or Aldwych without starting A-A loops, or to Pimlico without starting
Loops, or indeed to Morden without invoking the Paradox. So it is
obvious that some Loops are started deliberately, and require some
additional Action as well as the Player's presence at the Station.
Therefore, there has to be some separate Action of [<looptype> Loop] for
starting that Loop.

> the DH loop is weakened (you can Escape for the
>price of a Sidestep, without having to be at DH),
You really don't like the idea of being able to get out of Dollis
Hill Loops without having actually been there, do you? But this is what
has been happening anyway - someone plays a "Dollis Sidestep" for 1
Silver to ignore the DH Loop, and as a result the Loop is considered
ended because the last non-Pass move is to somewhere other than DH. Thus
I have brought it under the heading of an Escape (which ends the Loop),
as opposed to a Sidestep (which now merely avoids it while keeping the
rest of the players in), but the end result is exactly the same - no
matter what you prefer to call it.

> the Morden Paradox
>lacks a Trap Station and there's a casual and abusable "chosen at
>random by the next Player".

Whoops. Bugfix coming up... Trap Station for the Morden Paradox is
of course Morden.
As for the "chosen at random by the next Player", this should only
apply to a Timeout - and is mainly meant to prevent Players passing or
timeouting to avoid being drawn into a Loop at all. Consider that the
chances of actually being forced into an Unordered Multiple-Trap Loop
are very slim anyway (considering that there is exactly one such Loop
contained in this Proposal), and any Player timeouting in such a
situation clearly has to be forced into the Loop somewhere or gain the
unfair advantage of being allowed to ignore it by passing - I can hardly
imagine Mrs Trellis trying something like that, but it's the sort of
thing that Ruttsborough or Stannard might try to get away with -
deliberately timing out in order to avoid going into the loop, and thus
remain outside for that one crucial extra turn. Hence the fact that the
next Player chooses the timeouting Player's destination...

>>Proposal 771 - Game into Boris... [Enactment]
>This doesn't really fit the Morningtonia definition (perhaps we should
>have a link to the Encyclopaedia from our Web page, actually?), but
>seems fairly interesting nevertheless. I'm a bit hazy as to what
happens
>if I don't change Line but don't have any Black Tokens, and the denied
>Passing leaves a bad taste, but otherwise it seems alright.

If you don't have any black tokens, you *have* to change Line or
the move is Invalid. If you can't change line, there is no valid Move
and as such you must Pass. But in Boris, the Pass is also denied -
however, a Special Move into a Dollis Hill Loop is permitted, and
enforced, instead (basically, this replaces the Pass, which otherwise
can be used as a forcing Action - for instance when Visiting, collecting
Pigeons, forging a PoID etc.)
Hence the nastiness of the condition, which is not obvious at
first: one has to change Line or lose a Black Token, but moves are
limited to short distances (the restriction on LV) which implies
comparatively less chance of being able to change Line in that
distance...
...and the real nastiness of it is that, if a DH loop does start,
there is no way of being able to get to an LV of 10. It is still
possible for Players to cooperate to give one player 10 tokens of the
same colour, (enough for a Bonanza), gain 1 Gold, split to 2 Silvers,
pay one Silver for the Escape and move past Wembley Park (thus changing
Line, legally.) But DH Loops will be much harder to get out of in Boris,
and much easier to get into... Yes, I've thought very carefully about
just how evil I can get with this condition. The idea being that one has
to tread very carefully to avoid total disaster, and the player cannot
simply avoid the dilemma by Passing because that triggers off the Dollis
Hill trap which is suddenly much more deadly. Thus, about as close to
the EM definition as I could get.
And a little bit of MC history I dug up recently: nobody knows who
it was that was first caught on a Line during a Power Failure with the
game in what is now known as "Boris" - but when Mrs Trellis used the
tactic on the Piccadilly in the '84 final for her revenge against
Baryshnikov, the Russian was trapped at Russell Square with nowhere to
go (not even to change Line since Russell Square is not an interchange)
except Dollis Hill, and the now-infamous "Bloomsbury Boris Bomb" was
born. A little snippet of info which surprised me when I discovered it,
as the BBB is now a tactic so beloved of Ruttsborough-style players, but
it is in fact a Trellis invention.

>>Proposal 772 - Ladders Up and Down. [Multiple]
>
>Reversing the direction and loosening the boundaries at either end is
>nice, but I'm not sure why the rest of the rule has been so
dramatically
>reworded; making it dependent on one's last Move rather than the
>previous Player's Move takes away much of the beauty of the thing.

I must admit I hadn't noticed that distinction. Whoops.
(On the other hand, this makes it a little more like Charge Spirals
where each move is dependent on the Player's previous Charge rather than
the previous Player's current Charge. I nicked the wording from there,
not noticing the subtle change of meaning... it can always be amended
back next week, but I don't think a little thing like that is worth
losing the chance to climb down or reverse the Ladder for.)

>>Proposal 774 - A Whiter Shade of Pale... [Multiple]
>
>Even though this now gives us the five mana colours from Magic, which
is
>slightly amusing, I don't think it's a terribly worthwhile addition, at
>least without some suggested White Actions, and a way to actually get
>the things aside from Passing and Token Generating.

I agree (for once :-)

>>Proposal 777 - Lyttleton Announcement [Action]
>
>Curious. Perhaps a little cheap, in that it forces every Player to make
>their next Move a good distance from the Crescent (and is thus a very
>strong Win-denial), and can make a mockery of Capture the Flag games,
>but interestingly appealing all the same.
>
>It could probably use amendment so that Home Stations are lost at the
>end of the Turn, though, so that the Actioning Player can't "[Home:]"
>immediately and get the best place.

If it's a Post-Move Action, there isn't a problem except with
Capture the Flag (from which this Rule should be specifically
disallowed.)

Jonathan.

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