fyi, you accidentally doubleposted again

Just noticed; thanks. This time I made sure, when I clicked on the wrong button, that nothing had been posted, then I proceeded with the right button. Apparently there was a delay.

  I agree. Thanks for the analysis. I feel like Special Case has been used as a nursery for Core/Appendix Rules and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s time for the little ones to grow up.

As I can only hop on briefly atm I’ll go right into my thoughts on seasonal downtime. As one of, if not the person to suggest having it back when it was a proper rule and before special cases were a thing, I’m happy to keep it. Back when it was first made it was common for players to not be on during the holidays and I would rather not risk someone trying to sneak proposals in when people are away

As it defines a type of action I would think that atomic actions would be moved to the appendix. However it’s just so clunky of a rule that I think it needs some sort of rewrite before that would happen; the length and clunkynees is to prevent scams but it seems unfit currently to move it out of the special case rules.

Some of these rules were initially moved to special case in order to test them fully before keeping them in the ruleset proper, tags, orphaned variables and possibly the tree rules. My idea for the special case rules was to keep all of the rules that seemed to be retained between dynasties or proposed consistently (g-man, imperial def, combos, atomic actions) and let the emperor turn them off instead of reproposing the same rules over and over again. Then some rules were moved there because they were taking up space in the core ruleset, at least that was the reason given. Now I think that we could all agree that an important part of nomic is reading the rules, so even if a potential player is driven off by a long ruleset—even when no dynastic rules exist—they probably would not have enjoyed their time here anyway. That’s not to say I don’t believe I shrinking word count in those rules, but to move something out of core and say “the number of rules a player needs to read in order to participate is lessened” is disingenuous.

I think the following rules could easily be moved somewhere else: tags, seasonal downtime and orphan variables.

Also speaking of the length of the ruleset, does the wiki have a way to make collapsible sections? In this dynasty especially, it’s somewhat annoying to refer to rules if you need to scroll between the artefacts rule multiple times.

I wrote the original seasonal downtime rule years ago but it has never once not been controversial. Darknight aside, I feel like every winter it provokes this wave of mild irritation. I do still think it’s better to have than not have in its current incarnation but I don’t doubt that it could use some reform.

I’m generally of the opinion that the special case rules would make more sense if “off” was the default value, as anything that’s almost always on should be a core rule anyway.

Thanks for the work on this, Duke. It’s a helpful provocation.

I’d go with Duke’s suggestions here, putting the removed rules into the Appendix under whatever headings seem appropriate.

I’d also put Atomic Actions into the Appendix (probably as its own section with each paragraph a bullet point), as it makes no sense to have a toggleable rule that’s just defining something. If we don’t want to use atomic actions in a dynasty, we can just not write any; if we have written some, toggling the Atomic Actions off mid-dynasty would just break those rules.

[card] If you’re talking about mobile, https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MobileFrontend would give the wiki the same navigation as Wikipedia’s mobile site, with every section collapsed by default. But we’d need to be running a newer version of MediaWiki to install it.

Thanks josh. I know I had been part of the thought with it back then but I forgot who wrote it out as a rule

My thought was that Dormancy and Seasonal Downtime might remain where they are, because they are contingent on what the active players prefer, and we might sometime decide that these protections (which rightly are the default state for the game) impede rather than facilitate gameplay in a particular dynasty. If, on the other hand, we decide that these protections should be permanent, then the rules might as well reflect that.

I had this thought that “The Tree” is a good fit for “Individuals”... But it’s not important enough, and I am conscious of the need to keep the Core Rules manageable. Players must indeed be aware of the entire ruleset, but they can jump in without knowing things like Traitors, Atomic Actions and the relative precedence of rules.

On the other hand, leaving out a tag is an easy way to ruin a proposal, and there’s a good case for making “Tags” a subrule of “Votable Matters”.

[Kevan] I am not limited to mobile, but I think the option of collapsible sections can be useful on both mobile and desktop. Not sure who else agrees with.

I don’t think “The Tree” has a good reason to be in the ruleset, Special Case or otherwise. I certainly don’t think the associated page should be gamestate.

Card might be agreeing with you… They’re already breaking the rules, hehe.

I suppose the point is that the Player Tree might later serve as a hook for dynastic mechanics. No idea what these might look like, though.

I don’t think it ever should.

My plan for the transfer of rules out of the Special Case section, once this discussion runs its course, is to do it rule by rule. It would be easier to manage, and it could serve as an opportunity to see if there is a desire to repeal the “Tree” rule instead of moving it.

I’m working on a Ruleset Sandbox (permanent link here), where I’ve converted the “Tags” rule into a subrule of “Votable Matters” and I have moved the “Atomic Actions” rule to the Appendix, between “Gamestate Tracking” and “Clarifications”.

More importantly, I have made various changes to “Atomic Actions”: I’ve added a brief definition, changed the paragraphs to bullet points, rearranged some of the clauses, made minor textual improvements, changed a “should” to “must”, and removed the “cannot be overruled by the Dynastic Rules” clause at the end, which is no longer needed because the Appendix has precedence anyway. It’s probably not the kind of rewrite that card had in mind – I don’t think I’ve changed anything of substance, and the rule isn’t any shorter than before – but I consider the result an improvement all the same.

Please have a look and bring up any objections; otherwise I’ll make a proposal tomorrow to implement these changes.

(I’ve also moved “The Tree” to right after “Atomic Actions”, but I’m not satisfied with that solution and am considering alternatives.)

Duke, what made you decide to go with bullets rather than paragraphs for the Atomic Actions rewrite?

Kevan suggested it above, and I thought I’d give it a try. I suppose you get away with shorter paragraphs that way: individual elements that walk you through it step by step, rather than denser blocks of text. The Appendix is already full of bullets, and this is a fairly technical rule, so I found it appropriate.

If I were to take out the bullets, I’d likely end up joining at least some ex-bullets together, though I’m not sure which. (The order of the clauses would probably stay the same; I’m very satisfied with how the rule flows now.)