BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

I thought this might come up. I think that what I attempted to do was in fact legal. The “daily action” specified is to “create a Crate” not to attempt to create one. I did not place a Crate in the Arena Square because, “the selected Arena Square” was not in fact empty, and therefore did not create a crate. I therefore did not perform the daily Action, and was thus perfectly within my rights to make a further attempt to create a Crate until I was successful.

Had I made a further attempt to create a Crate after being successful, then my action would have indeed been illegal, but I didn’t, so it wasn’t.

It came up a few turns ago as well, I forget who from.

The daily action is called “create a Crate”, and a player signals that they are performing it by picking a random square. Sometimes it has an effect and the player is allowed to place a Crate there; sometimes it doesn’t have an effect, but that player will have still taken the daily Action of “creating a Crate”.

(If the rule was worded as “any Gladiator may - as a daily Action - activate the Crate Generator by selecting a random Arena Square”, then clearly you couldn’t keep activating it. And it’s thematically plausible that your new crate was “created” off-stage, but never placed anywhere.)

That’s the idea I was toying with - that there are crates which are not in the arena. Seems a bit insane to me. In the bit where it says “If the selected Arena Square is empty” - Doesn’t that imply that once a square becomes empty (conceptually) - a crate yet to be placed is then instantly created, as the rule doesn’t specify when the selected Arena Square must be empty?

Consequently, if the square concerned is a trap, then once a Gladiator moves to that square, surely there is an ambiguity, once the trap is removed, as to whether a crate is created before or after the gladiator steps onto the square. If crates are “created” off-stage, then this becomes a possibility.

If we accept, therefore, that this ambiguity is impossible, then one must also accept that I did not create a crate, and therefore did not perform the action, and therefore do not merit a foul.

You’re right in that a player could choose not to place the crate immediately, so it’s arguably legal to roll a Crate location and not drop anything there for a few days (or to drop crates in the squares of earlier failed Crate-drop rolls which are now empty).
The second sentence should maybe say “within ten minutes of performing the action” to fix that.

If this is what you mean by an “ambiguity”, though, I don’t see the relevance to this Foul. You created a Crate (there’s a daily action called “create a Crate” and you took it), you just didn’t place a Crate in an Arena Square. Even if you rolled an empty square and decided not to put a Crate there just yet, you would still have taken the action “create a Crate”.

I interpret “Create a crate” as “rolling to see where the crate goes and putting it there if you can”.

The whole piece is a Create a Crate Action.

Okay. Conceded. Thought I might argue the case, but didn’t read the Crate rule well enough.

Even if precedents do not say so. I’m sure I did it once or twice, Anduril once before this too, and possibly someone else.

Checking the GNDT log, Hello Kitty broke the rule on the 14th of last month, and Mideg reverted it. (“HKoD: You may only create one crate per day, whereby the selection of the random Square is the daily part. If the randomly selected square is not empty, bad luck.”) Blacky broke the rule on the 29th but nobody noticed.

“Blacky broke the rule on the 29th but nobody noticed.” Doesn’t that the action, that everyone’s been playing as if it happened, never happened, and we have to try and work out what the gamestate actually is (which may look quite different)?

(/me has flashbacks to B…)

Hmm, looking through the logs, Blacky immediately picked up the illegal crate and used the Acid Barrel they got from it to create an Acid Pool at E4. I pushed Kitty into it on the 3rd, and Blacky removed it on the 9th by placing another Pool elsewhere. Gamestate effect is that Blacky and I should be down one Frag.

0_0 Wow, that’s a discussion. I just was a weekend away. Initially, I thought as did Prince Anduril that may actions was legal, as no crate was “created”. However, you guys have a point.