Only one item?

Oh, and

we can amend that you know, the one item,  for now

I kind of like the one item thing.

I wish we could have three items, but that’s for another proposal.

Items, proposals, it’s like AG’s dynasty all over agian.

I am strongly this it requires the use of a GNDT field, and then mal-defines it. The Rule states that the GNDT field stores the Name of an Item that the Protagonist is holding. It then sets the field to “Nothing” if the player isn’t carrying anything. It doesn’t, however, define any special meaning for what “Nothing” means in that field. In essence, it makes a GNDT field normative (so that setting it changes the item the player is carrying), sets up a situation where noone is carrying anything, and then has a clause that, in that case, sets the underlying _field_ to “Nothing”. By setting the field, however, they are now carrying something. Specifically, they are carrying a single item called “Nothing”. If you are going to specify precise usage of a GNDT field in a Rule, actually be precise about it: add a statement “If the Item Held is set to ‘Nothing’, then the player is considered to not be carrying anything.”.

If a word is not specifically defined, you use its standard English definition.

The rule explicitly states not to use the English definition….

I still like it though !!!                              

You don’t need to word rules like “may only be changed as allowed by the Ruleset.” as that is already stated in Law 1.1.

“By setting the field… they are now carrying something.”

Nah.  The Rule defines a special case.

Carrying something?

Yes: Item Held = $name_of_item
No:  Item Held = “Nothing”

I see the distinction you’re making, I think.  You’re saying that the definition of “carrying something” is having a value in that field.  Whereas we’re treating the GNDT field as a reflection of some ethereal condition.  Or something.

But that’s not an area we often get into around here, because we tend to focus more on creating interesting mechanics than investigating deep Nomic philosophy.

And even then I’m not sure you’re quite right, because the Rule defines allowable conditions, then sets up a 1:1 correspondence between possible conditions and how they’re denoted.  I don’t know that it really matters how you do that.

I’ll vote for it now because “Fire in the Disco” is going to pass. The nothing thing could have been a problem, but I think the condition was set clearly enough that if a player is carrying a Nothing then the have no items.

75th: It’s two one way maps that aren’t surjections. It isn’t one-to-one. You have to look at it step-by-step. It explicitely defines the field to state what Item you are carrying, but it sets the field directly to Nothing without stating what Nothing means.

Let’s say that the Rule had said this:

Players who are not currently the Fire Marshal shall have their Item Held field set to “Fire Marshal Recruitment Flier”.

Would you then argue that the value “Field Marshal Recruitment Flier” _means_ they aren’t the Fire Marshal? It’s the _same_ form of the sentence as the one involving “Nothing”.