Sunday, October 28, 2012

Proposal: Breaking News

Quorums 2-7. — Quirck

Adminned at 30 Oct 2012 00:22:43 UTC

Add a subrule to the rule “Running a Story”, entitled Scoop:

If the Importance of a Event’s Location and the Public Opinion of that Event’s Subject combined total 120 or more, then that event is Breaking News. An Editor who does not have a Stance on that Breaking News’ Subject may run a Scoop on it, provided that no other Editor has run a Scoop on that Event, by running a Story on it as if they did have a Stance on that Subject, preceded by the word “Scoop!” They may then immediately EITHER raise their Journalistic Integrity by 1, OR reduce their Skeletons by 1.

Comments

Murphy:

28-10-2012 20:22:24 UTC

against

I like the idea of Scoops in general, but the mechanics don’t feel quite right:

* You can Scoop an event even if another Editor already ran a non-Scoop on it
* Journalistic Integrity makes sense, but why would it reduce Skeletons?

scshunt:

28-10-2012 21:50:46 UTC

for

RaichuKFM: she/her

28-10-2012 23:34:40 UTC

imperial Why would it affect skeletons?

Josh: he/they

29-10-2012 09:33:13 UTC

Because it’s useful to have a mechanic that reduces skeletons, and I’m a firm believer that thematic sense comes second to mechanical usefulness.

Kevan: he/him

29-10-2012 10:25:02 UTC

Mechanics might come second to theme, but theme shouldn’t be actively sacrificed to get there. If a game concept gets too thematically mangled, there’s a danger it will start to atrophy because nobody’s quite sure what to do with it any more.

(It’s also a bit thematically odd that newspapers can’t run scoops on stories that they happen to have taken a stance on. But I appreciate that making the rules unintuitive is a perfectly valid tactic in Nomic.)

In terms of raw mechanics, though, first-to-post Scoops give an unfair advantage to players who check in the most regularly, and/or share a timezone with the Mogul.

against

Bucky:

29-10-2012 15:06:57 UTC

imperial

quirck: he/him

29-10-2012 16:57:21 UTC

against

Clucky: he/him

29-10-2012 20:26:10 UTC

imperial

Larrytheturtle:

30-10-2012 02:41:18 UTC

imperial