BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

‘Can’ is defined as a keyword in rule 3.1, so “can not” means “is able to not”, common sense be damned.

“Can not” does mean “is able to not” in regular English; but this is fairly obviously a misspelling of “cannot”.

Well, it can mean that, anyway, depending on context. But I forgot the .

It can mean both as you say, but that’s beside the point. I wouldn’t call this an obvious typo since 1) the sentence reads perfectly well as it is and has a well-defined effect in the game, and 2) it could conceivably have been intentional; if I were to write a loophole that let me refuel as a Space Station, this is how I might’ve worded it.

It’s just, it is ambiguous and- Wait, we just had this same debate last Dynasty, and I’m going with precedent here: Where it is ambiguous, and equally valid interpretations exist, go with the one that seems obviously intended. So the issue is whether or not this being a typo is a valid interpretation. Anyone else have thoughts?

That’s been our method of handling ambiguous rule text; what we’re settling here is whether this is an ‘obvious typo’. When in doubt, we leave it alone. If the two positions (typo or no typo) are equally valid as you say, the assumption that it’s a typo is clearly not obvious.

Alright, thanks for the more applicable precedent. But it is still debatable if its an obvious typo or not; I’ll leave that to consensus.

“To Refuel, a Captain must transfer the Resources named in the Refueling Cost associated with a Space Station to the Captain who controls that Space Station, increase their Energy by 5, [..]”

“their” was probably intended to refer to the Captain who’s refueling, but if I were the Caption in charge of the Space Station I would strongly argue that it refers to me.

As for the “can not” issue… I can’t see this as a reason not to vote for; the text being replaced already allowed space stations captains to refuel.

(On an interesting note, if “their” actually refers to the Space Station Caption, and if the rules state that such a Captain cannot gain energy by refueling…)

While I know that it is based on the wording and not on intent, I still would like to say that was a misspelling of cannot.