Friday, June 26, 2020

Duplicate Names

I enacted the previous proposal before realising that creating two segments called “Figure” directly contradicts the existing rule that “no two Segments may have the same Name”. Nobody caught this during voting.

How should we handle this? Does “If the Admin enacting a Proposal reaches a step which cannot be applied immediately” kick in, given that it was a step that told me to create six Segments, two of which were illegal at that time? If so, what does the High-Stakes table (“a second, 6-Segment Wheel”) default to containing?

Comments

pokes:

26-06-2020 18:53:31 UTC

The most reasonable interpretation to me is an empty High-Stakes table, since creating it was one discrete step in the proposal, and it couldn’t be done. But there still is one because the rules assert there is, and the most reasonable default value is an empty list.

pokes:

26-06-2020 18:54:15 UTC

Also, all segments on both wheels should have a Global Effect and a Table Effect. I’ll edit that in.

pokes:

26-06-2020 18:57:08 UTC

(Arguably.)

Zyborg:

26-06-2020 19:01:19 UTC

I should have named them Sections or something.

Clucky: he/him

26-06-2020 19:57:42 UTC

I think “Create the High Stakes Table with the following segments:” could not be immediately applied so it doesn’t happen. And thus while the High Stakes Table has six segments, its currently not defiend what those segments are.

Josh: Observer he/they

26-06-2020 22:07:02 UTC

I think it’s pretty clear that the If the Admin enacting a Proposal reaches a step which cannot be applied immediately clause in Rules and Proposals applies specifically to chronological displacement, given the following example (e.g. “two days after this Proposal enacts, Gambler A gains 1 point”). I don’t think it applies here.

Given that, I think that it’s a prioritisation problem: can a proposal create gamestate that the ruleset says is illegal? On the face of it, yes. The existing ruleset does not actually have priority over proposals; the enacting admin must “updat[e] the Ruleset and/or Gamestate to include the specified effects of that Proposal”, and there is nothing in the rule on enactment to specify that the Admin should check to see whether the effects of the proposal are legal when doing so. I think it probably has to be enacted as written and then challenged by CfJ.

Alternatievly, we can look at the actual Prioritisation rule. That rule doesn’t mention proposals but does specify that dynastic rules take priority over core rules, and it’s a core rule that covers enactments. So it can be argued one of two ways: either Proposals aren’t mentioned in Prioritisation, so they should be considered to have no priority over any other part of the ruleset, and the supremacy of Dynastic rules over Core rules means that anything illegal at the point of enactment should be disregarded - in which case the second illegal Segment can be simply omitted - OR proposals, by virtue of their absence, should be considered to have equal priority to all parts of the ruleset, in which case the more limited scope of the Proposal should mean that is has priority over the broader scope of the Dynastic rule.

All of this is very fun but it’s probably a CfJ to resolve in any case.

Kevan: he/him

27-06-2020 11:52:50 UTC

I think “anything illegal at the point of enactment should be disregarded” is certainly how it’s been played in the past, when a proposal asks the enacting admin to perform an impossible action (like repealing a rule that doesn’t exist, or setting a numerical stat to an invalid value).

I know the “reaches a step that cannot be applied immediately” rule was written with the intention of catching delayed effects, but I think it’s neat and fair enough that it also catches steps that cannot be applied at all.

So per Clucky I think this means the High-Stakes Table exists with six Segments, but was never set up and therefore adopts its most default version. Which I think would be the “list which is alphabetically earliest from the set of lists with the fewest elements” - Anatomist, Bronco, Delta, False, Manatee, Payroll. Which means that Bronco and Payroll stop being Spare Segments, as they are now on a Wheel.

I’ll update the wiki page - if anyone disagrees, they should CfJ.