Friday, December 16, 2005

Proposal: Fire in the Disco!

Timed out, 10-5, one short of quorum. - Elias IX

Adminned at 18 Dec 2005 08:21:14 UTC

This rule fixes the bug Saurik found in In My Hot Little Hands that gives every player an item called “Nothing”.. hopefully the new item is more palatable to everyone playing ;-)

If there is no rule named “Items”, this proposal has no effect.

change the text:

Players who are not currently carrying an Item shall have their Item Held field set to “Nothing”.

to the text:

Players who are not currently carrying an Item shall have their Item Held field set to “Fire Marshall Recruitment Flyer”.

All players with their GNDT “Item Held” slot set to “Nothing” have their “Item Held” slot set to “Fire Marshall Recruitment Flyer”.

Add a new subsection named “Fire Marshall Recruitment Flyer” to the rule “Items” with the text:

A beautifully detailed piece of paper, folded into thirds. Poorly drawn fire covers the front, along with large red letters reading “Fire is Dangerous”. You are very interested to read the flyer.

The flyer reads as follows:

Fire Marshal Description:
The office of Fire Marshal in most North American firefighting services is responsible for investigating fires. They are members of the fire department, and they must have firefighting experience, but they are also sworn law officers. They carry a handgun, wear a badge, and make arrests (Usually arsonists).

Flavor text taken from Wikipedia.

If there is only one Protagonist holding a Fire Marshall Recruitment Flyer e immediately becomes the Fire Marshall and the Fire Marshall Recruitment Flyer erupts in flame. (That Protagonist’s Item slot is then set to “Ashes of a Fire Marshall Recruitment Flyer”.)

Add a new subsection named “Nothing” to the rule “Items” with the text:

The most POWERFUL item in the game. Any Protagonist holding one or more Nothing(s) may dub Protagonists “Fire Marshall” at will.

Comments

Excalabur:

16-12-2005 05:27:44 UTC

for :)

The Lone Amigo:

16-12-2005 05:36:33 UTC

The descriptory text needs to be listed as the *description* of the item.  against

AgentHH:

16-12-2005 05:57:27 UTC

The Lone Amigo: I think that the way that section is structured is OK. Nothing allows for any bizarre actions aside from the last paragraph describing what happens when only one Flyer is left.

for

Quazie:

16-12-2005 06:12:28 UTC

for

Salamander:

16-12-2005 07:14:59 UTC

Lone Amigo: Name isn’t marked in the “Hot Little Hands” proposal. If this goes through I’ll do some clean up on the wording of both to make it more consistent. Thanks for pointing this out.

Saurik:

16-12-2005 07:21:48 UTC

Realistically, I’m going to have to assume that other people are going to ignore the bug in In My Hot Little Hands and vote FOR it. While I was partially looking forward to trying to add rules that might allow me to covertly add an item named Nothing as a valid item, I feel this is a good fix for the problem and vote for.

The Description comment is unfortunate, but while inconsistent, I agree with AgentHH that it shouldn’t cause a problem. The original Rule didn’t state the Description had to be marked as such, only that the item has a Description, which it does.

Saurik:

16-12-2005 10:27:37 UTC

Oh, and I forgot to mention that part of my agreeing with AgentHH that it doesn’t cause a problem is that if you interpret it as Rule text (which you almost certainly should) it doesn’t have bad effects (unless you consider a firm statement that the reader of the Rule wants to read the flier a problem, which I don’t; if you don’t want to, and you are playing the game, it simply means you need to start wanting to, or maybe idle yourself, hehe).

The only thing, to me, that makes the lack of a Description: tag an issue is that the item could be argued to not have a Description. (Which I then went on to address after that.) I’m just adding this Comment to explain that I wasn’t saying that there was some implicit action that was making the text that wasn’t marked Description not rule text, as that makes random later arguments about rules not applying because they were descriptive scary. After having said this, I feel the need to reassert my for.

vee:

16-12-2005 10:56:50 UTC

for

ChronosPhaenon:

16-12-2005 11:09:13 UTC

for

Seventy-Fifth Trombone:

16-12-2005 12:57:42 UTC

for

Elias IX:

16-12-2005 13:13:16 UTC

for Well, I suppose there’ll be a Fire Marshall in any case now.

Angry Grasshopper:

16-12-2005 13:22:42 UTC

Well, as long as ‘dub’ doesn’t have any defined effect, this seems harmless enough.


Rodney:

16-12-2005 14:30:35 UTC

for

Cayvie:

16-12-2005 16:51:59 UTC

against

notafraud:

16-12-2005 17:45:56 UTC

That’s funny for

Purplebeard:

16-12-2005 19:59:59 UTC

for

danopato:

16-12-2005 20:39:41 UTC

sure for

Saurik:

16-12-2005 21:58:04 UTC

Two seconds after I commented this to In My Hot Little Hands it was admin’d, and I’m not convinced people are reading comments on things that are admin’d, so I’m cross-commenting it to here as it’s also relevant:

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”.

Saurik:

16-12-2005 21:59:42 UTC

Considering at least one Protagonist (AgentHH) voted on In My Hot Little Hands under the knowledge that Fire in the Disco! would pass, it would be hilarious if, before this could be admin’d, Salamander came and self-kill’d it, leaving us in the previous poorly defined state. (Especially as the admin that handled In My Hot Little Hands didn’t actually admin it accurately yet.)

Angry Grasshopper:

16-12-2005 22:33:13 UTC


COV. Creating so much extra litter is akin to creating a fire hazard, which would be a headache for the marshal.

Elias IX:

16-12-2005 22:39:01 UTC

against CoV.

That may be too many flyers.

AgentHH:

16-12-2005 23:31:58 UTC

Actually, I’m starting to think this should be killed :P Too many flyers, but that isn’t my concern as much as not being able to have nothing. As soon as you lose your item, *poof* you get a flyer. I’m not sure I like that, and as such feel we should leave it in the previously poorly-defined state where each player has a Nothing until further notice. Or is it actually so bad? I think that the way the rules have it set to Nothing makes it apparent that the player has no items and as such is holding on to Nothing as defined by the English language.

against

Saurik:

16-12-2005 23:36:14 UTC

AgentHH: but the rules override that English definition that as stating, overly explicitely, that it is the _name_ of the Item you are holding. If it said the field stated what you were holding, that would be fine. But it _explicitely_ states that it is the _name_ of the item.

Cayvie:

16-12-2005 23:36:18 UTC

this would be so much easier if we just accepted the null value ( - ) as meaning nothing.

Saurik:

17-12-2005 00:11:43 UTC

Cayvie: that’s probably how I would have written the Rule ;P. (Well, assuming I wanted to use the GNDT in such an explicit manner and didn’t just write it the way I did for Deep Pockets, hehe.)

AgentHH:

17-12-2005 00:30:19 UTC

Well, regardless, I don’t like the concept of the Fire Marshal Recruitment Flyer, so my against vote still stands.

Elias IX:

18-12-2005 02:16:32 UTC

Test. The text “Comments are closed.” is for some reason showing.

Salamander:

18-12-2005 13:21:32 UTC

lmol, I don’t believe this passed!!