Saturday, December 19, 2009

Proposal: Meta-wishes

Times out and failed, 6 against, 4 for, 7 unresolved def. Josh

Adminned at 21 Dec 2009 01:42:44 UTC

Add a new section under “Wish Fulfillment” called “Meta-wishes” that reads:

The Djinn has a certain number of meta-wishes (tracked in the “Wishes” column of the GNDT), which if undefined will be initially set to 1. To make a meta-wish, the Djinn must private message both the Sultan and the Grand Vizier a message with the title: “I meta-wish for:” with the desired meta-wish as the text of the message. The Sultan and the Grand Vizier must both be occupied by playing Adventurers, otherwise no meta-wish can be made. If both the Sultan and the Grand Vizier grant the meta-wish, the Djinn is then allowed to perform the required tasks himself, and his number of remaining meta-wishes is decreased by one. The Sultan and Grand Vizier grant the wish by privately messaging the Djinn a message with the title: “Your meta-wish is granted in part.” The meta-wish may only consist of the following:
*A meta-wish to allow the Djinn to do undo a game action not covered in the core rules which was performed less than 24 hour ago.
*A meta-wish to allow the Djinn to change an Adventurer’s power to any legal value.
*A meta-wish to allow the Djinn to allow an Adventurer to perform a daily or weekly action an additional time in a single day/week.
(The same restrictions apply to these three meta-wishes as if it was a normal wish of the same type.)
*A meta-wish to allow the Djinn to directly alter an Adventurer’s corruption.
*A meta-wish to allow the Djinn to ignore a wish that he normally would be required to grant. The full text of the wish in question must be given in the meta-wish.
*A meta-wish to allow the Djinn to grant a two-part wish. The full text of the wish in question must be given in the meta-wish.
No other meta-wishes can be made.
The Sultan and Grand Vizier are free to grant or deny a meta-wish at their own discretion, and granting a wish will not alter their game-state directly (it could if that is what the meta-wish asks for, but there is no cost in granting a meta-wish for the Sultan or Grand Vizier).
The meta-wish is not granted until both the Sultan and the Grand Vizier have granted their part of it.
If the Djinn releases himself from a lamp, or is released by something that is not an Adventurer, he receives one more meta-wish.

 

I first read about nomics in Douglas Hofstadter’s book Gödel, Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. In the book, there is a dialogue about a system of Djinni called GOD (for GOD Over Djinn) and the lowest Djinn can grant wishes, but can also request meta-wishes from GOD. So I thought it would be appropriate to make some reference to that here.

Comments

SingularByte: he/him

19-12-2009 11:09:10 UTC

imperial

redtara: they/them

19-12-2009 14:20:43 UTC

imperial

tecslicer:

19-12-2009 16:40:13 UTC

against

Klisz:

19-12-2009 16:48:09 UTC

imperial  I don’t have time to read through it at the moment; however, congratulations on not doing the “Proposal: Proposal:” thing.

Klisz:

19-12-2009 16:51:41 UTC

CoV for after reading it

alethiophile:

19-12-2009 17:48:13 UTC

against

I may well vote for a similar post with the same idea, but I have a problem with one of the wordings. The bullet ‘A meta-wish to allow the Djinn to directly alter an Adventurer’s corruption’, especially when compared to the similar but differently-worded ‘A meta-wish to allow the Djinn to change an Adventurer’s power to any legal value’, could be construed to mean allow the Djinn to alter the target Adventurer’s corruption at their discretion from now on (i.e. add it to the Djinn’s power). I’m guessing this isn’t what you wanted.

alethiophile:

19-12-2009 17:48:56 UTC

s/power/powers/ above. (Meaning replace the word ‘power’ in the second-to-last sentence with ‘powers’.)

Ornithopter:

19-12-2009 21:58:29 UTC

imperial
It does seem dangerous to have the Djinni in charge of the interpretation of their own wishes. On the other hand, the Djinni can’t win the dynasty, so they have the least to gain from scamming.

Darknight: he/him

20-12-2009 00:11:24 UTC

imperial

Bucky:

20-12-2009 00:28:56 UTC

against

There:

20-12-2009 02:04:39 UTC

@DC: I did do the “Proposal: Proposal: ” thing, but I figured out how to fix it before anyone saw.
@alethiophile: I think I will fix that bit to clarify that. If I wasn’t clear, my intent was to allow the Djinn to change one adventurer’s corruption once per meta-wish to any legal value. I didn’t want to allow the Djinn to just be able to change corruption values at will.
@ornithopter: It just seemed easiest to do it that way. Maybe I will re-propose a similar rule that will require any granted meta-wishes to be fully disclosed.

Basically, I was hoping that this would add some uncertainty to everything about wishes… just to make things even more interesting.

SanguineTeddy:

20-12-2009 03:43:12 UTC

for

Wakukee:

20-12-2009 04:01:27 UTC

Meta-wishes? Has an emperor ever had this kind of power before? Mwa-ha-ha!!!

But in all seriousness, there is no way that I will vote on this.  imperial

digibomber:

20-12-2009 05:01:28 UTC

for

alethiophile:

20-12-2009 06:04:35 UTC

The Djinni can’t win, so it doesn’t really matter how much power they have.

NoOneImportant:

20-12-2009 07:30:39 UTC

against

Oze:

20-12-2009 10:20:37 UTC

against

Kevan: he/him

20-12-2009 12:08:37 UTC

against

Apathetic Lizardman:

20-12-2009 14:00:39 UTC

imperial

Ornithopter:

20-12-2009 17:06:31 UTC

Actually, there’s no reason the Djinni couldn’t win… I guess I should change my vote if Wak’s abstaining.

against

alethiophile:

20-12-2009 17:51:11 UTC

Actually, yes there is—the ruleset under ‘Victory and Ascension’ specifically exclude the Djinn from winning.

Ornithopter:

20-12-2009 19:17:14 UTC

Oh, hey. Would you look at that.

CoV.  for

Uvthenfuv:

20-12-2009 20:28:27 UTC

imperial