Thursday, October 08, 2009

Proposal: Smashing other nomics’ rulesets to pieces

Quorumed. Enacted 10-2-2. Oze
Ais523 is awarded 10 points—arth

Adminned at 09 Oct 2009 12:53:10 UTC

Create a new dynastic rule, “Ruleset Theft”:

As a weekly action, a player may attempt to Steal a Rule. To do so, that player must follow the following steps in order:

  • Roll “Stealing a Rule: DICEX” in the GNDT, where X is the number of active nomics listed at (note that DatabaseTemplate is not a nomic; it is illegal to make more than one of these rolls in a week);
  • Find the ruleset, or entity corresponding to a ruleset, of the nomic whose position in that list is equal to the number rolled in the GNDT in the first step (the attempt to Steal a Rule fails if it cannot be found, or if the nomic in question has no analogue to a ruleset);
  • Pick a random rule, or entity corresponding to a rule, from that nomic (using the GNDT to randomize which rule to pick in a suitable manner; if the rules of the nomic in question are customarily arranged in some order, then rolling DICEX where X is the number of rules in that nomic, then picking the Nth rule where N is the result of the dice roll, is the recommended method);
  • Submit a proposal with “[Theft]” (a Theft Proposal) in its title which would create the rule in question as a BlogNomic dynastic rule, except that any number of proper nouns in the rule in question may be changed from terms in the nomic in question to equivalent terms in BlogNomic (for example, if a rule that was stolen this way had the name of the nomic it was stolen from in it, that name should be changed to “BlogNomic” rather than being left in its original state);
  • If the proposal in question is passed, then the attempt to Steal a Rule succeeds; if it is failed, it fails.

As an exception to the Core Rules, Theft Proposals submitted according to this rule can be legally submitted even if the submitter already has 2 proposals Pending, or has already submitted 3 proposals that day. Also, no player may edit the NomicWiki page in question while this rule exists; and if any player edited the page in question while this proposal was Pending, that player must not attempt to Steal a Rule. It is not necessary, although still considered good style, to mention the source of the rule created by a Theft Proposal in the Theft Proposal’s commentary.

When an attempt to Steal a Rule succeeds, the player who made the attempt gains an additional 5 points, each player who voted FOR the corresponding Theft Proposal gains 2 points, and the administrator who administrated the Theft Proposal gains 2 points.

Fittingly, this rule was more-or-less stolen from another (now dead) nomic, too; I can’t remember which one it was. That other nomic didn’t get started simply because it was the only rule, and people got bored before it managed to steal a workable proposal system; with the rest of BlogNomic going on in the background, this should work better. This is done as a proposal so that massively damaging new rules can be voted down; the rewards for voting FOR are to make these proposals easier to pass than typical proposals.

Even if this proposal doesn’t pass, I may try to steal rules anyway, to see what happens. Of course, there wouldn’t be extra rewards then, and it would cost slots.

posted by ais523 at 08 Oct 2009 13:33:09 UTC Comments (31)

Comments

spikebrennan:

08-10-2009 14:00:18 UTC

against
The monkeys typing Shakespeare woudl have a better chance of coming up with a coherent ruleset—or even two separate random rules that bear any sort of coherent relationship to each other or to our core rules.  Even the vocabulary wouldn’t match.

Klisz:

08-10-2009 14:00:46 UTC

for  for  for  for  for

ais523:

08-10-2009 14:22:41 UTC

@spikebrennan: the proposal isn’t really intended to create a coherent ruleset… it’s more to add rules to build around. After all, near the start of most dynasties, there are lots of rules that reference things that aren’t in the ruleset yet; and the plain language of other nomics’ rules tends to make sense, even if the terms in them aren’t rigorously defined.

Josh: Observer he/they

08-10-2009 14:37:26 UTC

for Metadynasties are no place for consistency. *remembers hats, Gostaks*

Kevan: he/him

08-10-2009 14:42:33 UTC

for Although “no player may edit the NomicWiki page” is ineffective, as the page is an autogenerated list of other pages (apart from the redundant Isonomic link at the top).

ais523:

08-10-2009 14:45:22 UTC

@Kevan: oh, good point. If anyone starts cheating like that, we can go punish them by proposal, though.

Klisz:

08-10-2009 14:46:03 UTC

CoV against  because we might steal a dictatorship.

Klisz:

08-10-2009 14:46:53 UTC

CoV for  because the proposal would fail.

ais523:

08-10-2009 14:51:34 UTC

Yep, having to submit a proposal, rather than just creating the rule, lets us vote down harmful rules that might be stolen.

Wooble:

08-10-2009 15:00:42 UTC

for

redtara: they/them

08-10-2009 15:05:02 UTC

for

arthexis: he/him

08-10-2009 15:16:13 UTC

against

ais523:

08-10-2009 15:19:21 UTC

@arthexis: I thought this would be the sort of thing you’d like…

Bucky:

08-10-2009 16:04:25 UTC

against on a technicality in the first step.

ais523:

08-10-2009 16:07:47 UTC

@Bucky: what technicality?

Kevan: he/him

08-10-2009 16:23:53 UTC

The broken URL? You typed it with pointy brackets around it, rather than a proper HTML tag. I assume that just counts as a typo, though.

ais523:

08-10-2009 17:36:21 UTC

@Kevan, ah, yes. It’ll be visible when it’s copied into MediaWiki.

Shem:

08-10-2009 18:15:43 UTC

imperial What list is this?

Qwazukee:

08-10-2009 19:01:24 UTC

against I don’t like other nomics. That’s why I do BlogNomic.

spikebrennan:

08-10-2009 20:51:28 UTC

for
COV.  Let’s see what happens.

Darknight: he/him

08-10-2009 22:13:38 UTC

for should be fun.

Excalabur:

08-10-2009 22:42:21 UTC

imperial

Bucky:

09-10-2009 04:42:13 UTC

CoV for

arthexis: he/him

09-10-2009 05:44:11 UTC

I’ll explain why I don’t like this:

First, it means we have to read potentially endless rulesets before we can act on this rule.

Second, this rule has a large wording, with many many spots where the interpretation is readily left up to the proposal.

Third, I can get around the “safeguards” on this rule by becoming Idle (not counting as a player), and then editing that NomicWiki page to something suitable to my ends.

Fourth, most rules on nomics make no sense without other complimentary rules (IE a rule that specifies how can I change my tie color is quite irrelevant). While it might appear inoffensive, it can still clog up the proposal queue and slow down the game in general.

redtara: they/them

09-10-2009 05:56:05 UTC

arth:
1) you only have to read the selected ruleset. No, actually: you only have to read the ORDER of the selected ruleset.
2) Seems unambiguous enough
3) We can CfJ that, to treat it like you’d never done it
4) Those proposals can be S/Ked

arthexis: he/him

09-10-2009 06:11:48 UTC

@yuri:

1)What if the rule’s ordering cannot be easily inferred without having to read it? Take BN for an example. What should I roll? I have no idea! Should I roll DICE3 because we have 3 rules? or one for each core+dynasty+glossary entry? Are sub-rules rules? In fact, BN doesn’t even DEFINE sub-rules. We take them for granted. Do people coming for other Nomics come that without having to hang around for a while to watch us interpret the ruleset? 

2) Somewhere it says “Pick a random rule” it says one method is recommended, but none are enforced. So, lets try this: I’ll write down a number, and put it in a hat with no other numbers. Then I’ll randomly shuffle the hat and produce a paper that tells me which rule to steal… not random enough? Too bad, it seems random to me.

3) But wasn’t my play a legal play? Why should you try to undo it? Because I’m smarter than you and you don’t like that?

4) And that fixes what? So I picked a crappy proposal as my once a week action. It was really crappy. Though luck, self kill it, loose 2 points, wait another week. Real fun gameplay!

redtara: they/them

09-10-2009 06:30:22 UTC

1 and 2 could be defined more clearly, I agree. But no one except you will take advantage of those things.
3) Let’s not resort to ad hominem attacks.
4) It’s a risk you have to take.

Kevan: he/him

09-10-2009 08:23:14 UTC

If you don’t find an optional rule fun, don’t use it. If a quorum of players don’t find it fun, repeal it.

arthexis: he/him

09-10-2009 18:30:15 UTC

Currently 8-2-2

Kevan: he/him

09-10-2009 18:41:08 UTC

I make it 9-2-2 (Ais, Darth, Josh, me, Wooble, Yuri, Spike, Darknight and Bucky in favour). You don’t fancy changing your vote so that we can pass it right now?

Oze:

09-10-2009 19:07:59 UTC

for