Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Proposal: Storage

Vetoed. —75th Trombone

Adminned at 14 Dec 2005 02:37:13 UTC

Add a rule named “Inventory”:

=== Inventory ===

Each Protagonist has an Inventory that is recorded on a Wiki page. An Inventory consists of a list of items collected by that protagonist. Every time a Result includes a sentence with the following structure:

“(protagonist name) picks up (item)”
“(protagonist name) gains (item)”
“(protagonist name) is given (item)”
“(protagonist name) creates (item)”

add that item to that Protagonist’s Inventory. Every time a Result includes a sentence with the following structure:

“(protagonist name) drops (item)”
“(protagonist name) loses (item)”
“(protagonist name)‘s (item) is destroyed.”

remove that item from that Protagonist’s Inventory.

Players without any items in their Inventory add two cows to their Inventory, unless they are in Soviet Russia.

posted by The Lone Amigo at 14 Dec 2005 05:16:13 UTC Comments (4)

Comments

Seventy-Fifth Trombone:

14-12-2005 06:15:31 UTC

veto

Several things:

I don’t want to resort to the Wiki until absolutely necessary.  It gets unwieldy and makes keeping track of stuff awkward.

And arbitrary creation of items is scary. Fifteen potential new items per day?  Nah.

If this is limited to items defined (in number, effect, and location) in the Rules, I’ll like it.  And if that’s the case, I think we can use the GNDT.

The Lone Amigo:

14-12-2005 06:24:32 UTC

Hmmm, you have very valid complaints. I still the Wiki would be less unwieldy than using the GNDT to keep track of a list.

Cayvie:

14-12-2005 07:59:35 UTC

i admire your judicious yet firm use of the veto

Seventy-Fifth Trombone:

14-12-2005 08:16:21 UTC

Thank you, Cayvie   ;)

Amigo, an inventory column in GNDT might be visually more cluttered than a Wikipedia entry, yes.  (And from a data normalization point-of-view, it’s almost physically painful to think about.)

But I think the benefits of having it in the GNDT outweigh the annoyances.  It keeps it one place with all the other data.  It makes it more compact, so even though it’s cluttered, you’re not liable to scroll through three page-lengths of headings to get to what you’re interested in.

And most importantly—for my brand of ADD, anyway—it’s one less page you have to find and open when you’re tabbing back and forth to compare stats to Rules to Proposals, trying to figure out whether you can launch whatever coup you might be planning.

If it gets ridiculous, then yes, moving it to a Wiki page will be fine.  But since I’ll veto anything that lets it get too ridiculous too soon, I strongly think the GNDT is the way to go at first.  :)