Sunday, September 11, 2011

Proposal: The Simplest Ideas

Reached quorum 6 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 12 Sep 2011 00:03:24 UTC

Reword the rule “Using Items in the Most Creative Ways” to:-

Some Items may have special effects, as follows:

  • Fishing equipment and Can of Worms. If no Survivor has done so that day, any sane Survivor owning both Fishing equipment and a Can of Worms may Go Fishing: they shall roll a DICE3. On 1, they may add a Raw Fish (an Edible Damp Item worth 2 Portions) to their possession. Otherwise, nothing happens.
  • Can of Worms. A Survivor carrying a Can of Worms may spend 1 Sanity to treat all Cans of Worms as being Edible for the remainder of the day.
  • A Children’s Book. If a Survivor possesses a Children’s book, as a Daily Action they may Read to any one Survivor (which may be themselves). Any Survivor who is Read to gains 1 Sanity level. No Survivor may gain more than 1 Sanity level in this way, per week.
  • Leather cased desk clock made by Curtis of Horspool. If a Survivor possesses this Desk Clock and no Survivor has done so in the last seven days, any Survivor may decrease the sanity of every Survivor by 1. This affects all Survivors including himself.
  • The Compass of Jack Sparrow. If an Insane Survivor possesses the Compass of Jack Sparrow, they may perform a Sighting action, without being Sane.

If a Proposal’s Title includes the string “Eureka!”, and its effect is only to add or modify a single effect in the list above, then it is known as a Eureka Proposal - it does not count towards (and is not affected by) the “2 Proposals pending” or “3 Proposals that day” limits of Rule 1.4. A Survivor may not make more than one Eureka Proposal per day.

The effects defined on the wiki page “Ideas” shall no longer apply to the gamestate.

Maybe this would just be simpler as a free extra proposal; the main effect we’re getting from the current implementation just seems to be “if the Captain doesn’t like it then it can never enact”.

I’ll fix the clock while I’m here.

posted by Kevan at 11 Sep 2011 12:27:23 UTC Comments (12)

Comments

Ely:

11-09-2011 14:38:03 UTC

for

Florw:

11-09-2011 16:03:13 UTC

for

bateleur:

11-09-2011 16:29:53 UTC

Rules question: if a proposal contains a false statement (such as “the sky is beige”) does that statement become true within the game as if it were within the text of a rule, or is it simply ignored?

(I ask because the line at the end of this proposal is more-or-less such a statement. Effects on that page DO continue to apply, just not as a result of being on the page.)

Prince Anduril:

11-09-2011 16:47:31 UTC

You could argue that a false statement in the rules is actually a rule-defined keyword, so all instances of that word in the rules should use that definition.

The Keywords section of the rules gives this example:

“A rule specifying “bananas are blue” cannot be overruled by posting a dictionary definition or a photo of a banana”.

That last sentence is a very interesting case. I’ll point it out because I see no practical advantage to exploiting it. “May” is defined as “is permitted to” in the keywords. If you replace that definition in this proposal you get the following:

“A Survivor is permitted to not make more than one Eureka Proposal per day.”

Well that’s good to know.

for

Kevan: he/him

11-09-2011 16:51:17 UTC

It should be ignored - a proposal may only “change the Ruleset or Gamestate”, and the colour of the sky isn’t gamestate because it’s not “information which the Ruleset regulates the alteration of”, so it’s outside of proposal scope.

The current Ideas page has been triggering an invisible “start applying effectively to the gamestate” effect every time an item was added; I’m just making sure that we switch it off if we stop using the page. (I’m not entirely sure that “applying to the gamestate” ever made any sense, but still.)

bateleur:

11-09-2011 17:13:06 UTC

for

Prince Anduril:

11-09-2011 17:19:12 UTC

It’s interesting that ‘may not’ according to the current definition of ‘may’ always means ‘is permitted to not’. I might try and think of a reword.

Ely:

11-09-2011 17:26:05 UTC

I think that common sense should always be used.
May=is permitted to
negative form of “may” (i.e may not)=negative form of “is permitted to” (is not permitted to)
If the Appendix said “every time may appears in the Ruleset it is read as “is permitted to”, then you would have a point.
We’re people, not computers (at least I’m pretty sure I am)

Kevan: he/him

11-09-2011 17:29:07 UTC

[Prince] Well, giving something a definition doesn’t mean “replace this exact word with these other words” - we can also read it as “is not permitted to”.

It might be best just to add “may not” to the glossary, for clarity. The only context I can think of where we’d want it to mean “permitted to not” would be when it meant “permitted to opt-out” (“survivors must shave every day; female survivors may not shave”), but the oddness of that wording suggests that we’d never write a rule like that without realising, so a glossary definition of “may not” would be fine.

bateleur:

11-09-2011 17:29:23 UTC

I tend to feel that these sorts of interpretation wars are well handled by calls for judgement. It’s easy to come up with unnatural interpretations, but very hard to get any support from them being correct!

Prince Anduril:

11-09-2011 17:45:12 UTC

I’ll transfer my responses to my proposal - please see there.

Darknight: he/him

11-09-2011 22:21:47 UTC

for