Friday, December 06, 2024

Proposal: This ruleset is a mess

Withdrawn. Failed by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 07 Dec 2024 21:07:36 UTC

Append the following to the rule “Moving”:

The keyword Move with a capital M is distinct from “move” with a lowercase M. The former refers to the list of Moves in this rule. The latter refers to any change in a Snail’s Position.

In the description of the Slug of Death, replace ‘Other Snails may not move if the Slug of Death’s position is greater than theirs’ with ‘When the Slug of Death has a Position greater than a Snail, that Snail’s Status is changed to “Slugged”’.

Give ‘move’ a capital M in ‘cause the Slug of Death to perform the Crawl move for that race’.
Give ‘move’ a capital M in ‘When using the Crawl move, you may increase your position by DICE12 instead of DICE10’.

There was a strange unspoken agreement on the difference between “move” and capital-M “Move”. Josh is right to point out that this is incredibly ambiguous. This codifies the difference in the ruleset and irons out a couple inconsistencies. It also makes interpreting the rules incredibly difficult. I would’ve just rewritten the rules to avoid this distinction in the first place, but they’re already big enough that it’d be impossible to catch all the edge cases…

Comments

JonathanDark: he/him

06-12-2024 22:55:39 UTC

I had already started working on a similar Proposal to rename capital-M “Move” to something else less ambiguous, but might work as well. There’s a few places that could still use a change:

If the Position of a Snail is after the Finish Line, they cannot Move. If there is an Ongoing Race but no non-Slug Snail can Move, any Snail or the Jury may perform the Award Ceremony.

The above could still allow a Snail after the Finish Line to have their Position changed by means other than a captial-M Move, such as a Slug’s Effect. I could see the Iron Slug pulling a Snail back under the Finish Line. Do we want that?

If it has been at least 24 hours since the Slug of Death last moved in a ongoing race

Another Slug could change the position of the Slug of Death, causing a reset of this 24-hour timer if this text is lower-case M “move”.

Name: Identity Crisis Ian
Movement Rules: If it has been longer than 24 hours since he has last moved or he has not Moved this Race

This is unfortunately using both lower and upper case M. We should decide on one or the other.

 

Josh: he/they

06-12-2024 23:02:09 UTC

I will vote against this as currently written. The ruleset should not distinguish between minor and missable typographical and stylistic differences; if we want to distinguish between two types of concepts then we should implement a second set of terminology.

Habanero:

06-12-2024 23:39:29 UTC

I’m not incredibly proud of this proposal either, for much the same reasons (I just feel like *something* needs to be done about it before race 3 rolls around, and don’t really have the time to spare to draft up something more robust). I’d be willing to withdraw it if one of you comes up with something better.

JonathanDark: he/him

07-12-2024 00:02:10 UTC

In that case I’ll finish the one I started and post it.

Josh: he/they

07-12-2024 15:39:01 UTC

against

JonathanDark: he/him

07-12-2024 18:31:46 UTC

against in favor of Playing Around.

Habanero:

07-12-2024 20:16:19 UTC

against Withdrawn in favour of Playing Around