BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

I haven’t been in a (real) situation of a time freeze, nor in a situation that warranted it. Thus, I trust the wisdom of other more experienced Kaiju Gods.

I’ve been playing since 2003 and don’t remember any situations that would have been helped by a Time Freeze. (I can remember at least one case where the ability to freeze the gamestate at will and declare victory during that would have been useful for a scam, though.)

The situation for which I think the Time Freezes could be very useful is not for loopholes that need plugging, but when there is a massive schism as to the exact nature of the Gamestate.  Everyone will want to continue playing under the assumption that he is correct, which would lead to a horrible mess to untangle either way the CfJ resolved.

In this situation, it is almost essential to be able to call “Time out!”, and Hiatus via DoV is of questionable legality if the poster doesn’t believe he has achieved victory.

Admittedly, massive schisms don’t happen very frequently.

I’d have thought that would have been just as easy to deal with using a CfJ that opened with “Time out! Any changes made to the GNDT between now and this CfJ passing shall be undone.” - it’d even be acceptable to post a CfJ that only did this, and a second CfJ to try to resolve whatever the actual issue was.

Because the point of the Time Freeze was to allow people to pause the game without falsely declaring victory.

The problem with putting a clause in the CfJ is that they only take of the CfJ passses

The CfJ would only not pass if a majority of players voted against it, and if half the players vote against it then it’s not a proper scam. Freezing time to ensure that you get the result you then want is probably not sufficiently in the spirit of the game to justify a core rule.

There were a couple of situations before I made that post in which someone created a DoV, there was debate over the legitness of the victory, and another person created a DoV to prolong the hiatus while the debate was resolved via a CfJ. If there was a way around this via cleaver CfJ wording, it wasn’t being used. The time freeze proposal was designed to allow the same game freezing mechanic without abusing the concept of a DoV.

Gosh.

Once upon a time, CfJs prolonged the hiatus automatically. When did that get written out, and why?

It looks like that was me, actually, after making really sure that people weren’t against it. (That proposal failed because of my carefulness clause, but I reproposed it verbatim a while later and it passed.)

It looks like my usual “CfJs can be used to threaten punishment for continuing to exploit a loophole” argument, anyway.

Sorry, broken URL. The proposal I’m talking about was here. It was reproposed and passed unanimously two days later.

changing my vote—looks like there might be enough of a precedence of using it, and though it has a potential of abuse (as does any other rule), the benefit seems worthwhile.

maybe it just needs some rewriting, rather than a complete repeal.