Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Unmutexing the ball?

One gripe I have with the current rules is that there’s nothing much to do if you don’t have the ball (hereafter, if you are a non-carrier). The ball acts like a mutex for play. One idea for changing this:

Allow players to set instructions, in some restricted language, in the GNDT (“Play”, maybe?), which take effect immediately upon their acquiring the ball (subject to some safety conditions, e.g. to prevent infinite cycles). This would give non-carriers something to do (prepare their Plays), but would still keep ‘actual’ play centered on the ball, leaving the mechanics for the ball unchanged. Surely ideas roughly like this have been tried in past dynasties? My gut says it’s unlikely to work well, but I’m not sure.

I guess that would be creating play for non-carriers by introducing a level of metaplay. There are probably simpler alternatives where we just create new (non-meta) play for non-carriers.

Thoughts?

posted by Eritivus at 29 Oct 2014 05:07:39 UTC Comments (12)

Comments

ayesdeeef:

29-10-2014 13:08:13 UTC

Maybe we should just add more balls. I’m not kidding.

ayesdeeef:

29-10-2014 13:09:06 UTC

Are dynasties allowed to make their own appendices? That would be cool.

Bucky:

29-10-2014 15:40:26 UTC

Appendices?  You mean wiki pages?

ayesdeeef:

30-10-2014 00:49:44 UTC

Well, the ruleset has an appendix that clarifies terms. Could a Dynasty have an appendix that clarifies Dynastic terms? I understand there are rule-based ways to do this like “The word blank is treated as if it is in the appendix with definition blank” but how about a Dynasty-specific appendix?

Sylphrena:

30-10-2014 02:10:07 UTC

I agree that allowing gameplay for the non-ball-carriers is important. However, I’m having trouble picturing what a “play” would look like.

Sylphrena:

30-10-2014 02:49:57 UTC

@ayesdeeef: I see no reason why we couldn’t make a proposal to make Section 1 be Core Rules, Section 2 be Dynastic Rules, Section 3 be a Dynastic Appendix, and Section 4 be a General Appendix (where sections 2 & 3 blank themselves each dynasty instead of just Section 2). There’s enough rewriting of the rules involved so that I won’t do it if I’m not certain it would pass, but I see no reason why it couldn’t happen.

ayesdeeef:

30-10-2014 03:01:55 UTC

My thoughts exactly! I’ll put that on my to-do list (it’s now one item long)

Bucky:

30-10-2014 04:39:29 UTC

Why not just have a special ‘appendix’ rule at the end of the Dynastic Rules section?

Sylphrena:

30-10-2014 05:17:47 UTC

Mostly because I want the default to be “appendix doesn’t disappear between dynasties” and because I want the appendix to stay after the regular dynastic rules in the ruleset (and for consistency between appendices). No functional reasons, just aesthetic ones.

Eritivus:

30-10-2014 05:28:44 UTC

Sylphrena, the examples I had imagined so far, designed to just use the existing mechanics:

NONE
KICK TO Bucky
KICK TO Offense
KICK TO Midfield AND ASSIST
KICK Goalward AND DEASSIST
SHOOT
IF (ASSISTS >= 3) THEN (SHOOT) ELSE (KICK TO Offensive AND ASSIST)

Not sure whether these would lead to interesting metaplay as is—they could of course be adjusted if these suck but the overall idea doesn’t suck.

Eritivus:

30-10-2014 05:31:42 UTC

ayesdeeef: interesting idea, multiple balls. It makes sense flavorically, for a practice session. Not immediately obvious to me what all would have to change to accommodate switching from “the Ball” to “a Ball”.

ayesdeeef:

30-10-2014 15:06:28 UTC

Bucky, what Sylphrena just said is what I also meant. The Dynastic Appendix could have its own explanation in the Core Rules and simply be wiped between Dynasties to be used by the next Dynasties.