[BNomic-Public] ideas...

[Zarpint Jeremy Cook]

On Tue, 16 Dec 2003, Daniel Lepage wrote:

Computer Automation stuff:
It sounds good, but it would be nice if it didn't all have to be done through the Web, but
we could also vote/propose by email. Would we write all these, or would Joel or Dave?
I could write some...

We could make a Ministry or something where writers of working automatons get points for writing.

>
> > 2. rectify
>
> This could perhaps be done by a web script of sorts... but no amount of
> scripting can tell the difference between a typo fix and something that
> alters the meaning of the word.

The web script could contain the four letters "DWIM" (cf. Jargon File)
(i.e., a rectifying web script would be more likely to turn rules into Sushi-ese than vice versa.)

clock:
It would be good to have some mechanism player control over it other than by proposals. The
script would work well, but we might need to stop it manually at some point in an efficient way.

>
> > 6. designate Fora
>
> Certainly a proposal has the power to designate a forum, as does a SOE;
> perhaps a less powerful version of the Council of Elders could be
> brought back to deal with small things such as this. They could govern
> typo fixes, too.

No--not if there's no forum to make a proposal in. We would need a SOE here, or else
to codify a backup forum. Do we need an SOE if the only problem is that we haven't designated
a forum as official?

>
> > 11. diagnose comas.
>
> This, at least, I've already got drafts to deal with. Rather than
> making it a boring duty that has to be dealt with from time to time,
> I'm thinking we could use the half-dead as tools in the game of cards.
> Under the Baron's current proposed change to the card rules, all
> players would get a card each nweek, even those on Forced Leave; with
> Looting the Corpse, such cards could be claimed by active players.
> 	I plan on proposing a) more cards that let you somehow manipulate
> empty players, and b) cards to take over Garbage Collection. For
> example, __Living Death__ might say something like, "Choose a player
> who has not sent any message to the public forum in the past three
> nweeks. That player is put on Forced Leave." Playing this card on an
> effectively dead player would then make them a legal target for Looting
> the Corpse and other such cards; another card might remove any player
> from the game if that player has been on Forced Leave for two nweeks,
> and return eir cards to the Deck.
> 	Perhaps one card might even allow one to reincarnate a Lost Soul as a
> player on Forced Leave, to create new card banks...

How about a Zombify card that lets you bring a dead player back to life and control em?
(I will actually propose all this once we are out of SOE)

>
> BTW, Athena, Cards are new, so you don't see them in the nweek 51
> rules. They're like Actions in Dvorak, if that means anything to you.
> The other big difference I can remember between what I have and the
> real ruleset is that the system of voting and proposals has changed; it
> functions exactly the same, but is easier to read and to expand. For
> one thing, Bandwidth now comes in discrete units, "Chits of Bandwidth",
> and each player has 10 of them at the beginning of each nweek; a
> general proposal takes 2.

Oh, I like Dvorak, and also the more anarchic 1000 Blank White Cards. Thanks for the update.

> > Hey---wasn't there once a CFJ saying something like, "No rules mean
> > anything; only what the
> > Admin says counts?" I don't think it was Ruled on, though.

>Well, the Statute of Limitations runs along those lines...

No, this was an actual CFJ that said that the rules at no time had any effect on the game, I
think.

-- 
Zarpint            "All thy toiling only breeds new dreams, new dreams;
Jeremy Cook         there is no truth saving in thine own heart."
mcfoufou@umich.edu       --W.B. Yeats, The Song of the Happy Shepherd
grep -r kibo /     "Movements are the problem, not the answer to problems."