[BNomic-Public] ideas...

[Daniel Lepage]

On Tuesday, December 16, 2003, at 01:00 AM, Zarpint Jeremy Cook wrote:

> 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.

I have, half written, a script that, given an email from a player, 
figures out which player sent it and passes it on to a handler based on 
the subject line. So, for example, an email coming from 
dpl33@cornell.edu, wonko@charybdis.ellipsis.cx, or wonko@bnomic.org 
would all be treated as an email from Wonko, etc.
	It also supports a mild command language, allowing players to, for 
example, add new email addresses and whatnot.
	I can try to finish this by the end of the week, if it would be 
helpful.

>>> 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.)

Typos could also be the responsibility of a Council of Elders; three 
people can make decisions much faster than the full game, and if all 
three have the privileges to alter the rules DB, any one of them could 
fix the problem.

> 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.

The Council could handle this, too, since waiting for a majority of 
players to declare something is generally much slower than waiting for 
three.

>>
>>> 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?

Council again - they don't necessarily need a forum to make decisions, 
as long as they can report to everyone what decisions they've made.

>>> 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)

That's sort of what I was thinking, but I'd want it to be a Metacard - 
I was thinking Reincarnation brings a Lost Soul back to the Forced 
Leave world, and the MetaCard Zombify (Reincarnation + 2xBrains...) 
turns them into a zombie who plays cards at your command, but is 
destroyed if targeted by Holy Water.

-- 
Wonko