[BNomic-Public] The State of the Game

Daniel Lepage bnomic-public@ysolde.ucam.org
Sun, 19 Sep 2004 19:02:12 -0400


Norinel plays Smooth Hands, becoming the Hand Job Master.
Araltaln draws Cash In.

"The Ugly Patch" is p1906.
"Dutifully" is p1907.
"Respect, Again" is p1908.

Now, here's the state of the game, near as I can see. I've put this  
together from the info stored on the backup wiki (at least an nweek out  
of date), and from my year or so of spoon-business archives.

If anyone wants any other information, ask me and I'll see what I can  
do.

Also, if anyone sees anything incorrect, let me know and I'll look into  
it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
----------------
                                      Scores, attributes
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
----------------
Everyone has zero points.
Everyone has zero Research, except:
	Wonko has 2.
	Zarpint has 73.

Norinel is Hand Job Master.
Wonko is Zen Master of Nomic.

The following people are playing:
  Aquarion
  Araltaln
  bd
  Gizmit
  Glotmorf
  Iain
  Norinel
  Phil
  Rob
  Sagitta
  Scoff!
  SkArcher
  Teucer
  The Pusher Robot
  theta
  The Voice
  Wonko
  Zarpint the Incomplete

The following societies exist:
  M-Tek
  Members: Glotmorf (Prez), Wonko

  Mercantile Society, The
  Members: Wonko

  UNSEEN
  Founder: Teucer. Membership is tracked by Teucer

  Wealthy Bastard Enterprises
  Members: Glotmorf (Wealthy Bastard, Usurper), Wonko (Deposed King)

  Insert Name Here
  Members: Wonko (Leader), bd, Glotmorf, The Voice

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
----------------
                                   Ministries and Ministers
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
----------------
Zarpint is Meta-Minister.
Araltaln is Attorney General.
Wonko is Minister of Quotes.
Phil is The Twiddler.
Zarpint is Minister of the Roster.
The FCC, the Chairman, and the Dealer are unheld ministries.
52 elections are in progress for each. 51 of them have no nominations  
and no candidates.
The 52nd ones are for the sake of argument the 'active' ones. In them:
Wonko has been nominated and has accepted as a candidate for the FCC,  
the Chairman, and the Dealer.
bd has been nominated and has accepted as a candidate for the FCC.

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
----------------
                                     The Justice System
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
----------------
The Upper House is empty; Zarpint, Wonko, and Araltaln have begun to  
join it and will finish at the end of the nweek.

1 CFI is pending. It does not have an assigned judge. There are no  
eligible judges.
<cfi>
<title>Newton's Third Law</title>
<birthdate>
   <day>15</day>
   <month>9</month>
   <year>2004</year>
</birthdate>
<plaintiff> Araltaln </plaintiff>
<defendant> Wonko </defendant>
<statement> Wonko failed to fulfill the Election Duty on his second
attempt and all attempts thereafter. </statement>
<ptiff_anal> The Election Duty requires that an Election be called on
every Open Ministry--however, Elections cannot be started on
Ministries which already have Elections running. Therefore, Wonko
could not complete the Game Actions necessary to complete this Duty.
</ptiff_anal>
<def_anal>

To understand why my actions are legal, look at r1583 [[Duties]].  
Section A.1 of this rule states "When a Duty Requires Attention, any  
player who is not otherwise barred from performing that Duty may  
perform it."
Look also at section C.2, which includes: "It shall be the  
responsibility of the Player carrying out the Duty to call an Election  
for all Free Ministries."

These two sentences taken together indicate that when the Election Duty  
requires attention, any player who is not forbidden from calling an  
Election on all Free Ministries may do so.

The Plaintiff's argument revolves around the claim that the rules make  
it illegal to call an Election for a Ministry if an Election is already  
in progress for that Ministry; however, this claim is not supported by  
the rules.

It is my belief that the plaintiff was confused by r625.B, which states  
"Any player may start an Election for any Open Ministry as a Game  
Action, provided that the Ministry has been Open for at least five  
ndays and there is not already an Election in progress for that  
Ministry".

This clause has no bearing on my actions: although it gives one set of  
circumstances under which an election may be called, it does not state  
or imply that calling an election is illegal under all other  
circumstances. Thus, it does not forbid be from calling elections as  
per rule 1583.

Note: The following past precedents relate to this case:
1) Past use of ministries and deputies confirms that when the rules  
state "player X is responsible for doing Y", it is implicit in this  
that player X is empowered to do Y (indeed, some Ministries, and my own  
deputyship and thus the game, would be rendered completely  
nonfunctional under the current rules were this otherwise).
2) Former CFIs have supported the interpretation that a rule saying  
"players may do X if Y is true" should not be interpreted to forbid  
players from doing X when Y is false when another rule allows X to be  
done.
</def_anal>
</cfi>

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
----------------
                                       Proposals
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
----------------
Three proposals exist:
------------------------
Proposal 1906: The Ugly Patch
By Norinel

Shelve this proposal.

[[In case I come up with something better to do with it.]]

----------------------
Proposal 1907: Dutifully
By Zarpint

Add the following to the Ruleset as r1583.A.4:

"If a Duty consists of performing one or more Actions, merely performing
those Actions is not performing the Duty unless the entity performing
the Actions states explicitly that e is performing the Duty. No player
may perform a Duty more than once an nweek. To perform a Duty, a player
must be able to perform the Actions it consists of regardless of whether
or not e is performing the Duty, unless the Duty explicitly empowers
Players to perform Actions."

Call an election for all unoccupied Ministries with Godel as the
Moderator and Approval Voting as the Selection Method.

----------------------
Proposal 1908: Respect, Again
By Zarpint

Add the following to the Ruleset as r21.A.3:

"A.3 Respect

Players may possess Respect in units of Franklins. After a Player Wins,
e receives 1 Franklin. It is the responsibility of the Minister of the
Roster to keep track of the Franklins each Player has."

Add the following to the end of r27:

"When a Player is awarded a Win in this fashion, Deactivate this Rule."

[[That way, when we prop to fix a scam, we can manually reactivate r27
when we're ready.]]
----------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
----------------
                                           Coils
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
----------------
One coil is posted:
{{
__Cards: General interface__
Bonus: 50 points
Patron: Wonko

Description:
The program must come in the form of something I can easily put on the  
website, i.e., a php page, a cgi script, a MoinMoin macro, etc.

It will be responsible for being an interface for players to move cards  
around themselves.

It must be able to do the following things:
  1. It stores information (name, body, image, etc.) about each existing  
card, in whatever format it wants (MySQL, etc. can be arranged; tell me  
what you need)
  2. It stores a list of 'card regions' where cards can be, and knows  
which cards are in which regions (examples of regions would include  
'The Deck', "Wonko's Hand", and 'Waiting')
  3. It provides a means of viewing, through a webpage, all of the above  
information
  4. It provides pages that allow a person to move specific cards from  
one region to another
  5. It provides pages that allow a person to move a random card from  
one region to another
  6. It makes it easy to add new regions and cards, and also to destroy  
old ones.

Other things are not necessary, but would be nice:
  * The ability to perform any of those changes repeatedly (for example,  
if I could transfer random cards from one region (like the Deck) to  
many other regions at once (like all players' hands)
  * Authentication stuff. If this is done as a MoinMoin macro, then  
authentication is done by the wiki itself and you can use the full  
power of MoinMoin's login system; if this is done as anything else, it  
is up to you what sort of security you use. If you don't prohibit  
non-players from altering the data, then I'll probably just slap a  
.htaccess password protection on a page and give all the players a  
password to edit things.
  * Standard buttons for common requests, for example, a 'Draw' button  
that moves a card at random from the region called 'The Deck' to  
whatever region you're currently viewing, and a 'play' button that  
moves a card from a hand to the Deck (or maybe to a 'pending plays'  
region, so we can decide if it goes into play or into the deck?)
  * Support for cards changing what they are and remembering their  
history somehow. For example, something that would let us implement The  
Plague.
  * Any other fun features you can think of.

There's no time limit, but if you want complicated card things like The  
Plague somebody will have to fill this first, 'cause I sure don't have  
time to build support for that.
}}
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
----------------
                                         Miscellany
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
----------------
The public forum is bnomic-public@ysolde.ucam.org
The common private forum is bnomic-private@ysolde.ucam.org
The website is http://www.bnomic.org
The wiki is unavailable, but an out-of-date backup wiki is available at  
http://www.bnomic.org/wiki
The Roster is maintained at http://dynamicwind.com/roster.html
The Rules are maintained at http://www.bnomic.org/static/rules.html
The Cards are maintained at http://www.bnomic.org/display_all_cards.psp
Proposals and calls for judgment are, at the moment, tracked via emails  
such as this one.

-- 
Wonko


In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a  
really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would  
actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them  
again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should,  
because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it  
happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that  
happened in politics or religion.
       -Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP Keynote Address