Baron von Skippy on 22 Oct 2002 00:52:02 -0000


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Re: [spoon-discuss] societies and corporations discussion


*sigh* Okay, first of all, I'd like to apologize for the generally pissy tone last night. My response to your proposal wasn't as much logical as it was territorial. M-Tek is sort of my baby, and I sometimes think of r578 as my adopted child. Let me try a more rational statement today...'

-Yeah, as a general note: I have no problems with, in fact I encourage, people revising vSOI or the satellite rules that make vSOI what it is. This proposal looks to be doing that, although I didn't see anywhere in there dealing with the Gnome Account or vSET, which will soon become a problem. So alterations are okay. However, people suggesting its destruction, especially as part of a blanket purge of newer, less proven and more questionably motivated societies, will be hunted down and tortured. Your computer will crash just as you finish your masterpiece of a Nomic prop.
Trained attack squirrels will come for you as you walk down the street.
Never again will you be able to find socks that match.
I hope I need not continue with the list of horrendous things I can do to you if the need arises...-

There are problems with the ruleset, yes. This is inherent in any ruleset that's gone through as many modifications as this one has. It's like a quilted hot-air balloon: it's gonna leak somewhere, and most attempts to change it, while perhaps fixing some leaks, have the potential to cause others.
-Especially if we keep trying to attatch patches with nail guns...-

This isn't to say that a given rule is totally, inherently bad because either a given single segment of it is bad or because someone manages to use it for a purpose other than that for which it was intended. That a smashed beer bottle is a deadly weapon doesn't necessarily mean beer bottles as a whole need re-engineering.

There is therefore some separation between a rule and its use. A mess can be caused by a flaw in a rule, or the interaction of multiple rules, but that doesn't mean the rule itself is necessarily a mess. The rule may be generally functional, generally well-formed, with relatively tiny flaws that can be magnified a hundredfold in actual use.
-*grin* Or two thousand and fifty fold.-

To declare a mess to be a mess, and to hold the person who made the mess responsible for it, is one thing. To declare a rule to be as big a mess as the mess made through the exploitation of a flaw in the rule is another. The person or persons responsible for the creation of said rule may take some measure of offense at the suggestion that the product of their effort was a total mess simply because someone managed to beat the game over the head with it.
-Are we still talking about the beer bottle here?-

A rule doesn't necessarily need a complete overhaul in order to fix a small problem, especially if said overhaul includes a rehash of much of the original. If a complete overhaul is attempted, it is important to understand what the purpose was of the parts of the original, so that leaving something out doesn't create a bigger hole than what existed before.

Finally, about the "uber prop": In general, saying "there's no need for you to do this now because I'm going to do it later" is neither a logical nor a reasonable argument. It's not logical because the fact that someone is trying to do something now suggests e does in fact think there's a need for it to be done now; that it may be fixed later doesn't change the perception that it needs to be fixed now. It's not reasonable because achievement in this game is measured in action, so a player looking out for eir own interests translates the statement above into "you should not try to achieve something now because I want to achieve something later"; it is unrealistic to expect a player to comply with this, and annoying and insulting to repeatedly insist on it.
-This I agree with, this I have said. Orc, giving us the URL, even though I'm not likely to visit it, was a good idea. However, propose the damn thing already. You don't win any favor by trying to get us to hold up for a bit. If you need more time, declare a SOE and take a few days where you don't need to do anything else for this game. Past that, there's nothing to do to help you. It sounds like you're looking for a Theory of Everything to bind the parts of B Nomic under one law, but I'm afraid it doesn't exist. It's hard enough to make up proposals to modify one rule or idea at a time with this game so mutable, but such is the way of things. Why don't you propose the uber in bits? I mean, unless you're making it a prose haiku or something, your hours of work amount to 3d6 points, and it still might fail. Sorry, this was only supposed to be about two sentencs when I began, so it's probably a little confused... but then again, what's new with me?-


                                                  [[BvS]]

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