Daniel Lepage on 10 Apr 2003 03:39:02 -0000


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Re: [spoon-discuss] A name for... things 


On Wednesday, April 9, 2003, at 11:28  PM, Glotmorf wrote:


On 4/9/03 at 4:51 PM Daniel Lepage wrote:


On Wednesday, April 9, 2003, at 04:17  PM, Orc In A Spacesuit wrote:


We have many things in the ruleset.  Players.  Gremlins.  Societies.
Entities.  Objects.  The Yeti.  Etc.  One thing that would help with
standardization would be a term that could be used for "Anything that
acts on its own/does stuff/performs actions".  This would include
players and gremlins and societies and such.  And an adjective to put
out front would be good, to show those that are on the grid.
I have searched long for such a term. In the Uber, I defined "entity" 
as having that meaning.  But I have found a term that may be better,
whether in the Uber or not:

Volitional.
That means, roughly, "acts of its own volition". A definition I found 
elsewhere, is: "An object that has the ability to move, and/or talk.
Usually it refers to humans, and other sentient and sub-sentient
races, but it could also refer to a talking statue or a walking
enchanted table."

So... it's a long word, but considerably shorter than "player,
gremlins, the Yeti, Barney..." etc lists all over the ruleset, list
that will have to change every time a new type of volitional pops up,
if they don't use a standardized term.

What do you think?  Should we define certain kinds of things to be
"Volitional"?


I tried to define such objects as 'entities' once, and that got shot
down. But if you'd like to try, go ahead. I'll vote for it.
I don't think Barney, the Yeti and the gremlins would qualify as "volitional". They're not capable of taking independent action, after all; they only take action in response to specific game-context events, such as the beginning of a certain nday, the proximity of other objects, etc. Otherwise a magnet would be volitional because it can attract or repel things.
If you're going to try to define certain things as "volitional", I'd prefer that they be things that are capable of performing actions independent of game-context events. That'd include players and societies, but not gremlins or Barney.
Gremlins and Barney would be things that, while not capable of performing independent actions, nevertheless do perform actions in response to game-context events. Perhaps they could then be classed as "reactional".
That leaves "usable" for objects that take no action at all, but can be a part of actions taken by volitional or reactional objects. And perhaps "targetable" for objects that can be the target of actions. 

Note, however, that these four classes may not be mutually exclusive.
But Gremlins, the Yeti, etc. are not entirely 'reactional' - they do some thing solely because the rules say they do. Most objects only change status as a result of some player action - I place Bait on a Big Rock, and so the Rock becomes Sirened, I fire lasers at a square, and so the square becomes Fire, etc. Relatively few objects would keep doing things even if all the players went idle for a week.
On the other hand, the Weather changes itself every nweek, and many natural phenomena such as tumbleweeds and thunderstorms move by themselves without human intervention; they'd still be called 'reactional' objects... And some 'nonreactional', like the Police Gremlins, perform most of their actions based on player intervention...
I think really it comes down to common sense. Which, unfortunately, cannot be easily coded.
My suggestion would be to call them 'Beings' - things which, in the fictional world we create, would be thought of as having personalities. It seems to me that such objects would be worthy of their own name simply because there are many different cases where we'd want to refer to all of them. 

--
Wonko

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