Orc In A Spacesuit on 24 Apr 2003 23:17:01 -0000


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Re: [spoon-discuss] Re: [Spoon-business] Who wins?


From: Daniel Lepage <dplepage@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
It seems we've crossed the line from mildly ludicrous to totally absurd. Okay:
On Thursday, April 24, 2003, at 05:22  PM, Orc In A Spacesuit wrote:

There are three points of contention that will determine who grabs the win in the current nuttiness.

First, is whether or not a player can modify a charter to a society, or set some object to be a society (As in Wonko making himself his new society's charter).
If that is possible, Wonko wins.
If that is not possible, then Wonko does not win.
I believe it is not possible, as "Players may not change the game state."

You left out the important part "This rule defers to all other rules." R18 is part of "all other rules"; thus, it supersedes this.

Deference only comes into play if there's confliction. There is not. "Players may not change the game state" is a prohibition; rule 18 says "whatever is not prohibited...is permitted". Otherwise, players could change the game state all they wanted. Sorry.

Finally, there is whether or a society, which is empowered to modify its charter by the rules, can modify its charter to be a rule.
If so, I win.
If not, I do not win.
I believe that they can.  Here's:

First, you have to decide if modifying a charter to be a rule counts as Rule Change. We have: "A Rule Change consists of the creation (enactment), modification (amendment), or deletion (repeal) of a rule."

I do not think that modifying a charter such that it becomes a rule counts as a Rule Change. It is not a creation of the rule, as it already existed while not a rule. It is not modification of a rule, as it is not a rule until the modification happens. And nothing's being deleted.

It is the creation of a rule: "Every modification to a revisable object that does not eliminate it from play creates a new version of it."

But only rules, CFI's, and proposals are reviseable objects, according to the rules. A charter is not. After the modification, it is, but until then, it is not. That is, if the actual /modification of a charter to be a rule/ does not count as a rule change. If it does count as a rule change, then it already counts, so all this stuff saying that it counts again really is moot.

Modifying the charter creates a new version of it; this new version would be a rule; therefore, you'd be creating a rule.

That's regulated. But even if somehow I'm wrong, this still doesn't work because:

Now, I might be right, I might be wrong.
If I am right, I win just with what I've shown so far.

Not so. The regulation is not on "Rule Changes", but on changing the rules. "Rule Change" is specifically defined, but 'changing the rules' must be interpreted according to its standard english meaning, that is, 'altering the set of all rules'.

Must it? Something that's up for contention. I think that, since a Rule Change is defined in the rules, that anything synonymous, such as "changing the rules", has a similar meaning. If I am right on this count, I win. If not... well, I still have other ways.

If I am wrong, then there's still this:

"Changing the Rules is permitted only as explicitly or implicitly described by a Rule other than this Rule or a set of Rules not including this Rule."

Modifying a charter is described by the Societies rule. Whether or not that charter is also a rule doesn't change the fact that the modification is described.

But modification does not include transmutation as a possibility, i.e., although you're allowed to modify a proposal, you can't modify it by turning it into something other than a proposal.

Sez who? Transmutation sure seems like a modification to me. And proposals, which are a set of requested changes, are "revised", not "modified". Revision is a change of text. Modification is a change. Any change.

Otherwise, I could amend my prop __Don't try to do these things yourself__ to be a rule in layer 5 with chutzpah 1200 that reads

If revision includes the ability to transmute; from what I can tell, it only means changes to text (or drawings or such, if you really want to be broad). Such actually could be a possibility, though I doubt it would hold up in court unless you bribed the jury.

Now then, I suppose that it could possibly be ruled that none of this is legal. In such a case, I need to summon up my backup plan.

WARNING: The following is confusing as heck, and I'm not going to do it anyway unless I haven't already gotten a win. It's a backup. If you are in the slightest confused about what's going on now, don't even bother with trying to read it.

IF I have not already been Awarded a Win during Nweek 40:

OEPEVA modifies its charter to also be a society, with itself as a member, and also modifies that charter/society to have the name "CharterExploits".
OEPEVA modifies it's charter, CharterExploits, to be its own charter.
OEPEVA modfires it's charter, CharterExploits, to have 100 Charm.
As CharterExploits has the same charter as OEPEVA, it also does what I say it does. CharterExploits modifies it's charter to have the following sentence appended to it: "If this society has positive charm, it gives 1 charm to Orc in a Spacesuit." That should get me a load of charm. Now to take care of that entropy problem: CharterExploits modifies its charter to be an Ancient Monolith, including all that entails, including being a grid object. The charter/society/monolith wasn't created just now, only modified, so it's entropy absorption isn't set now. Or maybe it might be, depending on your interpertaion. In any case: CharterExploits modifies its charter to to have the location (12,4), and an Entropy Capacity of 1000. I kneel facing the Monolith and pray to the gods of planar geometry. It absorbs 3d6 entropy. That should put me down below the maximum. I win.

Congratulations, you're looking at the first society which is also its own charter, and is also the charter for another society, and is also a grid object.

Actually, even if this were legal at first, it all breaks apart on the first line. Societies are not bodies of text, so as soon as you make the charter a society, you lose the text. After that, you have no control.

Societies are not bodies of text. But a charter, which is already a body of text, also becomes a society, it simply gains the properties of a society; nothing makes it lose its previous properties.

But regardless, you can't modify something into something else. The word "Modification", as both my dictionary program's list of dictionaries (yes, all of them) and game custom dictates, applies to minor changes of structure; not to complete replacement by a different object. Melting down a sword and making plowshares out of it is not a modification; it's a destruction/reconstruction.

I am not "melting down a sword to make a plowshare"; the "sword" is still a sword, I'm just adding some attachements so it's also a "plowshare". And minor truly is subjective; Something major would be be changing the charter into a Ford Pickup in my back yard. Minor truly is in the eye of the beholder.

In any case, I thought of this wierd way of doing things first, but thought it a bit too wierd except to hold as a backup plan. We can pick it apart now, but I think it'd be easier to wait until we see how all the other scams turn out.

Orc in a Spacesuit

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