Re: [spoon-discuss] Re: [Spoon-business] The Underground Society

["Glotmorf" <glotmorf@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Note: I'll set up a Underground Society webpage that'll have the most current version of the rules on it, so that I don't have to pepper Dave with edit-changes.  I'll update the charter also, but not on a minute-by-minute basis.

On 8/3/03 at 7:05 PM Daniel Lepage wrote:

>On Sunday, August 3, 2003, at 05:21  PM, Glotmorf wrote:
>
>
>>> And what happens if a player goes On Leave or something? Does the game
>>> simply pause until e gets back/gets garbage collected?
>>
>> I'll have to think about that.  My first thought is to say eir mole
>> stays where it is while e's on leave, and dies if e's
>> garbage-collected.
>
>And eir turn gets skipped?

Definitely.  Though a player on leave might still want to respond to attacks.  By default, I'd say an on-leave player would defend with eir longest-held card, and would still draw up to five cards at eir turn as an instant event.

>>>> 5. Joining a Game
>>>>
>>>> Members of this society may pay four points to the society to become
>>>> a
>>>> player in a game of Tunnelers.  If a game is running at that time,
>>>> the
>>>> player's mole is placed on the board at the Moderator's discretion,
>>>> the player receives five cards from the deck, and the player's name
>>>> is
>>>> added to the player list just after the last player to have completed
>>>> a turn.  If a game is not running, the player's mole is placed
>>>> randomly on the board, and the player's name is added to the end of
>>>> the player list.
>>>
>>> This means that a member of the society can pay four points even if
>>> they're already playing in order to relocate eir mole, gain five
>>> cards,
>>> and get another entry on the turn list.
>>
>> Careful, guy.  You're on the verge of giving credence to the Baron's
>> MPD Scam.  "Members of this society may pay four points to the society
>> to *become* a player..." which means, like in the Baron's case, they
>> presumably weren't a player before.
>
>You list four things that happen when a member pays four points:
>* They become a player in the game of Tunnelers
>* Their mole is placed on the board at the Moderator's discretion
>* The player receives 5 cards
>* The player gets added to the list of players (although technically
>nothing links the player list to the turn order)
>
>The first of these will fail if the joiner already is a player. The
>other three won't.

This is splitting hairs, or, more specifically, paragraphs.  The later sentences in the paragraph are dependent on the first one.  I can reword it in anticipation of someone other than me being moderator, but while I'm moderator that's my interpretation.

>>> Also, how can you guarantee that the game will ever end if dead
>>> players
>>> can come back for 4 points? Or is that intentional?
>>
>> That's intentional.  If you get killed, you can re-enter for 4 points,
>> though with a base-stat mole.  Note that killing two other moles lets
>> you break even, and killing three yields profit.  And the jackpot
>> continues to climb.
>>
>> I suspect that, if any mole gets strong enough, people are gonna cease
>> to want to go after it with a base-stat mole.  That mole would then
>> wind up as the sole survivor and cash out, then a new game would
>> begin. (Anyone who wants to bankrupt emself pointwise just to prove me
>> wrong is of course welcome to do so.)
>
>Since it's hidden data, we might not know when somebody became too
>strong to make it worthwhile.

One would if e'd been beaten up enough times by the same mole...:)  As the transfer of points is part of the B Nomic gamestate, people must hear about payoffs; and since the player list must be publicly accessible, people must hear about deaths.  Therefore, it would be public information that player A killed player B.  And player C, and player D...

A side note, based on what you said earlier: I'm going to take my moderator fee out of the signup fee, rather than the death benefit.  Otherwise, I could process lots of turns for a player who might then leave the game without dying, thus depriving me of my fee.

						Glotmorf

-----
The Ivory Mini-Tower: a blog study in Social Technology.
http://ix.1sound.com/ivoryminitower

_______________________________________________
spoon-discuss mailing list
spoon-discuss@xxxxxxxxx
http://lists.ellipsis.cx/mailman/listinfo/spoon-discuss