Re: [spoon-discuss] Eleusis

[Daniel Lepage <dpl33@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sunday, September 28, 2003, at 10:43 PM, Glotmorf wrote:

> On 28 Sep 2003 at 20:42, Baron von Skippy wrote:
>
> > > I came across an interesting Nomic variant based on the card game
> > > Eleusis. The general gist of the game was that one player, the GOD,
> > > created a secret rule governing what sorts of proposals are
> > > allowable. During each player's turn, e makes a proposal; if it is
> > > consistent with the secret rule, it is adopted; otherwise it fails.
> > > The objective is to be the player who figures out what the secret
> > > rule is; at the end of the round, points are given out based on a
> > > variety of factors, including who made the most correct proposals,
> > > who finally ran out of points, etc.
> > >
> > > The original game collapsed because it became too difficult to get
> > > proposals passed; the records are in Joel's deadgames archive at
> > > http://www.nomic.net/deadgames/eleusis/eleusis.html
> > >
> > > Would anybody be interested in a subgame run along a similar theme?
> > -I could go for this. Sounds pretty cool.-
>
> My Blind Nomic game (also in Joel's deadgames archive) had
> similar problems, though people managed to eat away at quite a
> few of the secret rules.
>
> I ran it semi-Imperial, and one principle I operated under
> was, "Rules that specifically reveal substantial portions of
> the hidden rules would not be allowed."  Would there be non-
> hidden rules, or metarules, or whatever, in Eleusis?
> Otherwise, the hidden rule would HAVE to be something that
> prevents revealing itself, else someone could just make a
> proposal that reveals it.

There are some meta-rules and whatnot; but I don't believe they said 
anything about the secret rule; It's actually better to have the 
Immutability clause in the secret rule itself, though, because the 
visible rules can be altered by proposal too. Of course, and proposal 
to alter/reveal either has to fulfill the secret rule, so unless you're 
really lucky, you can't propose to reveal the secret unless you already 
know how to fulfill it, in which case you're better off not revealing 
it.

BTW, the secret rule for the game in the deadgames archive was :
{{
A proposal is legal if it does not specify the public revelation of any 
portion of this rule, and the text (not title) of the proposal either: 
  
1) contains any of the words 'harf', 'frink', 'grok' or 'spam' (or some 
form of those words).
2) contains the name of an animal or reference to some animalistic 
trait.
}}

Apparently this was too complicated, though, and the players gave up 
trying to figure it out.

Personally, I feel it would be more in keeping with the spirit of 
Eleusis if the validity of a proposal depends on some function of it 
and the proposal preceding it, but maybe that's too complicated...

--
Wonko
"This gubblick contains many nonsklarkish English flutzpahs, but the 
overall pluggandisp can be glorked [sic] from context" (David Moser, 
quoted by Douglas Hofstadter in his "Metamagical Themas" column in the 
January 1981 "Scientific American")
_______________________________________________
spoon-discuss mailing list
spoon-discuss@xxxxxxxxx
http://lists.ellipsis.cx/mailman/listinfo/spoon-discuss