Re: [spoon-discuss] Re: [Spoon-business] New card: Nop

[Daniel Lepage <dpl33@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Saturday, November 29, 2003, at 03:31 AM, Glotmorf wrote:

> On 28 Nov 2003 at 12:17, Daniel Lepage wrote:
>
> > Also, what constitutes a card related action? If somebody plays a card
> > that requires me to draw a card, for example, what happens? According
> > to their card, I must draw; according to mine, I cannot.
>
> The text reads, "upon receipt of a Nop card"; that means
> you're acting in immediate response to the Nop card.  If you
> get the Nop card because you're forced to draw, I would
> interpret the situation to mean you'd stop long enough to
> discard down to two cards, then draw more cards if still
> required.  If you were somehow forced to have more cards than
> the Nop-count maximum, you'd have to discard cards to come
> down to the maximum.
>
> If you're asking whether a card that forces drawing takes
> precedence over the Nop card, I'd guess the B Nomic precedence
> rule kicks in, such that cards added after the Nop defer to
> the Nop unless they explicitly claim precedence.

I'm worried about a situation like this:
I play for a while, and accrue a hand of, say, 9 cards. Then I stop 
playing, as many players have done in the past; I will eventually be 
garbage collected out of the game.
Shortly after I stop playing, many nweeks before garbage collection 
kicks in, you play Nop on me. The next nday, The Baron targets me with 
a card, Foo, that says something like "Wonko draws two cards". 
According to the Baron's card, I must now draw two cards; according to 
Nop, I cannot do so until I've discarded down to 2.

You could argue that since I am forced to draw by Foo, this supersedes 
the restriction set on me by Nop. In this case, it would also be true 
that if the Force were still in effect, and the Mind Trick was altered 
slightly, I could keep playing as normal, ignoring the Nop, simply by 
repeatedly forcing myself to play.
	This scenario also raises the issue of what happens then - Nop said I 
couldn't do anything, but then I did. Am I still under the Nop? Must I 
now discard before my next action (which will never come...)

You could argue that since I am forbidden to take card related actions, 
the draw card fizzles and has no effect, as I am unable to carry out 
its instructions. In that case, it is highly to my advantage to ignore 
Nops until the last possible second, so as to make myself immune to 
anything that forces me to discard.

Or you could argue what seems to me to be the most accurate argument 
based on the text of Nop, that I *must* discard before the Foo hits me; 
that is, as you suggested above, "I'd stop long enough to discard down 
to two cards", then continue as usual. Then we run into the old problem 
of the rules declaring that a player *must* do something when it has no 
power to enforce it - if I've left the game and am no longer 
responding, there's nothing the ruleset can do about it. So if I don't 
declare which cards I'm discarding, the game enters an indeterminate 
state, where, according to the rules, I must have at least two cards, 
and I must have drawn two from the Deck at some point; but there is no 
way to figure out which two are still in my hand, or whether I did 
discard the Nop first and thus have 10 cards in hand now, or whether I 
drew another Nop, or anything.

That is, IMHO, a Bad Thing.

Perhaps Nop should simply state, "If you hold a Nop card, you may not 
play any cards unless you first discard down to twice the number of Nop 
cards you hold."

This means that you can continue to draw, and even to give cards away 
if you were foresighted enough to set up a Syn/Ack connection before 
you got Nopped, but if you don't have a Syn/Ack, you'll have to discard 
before you can play anything new.

Perhaps a note should be included, too, something like [[Note - you 
choose which cards to discard first, then discard them all at once, so 
if the number of Nop cards in your hand changes as a result of this 
discard, you still discard the same number of cards.]]

--
Wonko

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