Re: [s-d] [s-b] repeal monopoly

["Peter Cooper Jr." <pete+bnomic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Geoffrey Spear wrote:
> It's also true that Peter Suber's initial ruleset specifically
> contains a clause stating that anything which is not forbidden or
> regulated by the rules is allowed and unregulated.  I couldn't tell
> you whether Suber himself believed when he added that rule that it was
> necessary because otherwise anything not permitted would be forbidden,
> but either way I think it's best to be explicit.  We recently had a
> bit of debate over in Nomicapolis whether the successor of Suber's
> Rule 101, which states that all players must follow the rules, is
> necessary.  Granted it's arguable that such a rule just means that if
> someone breaks another rule they're now violating 2 rules instead of
> 1, but I see it as the foundation that gives all of the other rules
> whatever authority they have.   Of course, it's also recently been
> argued there that Players don't actually have to follow the rules as
> long as they can get the Judge to go along with their rulebreaking
> activity. I think at some point you get into a philosophical crisis
> about unwritten metarules.

You pretty much summed it up.

I think that Suber's initial ruleset was based more on law than on games,
and in law, anything not specified as illegal *is* generally legal, so
that's my understanding of where it came from. I'm no Suber expert,
though.

Our rules do specify (in the definition of rules) that they're what govern
the game, but that's an attempt to clarify the the Rules game documents do
something that other Game Documents (like Proposals) don't.

However, if somebody made a proposal that included text to the effect of
"The words on this proposal define the game that's being played", it may
very well be effective if the players playing the game go along with it,
since it has as much right to claim to be the ultimate authority governing
the game as any other document. Really, like all games, it's just what the
players make of it.

-- 
Peter C.
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