Re: [s-d] [s-b] My RP: Set everything.

[Daniel Lepage <dplepage@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Dec 14, 2007, at 12:37 PM, Roger Hicks wrote:

>> Waiting in an undeterminable state is bad, but waiting in an illegal
>> state is worse. Your system simply chooses an answer to the
>> Consultation and behaves as though it were true, with the result that
>> when the Consultation comes in, we may find that the last seven days
>> worth of actions were completely illegal. I would prefer an  
>> indefinite
>> gamestate to an illegal one.
>>
> There is no waiting in an illegal state. The rules make that state
> legal. You can't argue with the rules. Yes, there is the possibility
> for abuse by declaring perfectly normal actions to be invalid...as was
> seen just prior to this latest emergency. However, with appropriate
> safeguards (2 Support) in place there is no reason this has to be a
> common occurrence.

The rules can contradict themselves, however, and that could leave us  
in an illegal state. For example, once upon a time when we had The  
Grid, there was a blanket clause forbidding two players from occupying  
the same square of The Grid, or from taking any action that would  
cause this to happen. Many other rules relied on the assumption that  
no two players could ever be in the same place at the same time. Under  
your system, however, if I move into your square without realizing it,  
and nobody notices for 24 hours, suddenly we have a supposedly  
impossible state that has been legalized by the rules. This leads to  
loopholes, paradoxes, and general disorder, and is IMHO much worse  
than having to undo several actions because I wasn't where I thought I  
was.

>> In fact, one could make a good case that every Consultation should
>> stop game time until it's decided. The only reason not to is that
>> there are so many frivolous Consultations.
>>
> So we either put the game on hold for a week once every few ndays
> while we wait for a consultation to be processed or we determine some
> method for the game to go on during consultations. In my opinion that
> latter is a far better choice.

We have such a method; it is to simply keep playing. If we only made  
Consultations when it was absolutely necessary, we could stop the game  
for every one. But since we do get lots of frivolous Consultations, it  
is better to keep going, and use Emergencies for cases where stopping  
time really is needed.

>>> Under the invalidity system implemented in the last emergency (if  
>>> the
>>> bugs are removed) the gamestate can always be determined to within  
>>> one
>>> day of present. Ambiguity can be resolved through consultations &
>>> oracularities while still maintaining a definite gamestate through  
>>> the
>>> entire process. When the consultation and corresponding oracularity
>>> become pondered, no one has to go back and sort through the mess of
>>> actions within the last week to determine which of those actions  
>>> were
>>> legal and which were not.
>>
>> Allowing players to perform illegal actions until the actions'
>> legality is officially judged is not a reasonable solution to this
>> problem.
>>
> I agree. Hence why any disputed action is illegal until judged legal.
> It wouldn't work in reverse (where actions are valid until judged
> invalid). Please don't confuse what I am advocating.

But actions which are invalid but not noticed as such become legal; in  
other words, unchallenged illegal actions can be performed.

> Hmm, actually, the old way of doing things operated much closer to
> that. The only way to definitively prove to a player that their action
> was invalid was to wait for it to be judged invalid. Until that point
> (regardless of how ridiculous the action was) you had a rift with one
> (or more) player(s) playing a game where the action was valid and the
> other players in a game where it was not.

Only if the player was convinced that his action was legal. Generally,  
someone will do something illegal, someone else will remark on it, and  
the perpetrator will say "Sorry, my mistake" and the game will proceed  
with no need for formal declarations or Ministerial acknowledgements.

>> If an action is clearly in contradiction with the rules, somebody  
>> will
>> note this on -discuss and we'll ignore the action. We don't need a
>> formal mechanism requiring players to make more posts confirming  
>> this.
>>
> It still requires someone to point it out either way. Formalizing the
> mechanism to do so lessens the ambiguity.

But it A) places strict limits on when you can point it out (much too  
strict, in your version, as it's perfectly possible to overlook  
something for a day), and B) requires more paperwork for everyone.

>> Moreover, there's no such thing as an "illegal Game Action". If it's
>> not a legal action, it doesn't happen, so you can't target it with an
>> Invalidation. Your system only allows players to Invalidate  
>> otherwise-
>> valid actions.
>
> Yes, this is one of the bugs in the present system that needs to be  
> addressed.

It's not merely a "bug", it's a fundamental flaw in the concept. The  
only way to address this is to include claimed actions in the state of  
the game, with some system that retroactively legalizes them if nobody  
objects. This is a terrible idea, open to all sorts of abuse. I know  
this because we did it once, had a bunch of CFJs, and promptly  
repealed it (issues included that we overlooked illegal actions and  
that players tried to surreptitiously insert them, such as repealing  
rules by including "I repeal rule 10!" in the middle of their  
signatures). And that was with a 10-day grace period instead of 1.

>> Oracularities are a convoluted system equivalent in power to
>> proposals, except without as many safeguards against abuse. We could
>> get exactly the same effect if players would bother to propose fixing
>> ambiguities in the rules.
>>
> There is some truth to this. Someone has to show enough concern to fix
> the problem so it doesn't keep re-occurring. Of course, Oracularities
> provide a rapid means of doing so without having to wait until the end
> of the nweek (or possibliy the following nweek).

If it takes four days to get through the Consultation and four more  
before it becomes Pondered, then you've used the rest of the current  
nweek already.

>> A definite gamestate of indefinite correctness, which IMHO is worse
>> than an indefinite gamestate.
>>
> Again, the rules say that the gamestate is correct through
> ratification of unchallenged actions. Are you arguing with the rules?

But this can result in an inconsistent gamestate, where properties  
required by the rules are not fulfilled and the rules essentially  
contradict themselves. See the example above.

> And in all seriousness....how likely is it that everyone will allow a
> clearly illegal action to go unchallenged?

Extremely. In fact, it has happened hundreds of times. Usually some  
little detail is overlooked, e.g. a Minister made a math error, and  
nobody notices for several days, by which point somebody has spent  
points he didn't have, or we forget that in certain special  
circumstances some action becomes illegal (for example, after going  
for several weeks without anyone being near a Siren on the Grid, we  
would miss several illegal moves when somebody's movement for the  
nweek would shift nearer to a Siren than e thought).

Usually these are noticed eventually, but frequently more than a day  
later.

-- 
Wonko

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