Re: [s-d] [s-b] logical hand grenades

[comex <comexk@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 5:03 PM, Craig Daniel <teucer@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 4:57 PM, Tyler <wisety@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> The correct grammar would be, "On nday 12 of nweek 152, I *forfeited*." And
>> no, you didn't. There are no restrictions placed by the game on when you can
>> forfeit, but unless you have a time machine, you can't do things in the
>> past.
>
> We don't have a temporal prime directive anymore, so that's no longer
> actually true.
>
> BINRL, and real life physics do not necessarily apply.

Oh, for God's sake.  While this is a game where we prefer the most
reasonable interpretation of Rules based on their text, even if it's
game-breaking, that doesn't mean we have to pick the least reasonable
interpretation possible for the sole reason that the standard and
obvious ones have the unfortunate property of /not/ breaking the game.

"Any Player can set their X" means "Any player can set his/her own X".
 For "their" to be used as a gender-neutral pronoun, especially when
the alternative would involve interpreting a sentence so that a
pronoun is used far too long after what it allegedly refers to, is
common, standard English usage.  "A Player can forfeit at any time"
means "At any time, a Player can forfeit", not "A Player can forfeit
specifying any time for the forfeit, upon which it goes retroactively
into effect".  This is just plainly obvious unless context indicates
otherwise-- a situation which I can only imagine occurring in a game
played by time travellers.

There is plenty enough ambiguity to be had without every single Rule
having to be spelled out as though it were being explained to a fickle
genie.  No, we don't have to be Blognomic, which assumes that the
rules say what they're supposed to mean even if they clearly don't,
nor Agora, which assumes as much unless the rules explicitly say
something different; but we needn't be their polar opposite.  Dare I
say that, as a minimum requirement for an alternative Rule
interpretation to be considered, the slightest _actual_ ambiguity
ought to be present?  We haven't even got that here, just some Players
panicking because they like the Emergency Procedure more than normal
play.
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