On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 12:32 PM, Kerim Aydin <ke...@u.washington.edu> wrote: > > > On Fri, 28 Sep 2012, omd wrote: >> On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 11:03 PM, Kerim Aydin <ke...@u.washington.edu> wrote: >> > Also: fun's fun, but I will also deregister if scshunt persists in these >> > changes. Consider that an objection, as well. >> >> Oh, come on. Although I feel obliged to counter-scam (not that it's >> particularly likely to work, since we already elected em dictator...), >> Imperial Nomic is one thing Agora *hasn't* tried in the last 5 years >> or so. > > Eh, I admit it was an initial kneejerk over a Mousetrap, I was coming > around to it anyway; you put more eloquently than I could have. > > Antony indeed. I'll bite and play First Citizen for a bit. > > Though I'll say that I'm concerned about any of R101; getting rid of > fair CFJs is more of a concern than a mousetrap to me, and the single > biggest thing that would cause me to leave.
I thought quite closely about the Prerogative of Prejudice. I wanted something cool and powerful, but not entirely absurd. My rationale is that Prejudice is not truly a just punishment, and should not be considered a judicial resolution to controversy per R101. If people are squeamish on that particular one (and it's probably the most significant and controversial element of this proposal), I'll gladly come up with an alternate judicial prerogative (because Certiorari is really quite weak and exists partially just to provide a means for avoiding abuse of Prejudice). In effect, I think that Prejudice is a usurpation of the criminal justice rules to perform arbitrary actions that are detrimental to individuals, rather than a part of the criminal justice system. >> dictatorship scams are sufficiently few and far between that I don't >> really remember the details of any; > > Really? You and I, at least, had the same opportunity last year, but > didn't use it out of sportsmanship (I guess). Very ironically, I think > scshunt deregistered when I got escalated to 3 last year (apologies if > I'm misremembering that, scshunt, but if that was you, it's just a wee > bit two-faced). I did deregister at some point, but it was not, by my recollection, due to the scam. It was due to me being overloaded by my personal life, and needing to break from Agora. I could be wrong, and if I am, you're quite right about me being hypocritical! > It's interesting. As the Town Fountain leader, I was actually all for > playing Dictator back then, but I was talked down by fellow conspirators: > "You don't want to repeat LW, do you Goethe?" That time, it was a far > less apathetic crowd, and persisting would have lost half the > participating, active players. > > This time, it's apathy that brought us here in the first place, so maybe > a shakeup is deserved. Maybe I've bought into that "don't rock Agora" > attitude too much over the last few years. Shakeup can be good: at least > it might stop the "ho hum, let em have a dictatorship, I can't be > bothered to fight and e'll just give emself a Patent Title" apathy. Indeed. The apathy was one part of the reason I thought to impose these changes unilaterally. I think we've had too much conservatism lately; we haven't had really interesting gameplay around since the last iteration of Cards; we have tried at least twice to make short-term economies (ergs and later rubles), and haven't really gotten anywhere. In my experience, the only gameplay that *really* works is when it's tied into the fundamental mechanisms of the game. The final version is tamer than my original thoughts were---I considered making the veto require unanimity and giving unlimited veto, but removing the Speaker's right to vote on any Proposal, even an unvetoed one. I also considered making things that relied on total Favour; that would probably still be a good idea since maintaining yourself high in one Branch is probably notably easier than remaining balanced, as well as more rewarding. But I don't want this to be perfect right away, just reasonably good, and hopefully better than anything we've had in a while. I'm still a player in this game, and I still want >> Actually, this is the closest I've seen to (but still much less >> extreme than) Lindrum World. > > No comparison. What made LW "special" wasn't that it was a dictatorial > large-scale rules change. The thing was, Lindrum's moves were UNDECIDABLY > illegal, in that half the players were just plain old convinced that > Lindrum had cheated and so the game wasn't being played any more. Here, > there's no comparison. I haven't seen any serious legal arguments that > the scam failed. Incidentally, this is why a "lack of fair and impartial > judicial system" is the deal-breaker for me, not mousetrapping. Otherwise, > the whole game is just arbitrary and capricious, and Not Fun. > > As a side note, pre-LW, Nomic World really was paralyzed due to massive > problems with the initial ruleset - it was the first online nomic AFAIK > and things that worked in Suber just failed there. In that sense, pre-LW > was much more like B is. Everyone agreed the rules were broken, and we > just couldn't figure out how to start it again. > > -G. Agreed. And there is certainly an unwritten convention in Agora (and really, in nearly any Nomic) that a player should not ruin the game, and this certainly applies in dictatorships. In the past, this has meant minimal interference because the game has been interesting and engaging, for some definition of those words. But that's not really the case right now; the most interesting thing that's happened in quite a while is, possibly, me and FKA getting into an argument over ATC. At a point in Agora's history, the standard for dictatorships was somewhat codified with the Win by Junta rule, which is somewhat ironically a part of my escalation to power 3, but the repeal of that rule also indicates that the convention should be loosened somewhat, in my opinion. I don't think my rule changes alone will revitalize the game, but there is a lot of framework there. I think that Favour rewards for various things (like voting!) would be good, and there should probably be another way to get rid of the Speaker than a weird and probably somewhat difficult win condition. (as for the other rule changes, removing the Agora, Adult and co. is just because they really are cruft in the ruleset and I'm not partial to keeping that around. They're also such obvious scambait that I don't think they're worth it. Machiavelli's trophy was at eir request and I consider it harmless enough; my own trophy is my prize. If people object to these, I'd be willing to consider working them separately.) So if people really don't want these changes to happen, I won't press them, but I think that in the long run they'll be good for Agora. -scshunt
