[Some first read-through thoughts. -G.]
On Wed, 19 Nov 2014, Alex Smith wrote:
> The Secretary is an office, responsible for tracking Organizations and
> related gamestate. The duties of the Secretary are described elsewhere.
Suggest describing the minimal Report here, up top: "eir weekly report
shall include X,Y,Z" instead of just "related gamestate". The second
sentence does nothing and is not needed.
> An Organization is a type of entity. The following changes are secured:
> creating, modifying, or destroying an Organization; and causing an
> entity to become an Organization or cease to be an Organization. No
> entity that existed before the enactment of the first revision of this
> rule is an Organization.
Have we needed the "no previous entity" clause before? We've brought
back common words ("contracts", "points" etc.) without needing this
no-retroactive clause.
> Budget is a switch belonging to (Organization, player) pairs (i.e. there
> is one instance of the switch for each combination of an Organization
> and a player), tracked by the Secretary, whose legal values are integers
> from 0 to 100 inclusive, defaulting to 0. An Organization's Income is
> the total value of all Budget switches for pairs that include that
> Organization. A player's Expenditure is the total value of all Budget
> switches for pairs that include that player. Changes to Budget are
> secured.
The Report should be called the Switchboard. Actually, I'm picturing
a patch panel.
> It is IMPOSSIBLE, by any means, to change a Budget switch from a zero to
> nonzero value, except with the consent of the player included in the
> pair to which that Budget switch applies. This rule takes precedence
> over any rule that might make such a change possible.
What constitutes "consent" here? The Rights had "explicit, willful"
consent. Is this a lower standard? What's the burden, does silence =
consent? Can an organization say in its charter "setting a positive
budget for this organization is considered consent for later changes"?
(defining a precise standard for Consent is an important mousetrap
or binding agreement consideration).
> Charter is an Organization switch, tracked by the Secretary, whose legal
> values are texts, and with default value "An amendment to this
> Organization is Appropriate if and only if all members of this
> Organization consent to it.".
Again, consent questions. I assume private consent is ok in organizations?
> Each possible modification to an Organization, or to a switch that
> pertains to an Organization or a pair including that Organization, is
> considered to be either Appropriate or Inappropriate. An Organization's
> Charter SHOULD contain a method of determining the appropriateness of
> any attempt to modify that Organization.
>
> If a Charter does not specify the appropriateness of a modification, or
> if it attempts to specify the appropriateness of a modification but in a
> way that is unclear, ambiguous, circular, inconsistent, paradoxical, or
> that depends on information that is impossible or unreasonably difficult
> to determine, the modification is Inappropriate; otherwise, it is
> Appropriate if and only if the Charter specifies that it is.
>
> Organizations CAN be modified as follows:
>
> a) A member of an Organization CAN modify that Organization's Charter
> by announcement, if such a modification is Appropriate.
Trouble here: what does it mean, precisely, to modify a switch? Need
to stick to switch language ("flip to a new charter text") or make
Charters a non-switch thing (I'm not sure switches are the best model
for arbitrary texts in general).
Also, I'm tempted to leave this to game it, but this may allow secret
charters depending on how one reads this. If you intended that, so
much the better.
> b) Any player CAN flip a Budget Switch by announcement, if such a
> modification is considered Appropriate by the Organization to which
> the switch pertains, except where other rules disallow the change.
Er, is this meant to allow players to flip other players' budgets?
Given the issue with "consent", above...
> If an Organization's Income is ever lower than 50, that Organization
> Collapses, destroying the Organization. Any players who were members of
> the Organization immediately before its Income reduced below 50 CANNOT
> become (or be caused to become) members of Organizations (regardless of
> who actually flips the switch), and cannot create Organizations, for 7
> days after the collapse.
What's the 7-day limit meant to prevent/control? I see that a general
limits on Org creation somewhere would be needed, but not sure on the
logic tying it to collapse.
> Players SHALL ensure that their Expenditure never exceeds 100.
Is temporarily exceeding your Expenditure a valid game strategy
or cheating? The way the rest of these clauses are written, if you
exceed your expenditures, you can be stopped by other players, and
there's a game penalty (30 day limit), so it could be a valid game
strategy. The above sentence makes it "cheating". I'd prefer to
delete the above SHALL clause and make it a strategy with a penalty,
since *with* the SHALL clause, some people might do it anyway if the
reward was worth it.
> a) A "dice server" or similar randomization device is sent a
Honestly, we've never mandated random methods and I dislike doing
so. This description doesn't work anyway. For example, by this
definition, a "similar randomization device" = "the dice on my table
plus myself" and can meet all criteria you've listed.
If you must do this, how about forgetting the "dice server" language
and saying "random choices shall be made in such a way that no player
could know the result before all other players could" which mandates
an auto-selection sent straight to the PF, and also in more simple
terms covers the "despite this description" clause.
> For example, if there were two organizations,
I think you can do without the long ugly example, but I'll have to
think about that a bit to find better ways.
> Medal Count is an Organization switch, tracked by the Secretary, whose
> legal values are the non-negative integers, and which has a default of
> 0.
This (and the remaining text) should be a separate rule from the above.
It describes the effects of model-granting ceremonies on other game
quantities, while the preceding text described a method of making the
award (of which there may be others one day).
-G.
