On Fri, 2015-08-14 at 16:00 -0400, omd wrote: > - More generally, there should be a guide for new players. For > inspiration, here is a 20-year-old(!) Agora Guidebook: > http://agora.qoid.us/www.fysh.org/~zefram/agora/agora_vanyel0/agora/guidebook.html
It's surprising how much has changed, and how much is still the same. For example, "public forum" is still a term used today. There are also things that were repealed and re-enacted with different names many times (points, pledges, contests), things that were in the ruleset more or less continuously until the last round of appeals (CotC), and even cases of names of things moving around over time (e.g. the Herald used to track kudos; the more recent equivalent of "props" was tracked by the Air Traffic Controller, but there was an actual Herald office at the same time that did something entirely different). Something that amuses me a lot is the mention of the Assessor being able to break ties. With regard to the general subject, I think that having a game that you can jump into is quite important, but also that the vast majority of gameplay attempts in nomics fail. Also, I feel that gameplay only works well in a nomic once you already have rules in place that can exist around it (Contracts, Promises, etc.), and maybe some sort of connection to the "metagame" of rules and proposals and the like. It's more important to give new players an overview of rules and proposals and CFJs and the like because those are really the heart of Agora. (Also, because if you're just participating for a single contest or the like, there's no real need to even be a player; root participated in Enigma rather longer than e participated in Agora.) Which reminds me, Organizations are something that needs to happen. I didn't propose them earlier on selfish grounds; when I don't really have time for Agora, I'm typically content to let it drift so that it's active when I'm active. Now that I'm Prime Minister, though, I should probably be trying to guide gameplay benevolently (so far I've mostly been doing that wrt votes on proposals). Given that we have Erratic Rules now, it's probably best if they aren't initially tied to wins. -- ais523
