On Fri, 16 Jun 2017, Owen Jacobson wrote:
> One possible Agoran solution - to both questions - would be a high-
> Power rule whose effect is to nullify game actions (for some suitable
> definition thereof) made by non-players. I was discussing this whole
> affair with my fiancée this evening and her stance is that the idea
> that a non-player can play the game is inherently contradictory, and
> that the confluence of rules that allows it regardless is, if not
> broken, then at least highly suspect.
It's my impression that in the last 3-4 years, the number of places
the rules say "person" instead of "player" has crept up (I haven't
done a count or anything). That was a lot of slow-play time, so a
lot of the things that have been changed that way haven't been tested
at all. So in that sense, the interactions with non-players is all
"new territory" right now. It might be good to scale back.
The things non-players will always need to be able to do:
- register (duh), and therefore make announcements.
- call CFJs. There have been cases in the past where players have
been deregistered or punished illegally (or playerhood uncertain),
so non-players need to be able to defend themselves against that.
There are some bits of status that shouldn't be erased on
deregistration:
- Patent titles
- Ribbons (though, I'd say remove the ability for non-players to
earn them).
- The ability of documents to self-ratify, regardless of who posts them,
is a protective feature (if everyone's ever accidentally deregistered
at once - I think that came close to happening at least once - you'd
want to ratify someone back into the game to save it).
- I'm torn on allowing non-players to win - I think we should cut down
on methods (e.g. remove ribbon earning) but a non-player win would be
quite difficult, especially if you cut down other non-player things,
so it might be a prize worth keeping in reach.
- Agencies are interesting. I'd restrict them to players myself, as
that's a big hole. On the other hand, there were attempts at one
point to set up Agora as an arbitration service, where non-players
could sign contracts and have Agoran courts adjudicate any disputes.
Intriguing idea, sort of, though I don't think it would go anywhere
and would get used as a loophole far more.
> I don’t think there’s a satisfying formal way of distinguishing
> between unregulated game actions and unregulated non-game actions
Can you give an example of an "unregulated game action"? I'd say that,
by definition, if it's unregulated it's not a game action.
