Zefram wrote:
Ed Murphy wrote:
I think it's clear enough, but okay, "eir VCs of each color are
set to zero".
That's still a bad wording. The intent is not to modify the VCs
themselves, it's to arrange for em to not have any VCs. No doubt someone
will argue that "setting a VC to zero" is a null action, so that your
sentence has no effect on a player's VC holdings.
"Holdings" sounds like property, which VCs are not and would not
be; they're more like points, which can be "set" or "reset" without
it sounding as funny. Then again, "spending" sounds like property
too; maybe we should re-define them as property that can't be
transferred, only gained (created) or lost (destroyed) or spent
(also destroyed).
Perhaps the number could be rounded in a
weighted-random direction (e.g. 12.6 has a 60% chance of being
rounded to 13, 40% of being rounded to 12).
Fiddly, and problematic if we ever have to recalculate state (due to
mistake about VC holdings). History shows that determinate changes
are a lot less trouble. In fact, we only have one indeterminacy left
in the ruleset, so it's tempting to excise it and make the game fully
determinate. Please don't extend the use of randomness.
That particular indeterminacy (replacement of recused Appellate Judges)
should be excised for parallelism with the non-randomness of other Judge
selections. I'm less convinced that randomness should be generally
deprecated; what we really need to do is generalize Plato-Pragmatism.
Review of terms for the new players: Platonism is the philosophy that
the gamestate has objective properties, even if some or all players hold
mistaken beliefs about them. Pragmatism is the philosophy that the
gamestate is what player consensus believes it is. Plato-Pragmatism is
the practice of implementing pragmatic effects within a Platonic
framework by keying things to announcements, e.g. changing
"when X happens, Y gains 5 points"
to
"when the Scorekeepor announces that X happens, Y gains 5 points".
Tricky bit #1: What to do if the announcement is later discovered
to have been false? (How much later?) One approach is to ratify a
report, which makes irrelevant any errors prior to that point; Rule
2034 basically auto-ratifies voting results that aren't promptly
disputed. Another approach is to require the Scorekeepor to make a
correcting announcement, upon which Y loses 5 points, and we live
with Y having had the 5 extra points for a while. (And if we later
discover that the first announcement was true after all, then we
apply a similar corrective process to the second announcement. This
used to be implemented by issuing and vacating Orders.)
Tricky bit #2: What to do if Platonic limits interfere with the
situation? (A player claims to transfer some property, then we
later discover that e didn't actually possess it in the first place.)
