It strikes me that Rests aren't much of a punishment atm: you can burn them off easily enough with Absolv-o-matics, which you are likely to get for free each month. This also goes against the whole concept of rests; you are supposed to have to work to burn them off. In fact, it strikes me that having a card just for burning off rests encourages people to commit crimes in general. Even if you don't commit crimes yourself, you are likely to trade away the cards (directly or indirectly) to someone who will then use them to burn off rests.
The other problem with Agora's criminal system at the moment is that punishments tend to have no relation to the severity of the crime. Apart from the defined Class-N crimes, which tend to be the most severe (and yet not often perpetrated), the number of Rests a ninny gets depends on the Power of the violated Rule, which IMO has nothing to do with how bad the crime is. Someone (I think coppro?) recently attempted to resolve some of these issues in eir criminal reform proposal, but it failed for reasons I forget. Here are some of my suggestions: When judging SILENCE, the judge specifies how many Rests should be created. If the judgement remains unappealed for one week, any player CAN create the specified number of Rests in the posssession of the ninny by announcement. Get rid of free monthly salaries. Get rid of Absolv-o-matics. Instead, you can use certain other cards to destroy Rests. Increase the negative effects of Rests. Btw, I remember that it used to be impossible to spend Notes for anything other than destroying Rests when you went past a certain threshold. Do we still have that for Cards? If not, it would be a good thing to add. Another idea is not allowing players with more than X Rests to transfer assets (maybe just cards or just Rule-defined assets). Comments? -- C-walker (Charles Walker)
