On Mon, 18 Oct 2010, omd wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 4:08 PM, Kerim Aydin <ke...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
> > As "forbidden" is not defined as directly associated with a particular
> > MMI mode, and (in general English) could be applied to either CAN or SHALL,
> > I'd say context is important. In this case, the "otherwise" is explicitly
> > and directly presented as the opposite to CAN in the same sentence, so here
> > means OTHERWISE CANNOT.
>
> I suppose you could say that "otherwise" - hypothetically, if Rule
> 2282 didn't exist - I COULD perform the action "for a charge of 2
> ergs", whatever that means; that makes the action "allowed by the
> rules", so R2125 doesn't apply; and then Rule 2283 turns "for a charge
> of 2 ergs" into 'by announcement stating the fee'.
Actually, here's the text with an added referent:
If the Rules associate a non-negative cost, price, charge, or
fee with an action, that action is a fee-based action.
[...]
To perform a fee-based action, a Player (the Actor) who is not
otherwise forbidden to perform the [FEE-BASED] action CAN...
which makes it possible to read as "as long as the rules don't
otherwise forbid performing the action as a fee-based action, by
saying for example "the Pariah CANNOT pay a fee to do this".
It's a stretch, perhaps!
Side note: When I proposed this, I thought for a while about sneaking
an "only" between "CAN" and "perform" for the final draft and hoping
no-one noticed it would shut off all other ways of doing things
associated with a fee. Didn't, though, probably a good thing here.
-G.
