On Sat, 3 Aug 2013, Tanner Swett wrote: > Some rules, despite seeming pretty fundamental, are also pretty vacuous > (Rule 2125 "Regulation Regulations", Rule 1586 "Definition and Continuity > of Entities", Rule 217 "Interpreting the Rules", Rule 105 "Rule Changes").
You would think that. But just about every time we sit down for some game play (e.g. the recent General Election), something like Fool's thing comes along, that depends on one or other of these obscure bits to get us out of. Two possible theses here: one is, we need these rules to protect ourselves from that, because that's Our Nature. Two is the opposite: we're overspecifying. By putting in writing things that are "generally obvious", it leaves it open to more textual loophole finding. I'm not sure which. In 2003 the ruleset was actually considerably longer (313 rules at one point as opposed to 120 now). It was gradually reduced in 2004-2005 to the mid-200s, then had a drop in late 2006 to the current levels; the drop was a concerted effort to, among other things, again encourage new players and good game-play. This final reduction, after a period of inactivity, was followed by the drastic INCREASE of CFJs in 2007-2008. No sure whether to find cause and effect there at all! > And what is Agora all about, anyway? Our Victory Conditions are kind of bare. For a long time it was just Points. Sometimes with limited ways to earn them. I'm not sure if # of ways makes a difference. It's just sometimes, a part of the game gets a critical mass that lots of people jump in (again, e.g., the recent election). Never sure exactly what allows for that! > > - What about a newbie friendly ruleset format, with the rules defining > > gameplay at the start and abstract definitions further back? (Take a > > look at this http://agora.qoid.us/alr.txt) > > Mm, that doesn't seem as useful as one would hope. I like this. When I write a contest for example, I tend to put a long section at the end called "legalese" that contains the details of definitions etc. that can be ignored until there's a question about them. > > - What about a "mentor" system, where each newbie is assigned an Elder > > to show them the ropes? The mentor could get an economic bonus for > > each month the newbie is still an active player. We had this a couple times, though it was voluntary rather than assigned. Occasionally helped a bit, usually ignored. One thing that was good was to give newbies temporary advantages that made then useful to other players, e.g. in today's game a purse full of VCs or something similar. This might lead older players to try and court the younger ones (of course, this only works at times when VCs or whatever are worth something!).
