305 (DRAFT): 209 Repeal.

[Leus]

I have no idea what to title this thread, but Quintopia, my Butt Man, was being "urgent" with me and now he's not online to tell me what to call it so I'm just calling it what I want and posting it.

209. At no time may there be more than 25 mutable rules.

I want to repeal this rule because I don't think that limits on the number of rules are any fun.  Even if the number of rules gets out of hand it will just make the game more interesting, in my opinion.

[CasualSax]

It should be called 305 (DRAFT):  209 Repeal.

[Leus]

Done, though it seems kind of odd because I'm not actually trying to make a new rule.  Oh well; I'm a newbie.

[CasualSax]

Its the proposal that gets the number.  =D

[Leus]

Oh, I see.  That makes more sense.  =)

[quintopia]

I can't even think why that rule existed in the first place.

[CasualSax]

It makes sense - a rule to keep too many rules from being in play at a time.  Keeps things less complicated.  I kind of like it - we don't need that many rules to add some fun actual game elements (that this group said a resounding no against), and it keeps from a bunch of loopholes from piling up.

[Leus]

Complications and loopholes are some of the things I was looking forward to most in this game.

[quintopia]

it's a pain in the ass, dude.  it means in just a couple of rounds we have to waste proposals transmuting rules, and that means that we have to then transmute them again later in order to change them.  What it'll end up doing is making it harder to get rid of loopholes and complications by making them immutable.  209 is one of those rules Suber put in to purposely make gameplay more confusing.

[Rye Coal]

I'm of the mind this rule should be amended as well. Remember there is no cap on immutable rules, just on mutable ones.

There is an advantage to having a cap on mutable rules. Mainly it will force rules passed to be more efficient with a larger impact on game play and rules of lesser impact will be removed or merged to save space.

The flip side is that 25 changeable rules is not much to play with. In round three we will be seeing the effects of the cap. I think the entire round, or the majority of it, will end up like a round of cleaning house to make room for new legislation. This is going to be a hindrance for causing loopholes as they will have to be embedded in both very well constructed legislation and well liked legislation. Looking at current day legislative bodies this is actually a good idea. There are many pointless laws that no one wants to take the time to repeal or strike out. This rule forces a legislative body to take the time to ensure the quality of the legislation passed.

The more I think about it the more I like this rule. The next largest drawback I can see is the perspective of one who would "waste a turn" in this spring cleaning round condensing or eliminating in place legislation instead of proposing personal legislation. This will "slow the game down" from the same perspective. For its quality control effects on game play I think it is worth putting aside the personal agenda for a turn to make the game itself better.

Should we add players to the game this rule will have a much greater impact on the game at increasingly shorter intervals relative to the number of rounds played. More players will equal longer rounds and more opportunities to pass legislation there by increasing the frequency of "spring cleaning" eventually to a ridiculous rate within a given round. One way to deal with this might be to make the cap flexible, vary it with the number of players in the game.

I like the effects of the cap but I can see it will be problematic in  the future. Any Ideas?

[CasualSax]

We currently have 14 mutable rules.  That gives us 11 more rules to submit before we have to change the rule.  I'd much rather wait until it was really "restraining" than rush this through now.  11 more turns - not counting turns that only modify rules, and adding on every rule made immutable, and not counting turns that don't result in a passed proposal.

And quin, this in no way, shape or form makes it harder to close loopholes.  It only makes us clean up the legislation we've submitted.

I'd much rather wait on this.  If you want to make it read "At the end of every third round, if this rule has not been modified, it increases to by ten" or some such, that I could agree with.

[tinuviel]

it's a pain in the ass, dude.  it means in just a couple of rounds we have to waste proposals transmuting rules, and that means that we have to then transmute them again later in order to change them.  What it'll end up doing is making it harder to get rid of loopholes and complications by making them immutable.  209 is one of those rules Suber put in to purposely make gameplay more confusing.

What he said.  :)
And CasualSax, you have a point about not needing this yet, but it has been proposed now, so I don't see any reason not to go ahead and pass it now, so that it will already be in place when we need it later.

[CasualSax]

I'm more worried that its limiting the quality of our legislation, or will cause us to leave things un-fixed in favor of proposing new legislation every turn.

[Itarien]

How about instead of repealing it up the cap ta little.

We can always remove it or up the cap some more later when we really are constrained.

I think pressure to rewrite and merge rules is good. I think the way I've written 304 is awkwark, bulky, confusing and it could probably have been done as a ammendment to 202.

[quintopia]

he's a possibility to get rid of the problem of wasting turns on transmutation:

If a new rule is added after the mutable rule cap has been reached, it shall be considered legal for this rule to simultaneously transmute another mutable rule.