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Messages - Geronus

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16
Magistrates Case Archive / Re: Farronite-Aslyon Merger
« on: December 23, 2013, 07:19:42 PM »
I will cite the example of Solaria again because the situation with the Ducny of Sun Hall joining Luria Nova is IDENTICAL. That was ruled legal. Its a power play, not a realm merger. You're allowed to do dastardly things, which this was. This is not two sovereign entities becoming one. This is a    Duchess making a power play. There is already a set precedent. Go read the Solaria/LN realm merger case.

Not the same. There was no power struggle that caused this if the OOC message that Indirik posted here is an accurate summation of events.

Question - who is/was the ruler of FR? Was it Khari?

17
Questions & Answers / Re: Elite Army
« on: December 06, 2013, 08:37:56 PM »
As long as the others also have some choices. If all you have is an elite army and a bureau army, then you are basically saying all others don't deserve the right to fight.

Yeah, this.

Tom's endorsement aside, some caution is still warranted in how you approach this topic IG as there are circumstances that could crop up around this that might lead to a related violation if you aren't careful. Use common sense and do not exclude people against their wishes.

18
Questions & Answers / Re: Player asking for IC information OOC
« on: November 22, 2013, 04:27:27 AM »
Unless you think he's actually breaking a rule, another way should be found to handle this. You could always simply start ignoring every OOC message he sends, or even put him on your actual ignore list. If enough people do that and he stops getting any responses to his OOC spam, methinks he will either get the message or he will leave. Either way, problem solved. If you're feeling kind you could even warn him what is going to happen if he doesn't stop, but at this point I wouldn't feel bad about just cutting him out with no warning.

19
Questions & Answers / Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« on: November 09, 2013, 03:50:02 PM »
You may well be right about their origin, but then as I understand it part of the Magistrates experiment was about lending more transparency to the process of adjudicating the rules. Part of that process in turn properly ought to be trying to reduce the amount of arbitrariness in how they are applied, as our open record of cases will quickly expose any arbitrariness in our decisions. That may necessitate interpreting things somewhat differently than they have been in the past; we may have already done this with respect to realm mergers. This is no different than what real judges do:  They interpret the law, a process which can effectively change it by changing how it is applied.

My arguments may be annoying to some people, but they're part of an honest effort to explore the scope and intent of the rule so that players' understanding of the rule and how it is applied will be increased. You can't have an open and transparent system of rules when 90% of the precedents and past interpretations of the rule are basically apocryphal. I mean we're practically ruling by anecdote here; someone will think they can recall something Tom said five years ago or a Titan case from four years ago and suddenly that becomes part of the basis of a ruling. If the Magistrates are going to do any good, then we need some leeway to tighten up the rules and precedents so that they're clearer and easier to understand for the 95% of the player base that doesn't have a decade-long store of memories of past cases, precedents and statements from Tom.

20
Questions & Answers / Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« on: November 09, 2013, 07:37:52 AM »
Can you imagine the state of the game if we enacted blanket rules to prevent every avenue of exploitation?

Let me turn that around. What makes this particular form of exploitation so special that it warrants a rule? And if it's so special, why isn't the rule stronger?

21
Questions & Answers / Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« on: November 08, 2013, 06:44:35 PM »
Thus it seems in the context of providing a friendly and trusting environment that a great many cases of gaming some of the more complex elements is going to occur. One would like to think that the environment engendered by this attitude might give rise to less 
occurrence of people trying to do so.

Your point is well taken, but I still think that it would be better to simply enact a blanket restriction if that's the intent of the rule. There are almost certainly people who can and will take advantage of the rule as written (and perhaps people who already have), though I'm sure that it does indeed go some way toward making most players less inclined to do it.

If the thought behind the rule is that strategic secessions are somehow exploitative, unfair, or otherwise have a negative impact on the game then they should simply be banned in all cases; I fail to see why the rule is written with such narrow parameters if that's truly the reason for its existence, hence my earlier conclusion that that probably isn't the case.

22
Questions & Answers / Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« on: November 08, 2013, 12:58:54 AM »
You and Indirik are being extremely annoying IMO in the fact that you are shrugging off the rule as unusable. Having a RP reason does not make it ok by itself.

Well why not? What, ultimately is the purpose of the rule? Is it to protect players from strategic secessions, or is it merely there to ensure that the atmosphere is maintained? I would argue that if the answer is that it's about the atmosphere, then ultimately almost all non-absurd RP reasons will, in fact, suffice. The RP rationale would have to be extraordinarily flimsy and transparent for me to be willing to essentially rule that the defendant was lying about his intentions, which is exactly what I would be doing. It's an exceedingly high standard of proof. So high that I don't see it realistically ever happening barring a situation where someone was in total ignorance of the rule in the first place.

23
Questions & Answers / Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« on: November 07, 2013, 06:46:24 PM »
All in all, this particular rule is nearly worthless, both in the way it is being interpreted, and in the way it has been enforced in the past. I can think of at least two secession cases on EC that were ridiculously blatant circumvention of multiple game mechanics, including the recruiting mechanic, that were shrugged off as OK because there was some RP behind it.

Well that's really been my whole point here. However, it now seems to me that circumvention of game mechanics isn't really what the rule is designed to prevent. Insofar as that is the case, it still serves a purpose, which is to ensure that people don't nakedly use secession as a way to power-game without at least coming up with a reasonable story justification. The rule seems to be more about preserving atmosphere than actually preventing the circumvention of game mechanics, for which you have correctly pointed out that it is nearly worthless.

Edit: I will also note that I think that the rule is pointless either way, and poorly written to boot.

24
Questions & Answers / Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« on: November 07, 2013, 05:15:28 PM »
My reading of it is that it requires that there be a real RP reason, not just a hasty justification tossed out there within a week or so of the secession. Again, in 99% of cases, this should be relatively obvious to neutral observers.

I think you and Vellos have been coming at this from too much of a "court" standpoint, and therefore overthinking the whole thing :)

Like I said before, all rules are not created equal. Not every rule in the game has to be for preventing some broad class of behaviour: narrowly-defined rules can be very important, too.

I would have to agree with this, but then in effect we are saying that secessions which confer a strategic advantage are fine in principle which I think is a very important point to come out of this discussion, one that might be worth working into the rules page in a more or less explicit sense. I don't think that point is at all clear from a first reading of the rule. Read this way, the rule is about preserving a certain atmosphere for the game, not prohibiting a certain class of action.

25
Questions & Answers / Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« on: November 07, 2013, 03:40:40 PM »
Please reread Telrunya's quote from Tom. It seems to pretty clearly indicate that it's meant to be a narrow rule protecting against blatant abuse. Not something intended for using as a club against anyone who secedes when you would prefer that they not do so.

All rules are not created equal. Some require careful scrutiny and long debate to be sure whether you've got it. Others, you can look at the situation and tell, "Yep, that's a violation," or "Nope, that's just fine." According to Tom, this is in the latter category, and the criteria you're supposed to use are not simple geography, but intent.

I challenge you to find a reasonable way to apply Tom's own words to this case and the clearly-stated intentions of Riombara and Marec Alumaani, and come up with a result of "blatant abuse."

I know the intent in this case was not abusive. That's not what I'm saying. I'm criticizing the rule as being either ineffective or unnecessary depending on what its intent actually is.

If the rule's only intent (which it is becoming increasingly clear to me must be the case) is to force people to have some sort of RP reason for a secession that confers a strategic advantage, then it is working perfectly. If its intent was ever anything else, than it's not.

26
Magistrates Case Archive / Re: Strategic secession of Iato
« on: November 07, 2013, 03:23:06 PM »
Since what happened is not in dispute, everything that's of any importance to the actual outcome of this case is likely to be discussed in the new thread that egamma linked, so please direct yourselves there for the discussion about the nature and application of the rule in question.

27
Questions & Answers / Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« on: November 07, 2013, 03:21:51 PM »
I'm willing to accept the interpretation being put forward that intent is all that matters, but then I will also state one final time that I now believe the rule to be almost entirely moot, and barring a case where one or more parties involved is stupid enough to state, explicitly, that they are only seceding a city to gain an advantage, I would never vote to punish anyone based on this rule. The way it's interpreted it doesn't protect anyone from anything. All it does is force people to have a fig leaf to cover up their otherwise blatant exploitation of game mechanics.

28
Questions & Answers / Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« on: November 07, 2013, 05:09:33 AM »
What it really comes down to for me is, just what is the purpose of this rule? Presumably, it is to prevent one group of players from unfairly gaining an advantage over another via secession. My problem with all this business of intent is that it compromises that basic purpose and renders the rule almost completely useless as a means of protecting players. That being the case, the rule seems pointless to me if interpreted in such a fashion. Does anyone believe that the purpose of the rule is not to protect players?

29
Questions & Answers / Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« on: November 07, 2013, 04:55:40 AM »
This is false. Intent is a HARD thing to deal with I grant you. But we often "prove" intent in the real world without admission from the suspected guilty party. Just like in real life anything to do with intent is also likely to involve controversy. For instance the recent Terran-D\'Hara Realm Merger case hinged on intent. The magistrates had to decide if it was a friendly merger, or if the merger was a "surrender", though they did not surrender to the force arrayed against them. Yet in a previous case the magistrates declared

"Realm mergers are only allowed if all its regions are taken over through war. This would be the meaning of 'no friendly realm mergers allowed'."

It was decided that although the regions were not "taken over" through war, the intention was basically similar, it was a surrender.

That rule is also written around intent, but it is not quite the same in my reckoning. There's more of a gray area about who exactly is getting hurt in the event of a realm merger, as well as a decidedly different intent behind the rule. Most of BM's rules are designed to protect players from each other. The realm merger rule is not. I'd elaborate but that would be decidedly off topic. In short, I do not accept the equivalence you are posing.

Edit: Also, as to intent, it's virtually impossible for us to prove, reliant as we are on evidence provided by others. Unless the defendant has been relatively open with at least one person about their intent, a person who then comes forward with the evidence to prove it, there's not much we can do other than look at what happened and the evidence provided and try to guess what the actual intent was. Sometimes it may seem like the only reason to do something is for advantage but we can't really know, and our decisions will end up being essentially arbitrary and heavily weighted toward innocence in virtually all cases that invoke this rule since it is so narrowly interpreted.

30
Questions & Answers / Re: Posts that do not provide evidence
« on: November 07, 2013, 04:29:52 AM »
It actually seems pointless to have this rule if the only time it would ever be invoked is if someone openly and explicitly seceded a city in order to start recruiting somewhere closer to the front, and did so in such a way that you could prove their intent. If you make such a rule, it will never need to be enforced unless someone didn't bother to read the rules in the first place. People who did read the rules would merely ensure that they had some other plausible reason to secede a city in order to accomplish the same damn thing so they can point to their story and say, "See? I had an acceptable reason for doing this, so the rule does not apply." The problem is especially acute since every single reason that isn't explicitly "because it will help me win" is seemingly permissible if the rule is so narrowly interpreted.

I mean, what is the point here? In theory, it's to protect one realm (and group of players) from a particular action that exploits game mechanics to generate an advantage that the very existence of the rule implies must be unfair. That has unquestionably happened here. By introducing the question of intent, the rule is made practically unenforceable and its reason for existence compromised. It essentially makes it so that something that is apparently considered to be objectively unfair (generating a wartime advantage through secession) is only considered a violation of the rule against it if someone is foolish enough to admit that what they did was purely to generate that advantage and for no other reason. In other words, it states that the very same action is unfair if done for one specific reason but not unfair if done for any other reason at all, which is both a logical contradiction and utterly nonsensical. Either it's not fair or there's nothing wrong with it; it can't be both.

If the consensus is that intent is all that matters (and not the impact it's going to have on the other team, which seems to me to be the only reason to have made the rule in the first place), you might as well just scrap the rule altogether; several people have already suggested that it's been ages since it was actually enforced, which I think just goes to prove the point - as interpreted by Anaris and others, the rule is both pointless and virtually unenforceable. No one will be stupid enough to actually admit that they're seceding a city in order to gain a strategic advantage even though that's exactly what they're getting, and so the rule will never be invoked and the possibility of strategic secessions will be a de facto reality whether they are fair to the other side or not.

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