On Thu, 28 Aug 2014, Alex Smith wrote:
> Time to reflect on this again. November 2009 was a time of widespread
> belief that the game was stalling, potentially stopping. It had pagesful
> of messages every day, but the economy was collapsing over its own
> administrative weight; BobTHJ had automated most of the economy, but
> eventually given up trying to keep it up with changes in the ruleset.
Having done a few rounds over the years with you on this, I now believe
that you can stop at your #1 issue. You need players willing to officiate
before, not after game mechanics, rules reform, or anything else.
In other words, active officering attracts good play, but even good
gameplay does not (generally) attract officers, at least when you're
trying to bootstrap something.
If there is an officer ready to run with gameplay, it works as long
as the officer keeps up. E.g. with BobTHJ, or the recent example of
my imaginary numbers (weren't the best rules by far, but they worked as
long as I was cheerleading and updating it, as soon as I stopped,
no more gameplay).
Now we all play for our own "reasons" and have our favorite styles, but
unless we're willing to put those aside for a officer gruntwork,
those discussions aren't going very far.
So if you get 2-3 people who actually say "we're willing to hold the
core offices and be consistent and timely about it", then you've got a
game. Unless you've got those 2-3 people going into this discussion
(do you?), and they follow through for a few months at least, the rules
themselves don't matter so much.
-G.
