Walls That Speak Of Walls by beverly penn
July 17th, 2006 5:31 AMEvery city has its gates, which need not be of stone. Nor need soldiers be upon them nor watchers before them. At first, when cities were jewels in a dark and mysterious world, they tended to be round and they had protective walls. To enter, one had to pass through gates, the reward for which was shelter from the overwhelming forests and seas, the merciless and taxing expanse of greens, whites, and blues - wild and free - that stopped at the city walls.
In time, the ramparts became higher and the gates more massive, until they simply disappeared and were replaced by barriers, subtler than stone, that girded every city like a crown and held in its spirit. Some claim that the barriers do not exist, and disparage them. Although they themselves can penetrate the new walls with no effort, their spirits (which, also, they claim do not exist) cannot, and are left like orphans around the periphery.
To enter a city intact it is necessary to pass through one of the new gates. They are far more difficult to find than their solid predecessors, for they are tests, mechanisms, devices, and implementations of justice.
Image from devworks.
Many copies. 8 1/2 x 10 (10 of them, a few of which had already been posted at the time of taking this photo), 12 x 17 (2), 28 x 36 (2).
Posted this on the way to pick up Ghost in the Shell...
and on the way back, found this man reading it.
8 vote(s)
not here
3
Ink Tea
3
Cunning Linguist
3
r0ck c4ndy
3
Burn Unit
3
SNORLAX
5
la flaneuse
5
Peter Garnett
Terms
(none yet)12 comment(s)
Absolutely the wrong forum for this, but... why say, "I'd vote if the task were worth more"? Wouldn't it be better to just not vote at all? And why do more points need to be involved, there is a player ranking based on how many votes were received as well (which, i might add, i'm fourth on, hahaha).
Sorry, just flaming a bit, but if you want to vote for someone, I think you should, regardless of bonus points.
Let's just say it's my way of saying some tasks (not the completed ones but the task in general) needs to have the given points bumped up. Also my way of saying the vote system needs to be more influential.
I was planning on (when I went home) to dig around and see if there was anything higher ranked/pointed that Nicole completed which I haven't voted for yet.
My way of tilting the game.
Rubin, I'm with CL on this one. If you like what someone has done to complete a task, vote for that task. Votes (i.e. peer recognition) are really what means the most and it's what encourages players to go that extra mile rather than simply doing the minimum.
(Sorry, Nicole, for hijacking your task to have this discussion, but it worth discussing. This votes vs points would be a good thing to post as a Note to players submission.)
I think what G said is particularly applicable to new players. Granted a vote that could give 32 vs 3 extra points may seem like a more humanitarian vote at first, but players doing tasks worth 45, 75 or 125 points don't need the encouragement as much as those starting out doing the 10, 15 and 25ers.
Just my $0.02
Again, my apologies for soapboxing here.
I really have no issue with this topic being discussed on a task page of mine. Debate away.
My view is that if I like something, I vote for it.
I do think that it would be nice to have a wider range of higher-scored tasks to chose from. There just aren't that many, so I end up doing tasks worth a little less.
I agree with the vote if you like it. I actually think rewarding the lower rank tasks is important because they are the one's that people frequently skimp on and just kind of throw up for points. It's like not voting for a task because it already has a ton of votes, sometimes I think that, but I believe in rewarding excellence. Give for things that go just a little higher.
That said, I understand the idea that you want your votes to tilt it more. hmm. Still, very cool and so I vote!
I have some cents, and I'm going to spend two of them! I respect Rubin's idea insofar as he's found a clever way to give people the extra points that the game itself doesn't give--that's a creative move for him. But I do not agree otherwise. I think if the task is well done, it should be voted on regardless, and I further hold forth my hope that if I spend all my points voting, my faith in the game will be upheld. For one, the game will still go on. But for another, I think if we spend our votes when we are duly impressed, we will be true to the spirit of the game in a way that can only help it. If votes are a kind of currency, I hope there will be so many great task completions that I can sell all I have and give it to the poor and something will change!
Something good will happen when we all run out of votes, I just believe it.
We're working on moving to a flat score per vote, regardless of the level of the task. We're trying to implement it such that it doesn't affect any current scores. It's been a slow process for us because we want to make the system very balanced.
Ian I think that's lovely. I would like to point out however--this from my perspective as a gamer of a different sphere--one of the "features" that honked me off about Dungeons & Dragons was the somewhat bizarre "game balance" attempts in their rules
(For example, I'm sure some MPLS SF0 players will recall the "magic users can't use swords" scene in last year's THACO at the Minnesota Fringe)
So if you're looking to balance, please be careful. I happen to think the fibonacci voting progression is very clever, regardless of perceptions of "game balance"
But let me state again, of far greater concern to me than the VALUE of the votes is their NUMBER. I don't wish to inflate or devalue that, ahem, currency, but the reason some are stingy with their votes is not solely because they're saving them for big tasks, they're saving them period because they don't have many.
That was definitely the best part about it. I had grown a bit disenchanted with SF0 for a bit there (having to make some major real-life decisions), but that man reading the poster...that kind of reawakened something. There was another man reading it as I was walking up as well, but he had finished before I got the camera out of my pocket.