When Gaming Gets Personal

JodaMyth wrote:     If you decide the rules of the game you can put whichever piece you want on the checkers board. A Queen, a playing card, some dice... you individually are determining that you are winning based on the game you have designed. Combining our analogies, with your self-determined play style you may consider yourself to be winning. Looking at the server as those 1k checkers boards, your towns, and by extension yourself, would be the "Queen" placed on the checkers board which are being removed from it and the players are currently watching you tell the people who say "You can't use a queen in checkers" being called bullies and threatening. You are right, there is no strict rules on how to "win" on a sandbox game, but much like playground games there are ones set up and recognized by the players involved i.e. tag, red rover, etc.  You are not playing Illyriad the game now, you are instead talking while most in-game assets you have are removed from you. Much like someone who was tagged before calling no tag backs I believe your words may be too late.      Not to compare you to conspiracy theorist but there are people who fully believe we haven't landed on the Moon, they have faith in their own logic in why it never happened. Using self-described logic to make yourself right does not make you correct to anyone but yourself. Perhaps that is all you need but you will need more than your own personal logic to convince the masses you are the great messiah here to rid Illy of the evils of threats by coercion and alliances who are so questionable at war they broke all their blades before it even began.

You cannot combine several games at once and expect any sort of cohesive understanding.  I could play Monopoly with checkers on a parcheesi board but it wouldn't make much sense.  You are still insisting that it's just one game.  I keep arguing it's multiple games in a single space and that the various games, because they have differing goals, will have differing rules.  I want to separate the games as much as possible by not allowing the tactics in one game to spill over onto players of other games.  That's why, in the 1000 board room, I have a separate board and do not put my queen on others' boards and expect that they will keep their checkers off mine.  If we happen to have our boards right next to each other I would expect that they would keep to theirs' and I to mine and not move my queen onto their board even when the squares line up.  That's the only way you can insure that everybody in that room can play their game freely.

I'm saying I'm not playing their game and the only time I interfere with their game is if they are interfering in mine needlessly.  If the intimidation by threats of coercion could be restricted to certain players, I'd have no problem with it as a agreed tactic between waring parties or warrior types.  But since the intimidation by threats of coercion is against all players it impacts all players and thus interferes needlessly with others' games on the playground.

And example:  I go to the playground to fly kites.  To do this you need a lot of open space without trees and the like.  I'm flying my kite and you come with your friends and want to play baseball.  If the field is large enough you can do so without interfering with me.  But if not, we have to compromise.  How we do that should not, I think, include you using intimidation by threats of force to get me to stop my enjoyment.  Nor should I not try to accommodate your needs.  It might be that I would move to the far outfield rather than stand by home plate.  It might be that you play the game around me somehow (if it can be done, it should be done).

You are right.  I'm playing my game.  I'm winning at my game.  And if people think that they can try to force me to play their game, they are wrong because the assets of which you speak aren't needed to win my game.  What's needed is for you, and the other players, to be rational and respond to the logic I've put forth.  Logically and systematically.  Begin, as I do, with your premises, lay out your logic and we can proceed to where it takes us.  If your logic proves stronger I will loose. And by logic I don't mean opinion, but demonstrable logic as in syllogisms or some other formal logic system. 

When you refer to "their logic" when referring to those who believe we've never been to the moon you should read Richard Hoefstater's The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Harper's Magazine, November 1964: http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/  In it he argues that the logic of such conspiracy theories isn't logic at all.  My logic is strictly formal and thus not opinion, as the "logic" of conspiracy theories is.  In fact, the point of the article is that conspiracy theorist actually attempt to present a case for logic of their position without laying it out step by step and with clear logical connections.  Do read the article as it's one of the landmark pieces in American rhetorical studies.