Talk:Cruelty scale

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Revision as of 14:07, 15 January 2007 by Eriorg (talk | contribs)

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Removed gratuitous link to truffle recipe. -- OKB 2002/11/20

not sure i understand this scale... does "stuck" mean unwinnable? if so, does it mean a game filled with "instant death" is merciful because you cant make the game unwinnable and can just undo the death move? -- 14:16, 14 January 2007 Nespresso

  • To be honest, I have difficulty understanding this scale as well. As far as I know, yes, "stuck" in this context does means making the game unwinnable. However, no, a game filled with "instant death" is not merciful. UNDO is a "meta-command" or otherwise called an out-of-world action and shouldn't be counted in reckoning game cruelty. In TADS games and some Z-code interpreters, you can UNDO multiple turns, which could potentially make an unwinnable game winnable again, and, well, you can see how allowing UNDO into the discussion makes cruelty assessment meaningless, I hope. So, at best, an instant death game is Polite.

    I suppose we should start seriously appending some sort of clarifications on the cruelty scale page and give examples. We may discover there's even more confusion than we thought. -- David Welbourn 00:17, 15 January 2007 (EST)

I have difficulty understanding it, too. The extremes (Merciful and Cruel) seem rather easy to understand, but the others... Maybe this RAIF thread could help a bit? --Eriorg 09:07, 15 January 2007 (EST)