§19.3. New rules
Stretching a point seasonally, we might write:
Every turn, say "The summer breeze shakes the apple-blossom."
This rule is nameless. It needs no name because it will never need to be referred to: by identifying it as an every turn rule we have already said enough to lodge it in the "every turn" rulebook. In fact, though, it is easy to create a named rule:
This is the blossom shaking rule: say "The summer breeze shakes the apple-blossom."
The name of a rule must always end with the word "rule", for clarity's sake. (The phrasing "This is the ... rule" is used because "The ... rule" would be open to misinterpretation.)
Previously we had a rule which had no name, but belonged to a rulebook: now we have the opposite, because although the "blossom shaking rule" has a name, it has not been placed in any rulebook. That means it will probably never be applied, unless we give specific instructions for that.
Alternatively, it is possible to both name and place a rule in a single sentence:
Every turn (this is the alternative blossom rule): say "The summer breeze shakes the apple-blossom."
Now the "alternative blossom rule" is a named rule in the "every turn" rulebook.
![]() | Start of Chapter 19: Rulebooks |
![]() | Back to §19.2. Named rules and rulebooks |
![]() | Onward to §19.4. Listing rules explicitly |
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A thing can have a rule as a property, if we like. Here we are going to allow the player to make a soup whose effects will depend on its ingredients. Each ingredient will have its own "food effect" rule, to be followed when the food is eaten. Note that there are other, slightly less cumbersome ways to do the same thing -- we will see in a few sections in the chapter on object-based rulebooks that we could make a "food effects rulebook" and then write a number of rules such as "food effects rule for carrots" or "food effects rule for the stone". Nonetheless, we demonstrate rules-as-properties here for the sake of thoroughness. So:
And now to provide some particular foods:
And the following is a relatively unimportant nicety:
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A thing can have a rule as a property, if we like. Here we are going to allow the player to make a soup whose effects will depend on its ingredients. Each ingredient will have its own "food effect" rule, to be followed when the food is eaten. Note that there are other, slightly less cumbersome ways to do the same thing -- we will see in a few sections in the chapter on object-based rulebooks that we could make a "food effects rulebook" and then write a number of rules such as "food effects rule for carrots" or "food effects rule for the stone". Nonetheless, we demonstrate rules-as-properties here for the sake of thoroughness. So:
And now to provide some particular foods:
And the following is a relatively unimportant nicety:
A thing can have a rule as a property, if we like. Here we are going to allow the player to make a soup whose effects will depend on its ingredients. Each ingredient will have its own "food effect" rule, to be followed when the food is eaten. Note that there are other, slightly less cumbersome ways to do the same thing -- we will see in a few sections in the chapter on object-based rulebooks that we could make a "food effects rulebook" and then write a number of rules such as "food effects rule for carrots" or "food effects rule for the stone". Nonetheless, we demonstrate rules-as-properties here for the sake of thoroughness. So:
And now to provide some particular foods:
And the following is a relatively unimportant nicety:
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