The Steps of Creating A Law
If you wish to write up a new law and have it enforced over
Egypt, here are the steps you will need to follow:
1. Achieve citizen status.
2. Go to the University of Leadership, click to create petition.
Type your petition into the dialog box.
3. Walk around and talk to people, ask them to sign your
petition. They can sign by clicking on you. You can also share
the petition.
4. When you have enough signatures, go back to the University
of Leadership, and turn in the petition.
5. The developers will now classify the petition: either it is a
feature request, or a petition for a law.
6. If it is a feature request, the developers will put it into the
feature request manager on atitd.info.
7. If it is a petition for a law, it will appear at the voting booth
in the game. Players will begin voting on it.
8. After the voting, if the players achieve the necessary number
of votes, the petition will become a law.
9. After a petition becomes a law, the developers reprogram
the game to enforce the law.
The Law Library
A good way to start is to go to a voting booth and view all the
laws that have already been written. You can view the law
library by clicking on the booth and selecting the "Law Library"
option. The laws are classified according to whether they
passed or not.
The Signature-Gathering Process
Any player can ask another for a copy of a petition. When you
get a copy of a petition, you also get a copy of the signatures.
So if I have a petition with 5 signatures, and you copy it, you
also have a petition with 5 signatures - the same 5 signatures.
Suppose, then, that you take the copy out in to the world, and
collect signatures. You gather 3 more signatures, so your
petition now contains 8 signatures: the 5 I originally gave you,
plus 3 more you collected yourself. Meanwhile, I go gather
another 2 signatures.
We can now meet and share signatures. To do so, you click the
same button you originally used to request a copy of the
petition. When you do, you will gain all of my signatures, and I
will gain all of yours. The result is that we will both have 10
signatures: the 5 that I originally had, plus the 3 you collected,
plus the 2 that I collected.
Is It A Law Or A Feature Request?
After turning in the petition, the developers will classify it as
a law or a feature request. The way we decide is simple, but
subtle: there are things that real-world governments cannot
do. If the petition asks to do something that a real-world
government could not do, then it is not a law, it is a feature
request. What follows is a short list of a few things that
governments cannot do.
Governments Cannot Grant New Abilities
Imagine if the US Congress were to pass a law declaring that
people can run faster. This would not suddenly enable
Americans to run any faster. Here is a proposal that violates
this rule:
Small and light buildings such as chests, forges, kitchens,
tents, etc. should be relocatable by the owner. This would
allow reorganization without destroying things.
Players do not have this ability, and governments cannot
grant abilities. Therefore, this petition is not a law, it's a
feature request. To rephrase: if there is some activity you
would like to do in the game, and there is currently no way
to do it, adding that ability is a feature request, not a law.
Governments Cannot Conjure Knowledge Out Of Thin Air
Imagine if the US Government were to pass a law stating that
from now on, all Americans shall have the knowledge of any
terrorists in their vicinity. Nothing would happen - governments
cannot magically grant knowledge to their subjects. Here is a
proposal that violates this rule
Imagine if the US Government were to pass a law stating that
from now on, all Americans shall have the knowledge of any
terrorists in their vicinity. Nothing would happen - governments
cannot magically grant knowledge to their subjects. Here is a
proposal that violates this rule
Since this proposal grants people knowledge, it is a feature
request.
Governments Cannot Negate Challenges
The Stranger has challenged Egypt - he has given us several
tests, and dared us to try to accomplish them. If the
government declares his tests "too hard" and substitutes easier
ones, then we have not lived up to his challenges at all! If a
law tries to simplify one of the tests, then that is simply a
concession that we are too weak to do what he challenged us
to do. Here is a sample law that violates the rule:
Each citizen will (automatically) send a personal messenger to
their mentor to advise them of the completion of their mentor
shrine. The mentor will receive an EgyptMail message telling
them that the mentee has built them a shrine.
This violates the rule because it makes mentorship easier.
Mentorship is intentionally hard - it's a test of character.
Anything that makes it easier, or automates any part of it, is
diluting the challenge. So this is a feature request, not a law.
So What Does Count As A Law?
Laws in Egypt are just like laws in the real world - it's a way
for you to limit the behavior of other people. For example, if
you say that "nobody may cut down trees in the lakeshore
region," that's a law. If you say "nobody may use the university
unless they first pay their taxes," that's a law.