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I don't know about instant/turn play semantics so can't follow the tradeoffs there. > Not everyone is well versed in how those semantics play out I would argu

I don't know about instant/turn play semantics so can't follow the tradeoffs there. > Not everyone is well versed in how those semantics play out I would argue that this is not necessary: just watch younger people who are friendly with each other discuss something: what I'm describing is a natural mode of communication. AFAICT it's just overridden in certain cases when people are taught "never interrupt someone speaking" or something along those lines. But I would be curious if you could lay out the tradeoffs with instant plays in the card game semantics you mentioned.

taeric 4y ago
Forming a hierarchy of leadership and follower is also fairly common among children. Probably fairly common among people, period. In that, you quickly start to form boundaries on who can interrupt what and why. And, in all cases, you almost always need someone that cannot be interrupted. The article does cover this. They have moderators that would keep things on track. Most of your interactions on a daily basis don't have moderators.
- westoncb 4y ago
  This is an interesting additional aspect to the situation. I wouldn't deny at all that what you're describing happens, but whether it's a problem or a solution is debatable imo ;) Is it always better to have an enforced equality of priority among speakers, or do these emergent hierarchies serve as effective regulators of group communication? However, I'd also argue that in most cases these social group hierarchical roles aren't going to end up having a large influence on communication style: typically it's only if there's something pressing going on. (Or, as I've already described elsewhere, if someone is unfairly taking advantage, the negation of which is a condition for cooperative interrupting to work.)
nextaccountic 4y ago
> I don't know about instant/turn play semantics so can't follow the tradeoffs there. Magic: The Gathering works like a computer (quite literally it's Turing complete). When you play a card or ability, it is put on a stack. After you're done, you need to yield - then the other player may play things on the stack too (but, they can only play "instants" - most other cards can only be played if the stack is empty). Then they must yield, and so on. (In the 90s, instants meant to interrupt other spells were called "interrupts", but this name was dropped) After everyone is done, things are popped from the stack in the reverse order they were played (like any stack). So if your opponent played something in response to what you played, their card resolves first, then yours. But if you played something in response to their response, your card resolves first, then theirs, then yours. This would be very tedious, but in fact most decks have few instants and little interaction with the stack, so most of time you play a card I will just wait it to resolve and generally wait my turn to play. And famously, no card of MtG is allowed to mention the stack in their printed text: while the concept itself is intuitive, talking about the stack is a sure way to make a card overly complicated.
- porknubbins 4y ago
  You just blew my mind a little bit, realizing MTG gameplay was based on CS concepts, and made me fee old since interrupts is what we called them (way before I knew about processor interrupts).
  - taeric 4y ago
    To be fair, this is more that a formal system described precisely can be mapped to many computer science structures. And I'm fairly confident these semantics exist in many card games. Unstable Unicorns has the neigh card. Uno has the rule of declaring uno. (Where you can interrupt the next play by calling uno to force the last player to draw a card. Note that this is a very specific time you can interrupt play.)
- westoncb 4y ago
  Great explanation, thanks. I actually played MtG a bit when I was a kid and have a vague recollection of interrupts but don't think I understood the stack dynamics too clearly. Insightful design decision to disallow stack referencing lol.
- CarlsJrMints 4y ago
  > no card of MtG is allowed to mention the stack in their printed text Nit: The Split Second keyword ability is usually accompanied by reminder text which mentions the stack > Split second (As long as this spell is on the stack, players can't cast spells or activate abilities that aren't mana abilities.) https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=509479 https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multive...
  - SilasX 4y ago
    Is this a recent standards change? I remember some legendary artifact that caused spells on the stack to be copied and explicitly described it that way.
  - waterhouse 4y ago
    Doing a search, I count 40 results with "stack" in their text; it appears that 18 of them have "split second", a few of them have "stack" in their name, several are from "Un" expansions or this weird "Mystery Booster" thing, several mention the stack in explanatory text about what it means to end the turn or end the combat phase... but there are several cards such as Grip of Chaos ("Whenever a spell or ability is put onto the stack, if it has a single target, reselect its target at random") that are from regular expansions. https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=+[stack] https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?actio...

taeric 4y ago

Forming a hierarchy of leadership and follower is also fairly common among children. Probably fairly common among people, period. In that, you quickly start to form boundaries on who can interrupt what and why. And, in all cases, you almost always need someone that cannot be interrupted. The article does cover this. They have moderators that would keep things on track. Most of your interactions on a daily basis don't have moderators.

westoncb 4y ago
This is an interesting additional aspect to the situation. I wouldn't deny at all that what you're describing happens, but whether it's a problem or a solution is debatable imo ;) Is it always better to have an enforced equality of priority among speakers, or do these emergent hierarchies serve as effective regulators of group communication? However, I'd also argue that in most cases these social group hierarchical roles aren't going to end up having a large influence on communication style: typically it's only if there's something pressing going on. (Or, as I've already described elsewhere, if someone is unfairly taking advantage, the negation of which is a condition for cooperative interrupting to work.)

nextaccountic 4y ago

> I don't know about instant/turn play semantics so can't follow the tradeoffs there. Magic: The Gathering works like a computer (quite literally it's Turing complete). When you play a card or ability, it is put on a stack. After you're done, you need to yield - then the other player may play things on the stack too (but, they can only play "instants" - most other cards can only be played if the stack is empty). Then they must yield, and so on. (In the 90s, instants meant to interrupt other spells were called "interrupts", but this name was dropped) After everyone is done, things are popped from the stack in the reverse order they were played (like any stack). So if your opponent played something in response to what you played, their card resolves first, then yours. But if you played something in response to their response, your card resolves first, then theirs, then yours. This would be very tedious, but in fact most decks have few instants and little interaction with the stack, so most of time you play a card I will just wait it to resolve and generally wait my turn to play. And famously, no card of MtG is allowed to mention the stack in their printed text: while the concept itself is intuitive, talking about the stack is a sure way to make a card overly complicated.

porknubbins 4y ago
You just blew my mind a little bit, realizing MTG gameplay was based on CS concepts, and made me fee old since interrupts is what we called them (way before I knew about processor interrupts).
- taeric 4y ago
  To be fair, this is more that a formal system described precisely can be mapped to many computer science structures. And I'm fairly confident these semantics exist in many card games. Unstable Unicorns has the neigh card. Uno has the rule of declaring uno. (Where you can interrupt the next play by calling uno to force the last player to draw a card. Note that this is a very specific time you can interrupt play.)
westoncb 4y ago
Great explanation, thanks. I actually played MtG a bit when I was a kid and have a vague recollection of interrupts but don't think I understood the stack dynamics too clearly. Insightful design decision to disallow stack referencing lol.
CarlsJrMints 4y ago
> no card of MtG is allowed to mention the stack in their printed text Nit: The Split Second keyword ability is usually accompanied by reminder text which mentions the stack > Split second (As long as this spell is on the stack, players can't cast spells or activate abilities that aren't mana abilities.) https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=509479 https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multive...
- SilasX 4y ago
  Is this a recent standards change? I remember some legendary artifact that caused spells on the stack to be copied and explicitly described it that way.
- waterhouse 4y ago
  Doing a search, I count 40 results with "stack" in their text; it appears that 18 of them have "split second", a few of them have "stack" in their name, several are from "Un" expansions or this weird "Mystery Booster" thing, several mention the stack in explanatory text about what it means to end the turn or end the combat phase... but there are several cards such as Grip of Chaos ("Whenever a spell or ability is put onto the stack, if it has a single target, reselect its target at random") that are from regular expansions. https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=+[stack] https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?actio...