Ruleset 102

Core Rules

Ruleset and Gamestate

This is the Ruleset for BlogNomic; all Farmers shall obey it. Section One consists of the “core rules” of BlogNomic, covering basic proposal mechanics; Section Two contains the rules of the current dynasty; and Section Three contains the appendix, which exists solely to clarify the remainder of the ruleset.

The Ruleset and Gamestate can only be altered in manners specified by the Ruleset.

Farmers may correct obvious spelling and typographical mistakes in the Ruleset and their own Pending Proposals at any time, including replacing Spivak and gender-specific pronouns with the singular “they”.

Farmers

Any human may apply to join BlogNomic (if they are not already playing) by registering at http://blognomic.com via the Register link in the sidebar, and then making a post making clear their wish to be a Farmer. An Admin shall add them to the roster in the sidebar and the GNDT, at which moment they become a Farmer.

A Farmer may leave the game at any time by posting an entry to the BlogNomic weblog requesting such an action. A Farmer may not rejoin the game within two weeks after having left. A Farmer may only change their name as a result of a proposal approving the change.

Some Farmers are Admins, responsible for updating the site and the Ruleset, and are signified as such in the sidebar. Farmers who wish to become Admins may sign up with a username for the Ruleset Wiki, and submit a Proposal to make themselves Admins. Existing Admins may be removed from their posts by Proposal, CfJ, or voluntary resignation. New admins shall be given the GNDT configuration password when they become admins.

Idle Farmers

Some Farmers are Idle, and shall be marked as such in the sidebar. For the purposes of the Ruleset, excluding Rules “Ruleset and Gamestate”, “Farmers”, “Dynasties”, “Fair Play” and any of those Rules’ subrules, Idle Farmers are not counted as Farmers.

If a Proposal contains a provision that targets a specifically named Idle Farmer, then that Idle Farmer is considered to be Unidle solely for the purposes of enacting that specific provision

When an Farmer is unidled, if they went Idle in the same dynasty, their personal gamestate retains the last legally endowed values it had, if they are still valid. Otherwise (including if a value is invalid, does not exist, or the Farmer Idled in a different dynasty), the Farmer is given the default value for new Farmers, if such a value exists.

An Admin may render a Farmer Idle if that Farmer has asked to become Idle in an entry or comment from the past four days, or if that Farmer has not posted an entry or comment in the last seven days. In the latter case, the Admin must announce the idling in a blog post. Admins may render themselves Idle at any time. An Admin may Unidle a Farmer if that Farmer has asked to become Unidle in an entry or comment from the past four days, and Idle Admins may Unidle themselves at any time, unless the Farmer who would be Unidled asked to become (or rendered themselves) Idle within the previous four days, and within the current dynasty.

Dynasties

BlogNomic is divided into a number of Dynasties. Each Dynasty may be headed by a single Farmer, known as the Demon. If there is no Demon, the Dynasty is a Metadynasty.

Proposals

Any Farmer may submit a Proposal to change the Ruleset or Gamestate, by posting an entry in the “Proposal” category that describes those changes (unless the Farmer already has 2 Proposals pending, or has already made 3 Proposals that day).

Special Proposal Voting

When a Farmer casts an explicit vote AGAINST their own Proposal, this renders the Proposal Self-Killed, even if the author later changes their Vote. The Demon may use VETO as a voting icon to cast a Vote on a proposal; when the Demon casts a vote of VETO on a Proposal, this renders the Proposal Vetoed, even if the Demon later changes their Vote.

If a Farmer other than the Demon casts a vote of DEFERENTIAL on a Proposal, then the Vote of DEFERENTIAL is an indication of confidence in the Demon. When the Demon has a valid Vote other than VETO on a Proposal, then all votes of DEFERENTIAL are instead considered to be valid and the same as the Demon’s Vote for the purposes of other rules unless otherwise specified.

Resolution of Proposals

The oldest pending Proposal may be enacted by any Admin (by updating the Ruleset and/or Gamestate to include the specified effects of that Proposal, and then setting that Proposal's status to Enacted) if either of the following is true:

• It has a number of FOR Votes that exceed or equal Quorum, has been open for voting for at least 12 hours, and has not been Vetoed or Self-Killed.
• It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours, it has more than 1 valid Vote cast on it, more valid Votes cast on it are FOR than are AGAINST, and it has not been Vetoed or Self-Killed.

The oldest pending Proposal may be failed by any Admin, if any of the following are true:

• It could not be Enacted without either one of the Votes AGAINST it being changed, or the set of Farmers being changed, or by awaiting the passage of time.
• It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and cannot be Enacted.

If a proposal somehow ends up being pending for more than 7 days, it is ignored for the purpose of calculating the oldest pending proposal, and can be failed by any Admin.

Votable Matters

A Votable Matter is a post which Farmers may cast Votes on, such as a Proposal, a Call for Judgement or a Declaration of Victory.

Each Farmer may cast one Vote on a Votable Matter by making a comment to the Official Post that comprises that Votable Matter using a voting icon of FOR, AGAINST, or DEFERENTIAL. Additional voting icons may be permitted in some cases by other rules. A valid Vote is, except when otherwise specified, a Vote of FOR or AGAINST. A Farmer’s Vote on a Votable Matter is the last valid voting icon that they have used in any comment on that Votable Matter. Additionally, if the author of a Votable Matter has not used a valid voting icon in a comment to the post, then the author’s Vote is FOR. A non-Farmer never has a Vote, even if they were a Farmer previously and had cast a valid Vote.

Votable Matters can either be Pending, Enacted, or Failed. When a Votable Matter is first put forward, it is considered Pending.

Whenever an Admin resolves a Votable Matter, they must also mark their name, and report the final tally of Votes (or the fact that it was self-killed or vetoed).

This rule cannot be overruled by Dynastic Rules in its application to Calls for Judgement or Declarations of Victory.

Calls for Judgement

If two or more Farmers actively disagree as to the interpretation of the Ruleset, or if a Farmer feels that an aspect of the game needs urgent attention, then any Farmer may raise a Call for Judgement (abbreviated CfJ) by posting an entry in the “Call for Judgement” category.

A Pending CFJ may be Resolved by an Admin if it has a Quorum of FOR Votes, a Quorum of AGAINST Votes, or if it has been open for voting for more than 48 hours. When a CFJ is Resolved, it is to be Enacted if it has more FOR Votes than AGAINST Votes and Failed otherwise. When a CFJ is Enacted, the Admin Enacting it shall update the Gamestate and Ruleset, and correct the GNDT and other gamestate tracking entities, as specified in the CFJ.

Any CfJ that specifies neither changes to the Gamestate or Ruleset nor corrections to any gamestate tracking entities may be failed by any Admin.

This Rule may not be overruled by Dynastic Rules.

Victory and Ascension

If a Farmer (other than the Demon) believes that they have achieved victory in the current Dynasty, they may make a post to the Blognomic weblog in the Declaration of Victory category, detailing this.

Upon doing so, the game immediately goes into Hiatus, if it hasn’t already. During this time, the only game actions that may be taken are those covered by Rules “Farmers”, “Votable Matters”, “Calls for Judgement”, “Gamestate Tracking” and “Victory and Ascension”.

Every Farmer may cast Votes on that DoV to indicate agreement or disagreement with the proposition that the poster has achieved victory in the current Dynasty.

A Pending DoV may be enacted if any of the following is true:

• It has been open for voting for at least 12 hours, has a number of FOR Votes that exceed or equal Quorum, and either the Demon has Voted FOR it or it has no AGAINST Votes.
• It has been open for voting for at least 24 hours, has a number of FOR Votes that exceed or equal Quorum, and has a number of AGAINST Votes lesser than half of Quorum, rounded down.
• It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours, has a number of Votes that exceed or equal Quorum, and more than half of its valid Votes are FOR.

A DoV may be failed if any of the following are true:

• It has been open for voting for at least 12 hours, and it could not be Enacted without either at least one of the Votes AGAINST it being changed, or the set of Farmers being changed, or by awaiting the passage of time.
• It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and cannot be Enacted.

When a DoV fails and there are no pending DoVs, Hiatus ends.

When a DoV is enacted, all other active DoVs are failed, and a new Dynasty begins with the Farmer who made the DoV as its Demon. That Farmer may pass this role to another Farmer at this point by making a post to that effect, if they wish. The Hiatus continues until the new Demon makes an Ascension Address by posting an entry in the “Ascension Address” category - this should specify the Demon's chosen theme for the new Dynasty, and may optionally specify that the terms Farmer and Demon will be replaced with theme-specific terms throughout the entire ruleset, and/or a number of dynastic rules to keep. Upon posting such an Ascension Address, the ruleset is updated to reflect any changed terms, and any dynastic rules which were not listed to be kept are repealed.

A DoV may not be started in the period between an enacted DoV and that DoV’s Ascension Address. When a DoV is failed, if it has a number of AGAINST Votes that exceed Quorum, the Farmer who posted it cannot make another DoV until after 120 hours (5 days) have passed since the time their DoV was failed.

This rule cannot be overruled by Dynastic Rules as it relates to Declarations of Victory, but can be overruled in other matters.

Fair Play

The following are BlogNomic’s rules of fair play. If any of these rules are found to have been broken, or if a Farmer's behaviour or actions are otherwise deemed unacceptable (socially or otherwise), a proposal or CfJ may be made to reprimand or punish the perpetrator or, in cases of extreme or repeated violations, remove them from the game and bar them from rejoining.

• A single person should not control more than one Farmer within BlogNomic.
• A Farmer should not “spam” the BlogNomic blog. What counts as spamming is subjective, but would typically include posting more than ten blog entries in a day, more than ten blog comments in a row, or posting a blog entry of more than 1000 words.
• A Farmer should not deliberately exploit bugs or unexpected behaviours in the software running the game (ExpressionEngine, MediaWiki or the GNDT).
• A Farmer should not edit their own blog comments once posted, nor those of any other Farmer.
• A Farmer should not edit the "Entry Date" field of a blog post.
• A Farmer should not make a DoV primarily to delay the game by putting it into Hiatus.
• A Farmer should not do any action meant to make the game unplayable (for example, changing multiple keywords to the same word in an ascension address).

Seasonal Downtime

Blognomic goes into hiatus every year on December 24th, and remains in hiatus until December 27th. During this time no game actions may be taken except those described in the rules entitled “Votable Matters,” “Gamestate Tracking” and “Call for Judgement”.

Dynastic Rules

Housekeeping

Each Farmer has a nonnegative integer number of Bottles with Cursed Water, tracked in the GNDT in a column called CW and defaulting to 50.

Each Farmer also has a nonnegative integer number of Manuls, the total number of which is tracked in the GNDT in a column called Manuls. The default number of Manuls is 0.

Manuls are living creatures

Each Manul that a Farmer possess may itself posses an Amulet. Amulets must have unique IDs across all Farmers (including idle ones) consisting of one or more alphanumeric characters. Amulets are tracked in a GNDT called “Amulets”, and are listed in a comma seperated list in the row for the Farmer who possesses the Manul who owns that Amulet. Farmers may change the order of the Amulets possessed by their Manuls at any time. If a Farmer ever has fewer Manuls than entries in their Amulet list, the last entry in their Amulet list is removed.

If a Manul which possesses an Amulet dies, the Amulet is removed from that Farmer’s list and disappears and the Farmer’s Manul count decreases by one. Likewise, if a Manul which possesses an Amulet is sold or otherwise transferred to another Farmer, the Amulet is transferred to the other as well and the two Farmer’s Manul totals are updated accordingly. (If the Manul which dies or is transferred does not possess an Amulet, the Farmer’s Manul totals are still updated).

If a Farmer does not possess any Manuls and has not already done so this dynasty, he may give himself one Manul which possesses an Amulet with an ID of the Farmer’s choosing (provided, of course, it is unique).

feeding

At the start of every other day, beginning July 27th 2012, all Farmers having at least one Manul must feed their Manuls. A Farmer who has at least 2(M-1) CW, where M is the number of Manuls that Farmer has, loses 2(M-1) CW and has fed their Manuls for the day. Otherwise, they must automatically sell Manuls by repeatedly decreasing their Manul count by one and simultaneously increasing their CW by 6 CW, until the Farmer has N Manuls and at least 2(N-1) CW, at which point they lose 2(N-1) CW and have fed their Manuls.

The Demon is not a Farmer

For the purpose of any other Dynastic Rule, the Demon is not considered to be a Farmer, unless the rule explicitly refers to the Demon.

Manul Exchange

A Farmer may at any time buy a Manul by spending 8 CW and increasing the number of his Manuls by one.

If the number of Manuls a Farmer has is more than the number of Amulets his Manuls possess, he may at any time sell a Manul by gaining 6 CW and reducing number of his Manuls by one.

If the number of Farmer’s Manuls equals the number of Amulets his Manuls possess, he may at any time select one Amulet and sell the Manul possessing this Amulet by excluding this Amulet from the corresponding list in the GNDT, reducing number of his Manuls by one and gaining 6 CW.

Breeding

As a daily action, a Farmer owning not less than two Manuls may allow his Manuls to breed. To do this, he must roll DICEN in the GNDT, where N is the total number of Manuls he has divided by two and rounded down. The result is the number of newborn Manuls. He then must increase the number of his Manuls by the number of the newborn Manuls.

If a Farmer has not taken this action during a Day and at the end of the Day owns not less than two Manuls, the default breeding action shall take place: the number of his newborn Manuls is determined as above, and all the newborn Manuls are sold. This default action doesn’t count as performing a daily action of breeding. Any Farmer or the Demon may update the GNDT to reflect the results of this default action.

Hunting For Amulets

Any Farmer may send a Hunting Plan to the Demon via PM. The sender of the Hunting Plan is called the Hunter. The Hunting Plan must contain a list of Victims’ names, each Victim being a Farmer other than the Hunter. The list may contain duplicates. The number of Victims in the list must not exceed the number of Manuls the Hunter has minus the number of Amulets possessed by the Hunter’s Manuls. A Hunting Plan satisfying these restrictions is valid until 24 hours since its sending time pass or another action invalidates it.

If a Farmer having a valid Hunting Plan sends another valid Hunting Plan, the former Hunting Plan becomes invalid.

A Farmer may cancel his Hunting Plan by sending a PM to the Demon expressing clear wish to cancel his Hunting Plan. Upon sending such message, all Farmer’s Hunting Plans that were sent before this message become invalid.

Attack

Every day, starting July 31st 2012, at 20:30:00 UTC the following actions take place:

• For each Farmer, the number of his Staying Manuls is calculated as the number of Manuls he has minus the number of Victims in his valid Hunting Plan if he has a valid Hunting Plan at the specified time, or as the number of Manuls if the Farmer has no valid Hunting Plan at that time.

• A list of Attacks is made: for each valid Hunting Plan, for each Victim in it, the pair Hunter—Victim is added to the list of Attacks.

• The list of Attacks is randomly shuffled (with the help of an online shuffler like http://www.amdz.com/shuffler.php).

• For each Attack in the list, let N be the number of Victim’s Staying Manuls, then DICE(2N) is rolled, and if the result X is less than or equal to the number of Amulets possessed by the Victim’s Manuls, the X’th Amulet in the Victim’s Amulet list is transferred to the Hunter (by removing the Amulet from the Victim’s Amulets list and adding it to the end of the Hunter’s Amulets list).

The Demon should update the GNDT to reflect these changes within one hour since the specified time.

Sacred Things

There is a Sacred Word initially known only to the Demon. The Sacred Word is a four-letter English word. Each English letter that occurs in the Sacred Word is called a Sacred Letter, and any English letter may occur in the Sacred Word no more than once. Each Amulet is associated with exactly one Sacred Letter, which means that given the id of an Amulet, the Demon can name the Sacred Letter associated with that Amulet.

Exorcism Attempt

As a weekly action, a Farmer may perform an Exorcism Attempt by sending a private message (PM) to the Demon with the topic “Exorcism Attempt” specifying a four-letter English word which he believes is the Sacred Word. If the Farmer names the Sacred Word correctly and at the time the PM is sent his Manuls possess at least one Amulet associated with the first letter of the Sacred Word and at least one Amulet associated with its last letter, the Demon should announce that Farmer’s name in a blog post headed “Successful Exorcism”, and that Farmer has achieved victory. Otherwise the Demon should send a reply specifying that the Exorcism Attempt has failed.

Secret Disclosure

As a daily action, a Farmer may choose an Amulet possessed by his Manuls and send a private message to the Demon with the topic “Secret Disclosure” containing the id of that Amulet. The Demon should then send a reply specifying the Sacred Letter that Amulet is associated with.

Appendix

Keywords

A keyword defined by a rule supersedes the normal English usage of the word. A keyword defined in this glossary supersedes that defined by a rule. (eg. A rule specifying "bananas are blue" cannot be overruled by posting a dictionary definition or a photo of a banana, and a rule specifying "every day is Sunday" will be overruled by the glossary entry below.)

Can

"is able to"

Comment

A blog comment published to the BlogNomic weblog at blognomic.com

Core Proposal

A Proposal which mandates changes that, even if conditionally, are limited to the creation, deletion, and/or amendment of core rules and/or the glossary, and/or renaming, banning, and/or the granting or removing of admin status from one or more Farmers.

Daily Action

If a game action is a Daily Action, each Farmer able to perform it may take that action once each day, but not more than once every ten hours.

Day

References to a “day” as an entity rather than as a duration (e.g. “Sunday”, “The day after performing this action”, or “August 2nd”), unless otherwise stated, refer to a day beginning at and including 00:00:00 UTC, ending when the next day begins. It can never be 2 different days at the same instant.

Dice

References to "YDICEX" refer to Y X-sided dice, rolled within the GNDT. To roll dice, post DICEX in the comments field of the GNDT, replacing X with the number of sides on the die you wish to roll.

Dynastic Proposal

A Proposal which mandates changes that, even if conditionally, are limited to the creation, deletion, and/or amendment of dynastic rules and/or gamestate defined by dynastic rules.

Effective Vote Comment (EVC)

A Farmer’s Effective Vote Comment with respect to a given Votable Matter means that Farmer’s Comment to that Votable Matter, if any, that contains that Farmer’s Vote on that Votable Matter.

Flavour Text

When posting a blog entry, a Farmer may use the “Commentary or flavour text” field of the blog publishing form to add their own comments or description of their post. For the purposes of all other rules, such text is not considered to be part of the post.

Gamestate

Any information which the Ruleset regulates the alteration of.

IRC Channel

The Blognomic IRC channel is located at #nomic on the slashnet network (irc.slashnet.org).

May

"is permitted to"

May not

"is not permitted to"

Post

A blog post published to the BlogNomic weblog at blognomic.com

Quorum

Quorum of a subset of Farmers is half the number of Farmers in that subset, rounded down, plus one. If the word Quorum is used without qualifying which subset of Farmers it is referring to, it is referring to a Quorum of all Farmers.

Resolve/Resolution

If used in a context of a Votable Matter, the world “Resolve” means to perform the act, as an Admin, of enacting or failing a Votable Matter. The world “Resolution” means then the act of doing so. If used in any other context, the meaning of both “Resolve” and “Resolution” is the standard English meaning of these words

Rule

Each individually numbered section of the ruleset is a rule, including sections that are sub-rules of other rules.

Shall

"is required to"

Should

"is recommended that"

Sibling Rule

Two rules are “siblings” of each other if they are both direct subrules of the same rule.

Story Post

A Story Post is an entry in the “Story Post” category.

Subject

The "subject" of a blog entry is the part of the Title of an entry which is after the first colon. If the Title does not contain a colon, then the whole Title is the subject. Any entry whose subject is "" (i.e. an empty string) is not valid.

Subrule

A subrule is a type of rule that is nested within another rule. A proposal that specifically affects a rule affects all of its subrules; a proposal that specifically affects a subrule does not affect its parent rule or any other subrule of that rule, unless they are also explicitly cited as being affected by that proposal.

Vote

The word “Vote”, used as a noun, means a Vote that is cast in accordance with Rule “Votable Matters”. The word “Vote”, used as a verb, means the act of casting such a Vote.

Voting Icons

For use in voting, a check box http://blognomic.com/images/vote/for.gif shall represent a Vote FOR, an X http://blognomic.com/images/vote/against.gif shall represent a Vote AGAINST, an IMP http://blognomic.com/images/vote/imperial.gif shall represent a Vote of DEFERENTIAL, and an Imperial Seal http://blognomic.com/images/vote/seal.gif shall represent the Imperial Veto.

Week

References to a week as an entity rather than as a duration (e.g. “At the beginning of each week”, or “already happened this week”), unless otherwise stated, refer to a period of time between the beginning of a Monday and the end of the following Sunday.

Weekly Action

If a game action is a Weekly Action, each Farmer able to perform it may take that action once each week, but not more than once every twenty-four hours.

Weekly Communal Action

If a game action is a Weekly Communal Action, it can be performed by any Farmer, but only if it has not been performed (by any Farmer) already in the same week.

Wiki

The BlogNomic Wiki at http://blognomic.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Gamestate Tracking

Votable Matters and other official posts, as well as specific gamestate information, shall be tracked by the BlogNomic blog at http://blognomic.com. Any Farmer may post to the blog at any time, but may only make official posts to the blog when the Ruleset allows it. Posts following the format specified by a rule are considered official posts. No entry may be more than one of the following official types of post: Votable Matters, and Idling Post.

If no Farmer has commented on it, an official post may be altered or removed by its author; otherwise this can only be done as allowed by the Ruleset. However, despite this, official posts can never be changed from one category to another, or changed to be a different sort of official post, if they have been posted for more than fifteen minutes. The Admin processing an official post is allowed to append to the post to reflect its new status. Anything appended to a post in this way must be placed in the Admin field of the post, and the post's Status must be changed to reflect its status.

A non-official post may not, through editing of the blog or otherwise, be changed into an official post, with the following exception: Whilst a non-official post has been posted for less than fifteen minutes and has no comments, the author may change the categories as they wish.

Specific parts of the Gamestate data shall be tracked by the Generic Nomic Data Tracker at http://blognomic.com/gndt/generic.cgi?nomic=blog. Any Farmer may update any Farmer's data via the GNDT, whenever the Ruleset permits it.

All updates to the GNDT are logged. Actions that change gamestate directly (defined in other rules) can normally be performed simply by applying their effects to the GNDT, which updates the gamestate accordingly, unless another rule specifies some other method of performing them; one GNDT update may contain one or more actions, or one action may be split over multiple GNDT updates, as long as it’s clear what is happening and the actions are otherwise legal. The GNDT merely represents the Gamestate, and is not the same thing. In the event that the Gamestate and the GNDT are different, any Farmer may correct the GNDT to comply with the Gamestate.

If a Farmer feels that the GNDT was altered such that it no longer matches the gamestate (such as by performing an action which was against the Rules (as they were at the time of the alteration), or by any other means), they may simply undo the effects of that alteration. Instead of repeatedly reverting and re-reverting a disputed GNDT update, Farmers are encouraged to raise a Call for Judgement instead. Farmers shall be assigned a password for the GNDT when they join the Nomic.

Clarifications

Numbers and Variables

• If a set of valid values is not specified in their definition, game variables defined to hold numeric values can hold only non-negative integers. Any action that would set those values below zero is an illegal action unless explicitly otherwise stated in the ruleset.
• Any situation which would require a roll of DiceX when X is zero or lower always yields a value of 0 unless stated otherwise.
• All numbers, unless stated otherwise by a rule, are in base ten.
• Unless otherwise specified, to “spend” or “lose” an amount X of a numeric value “V” means to subtract X from V; to “gain” X of a numeric value “V” means to add X to V; and to “transfer” X of a numeric value “V” from A to B means to subtract X from A’s V and add X to B’s V. Unless otherwise specified, only positive amounts can be spent, lost, gained, or transferred, and a rule that allows Farmers to transfer a numeric value only allows them to transfer that value from themselves to another Farmer (of their choice unless otherwise stated).
• A Farmer who has a choice in whether to take an action defined by a dynastic rule may not take that action if both of the following conditions are true: a) the action's effects are limited to changing values tracked in the GNDT and/or similar gamestate-tracking entities (such as a wiki page), and b) the action would change one or more of those values to an illegal value.
• If a rule implies that the result of any calculation should be an integer (for instance, by attempting to store that result in, or add it to, a gamestate variable that can only hold integers), the result of the calculation is instead the result rounded towards 0.
• If a number or other game variable is selected 'at random' or 'randomly' from a range of possible values, its value shall always be taken from a uniform probability distribution over the entire range of possible values, unless otherwise specified.
• If a game variable has no defined starting value for new Farmers, or for existing Farmers upon the variable’s creation, then that starting value is zero (for numerical variables) or blank (for a text string or list).
• Invalid values for game variables can never be used, even if the values stored in the GNDT remain valid. (for example, if X appears in a formula referring to a value that is a non-negative integer, X must be used as a non-negative integer)

Rules and Proposals

• If a new rule is created by a proposal and its location is not noted in that proposal, that new rule is to be placed in the Dynastic Rules.
• Where a Proposal would amend the effects of Proposal Enactment, this does not apply to its own enactment unless explicitly stated (eg. a proposal proposing that enacted proposals earn their author a banana when enacted would not earn a banana for its own author, when enacted).
• Rules which trigger upon the Resolution of a Votable Matter are the responsibility of the Admin who Resolves it.
• Unless otherwise specified, a new Dynastic rule shall be placed at the end of the Dynastic Rules.
• If a rule would ever have no name, it is instead named “Unnamed Rule”.
• The names of rules are not themselves rule text and have no effect other than being rule names.

Time

• For the purpose of all rules, time in Blognomic is in UTC.
• All references to time must be either specific or defined within the ruleset to be considered achievable in the gamestate. Abstract concepts of time (e.g. "dinnertime", "twilight") cannot be achieved until they fulfil one of these criteria.
• Where the month, day and/or year of a calendar date are ambiguous (eg. "04/10/09"), it shall be assumed that the date is in a day/month/year format.

Spelling

• Superficial differences between the spelling of geographic versions of English, e.g, British English, American English and Australian English shall be construed as irrelevant for the purposes of play.

Names

• Within the ruleset, a word only refers to the name of a Farmer if it is explicitly stated that it refers to a Farmer's name.

Prioritisation

• If two parts of the Ruleset contradict each other, precedence shall be construed in the following order:

1. The Appendix has precedence over any Rule;
2. A Dynastic Rule has precedence over a Core Rule, unless that Core Rule explicitly says it can’t be overruled by a Dynastic Rule;
3. If both contradicting parts are a Core Rule, or if both of them are a Dynastic Rule, the part with more limited scope applies. (e.g. if the rules “Farmers may Kick each other” and “Farmers may not kick each other on Tuesdays” exist, and it is Tuesday, Farmers may not Kick each other.)
4. If two parts with the same scope contradict each other, the negative rule applies. (e.g. with “Farmers may Punch a Spaceman on Friday” and “Farmer may not Punch Spacemen on Friday”, then Farmers may not Punch Spacemen on Friday.)