BlogNomic Jargon

An explaination of some terms one will likely encounter here at Blognomic -- including several that are not officially defined under the authority of the Ruleset, but which are in common usage nonetheless.

Technical Terms

Call for Judgement

CfJ for short. A post which may be made by any player to fix any sort of problem with the game. Basically, all players vote FOR or AGAINST it, and the majority wins (see the Ruleset for specific details). It may not say so explicitly in the Ruleset, but we are careful to always preserve the right of any player to make (or vote on) a CfJ.

Counted Vote

Usually, when you vote multiple times on the same item (e.g. a Proposal) only the most recent one counts. Going idle also causes your votes to no longer count.

Declaration of Victory

DoV for short. The post you make when you believe you have achieved victory. Making such a post puts the game into Hiatus (i.e., the Hiatus begins as soon as the DoV is made, during the voting period in which the other players decide whether Victory has really been achieved). Get enough FOR votes on your DoV and you get to choose the next Emperor. If the DoV fails then the Hiatus ends and the game continues.

Dynasty

when a player achieves victory here at Blognomic, the game doesn't end; the winner simply chooses someone (usually themself) to begin a new Dynasty. Typically, a new Dynasty means that the game is about to take a large thematic change of direction. All or most of the previous Dynastic Rules are usually repealed, and we tend to resist making new rules which are too similar to ones we've repealed.

Effective vote comment (EVC)

The comment to a blog post containing the comment-author's counted vote. Used in some proposal (eg. "If at least half of the EVCs on this post contain the phrase 'I eat bananas', then reduce all players' bananas by 3.") Thus, if a given player votes twice on a particular proposal (say, :AGAINST: and, per a subsequent comment, :FOR:), only the _second_ comment counts as that player's EVC on that proposal since it contains the vote that actually matters.

Enactment

Technically, this term only applies to the passage of a Proposal, but we sometimes informally say that a Call for Judement or a Declaration of Victory has been "Enacted".

Gamestate

Intuitively, the Gamestate simply consists all the stuff that's actually part of the game itself. The technical definition from the Ruleset is currently "any information which the Ruleset regulates the alteration of." Proposals, votes, GNDT values, requests to idle, the list of players found on the sidebar, and the Ruleset itself all count as part of the Gamestate.

Generic Nomic Data Tracker

GNDT for short. Formerly used to track the current gamestate (although nowadays, we use this wiki). The GNDT was found at http://blognomic.com/gndt/generic.cgi?nomic=blog

Hiatus

When a player posts a Declaration of Victory, the game goes into a Hiatus. Roughly speaking, nothing is allowed to happen during a Hiatus except for creating and voting on CfJ's or DoV's (see the Ruleset for specific details).

Metadynasty

A Dynasty with no Emperor figure. The core rules do not require an Emperor to function, and it is occasionally proposed that a failing dynasty be ended and replaced with a Metadynasty.

Ruleset

Pretty much the ultimate authority of Blognomic. We all obey the Ruleset because it says we have to (usually in its first sentence). The current Ruleset is always on the Ruleset page of the wiki.

Spivak pronouns

Many English speakers use "they", "them", "their", "theirs", and "themself" to refer to a single person (especially when they don't want to specify gender), although these are technically plural pronouns. Just drop the "th" from each of those terms (and the "y" from "they") to get the Spivak prounouns to use in place of singular gendered pronouns (he/she, him/her, his/her, his/hers, and himself/herself). At the time of writing (March 2009), BlogNomic does not use or encourage Spivak.

Vote (noun)

When you vote, the actual voting icon you use (and its interpretation, e.g. FOR or AGAINST) is called your vote. Informally, you might refer to the entire comment that contains your vote as your "vote", but sometimes rules are worded in such a way as to make the distinction between the "vote" and the "comment".

Vote (verb)

to use one of the voting icons, at an appropriate time. Typically, voting is only done on Proposals, Calls for Judgement, and Declarations of Victory.

Withdraw

to vote against one's own Proposal; if a proposal has an against vote from its creator, it will automatically fail

Abbreviations and Informal Terms

See also: Plays

Admin Advantage

The mechanical advantage an admin has over a non-admin player, especially in regards to performing timing scams (because they possess enactment, failing, etc powers).

In the Mornington Crescent dynasty, Lilomar deliberately enacted a "create a new rule" proposal in a legal but perverse way that added a new rule halfway through the ruleset, changing some rule numbers and preventing a proposal later in the queue from having any effect, to Lilomar's own advantage.

Cabal

An (often secret) alliance of players with a common goal.

CoV

Change of Vote -- used to make it easier for admins to count the votes by reminding them that they should ignore your earlier votes.

CfJ

Call for Judgement

CfP

Call for Proposal -- used to convey that you think that a CfJ should have been a Proposal; not often used.

Coin-flip victory

Two or more players agreeing to assist one of their number to victory, in exchange for that player promising to randomly select a member of the group to pass the victory mantle to. (If two players both feel that they have a lower-than-50% chance of winning alone, working together for an exactly 50% chance of victory can make some sense.)

Example: In the Second Dynasty of Brendan, two zombie players idled so that the third zombie could trigger the "last remaining zombie" victory condition.

DoV

Declaration of Victory

EAV

Explicit Author Vote -- used when an author votes FOR on their own proposal even though they already had an implicit FOR vote on it (e.g. so that they can place an EVC). Has a similar purpose to CoV.

Emperor

A generic name for the player who heads a Dynasty, regardless of what their actual title is. Their role is to encourage people to participate and guide the direction of the dynasty when required; traditionally the first proposal of a dynasty is from the Emperor setting up the game. Sometimes there is no emperor, and only once has there been two emperors. Emperors have unique "veto" power where they can negate a rule with a single vote if they wish to, and they cannot declare victory in their own dynasties.

Favours

Historical interdynastic IOUs that were part of the game from April 2021 through to August 2021.

Fool's Gold

A resource which is stockpiled by a minority of players before any use is proposed for it, meaning that the majority will probably never want to give it a use.

G-Man

A type of rule that states the Emperor is not a regular player for the purposes of the dynastic ruleset. G-Man rules are fairly common - since the Emperor can't win the game and has a lot of influence over which proposals enact, it doesn't always make sense for them to take part in the dynastic game directly. Nowadays, the Special Case Rule "Dynastic Distance" is normally used for this purpose.

GNDT

Generic Nomic Data Tracker. A new defunct tracker that was embedded in the sidebar in the same way that the wikipages now are but only had the ability to show a single table of each active player or perform die rolls. It was in use by Blognomic for 10+ years.

Greentick

The "FOR" icon. (https://blognomic.com/images/vote/for.gif)

Grinding

A game mechanic can be considered a "grind" if there is never any reason not to use it, beyond (usually) a time restriction on how frequently it can be used. For example; "as a daily action, a player may gain 1 point". Since the outcome is always positive, there is no decision to be made and the mechanic simply becomes a chore that players must remember to do (and which they are penalised for if they miss a day and lag behind).

Mantle

Handing on the role of Emperor (or equivalent) to another player following victory, in a situation where the winner does not wish to lead the next dynasty, is known as "passing the mantle".

Meatpuppet

Real life person whose nomic actions are in control of another player.

Example: In The First Dynasty of ais523, Bucky suspected that DDA was "employing metapuppets from outside the nomic"

Protosal

An (often vague) idea for a proposal which has been made as a non-proposal post in order to elicit feedback before asking players to vote on an actual proposal version. Some players don't like them.

Rider

An additional feature that a proposal does which has little to no relation to other portions of the proposal, often applying a small fix that may not be worth its own proposal. Useful riders put players under slight pressure to support the whole proposal.

S/K

Self-kill

Stub

Incomplete and often function-less proposal, designed to be expanded by other proposals (typically from other players).

Traitor

A rule that ran from July 2019 to July 2021, where one player was randomly given Imperial permission to betray other players by breaking promises, in an attempt to break up the less interesting types of kingmaking and coordinated cabals.