Annotated ruleset

This is an annotated version of an (in some places out of date) copy of the Core and Appendix sections, intended to help find answers to the occasional Chesterton's Gate questions of "why is this here?", and to flag anything where the answer may be unclear. This is not the current ruleset and almost certainly fails to accurately reflect the latest core rules.

Feel free to add new annotations, and corrections or expansions to existing ones.

Core Rules

Ruleset and Gamestate

This is the Ruleset for BlogNomic; all Players shall obey it.

It comprises four Sections: 1) the “core rules” of BlogNomic, covering the essential elements of gameplay; 2) the rules of the current Dynasty; 3) rules which apply in special cases; and 4) the appendix, which complements and clarifies the Ruleset.

The Ruleset and Gamestate can only be altered in manners specified by the Ruleset. This document is considered to be, in effect, the only Ruleset for BlogNomic, so long as it is located at at the URL https://wiki.blognomic.com/index.php?title=Ruleset.

🡅 The URL statement was added in February 2022 to clarify that archived rulesets are not the ruleset. Per comments in voting, the proposer did not intend it to have any effect if (as a result of downtime or an illegal edit) no rulesets were located at that URL. It was moved here to Rule 1.1 by an unrelated proposal in May 2023 and a proposal to move it straight back was rejected to highlight the fact that core rules were currently difficult to amend.

If the text of the Ruleset document does not reflect all legal changes that have been authorised to be made to it, any Player may update it to do so.

🡅 This last paragraph was added in 2016, in response to a couple of CfJs that corrected incomplete enactments. A May 2023 amendment added the new "authorised" clause to address a perceived "freezing" of the game.

Players

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

A Player may only change their name as a result of a Proposal approving the change.

🡅 This was added in 2006: previously players could change names at will, which allowed Bucky to "become" the Captain during a dynasty where that was a keyword.

Some Players are Admins, responsible for updating the site and the Ruleset, and are signified as such in the sidebar. Players 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.

A Player may cease to be a Player at any time by posting an entry to the BlogNomic weblog requesting such an action. A human who has ceased to be a Player in this way may not become a Player again within the following two weeks.

🡅 Allowing players to leave the game in this way was present in the ruleset from the very start, with a two-week limit added in 2011. The paragraph was removed in February 2020, but added back in May 2023.

Idle Players

If a Player is Idle, this is tracked by their name being removed or concealed in the list of currently active Players in the Sidebar. For the purposes of all Gamestate and the Ruleset, excluding Rules “Ruleset and Gamestate”, “Players”, “Dynasties”, “Fair Play”, "Mentors" and any of those Rules’ subrules, Idle Players are not counted as Players.

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

🡅 This prevents a player from being able to dodge a punitive proposal or CfJ by idling.

When a Player 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 Player Idled in a different Dynasty), the Player is given the default value for new Players, if such a value exists.

An Admin may render a Player Idle if that Player has asked to become Idle in an entry or comment from the past 96 hours (4 Days), or if that Player has not posted an entry or comment in the past 168 Hours (7 days). In the latter case, the Admin must announce the idling in a blog post, and the 168 Hour idle timeout is considered to be reduced to 96 hours for that Player during the current and subsequent dynasty. Admins may render themselves Idle at any time, but should announce it in a post or comment when they do so. An Admin may Unidle a Player if that Player is Idle and has asked to become Unidle in an entry or comment from the past 96 hours (4 Days), and Idle Admins may Unidle themselves at any time, unless the Player who would be Unidled has become Idle within the past 96 hours (4 days), and within the current Dynasty.

🡅 The four-day window before unidling again is an old rule, to reduce the scope for brief, tactical idling to avoid some game event. Four days is considered enough for the remaining players to react with a proposal if they suspect that a player is doing this.

The reduction from 168 hours to 96 for the next dynasty was added in March 2023 to clarify that timing out after a week without voting is a failure state rather than one of two interchangeable ways to take a break from the game.

Admins who are unidling themselves should, in their first vote following each unidling, highlight their changed idle status and any changes to Quorum to have come about as a result of it.

Idle Admins can enact and fail Votable Matters.

Dynasties

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

An Interregnum is the period between dynasties, after a DoV has been enacted and before an Ascension Address has been posted. During an Interregnum the game is in hiatus; additionally, no DoVs may be made, and no Player may achieve Victory. However, dynastic actions that are specifically permitted to be carried out during an Interregnum may be carried out.

🡅 Interregna were added in March 2021 to clarify the transition between dynasties.

Votable Matters

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

Votes

Each Player 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 Player’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-Player never has a Vote, even if they were a Player previously and had cast a valid Vote.

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

A Votable Matter is Popular if any of the following are true:

• It has a number of FOR Votes that exceed or equal Quorum.
• It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours, it has more than 1 valid Vote cast on it, and more valid Votes cast on it are FOR than are AGAINST. Exception: Proposals which would change the text of a Core, Special Case or Appendix rule if enacted cannot be Popular on this basis.

🡅 The exception was proposed in August 2021 by Ais523, which ironically timed out and enacted. A proposal to repeal it was widely rejected a few months later, and another in May 2023 timed out 3-3.

A Votable Matter is Unpopular if any of the following are true:

• The number of Players who are not voting AGAINST it is less than Quorum.
• It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and it is not Popular.

Enacting and Failing

Votable matters have a status, which can either be Pending, Enacted, Failed, or Illegal. When a votable matter is first put forward it is considered Pending (which is tracked as having no status in the current blog software), and it remains Pending until it is Resolved.

🡅 The "Illegal" status was added in July 2021.

A votable matter is resolved by an admin setting its status through use of the “status” field in the blog post editing form. When an admin resolves a votable matter they should mark their name, and are highly encouraged to report the final tally of Votes (or the fact that it was withdrawn or vetoed). Comments cannot be made on resolved Votable Matters.

A votable matter may not be resolved except as directed by the ruleset, and the status of a resolved votable matter, once resolved, is determined by the votes cast upon it, as assessed by the rules that govern the specific kind of votable matter (as well as any other considerations regarding the legality of the votable matter, such as the stipulations put forward in the Appendix rule Official Posts). When a Failed proposal has been Vetoed it may optionally have the Vetoed status upon resolution, which is considered to be the same as Failed for the purposes of all other rules.

🡅 This clarificatory paragraph was added in July 2021.

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

Tags

Votable Matters have zero or more tags. Tags are represented in the title of a Votable Matter with the format “[X]” (e.g. “[Core] Wording Fix”, where “[Core]” is the tag).

Votable Matters making changes to the Core Rules, the Special Case Rules or the Appendix Rules require any of the following to be true for each such change in order to make that specific modification to the ruleset:

• The Votable Matter has the appropriate Tag or Tags for that change: [Core] for Core Rules changes, [Special Case] for Special Case Rules changes and [Appendix] for Appendix Rules changes.
• The modification is preceded or followed immediately by an unambiguous statement of which section of the ruleset it takes place.
• The modification specifically states a rule using its number or the name of the stated rule only occurs once in the ruleset.

🡅 Tags were introduced by Card in May 2017, after a scam by Cuddlebeam attempted to break the Core rules by including an innocuous "replace hyphens with bullets" in a regular proposal and having this apply by default to the entire ruleset. The main effect of Tags is to say that proposals can only edit Core/Appendix/Special-Case sections when they explicitly announce this. They're also seen as a way to flag such proposals for greater scrutiny and/or input from idle players.

A clause was added in September 2020 to cover situations where a player forgot or neglected to add tags but it was "obvious" that the proposal was deliberately amending a non-dynastic rule.

The rule originally also had a [Victory] tag to prevent a proposal from unexpectedly and directly assigning victory in a way that voters hadn't anticipated. This was removed in December 2022.

Proposals

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

🡅 Proposals are capped at two pending so that everyone gets an equal chance to shape the game. The three-per-day limit removes any temptation to keep withdrawing and reproposing ideas when the queue is empty.

Special Proposal Voting

When a Player casts a vote AGAINST their own Proposal (which is not in the form of a DEFERENTIAL vote), this renders the Proposal Withdrawn, even if the author later changes their Vote. The Emperor may use VETO as a voting icon to cast a Vote on a Proposal; when the Emperor casts a vote of VETO on a Proposal, this renders the Proposal Vetoed, even if the Emperor later changes their Vote.

🡅 Withdrawing and vetoing are irreversible, so that everyone else knows they can stop voting: the proposal will fail and cannot possibly be enacted.

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 all of the following are true:

• It is Popular.
• It has been open for voting for at least 12 hours.
• It has not been Vetoed or Withdrawn.

🡅 Proposals stay open for at least 12 hours so that all players theoretically get a chance to read it and give their input, whatever their timezone.

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

• It is Unpopular.
• It has been Vetoed or Withdrawn.

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.

🡅 Because proposals have to be resolved in order, if something goes wrong enacting/failing a proposal (e.g. it accidentally gets enacted too early), this would cause all future attempts to resolve proposals to also fail. The 7-day limit automatically cleans up old proposals that were never legally failed, helping to avoid this scenario.

When a Proposal is Enacted, its stated effects are immediately applied in full; the Admin Enacting it shall update the Gamestate and Ruleset, and correct any gamestate-tracking entities, as specified in the Proposal.

Calls for Judgement

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

A Pending CfJ may be Enacted by any Admin if all of the following are true:

• It is Popular.

A Pending CfJ may be Failed by any Admin if any of the following are true:

• It is Unpopular.
• It specifies neither changes to the Gamestate or Ruleset nor corrections to any gamestate-tracking entities.

🡅 Note that CfJs can't be withdrawn or vetoed.

The inability for a CfJ to be withdrawn means that the player who raised it may change their mind as a result of discussion without that instantly torpedoing the whole thing. It also means that a player can't tactically retract a popular CfJ at the last minute (the way that they could with a proposal, which is a valid if sneaky manoeuvre).

The inability for a CfJ to be vetoed is to ensure that it's always possible to amend the ruleset, even if the Emperor objects.

When a CfJ is Enacted, the Admin Enacting it shall update the Gamestate and Ruleset, and correct any gamestate-tracking entities, as specified in the CfJ.

This Rule may not be overruled by Dynastic Rules.

Victory and Ascension

If a Player (other than the Emperor) believes that they have achieved victory in the current Dynasty, they may make a Declaration of Victory (abbreviated “DoV”) detailing this, by posting an entry in the “Declaration of Victory” category.

A Player's vote on a DoV is encouraged to reflect whether or not they agree with the proposition that the poster has achieved victory in the current Dynasty. If there is at least one pending DoV, BlogNomic is on Hiatus, no Idle Player may be made unidle, and no new player joining requests may be administered.

🡅 The bar on players joining and unidling to vote on a DoV was added in December 2022, so that the potentially less-informed votes from returning or new players couldn't sway a declaration of victory.

A Pending DoV may be Enacted by any Admin if any of the following are true:

• It has a number of FOR Votes greater than 2/3rds of the number of Players, it has been open for at least 12 hours, and either the Emperor has Voted FOR it or it has no AGAINST Votes.
• It has a number of FOR Votes greater than 2/3rds of the number of Players, and it has been open for at least 24 hours.

🡅 Historically a regular quorum, this was raised to 2/3rds in April 2022 as a buffer against DoVs being enacted too soon or too easily. This was a result of a particularly surprising DoV managing to enact with possibly zero players believing the declarer had won.

A Pending DoV may be Failed by any Admin if any of the following are true:

• It is Unpopular, and it has been open for at least 12 hours.

If a DoV is Failed and it had at least one AGAINST vote, the Player who posted it cannot make another DoV until after 120 hours (5 days) have passed since the time their DoV was Failed.

When a DoV is Enacted, all other pending DoVs are Failed, the Player who posted the DoV becomes Emperor, and the game enters an Interregnum. When a DoV is enacted then all game actions that led up to it are considered to be upheld.

🡅 Upholding the previous dynasty's actions was added in March 2021.

If the game is in an Interregnum then the new Emperor must either Pass the Mantle (by making a post naming a Player who was not the last dynasty’s Emperor, in which case the passing Player ceases to be the Emperor and the Player so named becomes the Emperor) or start a new dynasty by completing the following Atomic Action:

🡅 The limitation on passing the mantle back to the Emperor was added in October 2021, after having been moved into the Malign Emperor special case rule.

• Make an Ascension Address by posting an entry in the “Ascension Address” category. This should specify the Emperor’s chosen theme for the new Dynasty, and it may optionally specify that dynasty-specific terms as outline in the rule "Synonyms", and/or list a number of dynastic rules to keep (if none are specifed then the entire Dynastic Ruleset is repealed).
• Update the Ruleset to reflect any changed terms, and any dynastic rules which were not listed to be kept are repealed.

Once this Atomic Action has been completed the Interregnum ends and the new dynasty begins.

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 Player’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. Players should vote against any DoV that relies on having broken a fair play rule.

🡅 A rule to bar players for spamming or "intentionally tampering with the game medium" was created dynastically by Qwazukee in February 2009, and made permanent as a set of "fair play" glossary rules later that month. Other bullet points were added over time.

• A single person should not control more than one non-Idle Player within BlogNomic, and should announce publicly if they control both a non-Idle Player and any Idle Players. This extends to exerting full control over the actions of another Player, defined here as the controlled Player's game behavior being functionally indistinguishable from if the controlling Player was logged into their account and playing through it, over a period of more than a day.

🡅 "should not control more than one non-Idle Player" was in the initial fair play rules.

The clause about "exerting full control" was added in October 2021 (first draft here) after a player revealed they had been acting entirely under the orders of another for a full dynasty.

• A Player 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 Player should not deliberately exploit bugs or unexpected behaviours in the software running the game (ExpressionEngine, MediaWiki or other blognomic.com scripts).
• A Player should not edit their own blog comments once posted, nor those of any other Player.

🡅 The above three items were the initial fair play rules.

• A Player should not edit the “Entry Date” field of a blog post.

🡅 Added in April 2009 at a time when some players were messing around with future blog posts.

• A Player should not make a DoV primarily to delay the game by putting it into Hiatus.

🡅 Added in May 2009 after some nonsense.

• A Player should not do any action meant to make the game unplayable (for example, changing multiple keywords to the same word in an Ascension Address).

🡅 Added on general principles in January 2010.

• A Player should not roll dice that are clearly associated with a particular action in the Ruleset, but with the intention to not use these rolled values to the best of their ability to resolve that action. A Player must use their own name in the Dice Roller, when rolling dice.

🡅 Added in June 2017 as something that had been intended for a while.

• A Player should not deliberately and unreasonably prolong the performance of a game action once they have started it.

🡅 Expanded from atomics to all actions in July 2018.

• A Player should not use a Core, Special Case, or Appendix rules scam to directly or indirectly cause a Player to achieve victory.

🡅 First floated unsuccessfully in 2012. Later added in January 2019 with the argument that BlogNomic should be seen as a game of discrete rounds. The proposal only passed 2-1, but an attempt to remove this clause in March 2023 received significant opposition.

• A Player should not trade actions in BlogNomic for favors or compensation outside of BlogNomic, nor trade actions in any other game for favors within BlogNomic.

🡅 Added in October 2021 after a player was found to have been casting votes as part of a deal made in another Nomic.

• A person with administrative, moderation, or other heightened access to the software running or supporting BlogNomic should not take any action using such heightened access for the purpose of causing any Player or Players to gain, receive, maintain, or preserve gameplay advantage unless any of the following is true:
  • Such action is required or explicitly permitted by the rules or required to implement an action required or explicitly permitted by the rules.
  • A reasonable, impartial, and prudent external observer would deem such action necessary or reasonable for the purpose of supporting, moderating, or administering BlogNomic or such software.

🡅 Added in January 2023 following concern that the existing "unexpected behaviours in the software" point didn't cover entirely predictable abuse of the software and its server.

All Players and idle Players should be aware of the BlogNomic Community Guidelines. The contents of this page are not ruletext and are nonbinding as pertains to the ruleset, but Players are encouraged to commit to upholding them to whatever extent is possible.

🡅 Community Guidelines were put forward by Josh in August 2021.

Dynastic Rules

Special Case

Special Case Rules can be Active or Inactive. If the title of a Special Case Rule includes "[X]", where X is either Active or Inactive, then its status is X. Otherwise, its status is its Default Status.

Special Case Rules have a Default Status, which can be Active or Inactive. If the title of a Special Case Rule includes "[Rare]", its Default Status is Inactive its Default Status is Inactive, otherwise, its Default Status is Active.

When a new Dynasty is started, the Ascension Address may list any number of existing Special Case Rules to be set to a status other than their respective Default Status. All other Special Case Rules are set to their respective Default Status.

The text of a Special Case Rule that is Inactive is flavour text.

🡅 Created by two proposals by Card in 2017, after a few sometimes-useful rules were thought to be worth promoting from dynastic, but not really suitable for core.

Seasonal Downtime [Active]

On the 24th, 25th and 26th of December, BlogNomic is on Hiatus. In addition, game actions defined by the rules titled “Players” and “Victory and Ascension” (with the exception of Voting in DoVs) may not be taken.

🡅 Straightforwardly pauses the game over Christmas, when players are likely to be offline. It began as a core rule in December 2010 - "BlogNomic does not formally observe any seasonal or religious holiday but can accommodate predictable downswings in activity" - and became a Special Case rule in September 2017.

Dormancy [Active]

If there are fewer than five Players, then BlogNomic is on Hiatus.

🡅 Pausing the game at low player counts removes the incentive to try to win a dynasty by encouraging silence and waiting for other players to get bored and idle out. Before this rule was brought in, some quiet dynasties tended to get quieter and quieter until somebody proposed to end them (with "I win" if they were arguably in the strongest position or "random player wins" if not). Dormancy instead encourages players to recruit friends or wake up idle players to get the game going again. In practice, invoking Dormancy has always seen the game recover within a couple of days.

The rule was initially road-tested dynastically as putting the game into Hiatus when the player count dropped below five, in December 2016. It became a Special Case rule in September 2017.

In May 2022 the rule had a secondary trigger added to account for an increased 2021/22 trend for semi-active players who were remaining present in the game but performing no actions in it: if only three people (including the Emperor) were making posts and affecting the gamestate, that was also enough to go Dormant. This was cautiously lowered to two the next day, based on proposal feedback. The rule became admin-triggered rather than automatic due to this complexity.

In November 2022 the rule was reverted an automatic "fewer than five players", given that the two-person timeout was seen as practically impossible, and that The First Dynasty of SingularByte had played out with its admins refusing to trigger Dormancy.

Imperial Deferentials [Active]

If the Emperor has voted DEFERENTIAL on a Proposal, that vote is instead considered to be valid and either FOR (if more Players have voted FOR the Proposal than have voted AGAINST it) or AGAINST (in all other cases). However, in either case, votes of DEFERENTIAL made by other Players on the same Proposal are not considered be valid.

🡅 This tends to be used when an Emperor wants to effectively abstain on dynastic-gameplay-level proposals, but without slowing the queue down. Added by Card in September 2018, and weakened by switching off player DEFs in March 2021.

If there are six or fewer Players , then the Emperor's vote of DEFERENTIAL on a proposal is only affected by this rule if all Players who are not the Emperor have cast a vote on that proposal.

🡅 Added in August 2023 over concerns that with a small group of players, a 2-vs-2 or 3-vs-3 tiebreak would always resolve in favour of whichever group happened to get their votes in place first.

Dynastic Distance [Active]

For the purposes of dynastic rules which do not deal with voting, the Emperor is not a Player.

🡅 Means that the Emperor doesn't count as a Player, in dynasties (particularly those where the Emperor holds secret information, or has significant influence over the gamestate) where it would be unfair for the Emperor to compete alongside the other players. If this is set to inactive, the Emperor is sometimes given some other game-ending effect for achieving the victory condition, since they are not allowed to declare victory in their own dynasty.

Added in August 2018 by Derrick, building on the long tradition of ad-hoc dynastic "G-Man" rules to this effect, since at least 2004.

Malign Emperors [Inactive] [Rare]

The Emperor may be recipient of the Mantle, as if they were a Player, during an Interregnum, as per the rule Victory and Ascension. The Emperor may not cast a vote of VETO on any Proposal whose effect is limited to the dynastic rules or gamestate; any such vote is disregarded for the purposes of proposal resolution.

If the Special Case rule “No Private Communication” is Active, any Player may set it to Inactive. (The combo is too strong.)

🡅 Added in October 2021 at the end of a dynasty where players voted to allow the Emperor to receive the mantle from a winning Player, but ignored observations that this gave the Emperor a reason to play to win.

Dynastic Tracking [Active]

The gamestate tracking page for this dynasty is the The Card Table page of the wiki. Unless otherwise stated, all publicly tracked gamestate information is tracked on it. an Emperor may change the wiki page referred to in this rule to a different page as part of their Ascension Address.

🡅 BlogNomic originally used the GNDT, a custom web script that tracked a row/column grid of players and their stats, which any player could update. This was replaced with an embedded wiki page in 2019. For a few years we declared such tracking dynastically, but in 2021 it was made a special case rule where the ascending Emperor could rename the tracking page.

No Private Communication [Inactive] [Rare]

If “Dynastic Distance” is also active, the Dealer is not considered a Player for the purposes of this rule.

Players may not privately communicate with each other about dynastic gameplay and strategy, including actions during the dynasty the Players have taken or plan to take, or private declarations of alliance or support. Private communications are considered to be anything that another average player could reasonably be privy to, and include any discussion on platforms other than the wiki, blog, or slack; discussions on those platforms that are obscured (such as an old blog thread, or a slack channel other than #currentdynasty or #general); or any form of private communication. Players may not use third party proxies to facilitate communication. Idle Players (or people who are not yet Players) also face the same restrictions if they intend to become a active Player during the course of the dynasty. Voteable matters which change non-dynastic rules are not privy to this rule, and players may private discuss their merits so long as the discussion is not about the dynasty specifics.

If “The Traitor” is also active, the Dealer informing a Player that they are the Traitor is still allowed.

A mentor and mentee may still privately converse with each other, but should keep their conservations away from discussion specific gameplay strategy.

If information which was not allowed to be discussed is still privately discussed, the players who were part of the conversation should make a post to the blog disclosing what information was discussed as their earliest convenience.

🡅 Added by Clucky as "No Collaboration" in April 2021 after some players felt that secret cabals making deals behind the scenes had become the default. Renamed to the more descriptive No Private Communication in July 2023.

Mantle Limitations [Active]

The mantle may not be passed. (Operators should also not make deals based on being made Emperor of the next dynasty by other means than achieving victory or being passed the mantle.)

🡅 Added dynastically in October 2021 by Pokes, with the bracketed clause following a day later. It later became a Special Case rule, and in September 2022 became active by default.

Declared Alliances [Inactive] [Rare]

Each Operator may have an Alliance, which is publicly tracked, and consists of the distinct names of no more than two other Operators; a Operator’s Alliance defaults to an empty set. A Operator may change their Alliance as a daily action.

If "Mantle Limitations" is also active, and if a Operator has achieved victory in this dynasty, has posted a Declaration of Victory which has been enacted, and did not change their Alliance for at least the 48 hours immediately prior to the posting time of their Declaration of Victory: then that Operator may pass the Mantle to a Operator who was named in their Alliance at the posting time of their Declaration of Victory.

If “No Private Communication” is active, it does not apply to communications between Operators who each have the other’s names in their Alliance, nor does the prohibition on deals in “Mantle Limitations” (if it is active) apply to Operators who have each other’s names in their Alliance.

🡅 Added dynastically in November 2021 by Brendan. Unilaterally upgraded to Special Case the next month by Brendan using the Dark One exploit, with no later objections.

Renamed from "Alliances" to "Declared Alliances" in July 2023 because players kept thinking that they weren't allowed to form alliances if it was switched off.

Event Types [Active]

An Event is an official post that meets a type definition in the dynastic rules, if and only if that type definition is specified as defining a type of Event; the type definition must include the following:

• A type name, such as “Auction” or “Quest”. A post with the Event type’s name as a tag is an Event of that type, provided it was (legally) posted while the type had a complete definition.
• A Response Format, the format by which a comment on that type of Event is classified as a Response for that Event. While other comments are allowed on an Event, only those comments which conform to its type’s Response Format are officially considered Responses. Whether or not a comment is currently considered a Response may change according to circumstances, but comments submitted on an Event while it is Ended can never be considered Responses.

An Event type definition may also optionally stipulate:

• Creation Condition(s). Unless they are met, an Event of that type may not be posted. They may include a format for the body of the post.
• Ending Condition(s). Unless they are met, an Open Event of that type may not be Ended.
• Ending Action(s). A Operator must do these when they End an Open Event of that type.

An Event is either Open or Ended, defaulting to Open. Except as otherwise specified, any Operator may post or may End an Event. To End an Event is to make it Ended by submitting a comment on that post saying it is Ended or is being Ended, and then immediately taking its Ending Action(s), if any. Once an Event has been Ended, it may not become Open again, nor may any Operator End it again.

🡅 Created in December 2021 by TyGuy6 to codify a kind of mechanic that occasionally appears in BlogNomic. Promoted to Special Case in January 2022 after being kept for a dynasty.

Bounties [Rare] [Inactive]

A Bounty Notice is a post in the Story Posts - Votable Matter category which broadly requests a single mechanical or ruleset change. Despite its category, it is not a votable matter and any votes on it are ignored. A Bounty Notice may be Open or Closed being Open by default and being Closed when set to the ‘Enacted’ or ‘Failed’ status in the post backend. The Enacted Status should be used for successfully completed Bounty Notices, while Failed should be used for ones that were closed for any other reason

The Emperor may post a Bounty Notice, or close an open Bounty Notice, at any time.

If a Bounty Payout action is not defined in the dynastic rules, then the Bounty Payout action is that nothing happens.

If the Emperor believes that one or more enacted votable matters satisfy the demand of an open Bounty Notice, then they may apply the Bounty Payout action to each Player (other than the Emperor ) who authored at least one of those votable matters and set that Bounty Notice to closed.

🡅 Added by Josh in March 2022, and first invoked in September 2022.

Reinitialisation [Rare] [Inactive]

If they have not already done so in the current dynasty, a Player may make a post to the blog announcing that they are Reinitialising; if they do so then they must immediately set all of their gamestate tracked values to their defaults for new players, and if the Emperor is privately tracking any information about them then they should do likewise at their first opportunity. When a Player has Reinitialised, they are considered to have undertaken no actions in this dynasty for the purposes of determining the validity of limited actions taken after the Reinitialisation, except for the action of Reinitialising itself.

🡅 Added in February 2023, prompted by a player having boxed themselves into a corner with a hasty early move: this would allow players one free reset per dynasty, on the grounds that it wouldn't be too different to them leaving and a new player joining. The rule was initially proposed limiting itself to the first week of the dynasty, but this was removed shortly after to avoid a rush to respawn as that week ended.

Some past dynasties have had optional resets (eg. Ruleset 117#Crash Site).

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. (e.g. 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.)

Imperatives

Can

“is able to”

Shall

“is required to”

Should

“is recommended that”

Time

Daily Action

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

Daily Communal Action

A Daily Communal Action is a Daily Action that can only be performed by one Player per day.

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.

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 Player able to perform it may take that action once each week, but not more than once every twenty-four hours.

Weekly Communal Action

A Weekly Communal action is a Weekly Action that can only be performed by one Player per week.

🡅 Daily and weekly actions were introduced in 2005 as the keywords "often" and "occasionally", with 6-hour and 24-hour buffers respectively. They were given their current name in 2007. A 2009 proposal failed to repeal daily actions, and in 2011 the daily action buffer was briefly inverted to 18 hours, before being compromised a few days later to ten hours.

Other

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 Players.

Dice

References to “DICEX” or “YDICEX” refer to X-sided dice and Y amount of X-sided dice, rolled using the Dice Roller.

Dynastic Action

An action that is defined in the Dynastic rules.

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 Player’s Effective Vote Comment with respect to a given Votable Matter is that Player’s Comment to that Votable Matter, if any, that contains that Player’s Vote on that Votable Matter.

Commentary

When posting a blog entry, a Player 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.

Flavour Text

If a part of the ruleset is defined as being “flavour text”, it is gamestate and remains part of the ruleset document, but is not considered to have any meaning beyond being a string of characters. Players are not required to obey flavour text and may not perform any action defined by it, and any statements that flavour text makes about gamestate are ignored.

Gamestate

Any information which the Ruleset regulates the alteration of. All wiki pages that the Dynastic Rules explicitly mention (except for dynastic histories and discussion pages) and any images or Templates contained within those Wiki Pages are assumed to be Gamestate.

Hiatus

If BlogNomic is on Hiatus, Dynastic Actions may not be taken (except where the rule defining the action explicitly requires it to be taken during Hiatus), and Proposals may not be submitted or Resolved. If multiple rules require BlogNomic to be on Hiatus at any given time, BlogNomic will continue to be on Hiatus until no rules require it.

Post

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

Private Message

A message sent via BlogNomic’s Private Messages system at blognomic.com.

Quorum

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

Resolve/Resolution

If used in a context of a Votable Matter, the word “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 subrules of other rules.

Slack

The BlogNomic Slack is located at blognomic.slack.com. Players may request an invite to the Slack while logged in by clicking the button in the sidebar.

Slack Channel

A Slack Channel is any channel on the BlogNomic Slack. To reference a Slack Channel, use a hash (#) followed by the name of that channel (e.g. #random).

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.

Table of Contents

The directory of section headings that is generated by the MediaWiki software for most pages in the wiki.

Uphold

To Uphold an illegal action is to retroactively declare the attempt to take it to have been successful, and to declare that all attempted game actions taken after it were attempted as if the Upheld action had been successful.

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, a DEF http://blognomic.com/images/vote/imperial.gif shall represent a Vote of DEFERENTIAL, and a crossed-out circle http://blognomic.com/images/vote/seal.gif shall represent a vote to VETO.

Wiki

The BlogNomic Wiki at http://wiki.blognomic.com

Gamestate Tracking

Official Posts

Votable Matters and other official posts, as well as specific gamestate information, shall be tracked by the BlogNomic blog at http://blognomic.com. Any Player 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. Any single official post cannot be of two different types of official post unless a rule explicitly states otherwise.

An official post may only be removed as allowed by the Ruleset. An official post may be altered by its author if it is less than 4 hours old and either no Player has commented on it or (if it is a Votable Matter) if all comments on it contain no voting icons; 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. An official blog post that has the status of Enacted or Failed cannot change categories. An official blog post’s status may never be altered except in accordance with the rules that define that official post.

🡅 The current four-hour window on editing your own proposals was added in July 2021. The history of proposal editing in BlogNomic is:

• When BlogNomic started, you couldn’t edit proposals at all.
• At some point, you could edit until someone posted any kind of comment.
• From August 2014, you could edit until someone made a comment that didn’t start with “Note:”
• From March 2017, you could edit for six hours or until someone voted.
• From May 2018, that became two hours.
• From June 2021 it became eight.
• From July 2021 it became four.

A non-official post may not, through editing of the blog or otherwise, be changed into an official post, with the following two exceptions: Firstly, 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. Secondly, if a post by a New Player is not in any category but follows the wording of a Proposal, in that it has written changes the gamestate and or Ruleset, and if it has been posted for less than six hours, then any Admin may change it to be in the Proposal category. A New Player is defined as a Player who has been a Player for fewer than seven days or a Player that has unidled in the past seven days after being idle for at least 3 months.

Any post that is or is made illegal as a result of an infraction against any of the prohibitions set out in this rule continues to be an Official Post but may no longer have any effect on the ruleset or the gamestate. If it is a Votable Matter then it is Unpopular, regardless of any other performance against criteria set out in the core rules. When it is resolved it may be marked as Illegal by the resolving admin. A post that is illegal in this manner cannot subsequently be made legal by any means.

🡅 This last paragraph was added as a minor fix during the Parallel Universe dynasty. History does not relate why.

Representations of the Gamestate

If authorised by the rules as a result of a Player’s action, changes to gamestate which is tracked in a specific place (such as a wiki page) do not take effect until the representation of that gamestate has been updated to match the authorised change. One wiki update may contain one or more alterations, or one alteration may be split over multiple updates, as long as it is clear what is happening and the alterations are otherwise legal. The wiki merely represents the Gamestate tracked there, and is not the same thing. In the event that the Gamestate and its representations are different, any Player may correct the representations to comply with the Gamestate.

🡅 Gamestate changes 100% not taking effect until applied to the relevant place of representation was made explicit in May 2023.

If a Player feels that a representation of the gamestate (such as a wiki page) does not match the gamestate, they may either:

• Undo the effects of any alteration that led to it, if that alteration did not follow the rules at the time it was made.
• Alter the representation to match what they believe to be the correct application of an incorrectly-applied alteration. This may include completing incomplete actions on behalf of the original Player, if doing so would not require the correcting Player to make any decisions on behalf of the original Player.

Instead of repeatedly reverting and re-reverting a disputed alteration, however, Players are encouraged to raise a Call for Judgement.

The historical fact of the occurrence of a defined game action is itself considered to be gamestate, tracked in the history of whatever resource is used to track the gamestate modified by that action, where possible, or in the wiki page Gamestate Modifications if this is not possible.

🡅 This last paragraph was enacted in 2020 to clarify a disagremeent over whether a broad "consider the gamestate to be X" proposal also affected the untracked status of whether or not actions had been performed.

Orphan Variables

An Orphan Variable is a dynastic gamestate variable which has neither a location in which it’s tracked, nor a reasonable manner in which it can be determined from other gamestate variables, specified in the Ruleset.

A Player may not take any dynastic actions that are contingent on the specific value of an Orphan Variable.

🡅 This rule avoids problems where a game variable is untracked, and could have been set or updated secretly. In these cases it's safer to ban any usage of that variable, than to allow players to act upon it.

The rule was originally written by Cuddlebeam in 2017, for use a month later in a scam that otherwise needed admin privileges. It was immediately repealed, before being added back with some alterations by Pokes.

Random Generators

The Dice Roller at https://blognomic.com/dice/roll.php can be used to generate random results.

• The DICEN command can be used to generate a random number between 1 and N.
• The FRUIT command will return a random result from the following options: Lemon, Orange, Kiwi, Grape, Cherry, Tangelo.
• The COLOUR (or COLOR) command will return a random result from the following: White, Red, Green, Silver, Yellow, Turquoise, Magenta, Orange, Purple, Black.
• The CARD command will return a card with a random suit (either Hearts, Diamonds, Spades or Clubs) and a random value (either Ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King). A card with a value that is either Jack, Queen or King is a face card.
• A list of comma-separated values in curly brackets (eg {x,y}) will return one of the values at random.

Any changes to the potential outcomes of the Dice Roller’s random result commands must be made by Proposal.

If a Proposal proposes a change to this rule that would require server-level access to the BlogNomic site to fully enact its effects, that Proposal must name a Player with such access. Only a Player with such access may Enact that Proposal. If that Proposal does not name a Player with such access, that Proposal is Illegal.

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. This value must be determined by an appropriate roll in the Dice Roller, unless otherwise specified. If a selection is explicitly specified as being “secretly” random, the Player making this determination may do so using a private method of their choosing, instead of the Dice Roller.

Atomic Actions

An Atomic Action combines otherwise separate game actions into a single action.

• All steps of an Atomic Action are considered one action, including the steps of an Atomic Action that is itself a step of a parent Atomic Action.
• When a Player performs an Atomic Action, they must complete all its steps; they must complete them in order; and they may not take any other dynastic action, or achieve victory, until all the steps are complete.
• An Atomic Action may direct the Player performing it to skip some of its steps, which the Player must do and in which case the skipped steps are considered completed for this rule.
• If a Player arrives at a step in an Atomic Action and they cannot perform that step, they undo all the steps they have performed of that Action and are considered never to have performed that Action.
• If one or more steps of an Atomic Action were done incorrectly, the Player must redo the Atomic Action; for that purpose, the Player uses any legal steps that have already been completed in the illegal Atomic Action and only redoes the illegal ones. (For example, if an Atomic Action consists of rolling a dice and then doing steps based upon its result, the Player would have to reroll the dice only if they rolled the wrong one in the first place, and would then have to repeat any steps that depended upon the result of that dice; however, if they rolled the dice correctly but took an illegal step later on, the result of the original dice roll would still be used in the redone step.)
• For the purposes of determining the ordering or legality of game actions, the time of an Atomic Action shall be the time that it is completed. For Atomic Actions that are redone, the time of completion is the last redone step.

🡅 Atomic Actions were introduced by Brendan in September 2016. Sequences of "this, then this, then this" actions have often appeared in the game, but the rules were previously silent on how to handle accidental or deliberate deviations from those sequences.

After a scam in which atomic actions were started and then abandoned to time out if die rolls were unfavorable, the rule was expanded by card in May 2017. Then rewritten by the Duke of Waltham in February 2020.

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, a Player can spend only their own values, and a rule that allows Players to transfer a numeric value only allows them to transfer that value from themselves to another Player (of their choice unless otherwise stated).
• A Player 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 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 game variable has a default value but no defined starting value, then its default value should also be considered a starting value. If a game variable has neither a default value nor a starting value, then both may be considered to be the nearest legal value to zero that it may take (for numerical variables, defaulting to positive if tied), blank (for a text string or list that may be blank), the alphabetically earliest legal text string it may take (for a text string which may not be blank, with the digits 0 through 9 considered to precede “A”), or the list which is alphabetically earliest from the set of lists with the fewest elements (for lists which may not be blank, and considering each list to be a single unpunctuated text string, with the digits 0 through 9 considered to precede “A”). For the purposes of this bullet point, the names of Players are not considered to be legal values for game variables, nor for list items within game variables.

🡅 First added by Kevan for numbers and lists in March 2011, and expanded for other types of data in January 2015. The term "default" was added in June 2020, and player names were exempted from alphabetical selection in April 2023 to remove a longstanding advantage for certain players.

• If the rules that define a game variable are amended, and some previously valid values become invalid as a consequence, any existing variables whose current values would become invalid are instead set to their starting value.
• Invalid values for game variables can never be used, even if the values stored in a gamestate-tracking entity 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)
• DICEN cannot be rolled in the Dice Roller if N is greater than one million.
• If a piece of information is described as being tracked secretly or privately by the Emperor (including secretly random selections), then that information may only be revealed by the Emperor when the ruleset allows it. If a Player should already know such a piece of information (in that the Emperor has already told them it, or vice versa, and there is no way that the information could have been changed since then), the Emperor may repeat it to them.

🡅 Added in June 2021 after it was noted that there were no rules against an Emperor giving insider tips to favoured players.

Rules and Votable Matters

• If a new rule is created by a Votable Matter and its location is not noted in that Votable Matter, that new rule is to be placed in the Dynastic Rules.
• If a wiki page becomes gamestate as a result of a Votable Matter enacting, that page shall – unless otherwise specified – be reverted to whatever state it was in at the time of that Votable Matter’s submission (and if the page did not exist at that time, it shall be blanked).
• Where a Votable Matter would amend the effects of Votable Matter Enactment, this does not apply to its own enactment unless explicitly stated (e.g. a Votable Matter proposing that enacted Votable Matters 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 the Admin enacting a Votable Matter reaches a step which cannot be applied immediately (e.g. “two days after this Votable Matter enacts, Player A gains 1 point”), that step is ignored for the purposes of enactment. Once a Votable Matter has been enacted, it can have no further direct effect on the gamestate.

🡅 This clarifies that the game of BlogNomic is only ever its current ruleset plus tracked gamestate: there can be no secret invisible rules hanging around from earlier Votable Matters. Although this makes some game fixes more elaborate by requiring players to write "two days after" as a self-repealing rule, it makes the game clearer and avoids long-con scams of "five years after this Votable Matter enacts, I win whatever dynasty is happening".

• If a dynastic rule has no text and no subrules, any Player may delete it from the ruleset.
• A rule may be accompanied by one or more illustrations, and an illustration may have a caption. In all situations, unless otherwise explicitly stated, an illustration and a caption to an illustration must be treated as flavour text.
• When the ruleset calls for the use of a specific tool (such as the dice roller, or an off-domain website, or a specific piece of downloadable software), Mindjackers may not deliberately interfere with the function of that tool except in ways explicitly permitted by the ruleset.

🡅 Added in March 2022 following an accepted victory where a player amended an external website in their browser, to modify its output when they used it.

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 (e.g. “04/10/09”), it shall be assumed that the date is in a day/month/year format.
• A Player may not take more than one dynastic game action at the same time (excluding any actions which have been ongoing for more than three hours).

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.
• Players 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”.

🡅 As is somewhat traditional in online Nomic, BlogNomic initially used (and required the use of) Spivak pronouns, before repealing this rule in 2007. In 2008 it became permissible to replace Spivak with the singular they under "typo correction", and in 2010 that was extended to replacing gendered pronouns.

Names

• Within the Ruleset, a word only refers to the name of a Player if it is explicitly stated that it refers to a Player's name.
• If a rule would ever have no name, it is instead given the name of the Votable Matter that created it, or (if this is not possible) the name “Unnamed Rule”.
• The names of rules and wiki pages (other than the Ruleset) are flavour text.
• Subrules can be referred to by a name which incorporates name of the rule they are a subrule of. Example: a subrule of the rule “Gin” is a “Gin Rule”, however the rule “Gin” is not a “Gin Rule” because it’s not a subrule of the rule “Gin”.
• When referring to a Votable Matter, the name used in reference to a specific Votable Matter may be simplified by not including braces and any text between the opening and closing braces. i.e. a Votable Matter named “Changes [Core]” could instead be referred to by the name “Changes”.
• When referring to a Rule, the name used in reference to a specific Rule may be simplified by not including braces and any text between a pair of opening and closing braces, as long as such a reference would be unambiguous.
• Where a Votable Matter refers to a second Votable Matter by name, it is assumed to refer to the most recently posted Votable Matter of that name which pre-dates the first Votable Matter.
• When changing their name or joining the game for the first time, a Player's (or prospective Player's) new name must be between 4 and 30 characters in length, and may only include the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, numbers, underscores, hyphens, full stops and apostrophes.

🡅 The name restriction was suggested then enacted in January 2022, including a restriction on spaces in belated recognition of a text injection username scam.

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 other 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. A Special Case Rule has equal precedence as a Dynastic Rule, unless that Special Case Rule explicitly says it can’t be overruled by a Dynastic Rule;
4. If two contradicting parts have equal precedence, the part with more limited scope applies (e.g. if the rules “Players may Kick each other” and “Players may not Kick each other on Tuesdays” exist, and it is Tuesday, Players may not Kick each other);
5. If two contradicting parts have the same scope, the negative rule applies (e.g. with “Players may Punch a Spaceman on Friday” and “Players may not Punch Spacemen on Friday”, then Players may not Punch Spacemen on Friday).

Mentors

A Player may have another Player as a Mentor. Players who are willing to act as a Mentor are listed on the Mentorships wiki page, and are said to be “Tenured”. A Player may add or remove their own name from this list at any time. The Mentorships page is also used to list the names of players who are prohibited from becoming Tenured; this list may only be amended by the effect of a votable matter.

If an unmentored Player requests a Mentor, or a new Player has joined the game and has no Mentor, the Emperor should select a Tenured Player and ask them to take that Player on as a Mentee; if they accept, then such a Mentorship is established. The Emperor should take care to consider game balance when selecting a potential mentor.

A relationship between a mentor and a mentee is a Mentorship. The members and starting dates of all active Mentorships are tracked on the Mentorships wiki page, and whenever a new Mentorship is established, the Emperor should announce it in a blog post. A Player may dissolve a Mentorship they are part of at any time, by announcing this in a blog post.

If there is no Emperor, any Player who has been active in at least three previous dynasties may act as Emperor for the purposes of this rule.

🡅 The Mentor system was introduced by Josh in February 2020, to address the common problem of new players sometimes silently abandoning the game, never to return.

The clause about prohibiting some players from becoming Tenured was added in March 2023 in response to a player considered unsuited to Mentorship quietly adding themselves to the list illegally and declining to step down after their addition was upheld by an Ascension.

Things that a mentor must do

A mentor must do the following:

• Make pro-active contact with their mentee when appointed, and explain the dynamics of the Mentorship system;
• Be available to answer any questions that their mentee may have about the game, including explaining the rules, common standards and etiquette of play, proofreading posts and clarifying game events;
• Introduce their mentee to the various platforms of the game, including the wiki and Dice Roller, and optionally the game’s Discord and social media feeds;
• If possible, give their mentee a nudge if it appears that they are at risk of becoming Idle;
• If they themselves go idle, communicate with their mentee to either continue to support them as an idle Player or arrange a handover to another mentor if requested.

Things that a mentor should do

The following sets out suggested best practice for Mentorship relationships:

• The Mentorship lasts for four weeks or until the next Ascension Address, whichever occurs latest. It can continue informally for longer but after this threshold the mentor is no longer bound by any of the conditions set out in the parent rule to this rule, or any of its subrules.
• The mentor can and should advise the mentee on how to proceed in the mentee’s own best interests. This can include making connections with other Players.
• The mentor should consider copying the mentee in on private, game-related communications, where it does not unfairly prejudice their own interests. The mentee should keep this information private without explicit consent from the mentor.
• The mentor and mentee may work together to achieve victory. If a mentor achieves victory with support of their mentee then they should, if the mentee wishes it, pass the baton to the mentee.

Things that a mentor should not do

The following sets out a list of things that a mentor should not do in their relationship with their mentee. All of these are considered to be Fair Play rules, as per the rule Fair Play.

• The mentor should not sock-puppet, bully, coerce or otherwise manipulate the mentee into performing any game actions.
• The mentor should not seek to dissuade the mentee from pursuing other alliances.
• A former mentor should not seek to use the fact of a prior Mentorship to influence the former mentee on an ongoing basis.

Synonyms

A dynasty may provide extra theming by using alternative terms for words like “City Architect” and “Urbifex Maximus”.

Each term in this list is synonymous with the term in parentheses

• City Architect (Player)
• Urbifex Maximus (Emperor)

When a new Dynasty is started, the Ascension Address may specify new terms for each entry in the above list, provided the newly chosen term does not appear anywhere in the ruleset outside of this rule (though if it only appears in rules which are being removed as part of the Ascension Address, it is fine), and that doing so would not cause two terms in the above list to become synonymous with each other. Doing so causes the old corresponding value (including regional spelling variations) to be replaced by the new value everywhere in the ruleset except in any of the parentheses in the above list.

🡅 Added by Clucky in April 2021 after one too many situations where an Emperor/Player keyword happened to overlap with a term already in the ruleset.