Ruleset

Core Rules

Ruleset and Gamestate

This is the Ruleset for BlogNomic; all Contractors 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; Section Three contains rules which apply in special cases; and Section Four 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.

Contractors 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”.

If the Ruleset does not properly reflect all legal changes that have been made to it, any Contractor may update it to do so.

Contractors

Any human may apply to join BlogNomic (if they are not already a Contractor) 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 Contractor. An Admin shall add them to the roster in the sidebar and the GNDT, at which moment they become a Contractor.

A Contractor may cease to be a Contractor at any time by posting an entry to the BlogNomic weblog requesting such an action. A human who has ceased to be a Contractor in this way may not become a Contractor again within the following two weeks. A Contractor may only change their name as a result of a proposal approving the change.

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

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

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

When a Contractor 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 Contractor Idled in a different dynasty), the Contractor is given the default value for new Contractor, if such a value exists.

An Admin may render a Contractor Idle if that Contractor has asked to become Idle in an entry or comment from the past four days, or if that Contractor 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, but should announce it in a post or comment when they do so. An Admin may Unidle a Contractor if that Contractor is Idle and 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 Contractor who would be Unidled asked to become (or rendered themselves) Idle within the previous four days, and within the current dynasty.

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 Contractor, known as the Great Eccentric. If there is no Great Eccentric, the Dynasty is a Metadynasty.

Votable Matters

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

Votes

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

If a Contractor other than the Great Eccentric casts a vote of DEFERENTIAL, then the Vote of DEFERENTIAL is an indication of confidence in the Great Eccentric. When the Great Eccentric 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 Great Eccentric'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.

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

• The number of Contractors 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 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 should mark their name, and are highly encouraged to report the final tally of Votes (or the fact that it was self-killed or vetoed). Comments cannot be made on Enacted or Failed Votable Matters.

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

Proposals

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

Special Proposal Voting

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

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 Self-Killed.

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 Self-Killed.

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.

Calls for Judgement

If two or more Contractors actively disagree as to the interpretation of the Ruleset, or if a Contractor feels that an aspect of the game needs urgent attention, then any Contractor 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 ture:

• 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.

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.

This Rule may not be overruled by Dynastic Rules.

Victory and Ascension

If a Contractor (other than the Great Eccentric) 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.

If the game is not already in Hiatus and there is a pending DoV, 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 “Contractors”, “Votable Matters”, “Calls for Judgement”, “Gamestate Tracking” and “Victory and Ascension”.

Every Contractor 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 by any Admin if any of the following is true:

• It is Popular, it has been open for at least 12 hours, and either the Great Eccentric has Voted FOR it or it has no AGAINST Votes.
• It is Popular, and it has been open for at least 24 hours.

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.

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

When a DoV is enacted, all other pending DoVs are failed, and a new Dynasty begins with the Contractor who made the DoV as its Great Eccentric. That Contractor may pass this role to another Contractor at this point by making a post to that effect, if they wish. The Hiatus continues until the new Great Eccentric makes an Ascension Address by posting an entry in the “Ascension Address” category - this should specify the Great Eccentric's chosen theme for the new Dynasty, and may optionally specify that the terms Contractor and Great Eccentric 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 had at least one AGAINST vote, the Contractor 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 Contractor'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 non-Idle Contractor within BlogNomic, and should announce publicly if they control both a non-Idle Contractor and any Idle Contractors.
• A Contractor 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 Contractor should not deliberately exploit bugs or unexpected behaviours in the software running the game (ExpressionEngine, MediaWiki or the GNDT).
• A Contractor should not edit their own blog comments once posted, nor those of any other Contractor.
• A Contractor should not edit the "Entry Date" field of a blog post.
• A Contractor should not make a DoV primarily to delay the game by putting it into Hiatus.
• A Contractor should not do any action meant to make the game unplayable (for example, changing multiple keywords to the same word in an ascension address).
• A Contractor should not roll dice in the GNDT 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 Contractor should not deliberately and unreasonably prolong the performance of a game action once they have started it.
• A Contractor should not use a core, special case or appendix rules scam to directly or indirectly achieve victory

Dynastic Rules

Finance

Each Contractor has Investment and Funds, which are numbers tracked in the GNDT with a ‘$’ before and a ‘B’ after. Investment has a starting value of the average investments of all Contractors, and Funds has a starting value of 10. They represent billions of dollars. A Contractor’s Funds divided by their Investment is their Return on Investment, or ROI - unless their Investment is zero, in which case their ROI is zero.

At any time a contractor may gain 2 Investment to gain 1 Fund.

Financial Victory

If there are Finished Projects in at least four different Locations, then the grand plan is finalized; otherwise it is not. If the grand plan is finalized and a single Director has a higher Return on Investment than every other Director, then that Director has achieved victory. (A Contractor is a Director if they have completed at least one Project; otherwise they are not.)

Resources

Each Contractor has 0 or more of the following resources.

• Robots represent machines that build things. It includes robotic arms in factories, automated construction equipment, and miners. X units of robots may be written as XR, where X is the number of robots.
• Transportation represents trains, boats, spaceships, and everything else that moves other things. X units of transportation may be written as XT, where X in the amount of transportation.
• Colonists represent unattached workers looking for a better life. Colonists can be sent to live on far-off worlds, but they can also be genetically engineered or paid to live in unusual circumstances. X units of colonists may be written as XC, where X is the number of colonists.
• Publicity represents Advertising, philanthropy, friendly reporters, and other ways to manage public opinion. X units of Publicity may be written as XP, where X is the amount of publicity.
• Biology represent genetic engineers, ecologists, medical staff, and the facilities they need. X units of Biologists may be written as XB, where X is the amount of biology.
• Engineering represents the ability to plan and solve physical engineering problems. It includes materials engineers, physicists, architects, and rocket engineers. X units of Engineering may be written as XE, where X is the amount of Engineering.
• Infrastructure represents the physical buildings and facilities constructed at a site. It includes housing, roads and power systems. X units of Infrastructure may be written as XI, where X is the amount of Infrastructure

Each Contractor’s resources are tracked in a field of the GNDT named “Resources”

All Resources are either Material, Human, or Social Resources. Material Resources refers to physical capital a Contractor can own, and include Robots, Transportation, and Infrastructure. Human Resources refers to manpower a Contractor can call upon to complete tasks (such as employees and volunteers), and include Colonists, Biology, and Engineering. Social Resources are means that a Contractor can use for outreach, and includes Publicity.

At any time, a Contractor may spend 1 Robot to increase any other Material Resource by 1; likewise, they may spend 1 Publicity to increase any other Human Resource by 1.

At any time a Contractor may spend 3 different resources (i.e. one each of three resources which are different from each other) or 2 funds to gain 1 resource of any kind.

Resource ranges

A resource range follows the format “X-Y A”, where X and Y are numbers with X lower than Y, and A is the first letter of a resource.

When a resource range is resolved, the result is number of resources, with the resource matching the letter of the resource range and the number being randomly selected from between X and Y inclusive.

Deliveries

If fewer than two Deliveries exists, any Contractor or the Great Eccentric may create one by performing the following atomic action:

• Randomly selecting a type of Resource from Robots, Transportation, Colonists, Publicity, Biology, Engineering and Infrastructure (excluding any Abundant Resource types; a Resource Type is Abundant if Contractors have 10 or more units of it, between them)
• Repeating the previous step four more times
• If no Resources have been selected, end the atomic action here
• Posting a Story Post blog entry with a title that includes the words “New Delivery” and listing the quantities of Resources selected in the previous steps (and only those Resources)

Any Contractor may respond to a Delivery with a comment in the format “Bidding $XB”, where X is a non-negative integer greater than zero: such a comment is known as a Bid. If the value stated in a Bid is less than or equal to its Bidder’s Funds, and it is not equal in value to an earlier Valid Bid on the same Delivery, then it is a Valid Bid.

If a Delivery is more than 24 hours old and no Contractor has made a Valid Bid on it in the past 24 hours, then any Contractor or the Great Eccentric may close the Delivery by posting a comment to that effect on that Delivery: upon doing so, the Contractor with the highest Valid Bid on the Delivery loses Funds equal to that Bid’s value, and gains the Resources listed in the Delivery. The Delivery then ceases to be a Delivery.

Sales

If a contractor is not the creator of a currently valid Sale, that Contractor may create one by performing the following atomic action:

• Reducing their Resources by any amount
• Posting a Story Post blog entry with a title that includes the words “Sale” and listing the quantities of Resources removed in the previous step (and only those Resources), as well as a minimum price

Any Contractor that is not the creator may respond to a Sale with a comment in the format “Bidding $XB”, where X is a non-negative integer greater than or equal to the minimum price: such a comment is known as a Bid. If the value stated in a Bid is less than or equal to its Bidder’s Funds, and it is not equal in value to an earlier Valid Bid on the same Sale, then it is a Valid Bid.

If a Sale is more than 24 hours old and no Contractor has made a Valid Bid on it in the past 24 hours, then any Contractor or the Great Eccentric may close the Sale by posting a comment to that effect on that Sale: upon doing so, the Contractor with the highest Valid Bid on the Sale pays Funds equal to that Bid’s value to the sale’s creator, and gains the Resources listed in the Sale. If no valid bid has been made, increase the resources of the creator of the sale by those listed in the sale. The Sale then ceases to be a Sale.

City Sites

Each Contractor is working at a Site, which may be either Earth, Mars, Venus, Moon, Ocean or Space, and which is tracked in the GNDT (defaulting to Earth, which may be tracked as “-”). Earth and Ocean are Local Sites, all others are Offworld Sites.

A Contractor may spend 1 Transportation to change their Site from a Local Site to another Local Site.

A site which is the location of a completed project with “space elevator” or “orbital ring” in its name is said to have a port

A Contractor may spend 2 Transportation to change their Site to Space. A contractor whose site has a port may spend 1 Transportation to change their site to space

A Contractor with a site of Space may spend 1 Transportation to change their Site to any Site. A Contractor with a site of Space may spend 0 Transportation to change their Site to a site that has a port

Whenever a Contractor changes their own Site, they must set their Infrastructure to zero.

Projects

Projects are tracked as a list in a subrule of this rule named “Project List”.

A Project has:

• a name (which is a string)
• a status (which is either dreamed, posted, secret, both, contracted, or finished, and defaults to dreamed)
• an estimation (a list of resource ranges)
• a location (which is a site)
• a bidding area (which is a string)

A project may be written as NAME (STATUS) | ESTIMATION | LOCATION | BIDDING AREA, where NAME is its name, where STATUS is its status, where ESTIMATION is its estimation, where LOCATION is its location, and where BIDDING AREA is its bidding area.

When a project with "Orbital Ring" in its name is completed, if the name of a site is in its name, change its location to that site.

Project List

• Atlantis Arcology (Secret) | 1-2 T 1-2 C 1-2 I | Ocean |
• Orbital Ring of Earth (Posted) | 2-2 R 3-6 T 1-3 I 2-3 P | Space | naught$8B
• Timbuktu Irrigation (Finished) | 2-2 R 2-2 B 1-1 P | Earth |
• Jakarta Space Elevator (Finished) | 2-3 T 2-3 E | Earth | naught$8B,Kevan$6B,naught$4B,Kevan$5B
• Trans-Atlantic Hypertube (Posted) | 1-2 T 1-2 R 1-2 E | Ocean | naught$8B
• Ceatan De-extinction (Posted) | 3-5 B 1-3 P | Ocean | naught$8B,Kevan$7B,naught$6B,Kevan$4B

Contracts

A contractor may make a bid on a project with a status of “Secret” by sending a private message to the Great Eccentric stating the name of the project and an amount. This is known as a Secret Bid.

A contractor may make a bid on a project with a status of “Posted” by appending to the bidding area their bid. Bids in the bidding area are formatted in a comma delinated list and represented as XY, where X is the name of the bidder and Y is the amount. This is known as a Public Bid.

A contractor may make both Secret and Public Bids on a project with a status of “Both”.

If it has been 24 hours or more since the last bid on a project with bids from more than one contractor, the Great Eccentric may “Award” a project by taking the following atomic action:

• Make a blog post stating the name of the project being awarded. This post is known as the project’s contract.
• Select the project’s winner from among the Contractors with the lowest bid on the project. If there is a tie, randomly choose from the following criteria, stopping at the first contractor chosen: contractors that have made the lowest public bid and have the lowest number of contracted projects, contractors that have made the lowest secret bid and have the lowest number of contracted projects.
• List the amount of the second lowest bid. This is known as the project’s prize
• Resolve the resource ranges in the project’s estimation, and list this in the contract. This is known as the project’s cost.
• Change the status of the project to “contracted”

The winner of a project with the same site as the project’s location may Complete that contract by paying the project’s cost from their resources, changing the project’s status to finished, and increasing their funds by the contract’s prize minus $1B for every full 72 hours since the project was awarded.

A contract is canceled by making a comment on it announcing the project is canceled, decreasing the funds of the winner by $3B, and setting the status of the project to dreamed.

The winner of a contract may cancel it at any time. If a contractor would loose as much or more money by completing a project they are the winner of than by canceling its project, any contractor or the Great Eccentric may cancel the contract.

Special Case

Special Case Rules can be active or inactive and default to active. The status of a Special Case rule is notated in the title of that rule ending in ”[X]” where X is the word Active or Inactive, denoting that Rule’s status. When a new dynasty is started, the Ascension Address may state any existing Special Case Rules that are set to inactive; any Special Case Rules not set in the Ascension Address become Active.

The text of Special Case Rules that are inactive shall be interpreted, for the purpose of play, to mean nothing.

Tags [Active]

Votable matters have zero or more tags. Tags are added by adding it to the title of a votable matter with the format “[X]” where [X] is the tag, for example “[Core] Wording Fix”. Votable Matters require the [Core] tag in order to make changes to the Core Rules, the [Special Case] tag in order to make changes to the Special Case Rules and the [Appendix] tag in order to make changes to the Appendix Rules. Votable Matters other than DoVs require the [Victory] tag in order to grant victory to a Contractor.

Atomic Actions [Active]

When a Contractor 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 such steps are complete. All of the steps of an Atomic Action are considered one action, as well as the steps of an Atomic Actions that is itself a step of a parent Atomic Action.

An Atomic Action may direct the performer to skip some of its steps, which the performer should do and in which case the skipped steps are considered completed for this rule.

If one or more steps of an Atomic Action were done incorrectly, the Contractor must redo the Atomic Action. In redoing an Atomic Action, the Contractor uses any legal steps that were already completed in the illegal Atomic Action and only redoes the illegal ones.

For instance if an Atomic Action consists of rolling a die in the GNDT and then doing steps based upon it’s result the Contractor would have to reroll the die if they rolled the wrong one if the first place and any steps that depended upon the result of that die; however if all they did was take an illegal action later on, the die is still used in the redone action.

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.

This rule cannot be overruled by the Dynastic Rules.

Seasonal Downtime [Active]

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”.

Dormancy [Active]

If there are fewer than five Contractors, then BlogNomic is Dormant. While BlogNomic is Dormant, actions defined by dynastic rules may not be taken, and proposals may not be submitted.

No Orphan Variables [Active]

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

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

Imperial Deferentials [Active]

If the Great Eccentric has voted DEFERENTIAL on a proposal, that vote is instead considered to be valid and either FOR (if more Contractors have voted FOR the proposal than have voted AGAINST it) or AGAINST (in all other cases).

Dynastic Distance [Active]

For the purposes of dynastic rules which do not deal with voting, The Great Eccentric is not a Contractor.

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 Contractors.

Daily Action

If a game action is a Daily Action, each Contractor 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 Contractor 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.

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

Flavour Text

When posting a blog entry, a Contractor 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. All GNDT columns that the Dynastic Rules explicitly mention are assumed to be Gamestate, as are all Wiki Pages that the Dynastic Rules explicitly mention except for dynastic histories and discussion pages.

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

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 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.

Slack

The BlogNomic Slack is located at blognomic.slack.com. Contractors 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. (For example, #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.

TOC

Table of Contents.

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.

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 Contractor 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 Contractor per week.

Wiki

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

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 Contractor 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 two hours old and either no Contractor 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.

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 Contractor 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 Contractor is defined as a Contractor who has been a Contractor for fewer than seven days or a Contractor that has unidled in the past seven days after being idle for at least 3 months.

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 Contractor may update any Contractor's data via the GNDT, whenever the Ruleset permits it.

All updates to the GNDT are logged. For gamestate which is tracked in a specific place (such as the GNDT or a wiki page), any alteration of that gamestate as a result of a Contractor’s action is (and can only be) applied by editing that data in that place. One GNDT or 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 GNDT and wiki merely represent the Gamestate, and are not the same thing. In the event that the Gamestate and its representations are different, any Contractor may correct the representations to comply with the Gamestate.

If a Contractor feels that a representation of the gamestate (such as the GNDT or the wiki) 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 alteration, Contractors are encouraged to raise a Call for Judgement instead. Contractors shall be assigned a password for the GNDT when they join the Nomic.

Random Generators

The GNDT 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.

Any changes to the potential outcomes of the GNDT’s random result commands must be made by proposal; and any proposal that seeks to nominate a change to this rule must first identify a Contractor with server-level access to the BlogNomic site who is able to perform the changes, and must also update this rule to reflect the new potential outcomes.

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 DICE roll in the GNDT, unless otherwise specified. If a selection is explicitly specified as being “secretly” random, the Contractor making this determination may do so using a private method of their choosing, instead of the GNDT.

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 Contractor can spend only their own values, and a rule that allows Contractors to transfer a numeric value only allows them to transfer that value from themselves to another Contractor (of their choice unless otherwise stated).
• A Contractor 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 game variable has no defined starting value, then that starting value is 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”).
• 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)
• DICEN cannot be rolled in the GNDT if N is 22 or more digits long.

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.
• If a wiki page becomes gamestate as a result of a proposal enacting, that page shall - unless otherwise specified - be reverted to whatever state it was in at the time of that proposal's submission (and if the page did not exist at that time, it shall be blanked).
• 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 the admin enacting a proposal reaches a step which cannot be applied immediately (eg. “two days after this proposal enacts, Contractor A gains 1 point”), that step is ignored for the purposes of enactment. Once a proposal has been enacted, it can have no further direct effect on the gamestate.

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.
• A Contractor 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.
• The terms "Contractor" and "Player" are synonyms.

Names

• Within the ruleset, a word only refers to the name of a Contractor if it is explicitly stated that it refers to a Contractor's name.
• 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.
• 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 proposal, the name used in reference to a specific proposal may be simplified by not including braces and any text between the opening and closing braces. i.e. a proposal named “Changes [Core]” could instead be referred to by the name “Changes”.

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