Building Blocks
Contents
Building Blocks
Low-Player Mode
The Core Rule Dormancy is flavour text.
Everyone’s Playing
For the purposes of all dynastic and Building Blocks rules, the City is an Thief.
Malign Emperors
The City may be recipient of the Mantle, as if they were an Thief, during an Interregnum, as per the rule Victory and Ascension. The City 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. The City may not use the rule “Official Posts” to move posts into the proposal category.
If there is a Building Block rule called No Private Communication then any Thief may remove this rule from the ruleset.
No Private Communication
Thieves may not privately communicate with each other about dynastic gameplay or votable matters that affect the dynastic ruleset or gamestate. Private communications are considered to be anything that any other Thief could not reasonably be privy to, perceive, or understand. Discussion conducted in plain English on the BlogNomic wiki and blog, and the #current-dynasty, #blognomic-general and #new-player-questions-and-mentorships Discord channels, are not considered to be private communication. Idle Thieves (or people who are not yet Thieves) also face the same restrictions if they intend to become an active Thief during the course of the dynasty. The use of creative strategies to circumvent this rule may be considered to be a scam for the purposes of determining whether an infraction of Fair Play has taken place.
A mentor and mentee may still privately converse with each other, but should keep their conversations away from discussing specific gameplay strategy. This rule’s restrictions on communication do not apply during an Interregnum. The restrictions in this rule on communication in non-blognomic-related media shall not be construed as to cause those media to be gamestate.
If information which was not allowed to be discussed is still privately discussed, the Thieves who were part of the conversation should make a post to the blog disclosing what information was discussed as their earliest convenience.
Mantle Limitations
The Mantle may not be passed during an Interregnum.
Declared Alliances
Each Thief may have an Alliance, which is publicly tracked, and consists of the distinct names of no more than two other Thieves; an Thief's Alliance defaults to an empty set. An Thief may change their Alliance as a daily action.
If "Mantle Limitations" is also active, and if an Thief 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 Thief may pass the Mantle to an Thief 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 Thieves 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 Thieves who have each other’s names in their Alliance.
Event Types
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). An Thief (or the City) 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 Thief (or the City) 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 it be Ended again.
Bounties
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 City 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 City 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 Thief (other than the City) who authored at least one of those votable matters and set that Bounty Notice to closed.
Reinitialisation
If they have not already done so in the current dynasty, An Thief 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 City is privately tracking any information about them then they should do likewise at their first opportunity. When an Thief 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.
Virtual Actions
A Virtual Action is a type of action that the City performs on behalf of an Thief. An Thief may initiate a virtual action by privately communicating to the City their request to do so, along with any additional information needed to carry it out. The City shall resolve the Virtual Action by performing the following Atomic Action:
- Determine whether the Virtual Action fails (if it does not fail, it is successful).
- If the action is successful, apply any specified effects on the gamestate and/or perform any specified actions on behalf of the Thief.
If a Virtual Action fails, the City should tell the Thief why. A virtual action may fail for any of these reasons:
- Some requirements/prerequisites to perform the action are not met.
- The request does not contain all the information needed to resolve the action.
- The request is unintelligible, or too vague to interpret unambiguously.
- It would require the City to do something they cannot do.
- Any other reason specified by the action itself.
Except where otherwise stated by the ruleset, the City must resolve all virtual actions in the order that they are received. A virtual action is considered to have occurred at the time it was resolved.
Until a virtual action is resolved, it is pending. An Thief may cancel a pending Virtual Action by privately communicating to the City their request to do so.
No Cooperation
In this dynasty, Thieves are expected to avoid co-operating to effect Victory, except through the use of co-operative mechanisms defined in the Dynastic rules, any activities carried out as part of a Mentorship, and the posting of votable matters and casting of votes. The Mentor clause that a Mentor and mentee “may work together to achieve victory” does not apply in this dynasty.
Idle Thieves are considered to be Thieves for the purposes of this rule.
If a Thief feels that another Thief has gone against this expectation in some way during the current dynasty, then they are encouraged to vote against all DoVs from that Thief during that dynasty. If a Thief feels that a DoV has come about as a result of one or more other Thieves making a sincere attempt to ‘kingmake’ for the Declarant, even if the author of the DoV was not a party to that cooperation, then they are encouraged to vote against it. This overrules the encouragement to vote according to the perception of a victory in the rule “Victory in Ascension”.
