Core Rules

Ruleset and Gamestate

This is the Ruleset for BlogNomic; all Vassals 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 set metagame parameters for the current dynasty; 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.

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

The gamestate tracking page for this dynasty is the Gartenberg page of the wiki. Unless otherwise stated, all publicly tracked gamestate information is tracked on it.

Vassals

A human with access to the blog who is not already an Vassal may make a blog post making clear their wish to be an Vassal (plural form Vassals); in response, an Admin shall add them to the roster in the sidebar, at which moment they become an Vassal. (See the FAQ for guidance on how to apply for access to the BlogNomic blog.)

An Vassal may only change their name as a result of a Proposal approving the change.

Some Vassals are Admins, responsible for updating the site and the Ruleset, and are signified as such in the sidebar. Vassals 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. Vassals may be made Admins through Proposal or CFJ.

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

Idle Vassals

If an Vassal is Idle, this is tracked by their name being removed or concealed in the list of currently active Vassals in the Sidebar. For the purposes of all Gamestate and the Ruleset, excluding the core and appendix Rules “Ruleset and Gamestate”, “Vassals ”, “Dynasties”, “Fair Play”, "Mentors" and any of those Rules’ subrules, Idle Vassals are not counted as Vassals . The combined term “Idle Vassal” can be used to refer to Vassals who are Idle even in rules that do not treat them as Vassals.

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

When an Vassal 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 Vassal Idled in a different Dynasty), the Vassal is given the default value for new Vassals, if such a value exists.

An Admin may render an Vassal Idle if that Vassal has asked to become Idle in an entry or comment from the past 96 hours (4 Days), or if that Vassal 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 Vassal 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 an Vassal if that Vassal 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 Vassal who would be Unidled has become Idle within the past 96 hours (4 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 resolve Votable Matters as a non-idle admin would.

Dormancy

If there are fewer than four Vassals (not including the Sovereign), then BlogNomic is on Hiatus.

Dynasties

BlogNomic is divided into a number of Dynasties. Each Dynasty may be headed by a single Vassal, known as the Sovereign. If there is no Sovereign, 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 Vassal may achieve Victory. However, dynastic actions that are specifically permitted to be carried out during an Interregnum may be carried out.

Unless otherwise stated by a dynastic or Building Blocks rule, then for the purposes of dynastic and Building Blocks rules, the Sovereign is not an Vassal.

Votable Matters

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

Votes

Each Vassal 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. An Vassal'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-Vassal never has a Vote, even if they were an Vassal previously and had cast a valid Vote.

If an Vassal other than the Sovereign casts a vote of DEFERENTIAL, then the Vote of DEFERENTIAL is an indication of confidence in the Sovereign. When the Sovereign 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 Sovereign's Vote for the purposes of other rules unless otherwise specified. When the Sovereign themselves casts a vote of DEFERENTIAL, it indicates an indication of confidence in the votes of the other players; please see the Rules and Votable Matters section of the Appendix for more information on how this is resolved.

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 Vassals 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.

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

Proposals

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

Special Proposal Voting

When an Vassal 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 Sovereign may use VETO as a voting icon to cast a Vote on a Proposal; when the Sovereign casts a vote of VETO on a Proposal, this renders the Proposal Vetoed, even if the Sovereign later changes their Vote.

Resolution of Proposals

The oldest Pending Proposal may be Enacted by any Admin 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.

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.

When a Proposal is Enacted, its stated effects are applied by treating the text in the Proposal as a series of steps starting from the beginning of that Proposal’s text and performing each step until reaching the end of that Proposal’s text, except that if the Admin Enacting it reaches a step which cannot be applied immediately (e.g. “two days after this Votable Matter enacts, Vassal A gains 1 point”) or at all (e.g. applying to a rule which does not exist), that step is ignored for the purposes of Enactment; the Admin Enacting the Proposal shall update the Gamestate and Ruleset, and correct any gamestate-tracking entities, as specified in each step that was performed.

Calls for Judgement

If two or more Vassals actively disagree as to the interpretation of the Ruleset, or if an Vassal feels that an aspect of the game needs urgent attention, then any Vassal 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.

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 an Vassal (other than the Sovereign) 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.

An Vassal'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 Vassal may be made unidle, and no new player joining requests may be administered.

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 Vassals, it has been open for at least 12 hours, and either the Sovereign 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 Vassals, 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.
It is more than 48 hours old and cannot be Enacted

If a DoV is Failed and it had at least one AGAINST vote, the Vassal 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 Vassal who posted the DoV becomes Sovereign, 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.

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

Make an Ascension Address by posting an entry in the “Ascension Address” category. This should specify the Sovereign's chosen theme for the new Dynasty, and it may optionally specify new 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).
Optionally specify any number of Building Blocks rules to remove or insert, as per the instructions in the Building Blocks section.
Update the Ruleset to reflect any changed terms, repeal any dynastic rules which were not listed to be kept, and make any specified or automatic changes to the Building Blocks section of the ruleset. Update the Building Blocks page to reflect any changes to the terms outlined in the rule Synonyms.
Optionally change the gamestate tracking page referred to in the rule “Ruleset and Gamestate” to a different page that does not exist and does not start with the word “Ruleset”.

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 an Vassal'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. Vassals should vote against any DoV that relies on having broken a fair play rule.

A single person should not control more than one non-Idle Vassal within BlogNomic, and should announce publicly if they control both a non-Idle Vassal and any Idle Vassals. This extends to exerting full control over the actions of another Vassal, defined here as the controlled Vassal's game behavior being functionally indistinguishable from if the controlling Vassal was logged into their account and playing through it, over a period of more than a day.
An Vassal 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.
An Vassal should not deliberately exploit bugs or unexpected behaviours in the software running the game (ExpressionEngine, MediaWiki or other blognomic.com scripts).
An Vassal should not edit their own blog comments once posted, nor those of any other Vassal.
An Vassal should not edit the “Entry Date” field of a blog post.
An Vassal should not make a DoV primarily to delay the game by putting it into Hiatus.
An Vassal should not do any action meant to make the game unplayable (for example, changing multiple keywords to the same word in an Ascension Address).
An Vassal 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. an Vassal must use their own name in the Dice Roller, when rolling dice.
An Vassal should not deliberately and unreasonably prolong the performance of a game action once they have started it.
An Vassal should not use a Core, Building Blocks, or Appendix rules scam to directly or indirectly cause an Vassal to achieve victory.
A Vassal should not trade actions in BlogNomic for favors or compensation outside of BlogNomic, nor trade actions in any other game for favors within BlogNomic, nor trade actions or favours in one Dynasty of Blognomic for actions or favours in another Dynasty of Blognomic.
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 Vassal or Vassals 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.

All Vassals and idle Vassals 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 Vassals are encouraged to commit to upholding them to whatever extent is possible.

Dynastic Rules

Castles

Stockpile

Each Vassal has publicly-tracked numbers, one for each type of Material listed in the table below and whose publicly-tracked name is the name of that Material with a default value of 0.

Material
Wood
Stone
Iron
Ore
Food

Food cannot be expended and is, for each Vassal, always equal to the total amount Produced by the effects of their Structures or Embellishments.

Structures

Each Vassal has Structures, which is a publicly-tracked ordered list defaulting to an empty list where each entry contains one of the Structures in the table below and a Size which is one of Small, Medium, Large or Gargantuan. There may be multiple entries with the same Structure. The last entry in a Vassal’s Structures is said to be its outermost Structure, and the first is said to be its innermost Structure.

Each Structure has a Cost, which is a list of one or more Materials, a Theatre (which may be one or more of Air, Land or Sea), and one or more Defensive Values, each of which is a number that applies to that respective Theatre in the order in which it is listed. If a Theatre isn’t listed, the Structure’s Defensive Value for that Theatre is 0.

Structure	Cost	Theatre	Defensive Value
Wooden Wall	Wood	Land, Sea, Air	10, 2, 2
Moat	Wood	Land	15
Stone Wall	Stone	Land, Sea, Air	20, 5, 5
Stone Tower	Stone	Land, Air	5, 15
Dam	Stone	Sea	15
Iron Wall	Iron	Land, Sea, Air	40, 10, 10
Lightning Rod	Iron	Sea, Air	15, 15
Blasters	Iron	Land, Sea, Air	0, 0, 0*

At the point at which a Vassal builds Blaster, and at any time at which they upgrade their Blaster, they may choose a single Theatre and add a defensive value of 20 to their Blaster in that Theatre.

At any time, a Vassal may Build a Structure by spending one of each material listed in the Structure’s Cost, and creating a new entry to any position in their Structures with the built Structure as Structure and Small as Size.

At any time, a Vassal may Upgrade one of their Structures that is not Gargantuan by spending an amount of each Material listed in the Structure’s Cost equal to the following rates, according to the Size being changed, and then changing the Size of that Structure accordingly as follows: 2 to change from Small to Medium, 3 to change from Medium to Large, and 5 to change from Large to Gargantuan.

For each publicly tracked Vassal’s Structures, the format for publicly tracking is “{{box|Size Name:Values}}”, where “Size” is the Size of the Structure, “Name” is the Name of the Structure, and “Values” are the Current Defensive Values for Land, Sea, and Air in that order, using a value of 0 for any Land, Sea, or Air Defensive Value that is not set to some other value, and that default to the amounts listed in the table for that Structure, multiplied by the following rates according to Size: 1 for Small, 2 for Medium, 3 for Large, and 5 for Gargantuan.

The Structures of each Vassal are publicly tracked. For each type of Structure, each Vassal may have at most one instance of that Structure of each Size.

Embellishments

Each Vassal may have a number of Embellishments that are publicly tracked. A Vassal may have a number Embellishments equal to or less than their Development, which is calculated as the number of upgrades they have applied to their Structures (eg a Medium Stone Wall adds 1 to their Development; a Gargantuan Moat adds 3; a small Stone Tower contributes 0).

Possible Embellishments are listed in this rule. An Embelleshment must have a name, a cost and an effect. The effect of an Embellisment may be one of the following: Combat, in which case it occurs when a Wave is charged; Passive, in which case it is always in effect for the owning Vassal; or Active, in which case it defines an action that may be electively taken by the owning Vassal according to the specifications of the effect itself.

Name	Cost	Effect
Housing	Wood, Stone	Passive: Increase Capacity by Development
Recycler	Wood, Wood, Wood	Passive: All Structure building and Upgrade costs are reduced by one Wood, to a minimum of one Wood
Engine Yard	Iron, Wood, Stone	Passive: The effect of the Mine task is "Gain 1 Ore for every two Assigned Serfs"
Fletcher	Wood, Stone	Combat: All Enemies lose 10% of their Strength, rounded up, to a minimum of 1
Sluice	Stone, Stone, Iron	Combat: All Enemies in the Sea theatre move to the Land Theatre and lose 1 Strength
Folly	Wood, Iron	Combat: All Small Enemies have their Strength set to 0
Embassy	Stone, Ore	Active: May Supplicate. Supplicating is an action that may only be carried out once by a Vassal between each Herald post. When a Vassal Supplicates, they spend Material and send a DM to the Sovereign announcing their Supplication. The Sovereign then reduces the Building Wave by 1 for each Wood, 3 for each Stone, 6 for each Iron and 10 for each Ore spent on performing this Action; they may then reduce their own Damage by 1.

At any time, a Vassal may build an Embellishment they don’t already have by spending the Materials listed in its Cost, unless they already have a number of Embellishments equal to their Development.

Special Buildings

Special buildings are structures that are not part of the castle nor have a defensive stat or theatre.

Name	Cost	Effect
Farm	Wood, 10 hectare	A farm produces 2 food plus 2 food per extra size above the first.

Special Buildings are exempt from the restriction that a Vassal may only own one instance of each type of Structure.

Reputation

Each Vassal has a number named Reputation which defaults to 0 and can be at most 2.

Land

Each Vassal has publicly-tracked number called land area. (Hereafter also refered as land.)

The starting value of land is 100. Land is expressed in hectare and follows the metric system. Land is spendible and can’t be less then zero. An action is legal if a player must pay amount of land but its value is bigger than the current amount of land that Vassal has.

Fortnight

The Fortnight is an atomic action with the following steps:

Resolve all unresolved Virtual Actions received in the order specified in the definitions of those Virtual Actions, or in default Virtual Action resolution order if not otherwise specified.
For each Task, apply its effects to each Vassal that has Assigned at least one Serf to that Task.
Charge a Wave using the Building Wave generated in the most recent Herald action, if there was one.
For each Vassal, add a number of Serfs equal to that Vassal’s Reputation.
Subtract 5 from the number of Serfs each Vassal has and compare the remainder to the amount of Food they are producing. If the amount of Food is greater then no action is taken for that Vassal. If the amount of Serfs is greater then remove the difference from their number of Serfs, to a minimum of 5.
For each Vassal, Contribute to the War Effort
Perform the Herald atomic action. This step may be skipped if the Sovereign determines that the Herald action will not communicate anything of significance, but the Sovereign must then post that they are skipping this step in the #current-dynasty Discord channel.

If the Sovereign has received at least one Virtual Action from every Vassal since the most recent Fortnight, or a Fortnight has not been performed in the last 72 hours, the Sovereign should perform the Fortnight action. If the Sovereign has not received any Virtual Actions from a Vassal 48 hours after the most recent Fortnight, the Sovereign should privately communicate to that Vassal with a reminder of this fact.

As a Virtual Action, a Vassal may send “No Change” to the Sovereign to indicate that they do not wish to exercise any other Virtual Actions before the next Fortnight.

Herald

Herald is an atomic action with the following steps:

Create a Story Post with the title “Herald: ” followed by the current date.
In the body of the post, summarize the resolution of Virtual Actions and gamestate changes since the most recent Herald, or if there hasn’t been a Herald before this one, since the start of this dynasty.
Roll DICE5+5 and add that to the total Strength of all Enemies in the most recent Wave (or 0 if there wasn’t one). Select Enemies and optionally Curses whose combined Strength equals the figure thus generated. Apply the Effects of each selected Curse unless its Effect is explicitly told to be applied when Charging the Wave. Put the Enemies in a random order and set them and the Curses to be the new Building Wave. Detail the new Building Wave in the same Herald post.

Serfs

Each Vassal has a publicly-tracked number named Serfs defaulting to 5. As a Virtual Action, a Vassal may Assign their Serfs to one or more Tasks, replacing any previous Assignment. If they Assign fewer Serfs than they have, any remaining Serfs are considered to be Assigned to Idle.

If a vassal loses a Serf, they lose them in the following order, based on how they are assinged: Idle, Smelt, Repair, Chop, Dig, Mine.

Tasks

The table below lists possible Tasks and an Effect for each Task. Each Task has a publicly-tracked list, defaulting to an empty list, where each entry in the list has a Vassal, which must the name of a Vassal, and a number of Serfs. These Serfs are considered to be Assigned by the corresponding Vassal. Unless otherwise stated, a Task’s Effect applies to each Vassal based on the number of Serfs Assigned by that Vassal.

Task	Effect
Idle	-
Chop	Gain 1 Wood for each Assigned Serf
Dig	Gain 1 Stone for every two Assigned Serfs
Mine	Gain 1 Ore for every three Assigned Serfs
Smelt	For each Assigned Serf, spend 1 Ore to gain 1 Iron
Repair	For each Assigned Serf, subtract 1 Damage, to a minimum of 0.

The first time a Vassal is unidled during this dynasty, the Sovereign or any admin should add an entry to the “Idle” task list containing the name of that Vassal and the amount of that Vassal’s Serfs.

Capacity

Each Vassal has a maximum number of Serfs they may have, called their Capacity. Each Vassal’s Capacity is by default equal to 5.

Waves

Each Vassal has a publicly tracked value called Damage, which defaults to the median value for Damage held by all other Vassals.

When a Wave is Charged, the Enemies who are participating in that Wave attack the castle of each Vassal. The result of the attack is resolved separately for each Vassal using the following atomic action (with any exceptions required by the Curses of the Wave):

Apply any Combat effects from Embellishments.
for each Structure from outermost to innermost in the Vassal’s Structures, do the following:
- for each Theatre in the orded Air, Land, Sea, with the Structure’s respective Defensive Value as Defense, do the following:
  - for each Enemy that has the Theatre and whose Size is at most the Structure’s Size, from first to last, do the following:
    - if the Enemy’s Strength is less than Defense, subtract the Enemy’s Strength from Defense and set the Enemy’s Strength to zero
    - otherwise, subtract Defense from the Enemy’s Strength and set Defense to zero
add the sum of the Strengths of all Enemies in the Wave to the Vassal’s Damage, then subtract that sum from the Vassal’s War Contributions
If the Vassal’s Damage increased as a result of the preceding step, subtract 1 from the Vassal’s Reputation, to a minimum of 0. Otherwise, add 1 to the Vassal’s Reputation, to a maximum of 2, and increase their Land by 10.
If the Vassal’s Damage did not increase as a result of of this action, add the base Strength of all Enemies in this Charging Wave to their War Contributions.
set all Structure’s Defensive Values and Enemies’ Strengths back to the values they had before performing this action

Enemies

The Enemies that can be in a Wave are listed in this rule. Each Enemy must have the following properties: a Name, a Theatre (which may be one or more of Air, Land or Sea), a Size (which must be one of Small, Medium, Large or Gargantuan), and a Strength (which must be an integer).

Name	Theatre	Size	Strength
Gobbo	Land	Small	1
Pilk	Sea	Small	2
Destral	Air	Small	1
Donker	Land	Medium	6
Tental	Sea	Medium	5
Flinger	Air	Medium	5
Stumps	Land	Large	14
Razorspine	Sea	Large	11
Drake	Air	Large	12
Carpathian	Land	Gargantuan	25
Shoggal	Sea	Gargantuan	22
Phlaxxon	Air	Gargantuan	23

Curses

The Curses that can be in a Wave are listed in this rule. Each Curse must have the following properties: a Name, an Effect and a Strength (which must be an integer).

Name	Effect	Strength
Lightning	For each Vassal, the Structure (or Structures, if tied) with the highest sum of Defensive Values is ignored when Charging the Wave	15
Crawl	Small Enemies can only be defended by Small Structures during the Charging of the Wave	10
Shadow	The Sovereign must not describe the Enemies of the Building Wave in the Herald post	8
Giant	One non-Gargantuan Enemy is made Gargantuan	20
Storm	The Theatre of each Enemy is randomly replaced with either Air or Sea	16
Earthquake	The Structures are processed in reversed order when Charging the Wave	5

The Anti-Monstrous War

Each Vassal has a War Participation, publicly tracked as a percentage of their War Contributions relative to the Defense of the Homeland.

The Defense of the Homeland, publicly tracked on the Gartenberg wiki page, is the total sum of all Vassals’ (including idle Vassals) War Contributions. When a Vassal Contributes to the War Effort, their War Contributions are increased by an amount based on the following:

+4 per Structure they have
+2 for each Structure they have of at least Medium Size
+3 for each Structure they have of at least Large Size
+6 for each Structure they have of at least Gargantuan Size
+2 times that Vassal’s Reputation
+2 for each Embellishment they have

The Final Advance

Once the Defense of the Homeland has reached a value of 500, the Final Advance is ready.

If a Vassal has a War Participation of 50% and the Final Advance is ready, that Vassal has achieved victory.

Default Mode

If every Vassal except one has 10 or more Damage then the Vassal with less than 10 Damage has achieved Victory.

Building Blocks

Building Blocks are rules that can be substituted in and out of the ruleset as needed, usually as a result of an Ascension Address. All rules in the Building Blocks section are ruletext.

Potential Building Blocks rules can be found at the Building Blocks page of the wiki. That page is gamestate and may not be altered except as specified by the ruleset or through the passage of a Proposal or CfJ; however, its contents are not rulestext. When the contents of the Building Blocks page are referred to as ‘rules’ by the ruleset or by a votable matter, it should be assumed that said contents are being referred to as potential rules rather than actual rules.

When a Sovereign specifies the Building Blocks rules in use for a new dynasty in an Ascension Address, they should specify (by name) the rules from the Building Blocks page that they would like to be included in this section of the ruleset; these rules must then be transcribed faithfully to this section of the ruleset, and any Building Blocks rules not so named must be removed from the Building Blocks section. Some rules on the Building Blocks page are listed as being Recommended; if the new Sovereign makes no statement on Building Blocks rules to be included in their Ascension Address then the Recommended Building Blocks are considered to have been selected. There are currently no Recommended Building Blocks.

Low-Player Mode

The Core Rule Dormancy is flavour text.

No Private Communication

Vassals 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 Vassal 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 Vassals (or people who are not yet Vassals) also face the same restrictions if they intend to become an active Vassal 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 Vassals who were part of the conversation should make a post to the blog disclosing what information was discussed as their earliest convenience.

Virtual Actions

A Virtual Action is a type of action that the Sovereign performs on behalf of an Vassal. An Vassal may initiate a virtual action by privately communicating to the Sovereign their request to do so, along with any additional information needed to carry it out. The Sovereign 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 Vassal.

If a Virtual Action fails, the Sovereign should tell the Vassal 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 Sovereign to do something they cannot do.
Any other reason specified by the action itself.

Except where otherwise stated by the ruleset, the Sovereign 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 Vassal may cancel a pending Virtual Action by privately communicating to the Sovereign their request to do so.

No Cooperation

In this dynasty, Vassals are expected to avoid co-operating to achieve Victory, except through the use of co-operative mechanisms defined in the Dynastic rules.

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 Vassal 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 Vassal 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 Vassal 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 Vassal per week.

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 Vassals.
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): An Vassal's Effective Vote Comment with respect to a given Votable Matter is that Vassal's Comment to that Votable Matter, if any, that contains that Vassal's Vote on that Votable Matter.
Commentary: When posting a blog entry, an Vassal 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.
Discord: The BlogNomic Discord can be accessed at https://discord.gg/J7kP9KuHQK and is also linked to on the sidebar. Vassals , as well as people who are not Vassals but are interested in learning more about BlogNomic, may join the Discord by clicking the button in the sidebar.
Discord Channel: A Discord Channel is any channel on the BlogNomic Discord in the BlogNomic Discussion category. All Vassals who are in the Discord should have the ability to access all of these channels. To reference a Discord Channel, use a hash (#) followed by the name of that channel (e.g. #random).
Flavour Text: If a part of the ruleset or gamestate is defined as being “flavour text”, it retains its context, but is not considered to have any meaning beyond being a string of characters. Vassals 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 (or indirectly invoked by 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.
Pass the Mantle: Passing the Mantle is a mechanism by which, during an Interregnum, a Sovereign may nominate another Vassal to become the Sovereign in the upcoming dynasty.
Post: A blog post published to the BlogNomic weblog at blognomic.com
Quorum: Quorum of a subset of Vassals is half the number of Vassals in that subset, rounded down, plus one. If the word Quorum is used without qualifying which subset of Vassals it is referring to, it is referring to a Quorum of all Vassals.
Resolve/Resolution: If used in a context of a Votable Matter, the word “Resolve” means to perform the act, as an Admin, of enacting, failing, or marking illegal 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. The resolution of a votable matter is tracked by reference to its status in the blog post edit form. If otherwise legally applied, the application of any status through the blog post editing form is sufficient to consider that votable matter to have been correctly resolved, but a resolved votable matter should have the correct status wherever possible; if any admin believes that a resolved votable matter has an incorrect status then they may correct it.
Rule: Each individually numbered and titled block of text (using the wikimedia section heading formatting) of the Ruleset is a rule, including rules that are subrules of other rules; with the exception that the top-level headings defined as ‘sections’ in the rule “Ruleset and Gamestate” are considered sections but not rules themselves.
Sticky Post: A blog post where the “Make Entry Sticky” option has been enabled. Changing the state of this option is not considering altering or modifying the post with regards to the rules on Official Posts. The sticky status of posts should generally be left to the discretion of the Sovereign.
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.
Seasonal Downtime: On the 24th, 25th and 26th of December, BlogNomic is on Hiatus. In addition, game actions defined by the core rules titled “Vassals” and “Victory and Ascension” (with the exception of Voting in DoVs) may not be taken.
Subrule: A subrule is a type of rule that is hierarchically ordered beneath another rule. Rules and proposals that refer to a rule do not also refer to its subrules, unless otherwise specified.
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 Vassal 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. Dynastic rules cannot define posts in the “Call for Judgement” category to be a type of official post other than a Call for Judgement, and this restriction cannot be overridden by dynastic rules.

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 Vassal 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, except that a votable matter’s illegal resolution may be overturned. 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 is less than six hours old and appears to the Sovereign to have been intended as a Proposal, and if its author does not already have two Proposals pending, then the Sovereign may move it into the Proposal category, causing it to be considered to have been open for voting since the time that the post was first posted.

Any post that is or is made illegal as a result of an infraction against any of the prohibitions set out in this rule, except for a votable matter’s illegal resolution that has been overturned, 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, except for the legal enactment of a CFJ. An illegal CFJ cannot cause itself to become legal.

Representations of the Gamestate

If authorised by the rules as a result of an Vassal’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 Vassal may correct the representations to comply with the Gamestate.

If an Vassal 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 Vassal, if doing so would not require the correcting Vassal to make any decisions on behalf of the original Vassal.

Instead of repeatedly reverting and re-reverting a disputed alteration, however, Vassals 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.

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.

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

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, MVassala, 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 Votable Matter.

If a Votable Matter proposes a change to this rule that would require server-level access to the BlogNomic site to fully enact its effects, that Votable Matter must name an Vassal with such access. Only an Vassal with such access may Enact that Votable Matter. If that Votable Matter does not name an Vassal with such access, that Votable Matter 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, and which value the roll result corresponds to must be reasonably inferable from the nature of the roll and any comments supplied by the Vassal making the roll before or while making the roll. If a selection is explicitly specified as being “secretly” random, the Vassal 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 an Vassal 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.
If a rule allows the Vassal performing an Atomic Action to skip some of its steps, the skipped steps are considered to have been completed.
If an Vassal 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 Vassal must redo the Atomic Action; for that purpose, the Vassal 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 Vassal 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.

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,” “pay” 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” or “pay” 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, paid, lost, gained, or transferred, an Vassal can spend or pay from only their own values, and a rule that allows Vassals to transfer or pay a numeric value to another Vassal only allows them to transfer that value from themselves to that other Vassal (of their choice unless otherwise stated).
If a Dynastic Action is defined as having a cost X of numeric value V, or defines a requirement to spend, pay, or lose X of numeric value V to accomplish an effect or multiple effects, then the arithmetic effects of spending or payment and the act of carrying out those effects are considered to be subsequent steps in an Atomic Action, with the spending or payment step taking place before the effects step unless stated otherwise.
An Vassal 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 Vassals are not considered to be legal values for game variables, nor for list items within game variables.
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 Sovereign (including secretly random selections), then that information may only be revealed by the Sovereign when the ruleset allows it. If an Vassal should already know such a piece of information (in that the Sovereign has already told them it, or vice versa, and there is no way that the information could have been changed since then), the Sovereign may repeat it to them.

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 a dynastic rule has no text and no subrules, any Vassal 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), Vassals may not deliberately interfere with the function of that tool except in ways explicitly permitted by the ruleset.
If the Sovereign has voted DEFERENTIAL on a Proposal, that vote is instead considered to be valid and either FOR (if more Vassals have a valid FOR vote on that Proposal than have a valid AGAINST vote on it) or AGAINST (in all other cases). However, in either case, votes of DEFERENTIAL made by other Vassals on the same Proposal are not considered to be valid. If there are six or fewer Vassals, then the Sovereign’s vote of DEFERENTIAL on a proposal is only affected by this rule if all Vassals who are not the Sovereign have cast a vote on that proposal.

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.
An Vassal 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 and formatting

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.
Vassals may correct obvious spelling, punctuation, and/or typographical mistakes in the Ruleset and their own Pending Votable Matters at any time, including replacing Spivak and gender-specific pronouns that refer to Vassals with the corresponding forms of the singular “they”.
An Vassal may reformat a list of items in the dynastic ruleset to have bullet points or other appropriate list markup, if doing so would not change the order of that list, nor how any rules interpreted its content.

Names

Within the Ruleset, a word only refers to the name of an Vassal if it is explicitly stated that it refers to an Vassal'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, an Vassal's (or prospective Vassal'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.

Prioritisation

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

The Appendix has precedence over any other Rule;
If a Core Rule explicitly says it cannot be overruled by a Dynastic Rule, that Core Rule has precedence over a Dynastic Rule, otherwise a Dynastic Rule has precedence over that Core Rule;
If a Building Blocks Rule explicitly says that it cannot be overruled by a Dynastic Rule, that Building Blocks Rule has precedence over a Dynastic Rule, otherwise a Dynastic Rule has equal precedence as that Building Blocks Rule;
If two contradicting parts have equal precedence, the part with more limited scope applies (e.g. if the rules “Vassals may Kick each other” and “Vassals may not Kick each other on Tuesdays” exist, and it is Tuesday, Vassals may not Kick each other);
If two contradicting parts have the same scope, or have scopes that only overlap where they contradict each other, the negative rule applies (e.g. with “Vassals may Punch a Spaceman on Friday” and “Vassals may not Punch Spacemen on Friday”, then Vassals may not Punch Spacemen on Friday).

Mentors

An Vassal may have another Vassal as a Mentor. Vassals who are willing to act as a Mentor are listed on the Mentorships wiki page, and are said to be “Tenured”. An Admin may add or remove their own name, or the name of an Vassal who has requested a change on their own behalf, 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 Vassal requests a Mentor, or a new Vassal has joined the game and has no Mentor, the Sovereign should select a Tenured Vassal and ask them to take that Vassal on as a Mentee; if they accept, then such a Mentorship is established. The members and starting dates of all active Mentorships are tracked on the Mentorships wiki page, and whenever a new Mentorship is established, the Sovereign should announce it in a blog post. The Sovereign should take care to consider game balance when selecting a potential mentor.

A relationship between a mentor and a mentee is a Mentorship. An Vassal may dissolve a Mentorship they are part of at any time, by announcing this in a blog post.

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

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 Vassal 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 Vassals .
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 “Vassal” and “Sovereign”.

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

Vassal (Player)
Sovereign (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 Building Blocks page or 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.

Ruleset 223

Contents

Core Rules

Ruleset and Gamestate

Vassals

Idle Vassals

Dormancy

Dynasties

Votable Matters

Votes

Enacting and Failing

Tags

Proposals

Special Proposal Voting

Resolution of Proposals

Calls for Judgement

Victory and Ascension

Fair Play

Dynastic Rules

Castles

Stockpile

Structures

Embellishments

Special Buildings

Reputation

Land

Fortnight

Herald

Serfs

Tasks

Capacity

Waves

Enemies

Curses

The Anti-Monstrous War

The Final Advance

Default Mode

Building Blocks

Low-Player Mode

No Private Communication

Virtual Actions

No Cooperation

Appendix

Keywords

Imperatives

Time

Other

Gamestate Tracking

Official Posts

Representations of the Gamestate

Orphan Variables

Random Generators

Atomic Actions

Clarifications

Numbers and Variables

Rules and Votable Matters

Time

Spelling and formatting

Names

Prioritisation

Mentors

Things that a mentor must do

Things that a mentor should do

Things that a mentor should not do

Synonyms

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