Core Rules

Ruleset and Gamestate

This is the Ruleset for BlogNomic; all Agents 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; and Section Three contains the glossary, which exists solely to clarify the remainder of the ruleset.

The Ruleset and Gamestate can only be altered in manners specified by the Ruleset.

Admins may correct obvious spelling and typographical mistakes in the Ruleset at any time, including replacing Spivak and gender-specific pronouns with the singular "they".

Agents

Anybody may apply to join BlogNomic (if they are not already playing) by registering at http://blognomic.com via the Register link in the sidebar, and then making a post announcing their arrival. An Admin shall add them to the roster in the sidebar and the GNDT, at which moment they become an Agent.

An Agent may leave the game at any time by posting an entry to the BlogNomic weblog requesting such an action. An Agent may only change their name as a result of a proposal approving the change.

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

Some Agents are Idle, and shall be marked as such in the sidebar. For the purposes of the Ruleset, excluding Rules 1.1, 1.2, 1.8 and 1.10, Idle Agents are not counted as Agents. Admins may render an Agent Idle if that Agent has asked to become Idle or if that Agent 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 by announcing that they have done so in a blog post. Admins may de-Idle an Agent at his request, and Idle Admins may de-idle themselves at any time, unless the idle Agent in question asked to become (or rendered themselves) Idle within the previous 4 days, and within the current dynasty. The Agent’s personal gamestate retains the values it had immediately prior to his going Idle. If one or more values would be undefined, it is set to the value new Agents receive, if such a value exists.

Proposals

Any Agent may submit a Proposal to change the Ruleset or Gamestate, by posting an entry in the "Proposal" category that describes those changes, except that:

An Agent cannot submit a non-Core Proposal if that Agent already has two or more non-Core Proposals pending.
An Agent cannot submit a Proposal if that Agent already has three or more Proposals pending.
An Agent cannot submit a Proposal if that Agent has already submitted three or more Proposals that day.

Proposals can either be Pending, Enacted, or Failed. When a Proposal is first put forward, it is considered Pending. A Proposal may not also be a Call for Judgment.

Voting

Any Agent may cast their 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, DEFERENTIAL (only if the Votable Matter is a Proposal), or VETO (only if the Votable Matter is a Proposal and the Agent is the Director of Operations).

If the Agent who authored a Votable Matter has not cast a Vote on it, their Vote is counted as FOR. If an Agent uses more than one Voting Icon in comments on a Votable Matter, their Vote is the last voting icon they use. If an Agent leaves the game or goes Idle, their Vote is no longer valid. If an Agent Votes against their own Proposal, this renders the Proposal self-killed and that Vote may not be changed.

A Vote of DEFERENTIAL is a Vote of no opinion, or of faith in the decision of the Director of Operations. The Vote will count as the same as the Director of Operations’s Vote. If the Director of Operations casts a Vote of DEFERENTIAL on a Proposal, it serves the purpose of cancelling any previous Vote on that Proposal that was cast by the Director of Operations and counts as an explicit Vote of abstention. If there is no Director of Operations, or the Vote is made by the proposal’s author on their own proposal and the Director of Operations does not Vote on it, a Vote of DEFERENTIAL counts as an explicit Vote of abstention, and has no effect except possibly to void earlier voting icons by that voter on that proposal.

If no Director of Operations has Voted on a Proposal, a Vote of DEFERENTIAL on that proposal does not count as a Vote for the purposes of rule 1.5.

Resolution of Proposals

The oldest pending Proposal may be enacted by any Admin (and the Ruleset and/or Gamestate updated to include the specified effects of that Proposal) if either of the following is true:-

It has a number of FOR Votes that exceed or equal Quorum, has been open for voting for at least 12 hours, and has not been vetoed or self-killed.
It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours, it has continuously been a proposal for that time, it has more than 1 valid Vote, more than half of its Votes are FOR, and 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 has enough AGAINST Votes that it could not be Enacted without one of those Votes being changed.
It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and half or fewer of its Votes are FOR.
It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and has fewer than 2 valid Votes.
The Agent who proposed it has Voted AGAINST it.
The Director of Operations has Voted to VETO it

If the Director of Operationshas voted to VETO a proposal and that Vote’s comment includes the word “Procedural”, the vetoed proposal can be failed immediately by any admin, even if it is not the oldest pending proposal.

Whenever an Admin marks a proposal, CfJ, or DoV as enacted or failed, they must also mark their name, and report the final tally of Votes (or the fact that it was self-killed or vetoed).

Proposals the Director of Operations has Voted to VETO are considered vetoed, and such a Vote cannot be changed. Proposals the author has Voted against are considered self-killed unless the Director of Operations has Voted VETO on them, or they have fulfilled one of the other requirements to fail a proposal before the author’s self-kill Vote is placed. Immediately after enacting a proposal that causes a rule with no name to be added to the ruleset, unless the proposal specifically states that the rule should have no name, the enacting admin can change the rule’s title to give it a name, so long as doing so does not change the meaning of any part of the ruleset, nor change any properties of the rule (such as specific words in the title) that the ruleset specifically cares about.

Calls for Judgment

If two or more Agents actively disagree as to the interpretation of the Ruleset, or if an Agent feels that an aspect of the game needs urgent attention, then any Agent may raise a Call for Judgment (abbreviated CfJ) by posting an entry in the “Call for Judgment” category. The post shall go on to describe the issue, and measures that shall be taken to resolve it.

All Agents may cast Votes on that CfJ to indicate agreement or disagreement with the position taken in that CfJ. Unfailed CfJs continue until they reach a Quorum of FOR Votes, a Quorum of AGAINST Votes, or if there is no hiatus going on, until four days have passed, and if there is a hiatus going on until two days have passed. After this time, if more than half the cast Votes are FOR Votes, the CfJ may be enacted by any Admin by updating or correcting the Gamestate and Ruleset as specified. Otherwise, the CfJ fails. A Failed CfJ has no further effect.

Any CfJ that has no effect on the ruleset or gamestate may be automatically failed by any admin.

Gamestate Tracking

Proposals, Calls for Judgment, and other official posts, as well as specific gamestate information, shall be tracked by the BlogNomic blog at http://blognomic.com. Any Agent 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.

If no Agent has commented on it, an official post may be altered or removed by its author; 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.

A non-official post may not, through editing of the blog or otherwise, be changed into an official post, with the following exception: 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.

Voting and comments are accessible through the link at the bottom of every post.

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 Agent may update any Agents data via the GNDT, whenever the Ruleset permits it.

All updates to the GNDT are logged. Actions that change gamestate directly (defined in other rules) can normally be performed simply by applying their effects to the GNDT, which updates the gamestate accordingly, unless another rule specifies some other method of performing them; one GNDT update may contain one or more actions, or one action may be split over multiple GNDT updates, as long as it’s clear what is happening and the actions are otherwise legal. The GNDT merely represents the Gamestate, and is not the same thing. In the event that the Gamestate and the GNDT are different, any Agent may correct the GNDT to comply with the Gamestate.

If an Agent feels that the GNDT 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 GNDT update, Agents are encouraged to raise a Call for Judgment instead. Agents shall be assigned a password for the GNDT when they join the Nomic.

Dynasties

BlogNomic is divided into a number of Dynasties. Each Dynasty is headed by a single Agent, known as the Director of Operations, and is named according to the number of Dynasties they have headed (eg. "The First Dynasty of Myke").

The Director of Operations may Vote to VETO any Proposal.

Victory and Ascension

If an Agent (other than the Director of Operations) 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.

Upon doing so, 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 “Agents”, “Voting”, “Calls for Judgment”, “Gamestate Tracking” and “Victory and Ascension”.

Every Agent 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 DoV may be enacted if any of the following is true:

It has been open for voting for 12 hours, has a number of FOR Votes that exceed or equal Quorum, and either the Director of Operations has Voted FOR it or it has no AGAINST Votes.
It has been open for voting for at least 24 hours, has a number of FOR Votes that exceed or equal Quorum, and has a number of against Votes fewer than half of Quorum, rounded down.
It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours, at least Quorum Agents have Voted on it, and more than half of its Votes are FOR.

A DoV may be failed if any of the following are true:

It has been open for voting for 12 hours and has enough AGAINST Votes that it could not be Enacted without one of those Votes being changed.
It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and cannot be legally enacted.

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

When a DoV is enacted, all other active DoVs are failed, and a new Dynasty begins with the Agent who made the DoV as its Director of Operations. (That Agent may pass this role to another Agent at this point, if they wish.) The Hiatus continues until the new Director of Operations posts an Ascension Address to the BlogNomic weblog - this shall specify the Director of Operations’s chosen theme for the new Dynasty, and may optionally include a proclamation that any number of Dynastic Rules will be repealed, and/or that the words Agent and Director of Operations will be replaced with theme-specific terms throughout the entire ruleset.

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 has a number of AGAINST Votes that exceed Quorum, the Agent who posted it cannot make another DoV until after 120 hours (5 days) have passed since the time their DoV was failed.

A Declaration of Victory may not also be any other type of Official Post unless the rules concerning that type of Official Post explicitly state otherwise.

Fair Play

The following are BlogNomic’s rules of fair play. If any of the rules are found to have been broken, a proposal or CfJ may be made to remove the perpetrator from the game, and bar them from rejoining.

A single person should not control more than one Agent within BlogNomic.
An Agent 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 Agent should not deliberately exploit bugs or unexpected behaviours in the software running the game (ExpressionEngine, MediaWiki or the GNDT).
An Agent should not edit their own blog comments once posted, nor those of any other Agent.
An Agent should not edit the "Entry Date" field of a blog post.
An Agent should not make a DoV primarily to delay the game by putting it into Hiatus.
An Agent should not do any action meant to make the game unplayable (for example, changing multiple keywords to the same word in an ascension address).

Dynastic Rules

Apparent Intelligence

Each Agent has an IQ, a number defaulting to 100, tracked in the GNDT. To “transfer” IQ from one Agent to another is to reduce the first Agent’s by IQ that amount, and increase another Agent’s IQ by that amount. IQ can only be transferred as described by the rules, and cannot be changed in any other way.

If the total IQ of all Agent is less than the number of Agents multiplied by 100, plus 50, then any Agent may increase the Director of Operations’s IQ by 1. If the total IQ of all Agent is greater than the number of Agents multiplied by 100, plus 50, then any Agent may decrease the Director of Operations’s IQ by 1.

an Agent with greater than 100 IQ may transfer IQ to a different Agent who has less than 100 IQ, provided that the former remains above 100 IQ, and the latter remains below 100 IQ. Such transfers are limited to 10 IQ per week.

Competition

A Competition is a sort of contest; each competition is tracked in a blog post dedicated to that Competition. The Director of Operations can create a Competition merely by creating a post to track it with [Competition] in the title; other Agents can only do so if they have prior approval from a proposal or a different rule. A Competition must not be, or be edited into, any other sort of official post. The post tracking a Competition must describe under what circumstances it transfers IQ.

A Competition cannot force Agents to do something, or prevent Agents from doing something, like a rule can. (It can, however, specify circumstances in which IQ could be transferred and/or Medals awarded, and those circumstances can include performing, or not performing, various actions.)

Agents can transfer IQ from one Agent to another, but only as described by a Competition, and only when both the Agent transferred from and the Agent transferred to have posted in the post describing that Competition within the previous 14 days (i.e. by not posting in a Competition’s post, an Agent can avoid incurring penalties from it). Additionally, no more than 20 IQ can be transferred from any Agent by any Competition in any week, and no more than 20 IQ can be transferred to any Agent by any Competition in any week.

A Competition may define criteria by which an Agent may be awarded Gold and/or Silver Medals. When an Agent is awarded a Medal by a Competition, that Competition expires and is no longer considered to be a Competition. (If more than one Agent would be awarded a Gold Medal at the same time by the same Competition, whoever is processing the award should roll DICEX, where X is the number of such Agents, and award the Gold Medal only to the Agent in the Yth position of an alphabetical list of such Agents, where Y is the result of the die roll.)

We Give Up

Any Agent may reply to a Competition by posting a comment with a single AGAINST vote. This is known as a Disapproval, and for the purposes of Rule 2.2, this does not count as having “posted in the post”. If a Competition blog post has Disapprovals from a number of Agents equal to or greater than Quorum, it no longer counts as a Competition.

Brain Damage

With the exception of the Director of Operations, an Agent with less than 20 IQ cannot comment to a Competition’s Post. If an Agent has had less than 20 IQ continuously for the last 72 hours, the Director of Operations may transfer any amount of IQ to them as long as their new IQ value is no greater than 20.

Medals

Each Agent has an amount of Gold and Silver Medals, a number defaulting to zero of each, tracked in the GNDT. To “award a Gold Medal” to an Agent is to increase that Agent’s Gold Medals by 1; to “award a Silver Medal” is to increase their Silver Medals by 1. If the colour of a Medal is not specified, it is assumed to be Gold.

If an Agent has five Gold Medals or equivalent (where two Silver Medals are considered to be equivalent to one Gold Medal), he or she has achieved victory.

Glossary

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 whose changes 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 Agents.

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

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 GMT, 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 Proposal: A Proposal whose only changes are the creation, deletion, and/or amendment of dynastic rules and/or gamestate defined by dynastic rules.

Effective Vote Comment (EVC): An Agent's Effective Vote Comment with respect to a given Proposal means that Agent’s Comment to that Proposal (if any) that contains that Agent’s Vote on the Proposal that is given effect in accordance with Rule 1.4 when the Proposal is Resolved, not including explicit Votes of abstention..

Flavour Text: When posting a blog entry, an Agent 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.

IRC Channel: The Blognomic IRC channel is located at #nomic on the slashnet network (irc.slashnet.org).

May: "is permitted to"

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

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

Resolve/Resolution: If used in a context of Proposals, Call for Judgements or Declarations of Victory, the world “Resolve” means to perform the act, as an Admin, of enacting or failing a Proposal, a Call for Judgement or a Declaration of Victory. The world “Resolution” means then the act of doing so. If used in another context, the meaning of both “Resolve” and “Resolution” is the standard English meaning of these words.

Shall: "is required to"

Should: "is recommended that"

Story Post: A Story Post is an Official Post that is not a member of any specific category of Official Posts mentioned or defined in a Core Rule (excluding Official Post).

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.

Votable Matter: The word “Votable Matter”, means a Proposal, a CFJ or a DoV.

Vote: The word “Vote”, used as a noun, means a Vote that is cast in accordance with Rule 1.4 “Voting”. 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, an IMP http://blognomic.com/images/vote/imperial.gif shall represent a Vote of DEFERENTIAL, and an Imperial Seal http://blognomic.com/images/vote/seal.gif shall represent the Imperial 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 Agent able to perform it may take that action once each week, but not more than once every twenty-four hours.

Wiki: The BlogNomic Wiki at http://blognomic.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Clarifications

Numbers and Variables

Unless otherwise specified, game variables defined to hold numeric values can hold only non-negative integers, and any action that would set those values below zero instead sets them to zero. 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, when “X” is a number, to spend X of a numeric value “V” means to subtract X from V (i.e. replace V with V-X); 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 the amount A's V was reduced by to B's V. Unless otherwise specified, a rule that allows Agents to transfer a numeric value only allows them to transfer that value from themselves to another Agent (of their choice unless otherwise stated).
An Agent 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 of those values to an illegal value.
If a rule implies that the result of a division 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 division is instead the result rounded towards 0.

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.
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 Enactment or Failure of a Proposal are the responsibility of the Admin who Enacts or Fails it.

Time

For the purpose of all rules, time in Blognomic is in GMT.
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.

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.

Names

Within the ruleset, a word only refers to the name of an Agent if it is explicitly stated that it refers to an Agent's name.

Ruleset 82

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