Core Rules

Ruleset and Gamestate

This is the Ruleset for BlogNomic; all Gladiators 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 appendix, which exists solely to clarify the remainder of the ruleset.

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

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".

Gladiators

Any human 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 a Gladiator.

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

Some Gladiators are Admins, responsible for updating the site and the Ruleset, and are signified as such in the sidebar. Gladiators 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 Gladiators are Idle, and shall be marked as such in the sidebar. For the purposes of the Ruleset, excluding Rules “Ruleset and Gamestate”, “Gladiators” , “Dynasties” and “Fair Play”, Idle Gladiators are not counted as Gladiators. Admins may render a Gladiator Idle if that Gladiator has asked to become Idle or if that Gladiator 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 a Gladiator at their request, and Idle Admins may de-idle themselves at any time, unless the idle Gladiator in question asked to become (or rendered themselves) Idle within the previous 4 days, and within the current dynasty. When a Gladiator is de-idled, 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 Gladiator idled in a different dynasty), the Gladiator is given the default value for new Gladiators, if such a value exists.

If a Proposal contains a provision that targets a specifically named idle Gladiator, then that idle Gladiator is considered to be not idle solely for the purposes of enacting that specific provision.

Dynasties

BlogNomic is divided into a number of Dynasties. Each Dynasty is headed by a single Gladiator, known as the Announcer.

The Announcer may Vote to VETO any Proposal.

Proposals

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

Proposals can either be Pending, Enacted, or Failed. When a Proposal is first put forward, it is considered Pending.

Voting

Any Gladiator 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 Gladiator is the Announcer).

If the Gladiator who authored a Votable Matter has not cast a Vote on it, their Vote is counted as FOR. If a Gladiator uses more than one Voting Icon in comments on a Votable Matter, their Vote is the last voting icon they use. If a Gladiator leaves the game or goes Idle, their Vote is no longer valid. If a Gladiator 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 Announcer. The Vote will count as the same as the Announcer’s Vote. If the Announcer 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 Announcer and counts as an explicit Vote of abstention. If there is no Announcer, or the Vote is made by the proposal’s author on their own proposal and the Announcer 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 Announcer has Voted on a Proposal, a Vote of DEFERENTIAL on that proposal does not count as a Vote for the purposes of rule "Resolution of Proposals".

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 Gladiator who proposed it has Voted AGAINST it.
The Announcer has Voted to VETO it.

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 Announcer 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 Announcer 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.

If a proposal somehow ends up being pending for more than 7 days, it is ignored for the purpose of calculating the oldest pending proposal, and can be failed by any Admin.

Calls for Judgment

If two or more Gladiators actively disagree as to the interpretation of the Ruleset, or if a Gladiator feels that an aspect of the game needs urgent attention, then any Gladiator 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 Gladiators 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 until 48 hours have passed since they were posted. 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.

This Rule may not be overruled by Dynastic Rules.

Victory and Ascension

If a Gladiator (other than the Announcer) 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 “Gladiators”, “Voting”, “Calls for Judgment”, “Gamestate Tracking” and “Victory and Ascension”.

Every Gladiator 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 Announcer 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 Gladiators 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 Gladiator who made the DoV as its Announcer. That Gladiator may pass this role to another Gladiator at this point by making a post to that effect, if they wish. The Hiatus continues until the new Announcer makes an Ascension Address by posting an entry in the “Ascension Address” category - this should specify the Announcer's chosen theme for the new Dynasty, and may optionally specify that the terms Gladiator and Announcer will be replaced with theme-specific terms throughout the entire ruleset, and/or a number of dynastic rules to keep. Upon posting such an Ascension Address, the ruleset is updated to reflect any changed terms, and any dynastic rules which were not listed to be kept are repealed.

A DoV may not be started in the period between an enacted DoV and that DoV’s Ascension Address. When a DoV is failed, if it has a number of AGAINST Votes that exceed Quorum, the Gladiator who posted it cannot make another DoV until after 120 hours (5 days) have passed since the time their DoV was failed.

Fair Play

The following are BlogNomic’s rules of fair play. If any of these rules are found to have been broken, or if a Gladiator's behaviour or actions are otherwise deemed unacceptable (socially or otherwise), a proposal or CfJ may be made to reprimand or punish the perpetrator or, in cases of extreme or repeated violations, remove them from the game and bar them from rejoining.

A single person should not control more than one Gladiator within BlogNomic.
A Gladiator should not “spam” the BlogNomic blog. What counts as spamming is subjective, but would typically include posting more than ten blog entries in a day, more than ten blog comments in a row, or posting a blog entry of more than 1000 words.
A Gladiator should not deliberately exploit bugs or unexpected behaviours in the software running the game (ExpressionEngine, MediaWiki or the GNDT).
A Gladiator should not edit their own blog comments once posted, nor those of any other Gladiator.
A Gladiator should not edit the "Entry Date" field of a blog post.
A Gladiator should not make a DoV primarily to delay the game by putting it into Hiatus.
A Gladiator should not do any action meant to make the game unplayable (for example, changing multiple keywords to the same word in an ascension address).

Seasonal Downtime

Blognomic goes into hiatus every year on December 24th, and remains in hiatus until December 27th. During this time no game actions may be taken except those described in the rules entitled “Voting,” “Gamestate Tracking” and “Call for Judgement”.

Dynastic Rules

Species

Gladiators are Entities. Each Gladiator has a Status, tracked in the GNDT, which is either "Fighting" or "Resting". Resting Gladiators do not occupy an Arena Square. New Gladiators begin as Resting.

An Entry Point is any Arena Square which is either in Column A, Column I, Row 1 or Row 9. If a Gladiator is Resting and has an Icon, and if any Empty Entry Points exist, that Gladiator may enter the Arena by occupying a single Empty Entry Point and updating his Status to “Fighting”. A Gladiator may not enter the Arena twice in any given three-hour period. When a Gladiator becomes idle, he also becomes Resting.

Despite being mostly sterile, Gladiators are considered to be male and may be referred to in dynastic rules with masculine pronouns (such as ‘he’).

The Arena

The Arena is a 9x9 grid of Squares. A Square within the Arena is referred to by a letter from A to I (designating its column) followed by an integer from 1-9(designating its row). The columns, are assigned consecutive letters left-to-right, starting with A. The rows are assigned consecutive numbers bottom-to-top, starting with 1.

Each Arena Square may contain either one or zero Entities. Entities are either Permanent or Temporary, defaulting to Temporary. The contents of each Arena Square is tracked as a grid of Icons on a wiki page called "The Arena", along with a key showing the Icons of any Gladiators who have Icons, matched to the names of those Gladiators. If an Arena Square contains no Entities, it is considered to be empty, and is represented by the Icon "IconEmpty.png".

A Square is considered Blocked if it is not inside the bounds of the Arena, it contains a Gladiator, or it contains anything the rules declare to be a Large Object. Two Arena Squares are considered to be adjacent if they are next to one another either orthogonally or diagonally.

If a Gladiator is ever required to select a random Arena Square, he must do so by rolling DICE9 twice in the GNDT; the first roll corresponds to the column of the selected Square (where A=1, B=2 and so on) and the second roll corresponds to its row.

Fittings and Fixtures

Acid Pools

Acid Pools are Entities represented by the Icon “IconAcid.png”. There are Permanent Acid Pools in the four corners (A1, A9, I1, I9) of the Arena. Any other Acid Pools are Temporary Acid Pools.

If the Arena contains more than two Temporary Acid Pools, any Gladiator may remove a single Temporary Acid Pool from the Arena.

If a Gladiator moves or is moved to a Square containing an Acid Pool, he dies. If an Acid Pool would be created in a Square containing a Gladiator, the Gladiator dies before the Pool is created.

Blood!

A Blood Pool is an Entity with IconBlood.png as Icon. Whenever a Gladiator would move into a blood pool by Stepping, being Shoved, being Charged or Slipping, he moves to the square adjacent to the Blood Pool in the same direction he would have moved into the Blood Pool. This Event is known as Slipping.If no such square exists or it is Blocked, the Gladiator dies instead of moving. The Blood Pool is then removed from the game.

Immediately after a Gladiator Dies, if the square where this death occurred is Empty, a Blood Pool is created there.

If no Gladiator has triggered the Water Jets during the current Turn, then any Gladiator may trigger the Water Jets by selecting a row or column and removing all Blood Pools from that row or column.

Turns

A Turn Boundary is a time that is the start of a week, noon on a Thursday, or at an instantaneous event defined as an Irregular Turn Boundary defined by the Rules or by a proposal. The start of a new dynasty is an Irregular Turn Boundary.

A Turn is the period of time between two consecutive Turn Boundaries. If a non-Irregular Turn Boundary happens during Hiatus, it is ignored as a Turn delimiter.

Turn-based Actions

Each Gladiator has a non-negative integer number of Action Points, tracked in the “AP” column of the GNDT. New Gladiators start with 3 AP. Any Gladiator who has not yet done so during the current Turn may set their AP to 3; this action is known as Refreshing.

Main Actions are actions that have a Cost in AP (which must be spent in order to perform the Main Action), which is 1 unless otherwise stated. No Gladiator can take Main Actions with a total cost greater than 3 AP in any 24-hour period. Whenever a Gladiator attempts to take a Main Action, if they are able to Refresh first, they automatically do so.

A Gladiator may not Refresh first two Turns in a row, unless he’s the only Fighting Gladiator.

The following actions are Main Actions:-

Stepping. A Gladiator taking this action may move himself from his current Arena Square to an adjacent Arena Square that is not Blocked.
Shoving. A Gladiator taking this action may select a Gladiator in an adjacent Arena Square, and move that Gladiator into a square that is not Blocked, not adjacent or diagonally adjacent to the Shoving Gladiator, and adjacent or diagonally adjacent to the selected Gladiator. If any Gladiators die as a result of processing the effects of the Shove, then the Shoving Gladiator is awarded one Frag for each such Gladiator death. Shoving costs 2AP.
Using a Weapon. The Gladiator may make an Attack with any single Weapon he is carrying. If any Gladiators die as a result of processing the effects of the Attack, then the Attacking Gladiator is awarded one Frag for each such Gladiator death.
Follow-through. A Gladiator may not take this Main Action unless they have been Shoved since the last Turn Boundary, and have not died or taken a Main Action since the Shove took place. When a Gladiator Follows Through, he may take a single Step or Shove at a cost 1AP cheaper than it would usually be, provided that it continues in the direction in which they were most recently Shoved.
Charge. Charge can only be performed by Resting Gladiators who have not Entered the Arena in the last 3 hours. A Gladiator (here, Attacker) taking this action selects a Gladiator (here, Victim) on an Entry Point and moves that Gladiator to any square the Victim could legally Step into that is not an Entry Point. The Attacker must then immediately Enter the Arena (as Per “Species”) on the Victim’s previous Square (i.e., the Entry Point the Victim was on when the Victim was Charged). Charging costs 2 AP.

Icons

Each Entity in the game may be represented by an Icon. An Icon is any wiki image which measures 80 pixels by 80 pixels, and whose filename is either “IconXxxx.png”, “IconXxxx.gif” or “IconXxxx.jpg”, where “Xxxx” is a string of no more than eight characters.

If a Gladiator has no Icon, he may select any valid Icon which exists on the wiki, and which is not being used to represent any other Entity (nor is it “IconEmpty.png”, nor a filename which is referenced in a pending proposal), and assign it to himself. This becomes that Gladiator’s Icon. Any Gladiator may upload new Icons at any time. For greater certainty, and idle Gladiator who idled in this dynasty is an Entity and retains the Icon, if any, assigned to them prior to their most recent idle.

The Announcer may change the image of any Icon at any time.

Death and Scorekeeping

Gladiators cannot Die except in manners allowed or required by a Rule. A single instance of a Gladiator Dying is a Death. Whenever a Gladiator Dies, their Status becomes Resting.

Each Gladiator has a number of Frags, tracked in the GNDT. New Gladiators start with 0 Frags.

A Gladiator gains 1 Frag when a rule says they are Awarded a Frag. A Gladiator can never receive a Frag for their own Death, or more than one Frag for the same Death.

A Resting Gladiator cannot Die.

A Gladiator’s Audience Appreciation is equal to the number of their Fouls subtracted from the number of their Frags. The first Gladiator to reach an Audience Appreciation of 10 achieves victory.

Food Chain

A Gladiator cannot receive a Frag for the Death of another Gladiator if he has at least 4 Frags more than that Gladiator.

Traps

A Target is a type of Entity, represented by the Icon “IconTarget.png”.

If there are fewer than four Targets in the Arena, any Gladiator may - as a daily Action - create a Target by selecting a random Arena Square. If the selected Arena Square is empty, then the Gladiator may place a Target in that Arena Square by updating the Arena wiki page.

Whenever a Gladiator (known as the “Victim”) would move into an Arena Square containing a Target, that Target is first removed, the Victim is moved to its Square, and the Gladiator responsible for causing the movement (the “Triggerer”) must roll DICEX in the GNDT (where X is the number of Traps in the following list) and apply the effect of the Trap whose number matches the die result:-

Vertical Particle Beam. If there are no Permanent Entities in the same column as the Victim, then all Entities in that column are removed (causing any Gladiators removed in this way to Die) and all squares in that column are edited to contain a Laser Beam (an Entity, represented by the Icon “IconLaser.png”). If a Laser Beam has been in the Arena for an entire Turn, then any Gladiator may remove all Laser Beams from the Arena.
Floor-Mounted Buzzsaw. The Triggerer rolls DICE2. On a 1, every Gladiator occupying the same column as the Victim (including the Victim himself) dies. On a 2, every Gladiator occupying the same row as the Victim (including the Victim himself) dies.
Monowire Cheesecutter. The Victim dies.
Stickybomb Fountain. The Victim dies, as does every Gladiator in a square adjacent to the Victim.
Spring-Mounted Propeller Panel. The Triggerer selects a random Arena Square. If that Square is Empty or contains a Target, then the Victim is moved to it. If the Square contains a Gladiator other than the Victim, then both that Gladiator and the Victim die. If neither of these conditions are met, the Victim dies.
Crazy Ivan. The Victim’s AP is set to zero, and they lose any Weapons they are carrying. The Triggerer may then move the Victim into a square adjacent to the Victim’s current location, provided that this square is Empty, or contains a Target or an Acid Pool.
Green ^. An Acid Pool is created in the square containing the Victim.

Crates

A Crate is a type of Entity, represented by the Icon “IconCrate.png”.

If there are fewer than two Crates in the Arena, any Gladiator may - as a daily Action - activate the Crate Dropper by selecting a random Arena Square. If the selected Arena Square is empty, then the Gladiator may place a Crate in that Arena Square within ten minutes of performing the action, by updating the Arena wiki page.

Whenever a Gladiator would move into an Arena Square containing a Crate, that Crate is first removed, the Gladiator is moved to its Square, and the Gladiator must roll DICEX in the GNDT (where X is the number of Weapons in the numbered list in the “Weapons” rule) and gain an instance of the Weapon whose number matches the die result.

Weapons

Each Gladiator may carry zero or more Weapons from the following lists - these are tracked next to the Gladiator’s name, in the Key on the Arena wiki page. New Gladiators start with no Weapons. When a Gladiator stops Fighting and begins Resting, they lose any Weapons they were carrying.

Harpoon. Can be used to Attack any Gladiator who shares a row or column with the Attacker. The Attacked Gladiator dies, and the Harpoon is removed from the Attacker’s possession.
Mortar. Can be used to attack any square in the Arena. Choose a random square in the Arena that is either the attacked square or adjacent to it. Any Gladiator in the chosen square Dies.
Acid Barrel. Can be used to Attack any Empty Arena Square which is adjacent to the Attacker. An Acid Pool is created in the Attacked square, and the Acid Barrel is removed from the Attacker’s possession. Whenever a Gladiator dies in an Acid Pool, the Gladiator who created that pool using an Acid Barrel gains 1 Frag.

These are some other Weapons:

a. The ClingBoom Cup (also The Cup). Can be used once per turn to set the Attacker’s AP to 2. The use of this weapon costs 0 AP.

Altar of Mayhem

There is a Permanent Entity, the StickyBomb Dispenser, located at G3 and represented by the Icon “IconDispnsr.png”.

A StickyBomb is a small object that a single Gladiator is attached to. At any time, if there are no StickyBombs in existence, any Gladiator adjacent to the StickyBomb Dispenser may make a StickyBomb Post; this is a Story Post with a title containing “(Bomb)”. A StickyBomb Post should be sticky. A new StickyBomb is then created with that Gladiator attached to it.

The Gladiator attached to a StickyBomb may fob it off on another Gladiator in an adjacent Square who has not previously been attached to that StickyBomb; to do so, he posts a comment to the StickyBomb Post saying so. He ceases to be attached to the StickyBomb and the other Gladiator becomes attached to it. If a single Gladiator has been continuously attached to the StickyBomb for 72 hours and for at least 24 hours since the last Turn Boundary, any Gladiator may cause the StickyBomb to explode, causing him to Die. When a Gladiator attached to a StickyBomb Dies, the Gladiator who fobbed it off on him and the Gladiator who made the StickyBomb’s StickyBomb Post are each awarded a Frag and the StickyBomb ceases to exist; this should be noted in a comment to the StickyBomb Post.

Log Entries

When a Gladiator performs one or more Main Actions which make a change to The Arena wiki page, the edit summary of that change should include the names of those Main Actions (or other forms of their lexemes; eg. “stepping” or “stepped” instead of “step”). This rule does not affect the validity of the action, but may cause an offender to suffer a penalty as defined elsewhere.

Fouls

Each Gladiator has a number of Fouls to their name, tracked in the GNDT. Gladiators start with zero Fouls.

Certain behaviours merit the awarding of Fouls. If a Gladiator can demonstrate that another Gladiator has performed a behaviour within the preceding 24 hours that would merit the awarding of a Foul, then they may make a Foul Post (which must include the word “Fweep” in its title, and must detail which Gladiator committed the foul and the nature of the foul allegedly committed) and increment that Gladiator’s Fouls by 1. A Foul Post is a Votable Matter. If a Foul Post is more than 48 hours old, any admin may mark it as closed, at which point it is no longer a Votable Matter - if more Gladiators voted AGAINST the Foul Post than FOR it at this point, then the awarded Foul is transferred from the Gladiator who was initially accused to the Gladiator who made the Foul Post (or, if that Gladiator does not exist, the awarded Foul is removed)

Below is a list of behaviours that may be considered to merit the awarding of a Foul:

Attempting to make an illegal modification to the Arena wiki page or the GNDT stats, which did not build upon an earlier, illegal attempted modification by another Gladiator, and where the Gladiator did not correct himself.

Persistent failure to follow the edit summary guidelines in the rule “Log Entries” - 3 or more examples, one of which must have occurred within the preceding 24 hours and none of which may have been previously used to support the awarding of a Foul to a Gladiator, must be cited to determine “persistent failure”.

A Gladiator may not gain more than one Foul from Foul Posts per day, excluding Fouls transferred from other Gladiators.

Tinkering

Whenever a Gladiator would roll DICEX to determine which Trap takes effect for a Target, they may instead choose a number between 1 and X and have that as a the result of the die roll. If they do so, they gain one Foul.

Victory and Glory

The Crazy Unbelievable Possibility (also CUP) is an Entity with IconCup.png as Icon.

Whenever no Gladiator has the Weapon called “The ClingBoom Cup” and no CUP is in the Arena, a CUP may be created at E5 by any Gladiator, replacing everything placed there.

If a Gladiator has been replaced in the process, he is considered to have Died, and any Gladiator who Shoved him since the last time he Stepped is awarded a Frag. Whenever a Gladiator would move into an Arena Square containing a CUP, said CUP is first removed, the Gladiator is moved to its former Square and gains an Instance of The ClingBoom Cup.

Only one Gladiator may hold The ClingBoom Cup at any time, and only one instance of CUP may be present in the Arena at any time. A CUP and The ClingBoom Cup may not exist at the same time.

When the Gladiator holding The ClingBoom Cup Dies, an Instance of CUP is placed on the square where that death occurred, if it is Empty.

If a Gladiator has been holding The ClingBoom Cup uninterruptedly through three consecutive Turn Boundaries, he achieves victory.

Appendix

Keywords

A keyword defined by a rule supersedes the normal English usage of the word. A keyword defined in this glossary supersedes that defined by a rule. (eg. A rule specifying "bananas are blue" cannot be overruled by posting a dictionary definition or a photo of a banana, and a rule specifying "every day is Sunday" will be overruled by the glossary entry below.)

Can: "is able to"

Comment: A blog comment published to the BlogNomic weblog at blognomic.com

Core Proposal: A Proposal 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 Gladiators.

Daily Action: If a game action is a Daily Action, each Gladiator 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 UTC, ending when the next day begins. It can never be 2 different days at the same instant.

Dice: References to "YDICEX" refer to Y X-sided dice, rolled within the GNDT. To roll dice, post DICEX in the comments field of the GNDT, replacing X with the number of sides on the die you wish to roll.

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

Flavour Text: When posting a blog entry, a Gladiator 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 Gladiators is half the number of Gladiators in that subset, rounded down, plus one. If the word Quorum is used without qualifying which subset of Gladiators it is referring to, it is referring to a Quorum of all Gladiators.

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"

Sibling Rule: Two rules are “siblings” of each other if they are both direct subrules of the same rule.

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: A post which Gladiators may cast Votes on, such as a Proposal, a Call for Judgment or a Declaration of Victory.

Vote: The word “Vote”, used as a noun, means a Vote that is cast in accordance with Rule “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 Gladiator 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

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 Gladiator 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. A proposal, call for judgment, or declaration of victory cannot simultaneously be any other type of official post unless otherwise specified by dynastic rules.

If no Gladiator 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.

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 Gladiator may update any Gladiator's 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 Gladiator may correct the GNDT to comply with the Gamestate.

If a Gladiator 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, Gladiators are encouraged to raise a Call for Judgment instead. Gladiators shall be assigned a password for the GNDT when they join the Nomic.

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 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, 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 Gladiators to transfer a numeric value only allows them to transfer that value from themselves to another Gladiator (of their choice unless otherwise stated).
A Gladiator who has a choice in whether to take an action defined by a dynastic rule may not take that action if both of the following conditions are true: a) the action's effects are limited to changing values tracked in the GNDT and/or similar gamestate-tracking entities (such as a wiki page), and b) the action would change one or more of those values to an illegal value.
If a rule implies that the result of any calculation should be an integer (for instance, by attempting to store that result in, or add it to, a gamestate variable that can only hold integers), the result of the calculation is instead the result rounded towards 0.
If a 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.
If a game variable has no defined starting value for new Gladiators, or for existing Gladiators upon the variable’s creation, then that starting value is zero (for numerical variables) or blank (for a text string or list).

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.
Unless otherwise specified, a new Dynastic rule shall be placed at the end of the Dynastic Rules.

Time

For the purpose of all rules, time in Blognomic is in UTC.
All references to time must be either specific or defined within the ruleset to be considered achievable in the gamestate. Abstract concepts of time (e.g. "dinnertime", "twilight") cannot be achieved until they fulfil one of these criteria.
Where the month, day and/or year of a calendar date are ambiguous (eg. "04/10/09"), it shall be assumed that the date is in a day/month/year format.

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 a Gladiator if it is explicitly stated that it refers to a Gladiator's name.

Prioritisation

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

The Appendix has precedence over any Rule;
A Dynastic Rule has precedence over a Core Rule, unless that Core Rule explicitly says it can’t be overruled by a Dynastic Rule;
If both contradicting parts are a Core Rule, or if both of them are a Dynastic Rule, the part with more limited scope applies. (e.g. if the rules “Players may Kick each other” and “Players may not kick each other on Tuesdays” exist, and it is Tuesday, players may not Kick each other.)
If two parts with the same scope contradict each other, the negative rule applies. (e.g. with “Players may Punch a Spaceman on Friday” and “Player may not Punch Spacemen on Friday”, then Players may not Punch Spacemen on Friday.)

Ruleset 93

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