The Fifth Dynasty of Bucky
September 11, 2012 - October 18, 2012
Welcome to Nomic 104. The purpose of this class is to teach you how to avoid a stagnant midgame such as the ones from the past few dynasties.
First, on many occasions poorly chosen victory conditions have made the route to victory obvious too early in the game. Once there is a victory condition, and some means of reaching it through solo play, players generally stop making proposals that don’t apply to the victory condition. If the first reasonable path to victory is boring and repetitive, the remainder of the dynasty will be as well. Therefore, over the course of the semester, students will be required to practice writing victory conditions.
Second, once a stagnant play pattern develops, some players actively avoid breaking it. They prefer protecting a narrow, optimized strategy from proposals to open the game. Therefore, starting with this course, the grading criteria will be selected so that the optimal strategy is not narrow.
Repeal all dynastic rules except “Out of Sight, Out of Mind”. Replace “Baker” with “Student” and “Simon” with “Professor”.
Players
The following players were active at the beginning of the Dynasty:
Bucky, Clucky, IceFromHell, Josh, Kevan, Klisz, Murphy, Quirck, Ragnar Danneskjöld, Spice.
The following players were also active throughout the Dynasty:
90000, Cpt_Koen, Ely, GreyWithAnE, Henri, RaichuKFM, scshunt, southpointingchariot, Tee.
The following players were active at the end of the Dynasty:
Bucky*, Clucky*, IceFromHell, Josh*, Kevan*, Quirck*, RaichuKFM.
Total active players during the Dynasty: 19 (Maximum active at the same time: 16 [Quorum: 9]; Minimum: 7 [Quorum: 4])
Final Ruleset
Posts of Interest
- http://blognomic.com/archive/virtual_victories/ introduced Scoring, which eventually became the aim of the game. Students would score Projects by completing various tasks considered to be healthy for the Nomic, such as making successful proposals, suggesting ideas with popular themes, or implementing new ideas for Projects. The intention was that by rewarding good behaviour, the dynasty would produce a good game of Nomic.
- http://blognomic.com/archive/ofsted_inspection/ laid out some guidelines for Professorial behaviour - again, to produce a healthy game of Nomic - such as encouraging him to vote on all proposals, to regularly submit his own, and to be clear and unambiguous in discussions with Students.
- http://blognomic.com/archive/shouldnt_we_start_studying/ attempted to introduce Classes, regulating actions Students should perform on a given day of week. After several takes, the idea was said to be too similar to existing Scoring system.
- http://blognomic.com/archive/something_to_do_please_anything/ introduced Pens, making use of the COLOR random generator.
- Upon ascension the Professor decided to keep the rule "Out of Sight, Out of Mind", that restricted the use of Trading for Students with "Out" Position. Both terms were defined in the rules that got repealed, and Students were perplexed as to what was the intention of the Professor, but http://blognomic.com/archive/question_for_bucky/ didn't bring clarity. http://blognomic.com/archive/swapsies/ filled the gap by introducing Trading, which allowed players to borrow pens at the cost of "owing a Favor". Actually Favors never got used during the course of the Dynasty. The definition of an "Out" position never appeared in the ruleset as well.
- http://blognomic.com/archive/maybe_zynga_will_buy_us_too/ introduced The Whiteboard, where Students could draw anything they liked in the color of a pen they possessed. http://blognomic.com/archive/do_not_erase/ added some tactical constraints on these drawings by allowing Students to mark areas of the whiteboard with "DO NOT ERASE".
- http://blognomic.com/archive/nomic_rules_ok/ allowed a Student to Score if he managed to make the Whiteboard contain his name and the name of no other Student. Kevan and Josh both signed the whiteboard in advance, but soon after the enactment Kevan noted that the software Josh used to write text in black had illegally added pixels of non-black color, which allowed him to revert that action and become the first one to Score under this rule.
- http://blognomic.com/archive/location_location_location4/ introduced the Classroom, where Students could occupy a Desk and move to neighboring Desks.
- http://blognomic.com/archive/turtles_all_the_way_down/ introduced Prefectures - "mini-dynasties in which players can experiment with Emperor behaviour, and get graded for it." It's interesting to note that all three Prefectures ended abnormally: the first was nullified due to the rules change, the second ended with idling of the Prefect, and the third began right before the end of the Dynasty.
- http://blognomic.com/archive/lets_wrap_this_up_then/ made Scoring five times the victory condition. It was found to be already fulfilled by one of the Students, since Projects could be scored at any time after their criteria had been met.
Ascension
Two days after the final scoring change, Kevan claimed three Projects which he had met the requirements for earlier in the dynasty, and declared victory.
