BlogNomic Jargon

An explaination of some terms one will likely encounter here at Blognomic -- including several that are not officially defined under the authority of the Ruleset, but which are in common usage nonetheless.

Technical Terms

Call for Judgement

CfJ for short. A post which may be made by any player to fix any sort of problem with the game. Basically, all players vote FOR or AGAINST it, and the majority wins (see the Ruleset for specific details). It may not say so explicitly in the Ruleset, but we are careful to always preserve the right of any player to make (or vote on) a CfJ.

Declaration of Victory

DoV for short. The post you make when you believe you have achieved victory. Making such a post puts the game into Hiatus (i.e., the Hiatus begins as soon as the DoV is made, during the voting period in which the other players decide whether Victory has really been achieved). Get enough FOR votes on your DoV and you get to choose the next Emperor. If the DoV fails then the Hiatus ends and the game continues.

Dynasty

when a player achieves victory here at Blognomic, the game doesn't end; the winner simply chooses someone (usually themself) to begin a new Dynasty. Typically, a new Dynasty means that the game is about to take a large thematic change of direction. All or most of the previous Dynastic Rules are usually repealed, and we tend to resist making new rules which are too similar to ones we've repealed.

Effective vote comment (EVC)

The comment to a blog post containing the comment-author's vote. Used in some proposal (eg. "If at least half of the EVCs on this post contain the phrase 'I eat bananas', then reduce all players' bananas by 3.") Thus, if a given player votes twice on a particular proposal (say, :AGAINST: and, per a subsequent comment, :FOR:), only the _second_ comment counts as that player's EVC on that proposal since it contains the vote that actually matters.

Enactment

Technically, this term only applies to the passage of a Proposal, but we sometimes informally say that a Call for Judement or a Declaration of Victory has been "Enacted".

Flavour text

In-game text which has no innate meaning from a rules perspective. Some dynasties allow players to freely name things, with any text they like. This needs to be treated carefully: if that text is going into the ruleset, a player may try to write a statement that would count as rule text; if it's gamestate, it could still cause other rules to trigger (for example, if a rule says "a player who owns the Crown of Might has achieved victory" and players can name their pets, maybe I can name my dog "the Crown of Might"). Defining such writable content as "flavour text" gives it some ruleset protection.

Gamestate

Intuitively, the Gamestate simply consists all the stuff that's actually part of the game itself. The technical definition from the Ruleset is currently "any information which the Ruleset regulates the alteration of." Proposals, votes, GNDT values, requests to idle, the list of players found on the sidebar, and the Ruleset itself all count as part of the Gamestate.

Generic Nomic Data Tracker

GNDT for short. Formerly used to track the current gamestate (although nowadays, we use this wiki). The GNDT was found at http://blognomic.com/gndt/generic.cgi?nomic=blog

Hiatus

When a player posts a Declaration of Victory, the game goes into a Hiatus. Roughly speaking, nothing is allowed to happen during a Hiatus except for creating and voting on CfJ's or DoV's (see the Ruleset for specific details).

Metadynasty

A Dynasty with no Emperor figure. The core rules do not require an Emperor to function, and it is occasionally proposed that a failing dynasty be ended and replaced with a Metadynasty.

Ruleset

Pretty much the ultimate authority of Blognomic. We all obey the Ruleset because it says we have to (usually in its first sentence). The current Ruleset is always on the Ruleset page of the wiki.

Spivak pronouns

There is a tradition of Nomics using Spivak pronouns (e, em, eir, etc) rather than gender-specific ones. BlogNomic likely used some Spivak from the start, and formally adopted it for a while (possibly during The First Dynasty of Rodney in 2005?), but switched to recognising the singular they instead in 2007, making it universal in 2010.

Vote (noun)

When you vote, the actual voting icon you use (and its interpretation, e.g. FOR or AGAINST) is called your vote. Informally, you might refer to the entire comment that contains your vote as your "vote", but sometimes rules are worded in such a way as to make the distinction between the "vote" and the "comment".

Vote (verb)

to use one of the voting icons, at an appropriate time. Typically, voting is only done on Proposals, Calls for Judgement, and Declarations of Victory.

Withdraw

to vote against one's own Proposal; if a proposal has an against vote from its creator, it will automatically fail

Abbreviations and Informal Terms

See also: Plays

Admin Advantage

The mechanical advantage an admin has over a non-admin player, especially in regards to performing timing scams (because they possess enactment, failing, etc powers).

In the Mornington Crescent dynasty, Lilomar deliberately enacted a "create a new rule" proposal in a legal but perverse way that added a new rule halfway through the ruleset, changing some rule numbers and preventing a proposal later in the queue from having any effect, to Lilomar's own advantage.

Cabal

An (often secret) alliance of players with a common goal.

CoV

Change of Vote -- used to make it easier for admins to count the votes by reminding them that they should ignore your earlier votes.

CfJ

Call for Judgement

CfP

Call for Proposal -- used to convey that you think that a CfJ should have been a Proposal; not often used.

Chop

An agreement to end the dynasty by roll of the dice, with two or more players having weighted odds based on their assessed win equity.

Coin-flip victory

Two or more players agreeing to assist one of their number to victory, in exchange for that player promising to randomly select a member of the group to pass the victory mantle to. (If two players both feel that they have a lower-than-50% chance of winning alone, working together for an exactly 50% chance of victory can make some sense.)

Example: In the Second Dynasty of Brendan, two zombie players idled so that the third zombie could trigger the "last remaining zombie" victory condition.

DoV

Declaration of Victory

EAV

Explicit Author Vote -- used when an author votes FOR on their own proposal even though they already had an implicit FOR vote on it (e.g. so that they can place an EVC). Has a similar purpose to CoV.

Emperor

A generic name for the player who heads a Dynasty, regardless of what their actual title is. Their role is to encourage people to participate and guide the direction of the dynasty when required; traditionally the first proposal of a dynasty is from the Emperor setting up the game. Sometimes there is no emperor, and only once has there been two emperors. Emperors have unique "veto" power where they can negate a rule with a single vote if they wish to, and they cannot declare victory in their own dynasties.

Emperor blindness

A tendency for the Emperor to be oblivious to some dynastic game strategies (because, unlike players, they never read the ruleset from the position of assessing possible moves) and the true level of game activity (because significant aspects are happening in private communications).

Fool's gold

A resource which is stockpiled by a minority of players before any use is proposed for it, meaning that the majority will probably never want to give it a use.

G-Man

A type of rule that states the Emperor is not a regular player for the purposes of the dynastic ruleset. G-Man rules are fairly common - since the Emperor can't win the game and has a lot of influence over which proposals enact, it doesn't always make sense for them to take part in the dynastic game directly. Nowadays, the Special Case Rule "Dynastic Distance" is normally used for this purpose.

GNDT

Generic Nomic Data Tracker. A new defunct tracker that was embedded in the sidebar in the same way that the wikipages now are but only had the ability to show a single table of each active player or perform die rolls. It was in use by Blognomic for 10+ years.

Greentick

The "FOR" icon (https://blognomic.com/images/vote/for.gif). Used to indicate support for a votable matter without casting a formal vote, usually to avoid curtailing an edit window.

Grinding

A game mechanic can be considered a "grind" if there is never any reason not to use it, beyond (usually) a time restriction on how frequently it can be used. For example; "as a daily action, a player may gain 1 point". Since the outcome is always positive, there is no decision to be made and the mechanic simply becomes a chore that players must remember to do (and which they are penalised for if they miss a day and lag behind).

Imperial style

The Emperor's intentions with regards to scams, fairness, and other gameplay aspects that can vary from Emperor to Emperor. It's been proposed as a rule a couple of times, without success: some Emperors still choose to announce an untracked style informally, using the unregulated keywords at the Imperial Styles page.

Lazymode

Taking part in a dynasty without understanding its ruleset, and instead being fully instructed by another player - typically in order to help that other player win, in exchange for a small chance of a mantle pass.

Mantle

Handing on the role of Emperor (or equivalent) to another player following victory, in a situation where the winner does not wish to lead the next dynasty, is known as "passing the mantle".

Meatpuppet

Real life person whose nomic actions are in control of another player.

Example: In The First Dynasty of ais523, Bucky suspected that DDA was "employing metapuppets from outside the nomic"

Protosal

An (often vague) idea for a proposal which has been made as a non-proposal post in order to elicit feedback before asking players to vote on an actual proposal version. Some players don't like them.

Rider

An additional feature that a proposal does which has little to no relation to other portions of the proposal, often applying a small fix that may not be worth its own proposal. Useful riders put players under slight pressure to support the whole proposal.

Self-kill (or S/K)

Obsolete term for voting against one's own proposal to guarantee its failure: this became "withdrawing" a proposal in October 2021.

Stub

Incomplete and often function-less proposal, designed to be expanded by other proposals (typically from other players).

Trivial Proposals

Proposals which don't count towards the proposal limit, so long as they only make minor changes, sometimes enforced by requiring a quorum of votes to agree that the proposal is trivial. These existed possibly as far back as the starting ruleset, having been a feature of other Nomics. They were repealed in December 2004, but came back a few times dynastically.

Win equity

A player's assessed likelyhood of winning the current dynasty, as a percentage. All other things being equal, each player has an equal win equity; such equality tends only to be in effect at the very start of a dynasty.

Obsolete terms

Combo

A rule added in April 2017 and removed in January 2018. It allowed players to take complex sequences of actions by announcing them in a blog post, only updating the gamestate to match the final outcome.

Counted vote

Old term used to talk about which of several voting icons from a player was considered to be their actual vote. Not used since 2011, presumably superseded by a clearer general definition of "a player's vote".

Favour

A form of historical interdynastic IOU that was part of the game from April 2021 through to August 2021. Their final form as a rule can be seen in Ruleset 189. An informal system of cross-dynastic favours also operated for an unknown amount of time between a few players before being ruled out in February 2024.

Traitor

A rule that ran from July 2019 to July 2021, where one player was randomly given Imperial permission to betray other players by breaking promises, in an attempt to break up the less interesting types of kingmaking and coordinated cabals.