New Player Guide

Although you can theoretically get all you need to know to play BlogNomic from just reading its current ruleset, this is a more informal guide to how the game works.

What is Nomic?

Nomic is a game where changing the rules is part of the game; players can suggest changes to the rules they're playing under, and vote on whether or not to adopt those changes. The original game of Nomic was invented in 1982 as a pen-and-paper tabletop game, but is well-suited to being played online, where it's easy to keep an unambiguous record of the rules and proposals, and where it's possible to play the game more slowly, over a period of days or weeks.

How does BlogNomic work?

We have a Ruleset that, at any given moment, tells players exactly how to play the game. It's divided into four sections - the Core Rules (which are the basic ground rules for making proposals and voting on them), the Dynastic Rules (which are the ones that change from round to round, and have a different genre theme each round), the Special Case Rules (some Core-ish mechanics which we sometimes disable and enable between dynasties) and the Appendix (which does what you'd expect, defining a few terms in more detail and clarifying some nitpicking details).

The Core Rules, Special Cases and Appendices are fairly detailed, as they need to be watertight, but they don't tend to change much - when we play a round of BlogNomic, we just create and alter the Dynastic Rules. If we want to change something about the Core Rules for a single round - maybe we want to change the voting process - we can write a Dynastic Rule that overrules the Core Rules.

The annotated ruleset has some notes about why particular rules are important, or are written the way they are. You should try to familiarise yourself with the ruleset - the rules are at the core of every action taken by the players - but you aren't expected to learn them completely and immediately before playing. You're entirely welcome to just lurk, vote and follow the lead of other players for a while, until you feel confident enough to start making your own proposals.

The basic process the Core Rules describe can be summarised (without meaning to be exhaustive) as:-

Players

• BlogNomic has players, who have to follow the rules. All of the players are signed-up members of the BlogNomic blog, allowing them to make and comment on blog posts. Some of the players are "admins", and it's their job to process proposals and do other housekeeping tasks.
• Players can go idle if they want to leave the game or take a break from it; this takes them out of play, and they can come back later. (If you don't post a comment for seven whole days, we'll assume you aren't playing any more and will set you idle automatically.)

Dynasties and gameplay

• Each round of BlogNomic is a dynasty, and has a separate theme (like "zombies" or "the Odyssey"). When somebody wins the game, we start a new dynasty and that player gets to pick the new theme. They get to be in charge of the new round, as its Emperor (although we use a theme-specific terms for Player and Emperors each dynasty, such as the Emperor being "CEO" and players "Employees").
• 

  Example gamestate from the The First Dynasty of Habanero
  Game information (such as scores, wealth, magic items or whatever else the current dynasty is about) is usually tracked on a shared wiki page, which any player can edit when the rules allow them to.
• If somebody thinks they've won the game (there will typically be a way to win defined in the dynastic rules somewhere), they can post a declaration of victory to announce this. The game is paused, and the players get to vote on whether they think the win was legal. If enough players agree, then that player is declared the winner: we erase the dynastic rules and begin a new dynasty with that winner as its Emperor.

Proposals

An example proposal from The Third Dynasty of Misty. The blog post suggests an edit to an existing rule, and players discuss it and cast votes in the comments below.

If you want to make a proposal to change the rules, you post it to the blog as a blog entry, describing the exact changes you want to make. Other players can then discuss and vote on your proposal in comments, by pressing the FOR or AGAINST buttons (or DEFERENTIAL if they want to defer to the Emperor). You can reword your own proposal for four hours after posting it, or until someone votes on it, whichever happens first. The Emperor can veto a proposal if they feel strongly that it shouldn't be enacted.

• As soon as the oldest proposal on the blog has a quorum of votes in favour of it (defined as over half the players), it enacts, and we update the ruleset accordingly. A proposal can also enact if it's been open for voting for 48 hours ("timing out"), and if has a majority in favour.
• If a proposal gets a quorum of votes against it, or if it's vetoed, or if the player who made it changes their mind and votes against it (known as "withdrawing" the proposal), or hits 48 hours without a majority of votes in favour, then it fails and nothing happens.
• Proposals are processed in a queue - it's always the oldest one that passes or fails before the others - so that we know what order everything is going to happen in.

Calls for Judgement

• If players disagree about the interpretation of the rules, they can raise a call for judgement (CfJ) for everyone to vote on. This is a special type of proposal which can be passed more quickly, ignoring the queue.

What is the actual game, apart from voting and proposing?

When we start a new dynasty, there is no actual game, there's just the Core Rules telling us how to propose and vote and things. So the dynasty starts by having players some basic ideas to play a game with - perhaps all players have Gold Pieces or a Stress Level, perhaps they have to be affiliated to a Political Party, perhaps there's a Map that they move around on, perhaps we all have a Hunger level which goes up every day unless we eat a Food object.

Once we have a few game variables, and a way to make decisions to change those variables, a game can start to emerge. Over time, this gets more complicated, and after a while someone will suggest a victory condition ("the winner is the first player to get 100 Gold Pieces", "if a Political Party has a majority of players supporting it, the member of that Party with the highest Popularity Score wins").

How do I... do stuff?

Most dynasties usually play out on some sort of wiki page (to get access to edit the wiki, follow these instructions), some involve submitting secret orders directly to the Emperor, and others still are a combination of the two.

If we're tracking players' scores on a wiki page and you want to take an action that's just described as "a player may spend 10 coins at any time to gain 1 score", you can just update the wiki page to set your coins and score to their new values.

How does a dynasty end?

A dynasty ends when someone meets the victory condition and posts a "declaration of victory" explaining how they got there. If a majority of other players agree that it was legal, that player wins and we start a new dynasty with them as the "Emperor".

Some dynasties are won through good, solid gameplay - others are won through the longstanding Nomic tradition of a "scam", where a player exploits an unexpected loophole in the ruleset to suddenly achieve the victory condition (maybe the victory condition is "get 100 Gold Pieces", and a player has noticed that they can buy a Nasty Potion for 2gp, drink it, and sell the Empty Bottle for 3gp - repeat for infinite gold!). It might be a loophole that was written accidentally, or it might be one that the player deliberately wrote themselves and hoped nobody would spot when it was being voted on as a proposal. All of this is equally valid - the game of Nomic is all about the writing and obeying of rules, and a clever scam is as admirable as a clever move-by-move win.

Joining the game

To become a player, start by filling in this form, letting us know the username you want to play under. We'll guide you through a couple of hoops and then you'll be ready to make posts and comments on the blog.

How to make a blog post

From the Blognomic home page, click 'Make a New Post', under your username in the sidebar. This link should take you to a form with various fields. These largely explain themselves; 'Title' is the title of the post, 'URL Title' is the title of the URL of the post, which you probably shouldn't touch, 'Body' is the main body of the post. The 'Commentary or flavour text' box under 'Body' is for explanatory text to proposals, which will not be binding if the proposal is enacted; the 'Admin' box is for admins, and you shouldn't touch it (unless you are one, in which case see Admin Manual). The buttons at top right are 'Preview', 'Quick save', and 'Submit'. Do not use the 'Quick save' button; it doesn't do what you think it does. In the body of the page, you can use basic HTML, including links, italic/bold/underlines, and block quotes.

If you are making a Proposal or a Call for Judgement, make sure that you set the correct category. Do this by clicking 'Categories' above the 'Title' field, and selecting the correct item from the list. Do not preface your title with 'Proposal: ' or 'Call for Judgement: '; this is done automatically if you select the category correctly.

If you're creating or amending a rule, which you usually will be, then it's common practice to use the <blockquote> tag to mark the text you're adding or altering. For example.

Create a new rule entitled 'Rule Name', containing the following:

<blockquote>rule text here</blockquote>

or

Replace the section of Rule 'Rule Name' that reads

<blockquote>old rule text here</blockquote>

with the text

<blockquote>new rule text here</blockquote>

How to play well

A survey of players in 2012 asked current and past players "What can the player base at large do to ensure that dynasties are more fun in general?". Some of those answers bear repeating here:-

• "Vote FOR for Proposals (that are not scammable) if you think they'll make the game more interesting. Propose a lot."
• "Be creative to help build the game."
• "Make more proposals and tell the Emperor about problems with the dynasty."
• "Participate and share ideas"
• "Participate, give feedback, try and make things work before doing anything else."
• "Rules. I for one don't come up with many great ideas, but this game is built on its rules. People should try to at least start discussions about future mechanics they think would be fun, and maybe someone else can figure out a way to work it into the current rules."
• "Support, encourage, and instruct new players; propose rule changes to create a game you think is fun; accept that other players might have different ideas of fun, or have different goals in playing than you do;"
• "Be bold enough to propose repealing or changing any rule that seems boring. Make some noise if it's getting quiet. Encourage interaction. Keep any rivalry in-character."
• "Take part of the dynasty. And if they are not enjoying it, make proposals to fix the parts they don't enjoy."

See also Cuddlebeam's Beginner's Strategy Guide.

Players are also encouraged to read and uphold the Community Guidelines.

Common proposal pitfalls

Watch out for the few mistakes that everyone makes:-

• Put your proposal in the "proposal" blog category. You don't have to type "Proposal:" at the start of the proposal title, the blog does that automatically - you instead have to put it in the Proposal category by clicking the Categories tab when you're writing it, and selecting "Proposal". This allows the blog to automate things a bit and put a link to it in the sidebar. It's easy to forget to do this, and the post won't be a legal proposal without it. (If you notice within fifteen minutes and nobody's commented, then you can edit the proposal to put it in the right category; if you're too late, then (per Rule 1.7, para 3), it is illegal to change the category, and you'll have to make a new post instead.)
• Remember you can only have two proposals pending at once. Even if you've withdrawn your first proposal because something was wrong with it, it still counts as "pending" until it's actually failed by an admin.
• If you're creating a new rule, say that. If you want your proposal to have a continuing effect on gameplay, you should explicitly say that it creates a new rule, and what the text and title of the rule are. (If you don't, the proposal will just happen once and then have no further effect.) Likewise, if you want to amend a rule, say which rule you're amending.
• You can edit after posting, but not if people have started voting. You can correct your proposal for four hours after posting it, so long as nobody has cast a vote on it - at that point the wording locks and you aren't allowed to change it any more. This ensures that we're all voting on and talking about the same thing. If a problem with the proposal gets raised in comments, you (or someone else) can make a follow-up proposal to fix it.

Live help discussion

Since 2020, some players have been using Discord to discuss the game. An invite can be found at https://discord.gg/J7kP9KuHQK, and non-players are welcome.