Ruleset 1

Archivist's note: This ruleset has been restored by taking the last known copy of the Round 1 ruleset and applying the proposals that enacted subsequently, in the way we assume Round 1 players would have enacted them.

Ruleset and Gamestate

This is the Ruleset for BlogNomic; all Players must obey it.

Any data which the Ruleset requires to be stored (including Proposal messages and the list of players) is considered part of the Gamestate.

The Ruleset and Gamestate can only be changed when a Rule specifically permits their being changed.

Admin Staff may correct obvious spelling and typographical mistakes in the Ruleset at any time. Undesired corrections may be challenged through a Call for Judgment.

Players

Any human being who maintains an active weblog may apply to join BlogNomic by contacting any of the Admin Staff, giving a contact email address and the URL of the weblog that they wish to use in BlogNomic. They will be signed up as a member of the BlogNomic weblog, and will be considered a Player from the moment that they first appear on the player roster in the sidebar.

Some Players are Admin Staff, responsible for updating the site and the Ruleset, and are signified as such in the sidebar. Any Admin Staff may confer Admin status onto another Player at any time, and update the sidebar appropriately.

A Player may leave the game at any time by declaring this intention in an entry.

Some Players are Idle, and should be marked as such in the sidebar. For the purposes of all other rules, Idle Players are not counted as Players. Admin may render a Player Idle if that Player has failed to vote for more than a week, or if that Player has asked to become Idle. Admin may un-Idle a Player who has asked to become un-Idle.

Proposals

Any Player may propose a change to the Ruleset or gamestate, provided that Player has fewer than two non-trivial Proposals pending, by posting an entry which begins with the paragraph "Proposal : [Title]" in bold text (where [Title] is a title of their choosing), and describes the changes they wish to make.

A Player can state in his Proposal that the Proposal is Trivial. Trivial Proposals score points as if they were declared Trivial in voting. A Player can submit any number of Trivial proposals at a time.

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

A BoardPlayer may state that their proposal is a GameBoard Proposal. GameBoard Proposals may only be voted on by BoardPlayers. Only proposals that deal solely with the GameBoard, and have no relevance to the main BlogNomic game (i.e. creating a prize that would give BoardPlayers points would be unacceptable, but changing the way a move is made on the GameBoard would be) can be designated GameBoard Proposals. For the purposes of GameBoard Proposals, quorum is one half of BoardPlayers, rounded down, plus one. GameBoard Proposals follow all other rules of Proposals

Voting

Any Player may cast their vote on a Pending Proposal by declaring it in the comments of the entry. Valid votes are FOR and AGAINST, which may be represented by appropriate icons.

FOR Votes may be marked as 'Trivial' if the voter considers the Proposal to be of minor effect, or to make amendments already discussed by other players, or to be otherwise unworthy of reward.

If there exists more than one Vote from a single Player on a single Proposal, only the most recent of those Votes is counted.

If the Player who made a Proposal has not cast an explicit Vote on it, their Vote is counted as FOR.

Only Boardplayers may vote on Proposals specifically designated as Gameboard Proposals.

Enactment

Quorum is equal to half the number of Players, rounded down, plus one.

If a pending Proposal's FOR votes exceed or equal Quorum, and if either no earlier Proposals are still pending, or the Proposal makes no changes to the Ruleset, then any Admin Staff may update the Ruleset and/or gamestate to include the specified effects of the Proposal, and mark that Proposal as Enacted.

If a pending Proposal has enough AGAINST votes that it could not be Enacted without one of them being changed, or if all Players have voted on a Proposal and it still cannot be Enacted, or if the Player whose Proposal it was has voted AGAINST it, then any Admin Staff may mark that Proposal as Failed.

For the purposes of the Enactment or Failure of a proposal, only Votes cast by current Players are counted.

For Proposals that are designated as Gameboard Proposals, Quorum for GameBoard Proposals is one half of BoardPlayers, rounded down, plus one.

Calls for Judgment

If two or more Players actively disagree as to the interpretation of the Ruleset, any Player may raise a Call for Judgment by posting an entry which begins with the paragraph "Call for Judgment" in bold text, and goes on to describe the disagreement, and measures that should be taken to correct it.

All Players may add votes of agreement or disagreement in comments to this entry, using appropriate voting icons. If more than half of the Players' votes (their later votes overriding their earlier) are in favour, the Gamestate and Ruleset should be amended as was specified. If more than half disagree, the CfJ fails and may have no further effect.

Time Out

If a Proposal or Call for Judgment has been pending for a week, any Admin Staff may mark that Proposal or Call for Judgment as Expired. Expired items have no further effect on the game.

If a Proposal has been pending for more than 48 hours, any Player who has been a Player for 48 hours, who has not yet cast a vote on that Proposal may be fined 10 points, by any Player, provided that they have not already been fined 10 points for not voting on that Proposal.

The GNDT

Specific parts of the Gamestate data shall be tracked by the Generic Nomic Data Tracker at http://kevan.org/generic?nomic=blog. Any Player may update any Player's data via the GNDT, whenever the Ruleset permits it.

All updates to the GNDT are logged - if a Player feels that an alteration goes against the Rules (as they were at the time of the alteration), he or she may simply undo the effects of that alteration. If such an undoing is disputed, a Call for Judgment should be raised.

Players shall be assigned a password for the GNDT when they join the Nomic.

Points

All new players start with the lowest score amongst the active players, or zero, whichever is greater. Returning players start with the lowest score amongst the active players, or their score when they left, whichever is lower. Scores may be either positive or negative.The Admin who sets up a new Player receives 10 points.

When a Proposal is enacted, its proposer (if a current player) gains 10 Points (or 2 Points, if most of that Proposal's FOR votes were marked Trivial). When a Proposal fails, its proposer (if a current player) loses 2 Points.

Whenever an Admin Enacts a non-Trivial Proposal, they may claim 5 Points. Whenever they Fail a Proposal or Enact a Trivial Proposal, they may claim 2 Points

Any player with a positive number of points may give any number of those points to another player, provided it does not take the giving player below 0.

A Player may award themselves five points for the first entry they post to their weblog, for a given day (these points must be claimed within half an hour of the entry being posted).

Glittering Prizes

Various Prizes are up for grabs in BlogNomic - each has a condition and a reward. A Prize's reward may vary as part of its condition, but may not exceed 50 points.

Every Monday, each Player may announce a single Prize for the week ahead by posting an entry to BlogNomic whose first paragraph is "Prize : [Name] ([Reward])" in bold text, where [Name] is the name of the prize, and [Reward] is its reward; the remainder of this post should detail the prizes conditions.

The Blognomic side-bar contains a section entitled "This Week's Prizes". On Tuesday, the first Admin to update This Week's Prizes with the titles of all the week's Prizes is awarded 5 points. On Sunday, the first Admin to replace the Prize-titles under This Week's Prizes with "To Be Announced" is awarded 2 points.

If a Player has posted a blog entry that meets a Prize's conditions, they may award themselves Points equal to that Prize's reward, anywhen within an hour of posting the entry. (Prizes may only be claimed during the week they were announced, unless otherwise specified.)

Karma

Each Player has a Karma score, which may be positive or negative. When a Player joins the game for the first time, they have their Karma set to zero. Players rejoining the game continue at their previous Karma value.

Players are able to award or deduct Karma from other Players at any time, in response to particularly good or bad blog entries, or behaviour within the game (explanatory comments must be given in the GNDT). A single Player may adjust up to 10 Karma points per day.

Any Player may, if no other Player has done so during the current week, calculate the average of the Players' Karma scores (including Idle Players, and rounding towards zero), and then deduct that amount from every Player's Karma score (again, including the Idle). The GNDT comment on these alterations should be 'averaging'.

Positive Feedback

Whenever a Player posts a blog entry, they may claim X points, where X is the number of people (aside from themselves) who posted a comment to the preceding entry. These points must be claimed within half an hour of posting the new entry. (Maximum 10 points per entry, and 70 points per week.)

The Game Board

The Game Board is part of the Gamestate and will serve as an abstract environment in which objects (that the Rules have specified as belonging on the board) can interact. The Game Board is located here.

The Rules of Play on the Game Board are as follows:

To make changes to the Game Board, register an account here and notify Erik (or another Player with appropriate privileges) to add permissions to your account.

Every action made on the board must be documented in the "Notes and Revisions" portion of the Game Board

Each Player may have a Colour (indicated in a key beneath the Board), and each Square on the Board may have a Colour (Squares which match a Player's Colour are considered to be "owned" by that Player).

If a Player has a Colour, they are known as a BoardPlayer. A BoardPlayer may take one Turn each day. A BoardPlayer may take multiple Turns in one day if at least two thirds of the other BoardPlayers have taken a Turn since the BoardPlayer's previous Turn. (A BoardPlayer may take their first Turn at any time.)

When taking a Turn, a BoardPlayer may either:-

• Change any Square on the Board to match their own Colour, provided that it is adjacent to a Square of the Player's Colour, or a path of adjacent white Squares can be traced between it and a Square of the Player's Colour.
• Change any white Square on the Board to match their own Colour, if they own no other Squares.
• Do nothing, but declare that they have taken a Turn.
• (If claiming a non-white Square, the claimer must simultaneously change one of their own Squares to white.)
• Give one of his/her own squares to another GamePlayer by changing its color.
• Move out of a square by changing it's color to white.
• Block a square from being purchased by another GamePlayer by placing the text "X-[blocked gameplayer's name]" in the square to be blocked. A block can be placed on any white square, or any square owned by the GamePlayer. A block costs 1/4 of the points of the Player to be blocked. Multiple blocks can be placed on each square. When claimed by a non-blocked GamePlayer, all blocks on a square are removed.

Two Squares are adjacent if they share an edge.

If a Player owns a group of more than 15 connected Squares (that is, it is possible to move between any two of those Squares along a path of adjacent Squares which the Player also owns), that Player wins the Game Board Game; they are awarded 200 points, and all Squares are turned to white.

You Don't Talk About BlogNomic

Although players are encouraged to include a link to BlogNomic from their weblog, and may include a generic warning that any weird content may be due to the game, they should not specifically explain that a given entry was made for the purposes of BlogNomic. (Anyone breaking this rule may be fined 20 Points.)

A Stitch In Time

Whenever another Rule specifies a time-limit for an action (eg. "claim points within half an hour of posting an entry"), that time-limit is extended by up to 24 hours if the Player attempts to make the action within the time-limit and is prevented by connection difficulties (eg. the comment server or the GNDT server being down).

Blog Traits

Each Player's weblog has a number of Traits, to be tracked through the GNDT. Traits can be either Active or Passive - an Active Trait can only be updated by the weblog owner, but a Passive Trait can be updated by any Player. Traits can be updated at any time. Traits which have never been updated default to zero, "none" or whichever value seems most appropriate.

Current Traits are:-

Output Level (Passive). This is the total number of postings made to the weblog during the day on which the Trait was updated, and during the previous six days. Political Leaning (Active). This can be either "Left", "Right" or "None", and reflects the general political mood of the weblog, if not the Player.

BlogNomic Lottery

All players who lose points due to not voting on proposals shall forfeit their points to the BlogNomic Lottery. The amount of points currently in the lottery shall be updated by an Admin each time a proposal passes or fails, and shall be posted as "This Month's Jackpot" on the right side of the page above the current week's prizes.

The admin who updates the lottery first shall be awarded two points.

The Lottery shall be drawn on the last Sunday of the current month, between noontime and midnight, and no sooner; at which point an Admin must award the player with the most Karma points at the time of drawing the jackpot. The Admin awarding the jackpot must also announce in the BlogNomic the winner of the month's Lottery in an entry beginning 'Jackpot Winner: [winner's name].'

If an Admin fails to do this during the allotted time on the last Sunday of the month, all Admins will forfeit one point to the next month's lottery. However, the Admin who awards the Jackpot first may award himself five points.

GameBoard Monkey

Archivist's note: This rule has been restored from seeing that a "gameboard proposal" enacted with this text. It's unclear if these were actually being tracked in the ruleset at the time.

The GameBoard Monkey is worth 10 points a day per player. Any player who holds the monkey (meaning the monkey exsists on a square they own) for any part of a day may claim 10 points. The Monkey may be moved only one square by each player during their turn and only if they own a square adjacent to the monkey.

Unnamed rule

Archivist's note: This was a line at the start of a proposal, presumably it created a rule?

First Player to 1200 Points wins this Round of BlogNomic. All GNDT values are reset to zero/blank.

Dynasties

BlogNomic is divided into Rounds called Dynasties, each with a separate winning condition. When a Player fulfills the winning condition, he/she is named Emperor/Empress of BlogNomic, and the next round is begun as that Player's Dynasty. (i.e. "First Dynasty of Myke" "Third Dynasty of Kevan" etc.)

The new Emperor/Empress will post a Welcome Address to the BlogNomic blog that begins the next Round of BlogNomic, and this address will be linked to in the right sidebar column as "[# of dynasty] Dynasty of [Emperor/Empress's name] ([start date]-[finish date/'current']" above the archive section.

The Emperor/Empress will be granted the power to Veto any proposal. This Imperial Veto may be overturned by a 2/3 majority, and may not be applied to any proposal that sets the winning condition for the current Round. The Emperor/Empress will also be permitted to change the BlogNomic header and color scheme upon their ascendency, and include the Dynastic label in the header.

Imperial Favor is a numerical rating that reflects the current Emperor/Empress's view of any other Player. The Emperor/Empress is the only Player who may update the "Imperial Favor" rating, and may do so at his/her whim. Values can be negative, positive, zero, and as large or small as the Emperor/Empress deigns. (An Emperor/Empress may not have an Imperial Favor rating themself.)

Glossary

This Rule is always at the end of the Ruleset. Its only effect can be to clarify ambiguity. When a Call for Judgement is resolved, any Admin may make an appropriate addition or alteration to this rule based on the result of the Call for Judgement.

• The terms "weblog", "blog" or "journal" shall be taken to mean "weblog or journal" throughout the Ruleset.
• For the purposes of the game, a Player's weblog is the one that they chose to use when they joined.
• References to "a day" (as an entity rather than a duration, eg. "Sunday") refer to that day in the timezone to which the Player's blog conforms, if blog-related; otherwise to the timezone of the BlogNomic blog.
• References to a "week" refer to the period of time between the start of a Monday and the end of the following Sunday.
• Any Rules based on the text of a blog entry refer only to the always-visible and non-automated text, ie. excluding mouseover text, datestamps, comment links and similar constructions.
• It is noted that 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 writer a banana when enacted would not earn a banana for its own writer, when enacted).
• Appropriate Icons: For use in voting, a red angry face shall represent a vote AGAINST, and any of the yellow faces shall represent a vote FOR.
• When the game refers to the "subject" of a blog entry, blogs which do not normally support subject lines shall have the first sentence of an entry treated as that entry's subject.