Ruleset 17

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Archivist's note: This is not the final ruleset for this dynasty, it's the only copy we could find. Taken from this archived copy.

BlogNomic Mission Statement

Mission Statement and Gamestate

This is the Mission Statement for BlogNomic; all Teamspersons must obey it. Rules 1-10 are the "core Mission Statement", covering basic Teamsperson and proposal mechanics; Rules 11 onwards are those specific to the current round.

The Mission Statement and Gamestate can only be changed when a Rule specifically permits their being changed. ("Gamestate" is defined as any information which the Mission Statement regulates the alteration of, such as Teamsperson s' names and Dignity totals, or the blog colour scheme.)

Admin Staff may correct obvious spelling and typographical mistakes in the Mission Statement at any time.

At the end of the first dynasty of Brendan, every instance of the word "Mission Statement" in the "Mission Statement" shall be changed to "Ruleset", and this sentence shall repeal itself.

Teamspersons

Anybody may apply to join BlogNomic (if they are not already playing) by contacting any of the Admin Staff, specifying the name they wish to use in the game and the URL or email address they want their name to link to in the Teamsperson roster. The Admin may choose to approve or reject this application; if it is approved, the applicant will be signed up as a member of the BlogNomic weblog, and will be considered a Teamsperson from the moment that they first appear on the roster in the sidebar.

A Teamsperson may change their name or their sidebar link, or leave the game, at any time, by posting an entry to the BlogNomic weblog requesting such action.

Some Teamspersons are Admin Staff, responsible for updating the site and the Mission Statement, and are signified as such in the sidebar. Teamspersons who wish to become Admin should sign up with a username for the Mission Statement Wiki, and submit a Proposal to make themselves an Admin. Existing Admin may be removed from their post by Proposal, CfJ? or voluntary resignation.

Some Teamspersons are idle, and should be marked as such in the sidebar. For the purposes of all other rules, idle Teamspersons are not counted as Teamspersons. Admin may render a Teamsperson idle if that Teamsperson has failed to vote for more than a week, or if it has asked to become idle. Admins may un-idle a Teamsperson at their request - the Teamsperson's personal gamestate retains the values it had immediately prior to their idling.

A single person may not control more than one Teamsperson within BlogNomic. If anybody is suspected of controlling more than one Teamsperson, then a Proposal may be made to remove any number of such Teamspersons from the game, and to bar the perpetrator from rejoining.

Dignity

Each Teamsperson has an amount of Dignity, which may vary during the course of the game. Dignity may not fall below 0 or rise above 200. Any effect which would take Dignity beyond either of these boundaries instead sets it to that boundary, unless the change must be made as a precondition of a game action (such as paying a "cost"), in which case that action cannot be performed.

Admins gain 10 Dignity for setting up new Teamspersons. Within 24 hours of joining the game, and only once, a Teamsperson may nominate a single (other) Teamsperson as being responsible for their joining - the nominated Teamsperson gains 20 Dignity, and the new Teamsperson gains 10 as a reward for nominating.

Dignity is normalised at the beginning of each new dynasty. If a Teamsperson's Dignity was higher than 125 before the Ascension of the new District Manager, it drops to 125. If it was lower than 75 before the Ascension, it rises to 75. If it was between 125 and 75, it retains its value for the new dynasty.

New Teamspersons begin the game with 100 Dignity.

Proposals

Any Teamsperson may propose a change to the Mission Statement or gamestate 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 be made.

(A Teamsperson can state in his Proposal's title that the Proposal is Trivial, if they feel that it only makes minor changes, or is otherwise unworthy of reward.)

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

No ostensible Proposal shall be legal if its posting leads to its poster having more than 4 Trivial Proposals' worth of Proposals pending. The legal maximum is, therefore, 2 non-Trivials, 4 Trivials, or 1 non-Trivial and 2 Trivials.

A Teamsperson may alter or remove their own Pending Proposals, provided that nobody else has commented on them. A Teamsperson may not, through editing of the blog, change a non-Proposal post into a Proposal.

Voting

Any Teamsperson may cast their vote on a Pending Proposal by declaring it in the comments of the entry. Valid votes are FOR, AGAINST, and DEFERENTIAL, which must be represented by appropriate icons. If there exists more than one Vote from a single Teamsperson on a single Proposal, only the most recent of those Votes is counted. If a Teamsperson leaves the game or goes idle, their Vote no longer counts.

A vote of DEFERENTIAL is a vote of no opinion, or of faith in the decision of the District Manager. The vote will count as the same as the District Manager's vote. The District Manager itself cannot cast a vote of DEFERENTIAL. If there is no District Manager, a vote of DEFERENTIAL counts as an explicit vote of abstention.

FOR votes may be marked as 'Trivial' if the voter thinks that the Proposal should have been marked Trivial. (If most of a Proposal's FOR votes are marked 'Trivial', the Proposal becomes Trivial.)

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

Enactment

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

If the oldest pending Proposal's FOR votes exceed or equal Quorum, or if it is more than 48 hours old and more than half of its votes are FOR, then any Admin Staff may mark that Proposal as Enacted, then update the Mission Statement and/or Gamestate to include the specified effects of that Proposal.

If the oldest pending Proposal has enough AGAINST votes that it could not be Enacted without one of those votes being changed, or if all Teamspersons have voted on it and it still cannot be Enacted, or if the Teamsperson who proposed it has voted AGAINST it, or if it is more than 48 hours old and most of its votes are AGAINST, then any Admin Staff may mark that Proposal as Failed. When the proposer votes against his or her own proposal, that vote may not be changed.

When a Proposal is enacted, its proposer gains 10 Dignity, or 2 Dignity if it was Trivial. When a Proposal fails, its proposer loses 3 Dignity.

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

Whenever an Admin Enacts or Fails a Proposal that has been pending for more than 48 hours, he/she has the option of deducting 5 Dignity from the accounts of all active Teamspersons who did not vote on the Proposal. This deduction cannot take place if a proposal has been vetoed or self failed.

Calls for Judgement

If two or more Teamspersons actively disagree as to the interpretation of the Mission Statement, or if a Teamsperson feels that an aspect of the game needs urgent attention, then any Teamsperson 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 issue, and measures that should be taken to resolve it.

All Teamspersons may add votes of agreement or disagreement in comments to this entry, using appropriate voting icons (a Teamsperson's later votes overriding its earlier ones). CfJs? continue until they reach a quorum of FOR votes, or until four days have passed. After this time, if more than half of the cast votes are in favour, the Gamestate and Mission Statement should be amended as was specified. Otherwise, the CfJ? fails and may have no further effect.

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 Teamsperson may update any Teamsperson's data via the GNDT, whenever the Mission Statement permits it.

All updates to the GNDT are logged - if a Teamsperson 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.

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

Dynasties

BlogNomic is divided into a number of Rounds, referred to as Dynasties.

Each Dynasty has a single District Manager and is named according to the number of times which that Teamsperson has been the District Manager (or the District Manager equivalent) (eg. "The First Dynasty of Myke").

The District Manager has the following powers:-

  • They may veto any Proposal; that Proposal immediately fails. (This veto may be contested with a CfJ? if it is thought excessively unreasonable.)
  • They may change the BlogNomic header, the colour scheme and the VETO icon, whenever they like.

A page of Dynasty Records are kept on a separate weblog, recording events that took place during past Dynasties, noting their themes, their District Manager or equivalent, interesting rules, large arguments, the winning move, etc. A Dynasty record must accurately reflect the Dynasty it refers to. Teamspersons may submit Dynasty Records to the District Manager - the District Manager may award the submitter 20 Dignity for any Records it uses.

Victory and Ascension

If a Teamsperson believes that they have achieved the victory conditions for the current Dynasty, they may post a Declaration of Victory to the BlogNomic weblog. At this point, BlogNomic immediately goes into Hiatus, during which no other game actions (including other victory claims) may be taken.

Every Teamsperson may respond to the Declaration of Victory saying whether they regard it as legal or illegal (using the FOR, AGAINST and DEFERENTIAL icons). If more than half of Teamspersons consider the win legal, then the poster of the Declaration is considered to have officially won the Dynasty - the Dynasty ends. If more than half consider it illegal, however, then the Hiatus ends and the current Dynasty continues. If no clear decision is reached after 24 hours, the District Manager may optionally step in and decide the win's legality.

When a Dynasty has been won, all Teamspersons' GNDT stats are reset to zero or blank. Any Teamspersons who were idle throughout that Dynasty may be removed from the game, at the District Manager's discretion.

The Hiatus then continues until the new District Manager posts an Ascension Address to the BlogNomic weblog - this should specify the District Manager's chosen theme for the new round, and may optionally include a proclamation that any number of Rules will be repealed (excluding Rules 1-10), and/or that the words "Teamsperson", "District Manager" and "Dignity" will be replaced with new theme-appropriate terms. The new District Manager may also proclaim at the Ascension Address the veto of any Pending Proposals. The failure of said proposals shall incur no Dignity penalty for the proposer.

Upon posting this Address, and having made the Mission Statement changes, the Hiatus period ends and the new Dynasty commences.

Should an District Manager be made idle during their tenure, without having previously requested it, the Dynasty immediately ends with no hiatus. The entire Mission Statement (except rules 1-10 and the glossary) repeal themselves and the game continues in a meta-dynastic state until a new District Manager is elected in accordance with the Mission Statement.

Periods of meta-dynasty are defined as periods of play in which there is no District Manager, and are considered to be dynasties for the purposes of the Mission Statement, excluding Rule 9 in its entirety.

Document-pushing

Every Teamsperson has an Inbox and an Outbox (tracked in the GNDT), each of which may contain any number of Documents. A Document consists of one or more Pages, each of a specific colour, and in a specific order. A Document is represented in the GNDT by a string of letters, being the first letters of each of its Pages' colours, in sequence. (eg. a Document whose first Page was Red and whose second Page was White would be listed as "RW".)

Teamspersons may, in the course of their job, and at any time:-

  • Start a Project. This costs 10 Dignity. The Teamsperson may create a Document containing any number of Black and White Pages, and one other Page of their choice, and place it in their own Inbox.
  • Answer the Phone. This costs nothing, but each Teamsperson may only Answer the Phone once per day. The Teamsperson must post a GNDT comment containing either one or two occurrences of the string "Document:COLOUR"; a new Document is then added to their Inbox with the resultant colours, in the order that they were generated.
  • Delegate Work. This is free, and allows them to move a Document from their Inbox to another Teamsperson's Inbox, provided that that Teamsperson has a lower Dignity.
  • Actually Do Some Work. This costs 10 Dignity, and allows them to move a Document from their Inbox to their Outbox.
  • Claim Credit. This is free, and requires the movement of one Document from their Outbox to the Outbox of a Teamsperson whose Dignity is at least 20 higher than their own. A Teamsperson may claim 10 Dignity upon moving a Document in this way.
  • Pretend to Work. For 5 Dignity, a Teamsperson may reverse the order of colored pages in a Document in his or her Inbox (for example, a GOB Document would become BOG).
  • Flatter Someone. This Teamsperson (the Flatterer) must post a GNDT comment stating who is being Flatterered and transfer 10 Dignity to that Teamsperson (The Flattered), which must have a higher Dignity. The Flatterer is thus allowed to, during 48 hours counting immediately after this action is announced, act or be targeted by actions as if its Dignity were the same as the current Flattered Teamsperson's Dignity.
  • Discredit Flatterer. This costs 15 Dignity. This Flattered Teamsperson must post a GNDT comment stating which Flatterer is being discredited. The effects of the Flattery action immediately cease and the Flatterer looses 5 Dignity.

Any Document that arrives in the District Manager's Outbox is immediately and automatically shredded. If a Teamsperson has any Documents in their Inbox, they are not allowed to declare victory.

The effects of each Document vary depending on the colours of the stationary. If two colours have contradictory effects, the effect that comes first in the list of colours for that Document is considered to have precedence. The colours and their effects are as follows:

  • Yellow: Document needs to be referred up. May be Delegated to a Teamsperson with a higher Dignity, and cannot be Delegated downwards.
  • Magenta: Personal client contact. May never be Delegated.
  • Purple: Humiliating. Costs 20 Dignity to process under Actually Do Some Work.
  • Orange: Urgent! Whenever an Orange Document is Delegated, add another Orange page to the end of it. If a Document ever has three or more Orange pages, it may not be delegated. If an Orange page of a Document has been in circulation for more than 72 hours, then whoever had that Document when the 72 hours expired loses 50 Dignity. The Document is then destroyed.
  • Red: Open-ended. Automatically Generates more Documents when Delegated. The Delegating Teamsperson may Generate more work for Delegatee; Documents generated in this manner cost the Delegatee Dignity to produce, rather than the Delegator.
  • Silver: High-Profile. When Claiming Credit for a Silver Document, the claimer earns Dignity equal to 5+(5*X), where X is the number of Silver pages in the Document. Upon doing so, another Silver page is added to end of the Document.
  • Turquoise: Multi-facetted. Any Document with Turquoise as one of its multiple colours may be (but does not have to be) split into a number of Documents equal to the number of colours the original Document has, each carrying one of the original Document's colours. A Document with just Turquoise as its colour may be combined with any existing Document in the Teamsperson's Inbox, adding Turquoise to its colour combination. Any Document with only one colour may be added to any Document in the same Teamsperson's Inbox that has Turquoise as one of it's colours.
  • Green or Black: Routine and daily. Costs no Dignity to process under Actually Do Some Work, but gains no Dignity under Claim Credit.
  • White: No effect.

Gossip

At any time, any Teamsperson may create a new piece of gossip. They do this by messaging an admin with the piece of gossip, which must take the following format:

'Subject' 'flavour text' ('effect').

For example:

'Kevan is off his diet (lose 15 dignity)'.

or

'ChinDoGu comes to work with a hangover every morning (cannot recieve Silver Documents)'.

The effect may only apply to the subject of the gossip. The Subject must be an active, non-idle Teamsperson. The flavour text has no effect.

The Admin then adds this new gossip to the Gossip field of the GNDT and posts to that effect on the BlogNomic weblog. Admins may not apply their own gossip; they must get another admin to do it for them. No Admin has to add any Gossip they are approached with if they choose not to.

Any player may change their own Gossip field to any piece of current Gossip at any time. The piece of Gossip which has been selected by the most Teamspersons is set to the player Water Cooler's Gossip field. This must be changed whenever it ceases to be correct. The piece of gossip active in Water Cooler's Gossip field is known as the Active Gossip.

For each 24 hour period that the Active Gossip remains active, its Subject looses 5 Dignity. The stated effect of the Gossip also remains in effect, although this effect is only considered to occur once, at the end of the first 24 hour period. The proposer of the gossip also looses 2 Dignity during this period; however, this penalty may be ignored if the propser has generated some work during the same period of time.

The Subject of the Gossip may email the applying Admin at any time, trying to guess who proposed the gossip. Should they get this right, the Gossip is deleted and has no further effect, and the proposer of the gossip looses 20 Dignity. The Subject may only guess in this manner once per day.

Gossip is deleted from the field if seven days have passed without it having been the Active Gossip. There may not be more than one piece of currect Gossip about any Teamsperson. A value of '-' or no gossip in the Gossip column of the GNDT is considered Gossip for the purposes of deciding the Active Gossip (i.e. if more people have no gossip in their Gossip column than anything else, then '-' is the Active Gossip). The District Manager may delete any Gossip he chooses at any time, unless he himself is the Subject of that Gossip.

Copy Machine

At any time, for a cost of 5 Dignity, a Teamsperson may "use the copier" to create a duplicate of any Document in their inbox or outbox, which is then placed in the same box. Unfortunately, it's an old monochrome model, so the duplicates automatically have the colours Black and White, instead of the original colours. (Note: This does not remove the original Document, just makes a new one of Black and White.)

In addition, the copier may be used for "non-business purposes." Such a Document is labeled with a color of "NB," and automatically goes to the creating Teamsperson's outbox. Non-Business Documents may be moved to any other Teamspersons outbox at no cost, at anytime. A non-business Document costs 15 Dignity to create.

Glossary

This Rule is always at the end of the Mission Statement. 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 Judgment.

  • References to "a day" (as an entity rather than a duration, eg. "Sunday") refer to that day in the timezone to which the Teamsperson'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.
  • 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 check box shall represent a vote FOR, an X shall represent a vote AGAINST, an I shall represent a vote of DEFERENTIAL, and an Imperial Seal (currently ) shall represent the Imperial Veto.
  • 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.
  • "Posts" and "comments" refer only to those made to the BlogNomic weblog at blognomic.blogspot.com - votes cast within the LiveJournal? feed shall not be regarded as legal votes.
  • Blog entries can also be referred to as "memos" during this Dynasty. (This glossary entry shall remove itself at the end of the First Dynasty of Brendan.)