Core Rules

Ruleset and Gamestate

This is the Ruleset for BlogNomic; all Employees shall obey it.

It comprises four Sections: 1) the “core rules” of BlogNomic, covering the essential elements of gameplay; 2) the rules of the current Dynasty; 3) rules which apply in special cases; and 4) the appendix, which complements and clarifies the Ruleset.

The Ruleset and Gamestate can only be altered in manners specified by the Ruleset.

If the Ruleset does not properly reflect all legal changes that have been made to it, any Employee may update it to do so.

Employees

The process of applying for access to the BlogNomic blog is outlined in the FAQ. A human with access to the blog who is not already a Employee may make a blog post making clear their wish to be a Employee (plural form Employees); in response, an Admin shall add them to the roster in the sidebar, at which moment they become a Employee.

A Employee may only change their name as a result of a Proposal approving the change.

Some Employees are Admins, responsible for updating the site and the Ruleset, and are signified as such in the sidebar. Employees who wish to become Admins may sign up with a username for the Ruleset Wiki, and submit a Proposal to make themselves Admins. Existing Admins may be removed from their posts by Proposal, CfJ, or voluntary resignation.

Idle Employees

If a Employee is Idle, this is tracked by their name being removed or concealed in the list of currently active Employees in the Sidebar. For the purposes of all Gamestate and the Ruleset, excluding the core and appendix Rules “Ruleset and Gamestate”, “Employees”, “Dynasties”, “Fair Play”, "Mentors" and any of those Rules’ subrules, Idle Employees are not counted as Employees. The combined term “Idle Employee” can be used to refer to Employees who are Idle even in rules that do not treat them as Employees.

If a Proposal contains a provision that targets a specifically named Idle Employee, then that Idle Employee is considered to be Unidle solely for the purposes of enacting that specific provision.

When a Employee is unidled, if they went Idle in the same Dynasty, their personal gamestate retains the last legally endowed values it had, if they are still valid. Otherwise (including if a value is invalid, does not exist, or the Employee Idled in a different Dynasty), the Employee is given the default value for new Employees, if such a value exists.

An Admin may render a Employee Idle if that Employee has asked to become Idle in an entry or comment from the past 96 hours (4 Days), or if that Employee has not posted an entry or comment in the past 168 Hours (7 days). In the latter case, the Admin must announce the idling in a blog post. Admins may render themselves Idle at any time, but should announce it in a post or comment when they do so. An Admin may Unidle a Employee if that Employee is Idle and has asked to become Unidle in an entry or comment from the past 96 hours (4 Days), and Idle Admins may Unidle themselves at any time, unless the Employee who would be Unidled asked to become (or rendered themselves) Idle within the past 96 hours (4 days), and within the current Dynasty.

Admins who are unidling themselves should, in their first vote following each unidling, highlight their changed idle status and any changes to Quorum to have come about as a result of it.

Idle admins can resolve Votable Matters as if they were not idle.

Dynasties

BlogNomic is divided into a number of Dynasties. Each Dynasty may be headed by a single Employee, known as the CEO. If there is no CEO, the Dynasty is a Metadynasty.

An Interregnum is the period between dynasties, after a DoV has been enacted and before an Ascension Address has been posted. During an Interregnum the game is in hiatus; additionally, no DoVs may be made, and no Employee may achieve Victory. However, dynastic actions that are specifically permitted to be carried out during an Interregnum may be carried out.

Votable Matters

A Votable Matter is a post which Employees may cast Votes on, such as a Proposal, a Call for Judgement or a Declaration of Victory.

Votes

Each Employee may cast one Vote on a Votable Matter by making a comment to the Official Post that comprises that Votable Matter using a voting icon of FOR, AGAINST, or DEFERENTIAL. Additional voting icons may be permitted in some cases by other rules. A valid Vote is, except when otherwise specified, a Vote of FOR or AGAINST. A Employee’s Vote on a Votable Matter is the last valid voting icon that they have used in any comment on that Votable Matter. Additionally, if the author of a Votable Matter has not used a valid voting icon in a comment to the post, then the author’s Vote is FOR. A non-Employee never has a Vote, even if they were a Employee previously and had cast a valid Vote.

If a Employee other than the CEO casts a vote of DEFERENTIAL, then the Vote of DEFERENTIAL is an indication of confidence in the CEO. When the CEO has a valid Vote other than VETO on a Votable Matter, then all votes of DEFERENTIAL on that Votable Matter are instead considered to be valid and the same as the CEO’s Vote for the purposes of other rules unless otherwise specified.

A Votable Matter is Popular if any of the following are true:

It has a number of FOR Votes that exceed or equal Quorum.
It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours, it has more than 1 valid Vote cast on it, and more valid Votes cast on it are FOR than are AGAINST. Exception: Proposals which would change the text of a Core, Special Case or Appendix rule if enacted cannot be Popular on this basis.

A Votable Matter is Unpopular if any of the following are true:

The number of Employees who are not voting AGAINST it is less than Quorum.
It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and it is not Popular.

Enacting and Failing

Votable matters have a status, which can either be Pending, Enacted, Failed, or Illegal. When a votable matter is first put forward it is considered Pending (which is tracked as having no status in the current blog software), and it remains Pending until it is Resolved.

A votable matter is resolved by an admin setting its status through use of the “status” field in the blog post editing form. When an admin resolves a votable matter they should mark their name, and are highly encouraged to report the final tally of Votes (or the fact that it was withdrawn or vetoed). Comments cannot be made on resolved Votable Matters.

A votable matter may not be resolved except as directed by the ruleset, and the status of a resolved votable matter, once resolved, is determined by the votes cast upon it, as assessed by the rules that govern the specific kind of votable matter (as well as any other considerations regarding the legality of the votable matter, such as the stipulations put forward in the Appendix rule Official Posts). When a Failed proposal has been Vetoed it may optionally have the Vetoed status upon resolution, which is considered to be the same as Failed for the purposes of all other rules.

This rule cannot be overruled by any other rule in its application to Calls for Judgement or Declarations of Victory.

Proposals

Any Employee may submit a Proposal to change the Ruleset or Gamestate, by posting an entry in the “Proposal” category that describes those changes (unless the Employee already has 2 Proposals pending or has already made 3 Proposals that day).

Special Proposal Voting

When a Employee casts a vote AGAINST their own Proposal (which is not in the form of a DEFERENTIAL vote), this renders the Proposal Withdrawn, even if the author later changes their Vote. The CEO may use VETO as a voting icon to cast a Vote on a Proposal; when the CEO casts a vote of VETO on a Proposal, this renders the Proposal Vetoed, even if the CEO later changes their Vote.

Resolution of Proposals

The oldest Pending Proposal may be Enacted by any Admin if all of the following are true:

It is Popular.
It has been open for voting for at least 12 hours.
It has not been Vetoed or Withdrawn.

The oldest Pending Proposal may be Failed by any Admin, if any of the following are true:

It is Unpopular.
It has been Vetoed or Withdrawn.

If a Proposal somehow ends up being pending for more than 7 days, it is ignored for the purpose of calculating the oldest pending Proposal, and can be failed by any Admin.

When a Proposal is Enacted, its stated effects are immediately applied in full; the Admin Enacting it shall update the Gamestate and Ruleset, and correct any gamestate-tracking entities, as specified in the Proposal.

Calls for Judgement

If two or more Employees actively disagree as to the interpretation of the Ruleset, or if a Employee feels that an aspect of the game needs urgent attention, then any Employee may raise a Call for Judgement (abbreviated “CfJ”) by posting an entry in the “Call for Judgement” category.

A Pending CfJ may be Enacted by any Admin if all of the following are true:

It is Popular.

A Pending CfJ may be Failed by any Admin if any of the following are true:

It is Unpopular.
It specifies neither changes to the Gamestate or Ruleset nor corrections to any gamestate-tracking entities.

When a CfJ is Enacted, the Admin Enacting it shall update the Gamestate and Ruleset, and correct any gamestate-tracking entities, as specified in the CfJ.

This Rule may not be overruled by Dynastic Rules.

Victory and Ascension

If a Employee (other than the CEO) believes that they have achieved victory in the current Dynasty, they may make a Declaration of Victory (abbreviated “DoV”) detailing this, by posting an entry in the “Declaration of Victory” category.

Every Employee may cast Votes on that DoV to indicate agreement or disagreement with the proposition that the poster has achieved victory in the current Dynasty. If there is at least one pending DoV, BlogNomic is on Hiatus.

A Pending DoV may be Enacted by any Admin if any of the following are true:

It is Popular, it has been open for at least 12 hours, and either the CEO has Voted FOR it or it has no AGAINST Votes.
It is Popular, and it has been open for at least 24 hours.

A Pending DoV may be Failed by any Admin if any of the following are true:

It is Unpopular, and it has been open for at least 12 hours.

If a DoV is Failed and it had at least one AGAINST vote, the Employee who posted it cannot make another DoV until after 120 hours (5 days) have passed since the time their DoV was Failed.

When a DoV is Enacted, all other pending DoVs are Failed, the Employee who posted the DoV becomes CEO, and the game enters an Interregnum. When a DoV is enacted then all game actions that led up to it are considered to be upheld.

If the game is in an Interregnum then the new CEO must either Pass the Mantle (by making a post naming a Employee who was not the last dynasty’s CEO, in which case the passing Employee ceases to be the CEO and the Employee so named becomes the CEO) or start a new dynasty by completing the following Atomic Action:

Make an Ascension Address by posting an entry in the “Ascension Address” category. This should specify the CEO’s chosen theme for the new Dynasty, and it may optionally specify new dynasty-specific terms as outline in the rule "Synonyms", and/or list a number of dynastic rules to keep (if none are specifed then the entire Dynastic Ruleset is repealed).
Update the Ruleset to reflect any changed terms, and any dynastic rules which were not listed to be kept are repealed.

Once this Atomic Action has been completed the Interregnum ends and the new dynasty begins.

Fair Play

The following are BlogNomic’s rules of fair play. If any of these rules are found to have been broken, or if a Employee’s behaviour or actions are otherwise deemed unacceptable (socially or otherwise), a Proposal or CfJ may be made to reprimand or punish the perpetrator or, in cases of extreme or repeated violations, remove them from the game and bar them from rejoining. Employees should vote against any DoV that relies on having broken a fair play rule.

A single person should not control more than one non-Idle Employee within BlogNomic, and should announce publicly if they control both a non-Idle Employee and any Idle Employees. This extends to exerting full control over the actions of another Employee, defined here as the controlled Employee’s game behavior being functionally indistinguishable from if the controlling Employee was logged into their account and playing through it, over a period of more than a day.
A Employee should not “spam” the BlogNomic blog. What counts as spamming is subjective, but would typically include posting more than ten blog entries in a day, more than ten blog comments in a row, or posting a blog entry of more than 1000 words.
A Employee should not deliberately exploit bugs or unexpected behaviours in the software running the game (ExpressionEngine, MediaWiki or other blognomic.com scripts).
A Employee should not edit their own blog comments once posted, nor those of any other Employee.
A Employee should not edit the “Entry Date” field of a blog post.
A Employee should not make a DoV primarily to delay the game by putting it into Hiatus.
A Employee should not do any action meant to make the game unplayable (for example, changing multiple keywords to the same word in an Ascension Address).
A Employee should not roll dice that are clearly associated with a particular action in the Ruleset, but with the intention to not use these rolled values to the best of their ability to resolve that action. A Employee must use their own name in the Dice Roller, when rolling dice.
A Employee should not deliberately and unreasonably prolong the performance of a game action once they have started it.
A Employee should not use a Core, Special Case, or Appendix rules scam to directly or indirectly cause a Employee to achieve victory.
A Employee should not trade actions in BlogNomic for favors or compensation outside of BlogNomic, nor trade actions in any other game for favors within BlogNomic.

All Employee and idle Employees should be aware of the BlogNomic Community Guidelines. The contents of this page are not ruletext and are nonbinding as pertains to the ruleset, but Employees are encouraged to commit to upholding them to whatever extent is possible.

Dynastic Rules

Boring Box Company

The Boring Box Co., LLC is a corporation whose mission statement is as follows: to produce and provide high quality boxes to our clients.

Weekdays are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. A Weekday Action is a daily action which may only be performed on a Weekday. The first time a given Employee performs a Weekday action on a given day, each member of their Team receives an increase in Options according the Incentive Formula.

The Company Budget is a monetary value that is tracked on the Company Portal. Monetary values default to 0.00, and may be prefixed with $, £ or € interchangeably without altering their meaning. Monetary values may contain up to 2 decimal places and may not be negative. Any variable with the words “Value” or “Cost” in their name are Monetary Values.

A box is a kind of resource. A box has properties for material, size, and value. The Warehouse is a list of boxes and their properties.

Research Inspiration is an integer tracked on the Company Portal. It defaults to 0 and can only be changed as described in the subrule “Research and Development”.

The Materials Table is a list of Materials and their properties.

Each employee has an integer value called Productivity. Each time an Employee performs a Weekday Action, their productivity increases by 1.

Each employee has an integer value called Production, which defaults to 0.

Resetting is weekly communal action, which may be performed by any Employee or the CEO, and is atomic action which consists of first setting each Employee’s Production to their current Productivity, then setting each Employee’s Productivity to zero.

No Weekday Actions may be performed if the Resetting action has not been performed yet for the current week.

Teams

All Employees of Boring Box Co. should belong to a Team, which is either Research & Development (AKA RnD or R&D), Manufacturing (AKA Mfg), or Sales. As a Weekday Action, an Employee may Transfer to another Team by changing their Team to one whose members have a total combined Production equal to or lower than their current team. An Employee’s Team is publicly tracked.

Departments

Each Employee has a Department, which is their location in the Boring Box Co. facility. An Employee’s Department defaults to Reception. As a Weekday Action, an Employee may change their Department to any valid department. An Employee’s Department is publicly tracked. Departmental Actions are a special kind of Weekday Action—all Departmental actions count as a Weekday Action, but not all Weekday Actions are Departmental Actions.

The list of Departments is as follows:

Reception
Research Lab
Factory
Warehouse
Office

Research Lab

An Employee may only perform actions described in this subrule if they are in the Research Lab. Employees not on the RnD Team receive twice as much Productivity for Departmental Actions performed in the Research Lab.

As a Departmental Action, an Employee may research a new type of box material by performing the following atomic action:

Roll 1DICEN, where N is any positive integer smaller than or equal to the company budget. The result of this roll is the research cost.
Divide the result by 10 then add Research Inspiration to determine the value for the new material.
Choose a name for the new material (the name of a material is arbitrary and always flavor text).
Add the name/value pair to the materials table.
Decrease the company budget by the research cost.
Set Research Inspiration to 0.

As a Departmental Action, an Employee may study existing box materials by performing the following atomic action:

Roll NDICE(5N) where N is the number of materials already on the materials table, divided by 5, rounded down.
Increase Research Inspiration by the result of the highest roll.

Factory

An Employee may only perform actions described in this subrule if they are in the Factory. Employees not on the Manufacturing Team receive twice as much Productivity for Departmental Actions performed in the Factory.

As a Departmental Action, an Employee may produce a box by performing the following atomic action:

Choose any material from the materials table.
Choose any integer from 1 to 10 (inclusive) for the size of the box.
Multiply the material’s value by the box’s size to determine the box’s value.
Add the new box to the Warehouse.
Decrease the company budget by the value of the box.

As a weekday action, an Employee may perform Quality Testing by performing the following atomic action:

Choose one material in the Materials Table
Add to that material’s value [(1DICE2)*5]-5

On Strike

At any time, an Employee may set their Department to Reception and their Team to “On Strike”. All Employees whose Team is “On Strike” may be said to be Striking. A Striking Employee may not perform Departmental Actions, and any time their Options would be increased, they are instead unchanged. A Striking Employee may have a Demand, which is free text containing no wikimedia formatting, and which must specifically and solely demand that the CEO carry out a single action that they are permitted to carry out by the ruleset; and which defaults to blank.

An Employee may only perform a Picket action if they belong to the On Strike Team. As a Weekday Action, an Employee may Picket, which is an atomic action with the following steps:

Add or change their Demand
Decrease the company budget and increase the company debt by x%, where x is the number of Striking Employees

The CEO may freely Accede to a Demand, by carrying out an Action demanded of them by a Striking Employee (ensuring that that action is otherwise legally carried out) and then changing that Employee’s Team.

Office

An Employee may only perform actions described in this subrule if they are in the Office. Employees not on the Sales Team receive twice as much Productivity for Departmental Actions performed in the Office.

As a Departmental Action, an Employee may sell a box by performing the following atomic action:

Choose a box from the Warehouse.
Roll 1DICE3, specifying the chosen box in the roll comment. The result of this roll is the profit margin.
If the Orders list contains an entry matching the material and size of the box being sold, add 1 to the profit margin and remove that Order from the Orders list.
Remove the chosen box from the Warehouse.
Roll 1DICEN, where N is the value of the box value, rounded to the nearest integer. If the result of the aforementioned roll is 1, skip the next step if the Atomic Action and add the Box to the Returning Warehouse.
Increase the company budget by the box’s value multiplied by the profit margin.

The list of Orders is a publicly tracked list of material/size pairs. As a Departmental action, an Employee may randomly select a material from the materials table, randomly select an integer from 1-10 (inclusive) for the size, and add that pair to the list of Orders.

As a weekday action, an employee may advertise the company by performing the following atomic action:

Roll 1DICEX, where X is the company budget divided by 5. The result of this roll plus 100 is known as the advertisement’s Expense.
Roll 1DICEY, where Y is the company budget divided by 5. The result of this roll plus [20 times the number of boxes in the warehouse] is the advertisement’s Effectiveness.
If the advertisement’s Effectiveness is higher than it’s Expense, then the Employee who took the advertising action may immediately sell a box, then once again advertise, regardless of if those actions would otherwise be legal. This is known as a selling streak. Actions taken as part of a selling streak do not add productivity or options.
If the advertisement’s Expense is higher than its Effectiveness, then decrease the company budget by the Expense.

Job Titles

Each Employee has a hierarchal rank, which defaults to Intern and which is publicly tracked. The CEO has a Hierarchal Rank of CEO.

An Employee’s Job Title is discerned as follows: X Y, where X is the name of the Team to which they belong and Y is their hierarchal rank. If an Employee does not belong to any Team, then their Job Title is simply their Hierarchal Rank.

The CEO is always considered to have a Hierarchal Rank of CEO, which is more senior than every other rank.

The Boring Box Company organisation chart recognises the following hierarchal ranks, ordered from most senior to least senior:

7. Vice-President
6. Director
5. Manager
4. Executive
3. Team Leader
2. Administrator
1. Officer
0. Intern

An Employee’s Seniority may be determined by the number of the rank that Employee holds per the above list; for instance, the CEO has a Seniority of 8, and an Intern has a Seniority of 0.

Within each Team, an Employee may be said to be managing all Employees whose Seniority is exactly one or two less than their own, and may be said to be being managed by all Employees whose Seniority is exactly one or two greater than their own. For the purposes of this rule, the CEO belongs to all Team. Across all Team, all Employees of the same hierarchal rank can be referred to as a cohort, or as contemporaries.

An Employee may, as a weekly action, Promote one Employee who they manage by increasing their hierarchal rank by one step, provided that this does not result in the promoted Employee having a hierarchal rank that is contemporary or senior to than that of the Employee that is promoting them.

Whenever an Admin renders any Idle Employee Unidle, they must then immediately set that Employee’s hierarchal rank to Intern.

Promotions

A proposal is a Promotion Proposal if and only if it is Titled “Requesting Promotions” and the text of the proposal is “Requesting Promotions for XXX” where XXX is a list of the names of one or more employees, which may not include the CEO. When a Promotion Proposal is Enacted, the Hierarchal rank of each Employee included in its list is increased by 1. A proposal is a Demotion Proposal if and only if it is Titled “Requesting Demotions” and the text of the proposal is “Requesting Demotions for XXX” where XXX is a list of the names of one or more employees, which may not include the CEO. When a Demotion Proposal is Enacted, the Hierarchal rank of each Employee included in its list is decreased by 1, to a minimum of 0.

If an Employee does not share a Team with any Employee whose name is mentioned in a given Promotion Proposal or a given Demotion Proposal, then their vote on that Proposal is invalid. For the purpose of calculating the quorum for a Promotion Proposal or a Demotion Proposal, only the Employees whose votes would be valid are considered to be Employees.

Incentive Formula

The Incentive Formula for an Employee is as follows:

Whenever an Employee receives an increase in Options, the amount of Options they receive is equal to their Seniority, plus half the number of Employees they Manage, rounded down.

Equity

Each Employee has an integer number of Options and a nonnegative amount of Vested Value, both of which are publicly tracked.

If the Company is not In The Red, an Employee may increase their Vested Value by X, where X is the Company’s Equity multiplied by that Employee’s own Options; upon the completion of this action, that Employee’s amount of Options is set to 0.

Issues

The Returning Warehouse is a list of boxes and their properties. These are products with defects.

Debt

Company Debt is a publicly tracked monetary value which defaults to $0. Additionally, the Company Debt has a Updated date which is publicly tracked. If the Company Debt’s Updated date is the same as the current date, the debt is said to be up to date. Otherwise it is not up to date.

As Weekday action, if the debt is up to date, the CEO may increase the Company Debt and the Company Budget by $100 each.

At any time, if the debt is up to date, the CEO may reduce the Company Budget by a positive amount in order to reduce the Company Debt by the same amount.

If the debt is not up to date, any Employee or the CEO may increase the Company Debt by 1% of its current value and increase the Company Debt’s Updated date by one day.

The Company Equity is equal to the Company Budget minus the Company Debt. If the Company Equity is below zero the Company is In the Red (otherwise it is not in the red)

My Other Job's a Yacht

While an Employee’s number of Options is greater than 70-(10P), where P is their Productivity, they are considered Overworked, and may not perform Weekday actions.

Blackwork Construction Co

As a subsidiary of BBC, Blackwork Construction Co has it in mind to build the first of several futuristic facilities out of the Hyposolid material. As a Weekday Action, an Employee may spend 25,000 Vested Value to add to the Warehouse a box of material “Hyposolid”, size 5, and value $291.50. Upon doing so, they gain 5 Shares in BCC. Shares in BCC are a tracked numeric value for each Employee.

If at the start of a Day, 100 or more total Shares in BCC are owned by Employees, then the Company is in Escrow and remains in Escrow for the remainder of the day (otherwise the Company is not in Escrow). If the Company is in Escrow, Employees may not perform Weekday actions defined by this rule. If the Company is in Escrow, any Employee may complete Facility 2, by randomly selecting an Employee, using each Employee’s number of Shares in BCC as their weighted odds of being selected. Once Facility 2 has been completed, it may not be completed again, and the Employee thus selected has achieved Victory.

Do-Groups

Each Employee may transfer Options, Vested Value, or Shares in BCC to another Employee.

Alan

Alan is an NPC whose actions are controlled by the CEO. For the purposes of Dynastic Rules, Alan is considered an Employee.

Alan is the only member of a team called Logistics (which is distinct from all other teams) and may not transfer to another team. Any time Alan would receive an increase in Vested Value, that increase is instead applied to the Company Budget.

When Alan moves between departments, a faint buzzing and whirring sound can be heard. This has no effect on the ruleset or gamestate, but it is creepy.

Special Case

Special Case Rules can be Active or Inactive. If the title of a Special Case Rule includes "[X]", where X is either Active or Inactive, then its status is X. Otherwise, its status is its Default Status.

Special Case Rules have a Default Status, which can be Active or Inactive. If the title of a Special Case Rule includes "[Rare]", its Default Status is Inactive, otherwise, its Default Status is Active.

When a new Dynasty is started, the Ascension Address may list any number of existing Special Case Rules to be set to a status other than their respective Default Status. All other Special Case Rules are set to their respective Default Status.

The text of a Special Case Rule that is Inactive is flavour text.

Seasonal Downtime [Active]

On the 24th, 25th and 26th of December, BlogNomic is on Hiatus. In addition, game actions defined by the core rules titled “Employees” and “Victory and Ascension” (with the exception of Voting in DoVs) may not be taken.

Dormancy [Active]

If there are fewer than five Employees, BlogNomic is on Hiatus.

Imperial Deferentials [Active]

If the CEO has voted DEFERENTIAL on a Proposal, that vote is instead considered to be valid and either FOR (if more Employees have a valid FOR vote on that Proposal than have a valid AGAINST vote on it) or AGAINST (in all other cases). However, in either case, votes of DEFERENTIAL made by other Employees on the same Proposal are not considered to be valid.

Dynastic Distance [Active]

For the purposes of dynastic rules which do not deal with voting, the CEO is not a Employee.

Malign Emperors [Inactive] [Rare]

The CEO may be recipient of the Mantle, as if they were a Employee, during an Interregnum, as per the rule Victory and Ascension. The CEO may not cast a vote of VETO on any Proposal whose effect is limited to the dynastic rules or gamestate; any such vote is disregarded for the purposes of proposal resolution.

Dynastic Tracking [Active]

The gamestate tracking page for this dynasty is the Company Portal page of the wiki. Unless otherwise stated, all publicly tracked gamestate information is tracked on it. An CEO may change the wiki page referred to in this rule to a different page as part of their Ascension Address, provided that page did not exist at the time the Ascension Address was posted and does not begin with the word “Ruleset”.

No Collaboration [Inactive] [Rare]

If “Dynastic Distance” is also active, the CEO is not considered a Employee for the purposes of this rule.

Employees may not privately communicate with each other about dynastic gameplay or votable matters that affect the dynastic ruleset or gamestate. Private communications are considered to be anything that any other Employee could not reasonably be privy to, perceive, or understand. Discussion conducted in plain English on the BlogNomic wiki and blog, and Discord channels, are not considered to be private communication. Idle Employees (or people who are not yet Employees) also face the same restrictions if they intend to become an active Employee during the course of the dynasty. The use of creative strategies to circumvent this rule may be considered to be a scam for the purposes of determining whether an infraction of Fair Play has taken place.

A mentor and mentee may still privately converse with each other, but should keep their conversations away from discussing specific gameplay strategy.

If information which was not allowed to be discussed is still privately discussed, the Employees who were part of the conversation should make a post to the blog disclosing what information was discussed as their earliest convenience.

Mantle Limitations [Inactive] [Rare]

The mantle may not be passed. (Players should also not make deals based on being made Emperor of the next dynasty by other means than achieving victory or being passed the mantle.)

Alliances [Inactive] [Rare]

Each Employee may have an Alliance, which is publicly tracked, and consists of the distinct names of no more than two other Employees; a Employee’s Alliance defaults to an empty set. A Employee may change their Alliance as a daily action.

If "Mantle Limitations" is also active, and if a Employee has achieved victory in this dynasty, has posted a Declaration of Victory which has been enacted, and did not change their Alliance for at least the 48 hours immediately prior to the posting time of their Declaration of Victory: then that Employee may pass the Mantle to a Employee who was named in their Alliance at the posting time of their Declaration of Victory.

If “No Collaboration” is active, it does not apply to communications between players who each have the other’s names in their Alliance, nor does the prohibition on deals in “Mantle Limitations” (if it is active) apply to players who have each other’s names in their Alliance.

Event Types [Active]

An Event is an official post that meets a type definition in the dynastic rules, if and only if that type definition is specified as defining a type of Event; the type definition must include the following:

A type name, such as “Auction” or “Quest”. A post with the Event type’s name as a tag is an Event of that type, provided it was (legally) posted while the type had a complete definition.
A Response Format, the format by which a comment on that type of Event is classified as a Response for that Event. While other comments are allowed on an Event, only those comments which conform to its type’s Response Format are officially considered Responses. Whether or not a comment is currently considered a Response may change according to circumstances, but comments submitted on an Event while it is Ended can never be considered Responses.

An Event type definition may also optionally stipulate:

Creation Condition(s). Unless they are met, an Event of that type may not be posted. They may include a format for the body of the post.
Ending Condition(s). Unless they are met, an Open Event of that type may not be Ended.
Ending Action(s). A Employee must do these when they End an Open Event of that type.

An Event is either Open or Ended, defaulting to Open. Except as otherwise specified, any Employee may post or may End an Event. To End an Event is to make it Ended by submitting a comment on that post saying it is Ended or is being Ended, and then immediately taking its Ending Action(s), if any. Once an Event has been Ended, it may not become Open again, nor may any player End it again.

Appendix

Keywords

A keyword defined by a rule supersedes the normal English usage of the word. A keyword defined in this glossary supersedes that defined by a rule. (e.g. A rule specifying “bananas are blue” cannot be overruled by posting a dictionary definition or a photo of a banana, and a rule specifying “every day is Sunday” will be overruled by the glossary entry below.)

Imperatives

Can: “is able to”
Shall: “is required to”
Should: “is recommended that”

Time

Daily Action: If a game action is a Daily Action, each Employee able to perform it may take that action once each day, but not more than once every ten hours.
Daily Communal Action: A Daily Communal Action is a Daily Action that can only be performed by one Employee per day.
Day: References to a “day” as an entity rather than as a duration (e.g. “Sunday”, “The day after performing this action”, or “August 2nd”), unless otherwise stated, refer to a day beginning at and including 00:00:00 UTC, ending when the next day begins. It can never be 2 different days at the same instant.
Week: References to a week as an entity rather than as a duration (e.g. “At the beginning of each week”, or “already happened this week”), unless otherwise stated, refer to a period of time between the beginning of a Monday and the end of the following Sunday.
Weekly Action: If a game action is a Weekly Action, each Employee able to perform it may take that action once each week, but not more than once every twenty-four hours.
Weekly Communal Action: A Weekly Communal action is a Weekly Action that can only be performed by one Employee per week.

Other

Comment: A blog comment published to the BlogNomic weblog at blognomic.com
Core Proposal: A Proposal which mandates changes that, even if conditionally, are limited to the creation, deletion, and/or amendment of core rules and/or the glossary, and/or renaming, banning, and/or the granting or removing of Admin status from one or more Employees.
Dice: References to “DICEX” or “YDICEX” refer to X-sided dice and Y amount of X-sided dice, rolled using the Dice Roller.
Dynastic Action: An action that is defined in the Dynastic rules.
Dynastic Proposal: A Proposal which mandates changes that, even if conditionally, are limited to the creation, deletion, and/or amendment of dynastic rules and/or gamestate defined by dynastic rules.
Effective Vote Comment (EVC): A Employee’s Effective Vote Comment with respect to a given Votable Matter is that Employee’s Comment to that Votable Matter, if any, that contains that Employee’s Vote on that Votable Matter.
Commentary: When posting a blog entry, a Employee may use the “Commentary or flavour text” field of the blog publishing form to add their own comments or description of their post. For the purposes of all other rules, such text is not considered to be part of the post.
Discord: The BlogNomic Discord can be accessed at https://discord.gg/J7kP9KuHQK and is also linked to on the sidebar. Employees, as well as people who are not Employees but are interested in learning more about BlogNomic, may join the Discord by clicking the button in the sidebar.
Discord Channel: A Discord Channel is any channel on the BlogNomic Discord in the BlogNomic Discussion category. All Employees who are in the Discord should have the ability to access all of these channels. To reference a Discord Channel, use a hash (#) followed by the name of that channel (e.g. #random).
Flavour Text: If a part of the ruleset or gamestate is defined as being “flavour text”, it retains its context, but is not considered to have any meaning beyond being a string of characters. Employees are not required to obey flavour text and may not perform any action defined by it, and any statements that flavour text makes about gamestate are ignored.
Gamestate: Any information which the Ruleset regulates the alteration of. All wiki pages that the Dynastic Rules explicitly mention (except for dynastic histories and discussion pages) and any images or Templates contained within those Wiki Pages are assumed to be Gamestate.
Hiatus: If BlogNomic is on Hiatus, Dynastic Actions may not be taken (except where the rule defining the action explicitly requires it to be taken during Hiatus), and Proposals may not be submitted or Resolved. If multiple rules require BlogNomic to be on Hiatus at any given time, BlogNomic will continue to be on Hiatus until no rules require it.
Post: A blog post published to the BlogNomic weblog at blognomic.com
Private Message: A message sent via BlogNomic’s Private Messages system at blognomic.com.
Quorum: Quorum of a subset of Employees is half the number of Employees in that subset, rounded down, plus one. If the word Quorum is used without qualifying which subset of Employees it is referring to, it is referring to a Quorum of all Employees.
Resolve/Resolution: If used in a context of a Votable Matter, the word “Resolve” means to perform the act, as an Admin, of enacting, failing, or marking illegal a Votable Matter. The world “Resolution” means then the act of doing so. If used in any other context, the meaning of both “Resolve” and “Resolution” is the standard English meaning of these words. The resolution of a votable matter is tracked by reference to its status in the blog post edit form. If otherwise legally applied, the application of any status through the blog post editing form is sufficient to consider that votable matter to have been correctly resolved, but a resolved votable matter should have the correct status wherever possible; if any admin believes that a resolved votable matter has an incorrect status then they may correct it.
Rule: Each individually numbered and titled block of text (using the wikimedia section heading formatting) of the Ruleset is a rule, including rules that are subrules of other rules; with the exception that the top-level headings defined as ‘sections’ in the rule “Ruleset and Gamestate” are considered sections but not rules themselves.
Story Post: A Story Post is an entry in the “Story Post” category.
Subject: The “subject” of a blog entry is the part of the Title of an entry which is after the first colon. If the Title does not contain a colon, then the whole Title is the subject. Any entry whose subject is “” (i.e. an empty string) is not valid.
Subrule: A subrule is a type of rule that is nested within another rule. A Proposal that specifically affects a rule affects all of its subrules; a Proposal that specifically affects a subrule does not affect its parent rule or any other subrule of that rule, unless they are also explicitly cited as being affected by that Proposal.
Table of Contents: The directory of section headings that is generated by the MediaWiki software for most pages in the wiki.
Uphold: To Uphold an illegal action is to retroactively declare the attempt to take it to have been successful, and to declare that all attempted game actions taken after it were attempted as if the Upheld action had been successful.
Vote: The word “Vote”, used as a noun, means a Vote that is cast in accordance with Rule “Votable Matters”. The word “Vote”, used as a verb, means the act of casting such a Vote.
Voting Icons: For use in voting, a check box http://blognomic.com/images/vote/for.gif shall represent a Vote FOR, an X http://blognomic.com/images/vote/against.gif shall represent a Vote AGAINST, a DEF http://blognomic.com/images/vote/imperial.gif shall represent a Vote of DEFERENTIAL, and a crossed-out circle http://blognomic.com/images/vote/seal.gif shall represent a vote to VETO.
Wiki: The BlogNomic Wiki at http://wiki.blognomic.com

Gamestate Tracking

Official Posts

Votable Matters and other official posts, as well as specific gamestate information, shall be tracked by the BlogNomic blog at http://blognomic.com. Any Employee may post to the blog at any time, but may only make official posts to the blog when the Ruleset allows it. Posts following the format specified by a rule are considered official posts. Any single official post cannot be of two different types of official post unless a rule explicitly states otherwise. Dynastic rules cannot define posts in the “Call for Judgement” category to be a type of official post other than a Call for Judgement, and this restriction cannot be overridden by dynastic rules.

An official post may only be removed as allowed by the Ruleset. An official post may be altered by its author if it is less than 4 hours old and either no Employee has commented on it or (if it is a Votable Matter) if all comments on it contain no voting icons; otherwise this can only be done as allowed by the Ruleset. However, despite this, official posts can never be changed from one category to another, or changed to be a different sort of official post, if they have been posted for more than fifteen minutes. The Admin processing an official post is allowed to append to the post to reflect its new status. Anything appended to a post in this way must be placed in the Admin field of the post, and the post’s Status must be changed to reflect its status. An official blog post that has the status of Enacted or Failed cannot change categories, except that a votable matter’s illegal resolution may be overturned. An official blog post’s status may never be altered except in accordance with the rules that define that official post.

A non-official post may not, through editing of the blog or otherwise, be changed into an official post, with the following two exceptions: Firstly, whilst a non-official post has been posted for less than fifteen minutes and has no comments, the author may change the categories as they wish. Secondly, if a post by a New Employee is not in any category but follows the wording of a Proposal, in that it has written changes the gamestate and or Ruleset, and if it has been posted for less than six hours, then any Admin may change it to be in the Proposal category. A New Employee is defined as a Employee who has been a Employee for fewer than seven days or a Employee that has unidled in the past seven days after being idle for at least 3 months.

Any post that is or is made illegal as a result of an infraction against any of the prohibitions set out in this rule, except for a votable matter’s illegal resolution that has been overturned, continues to be an Official Post but may no longer have any effect on the ruleset or the gamestate. If it is a Votable Matter then it is Unpopular, regardless of any other performance against criteria set out in the core rules. When it is resolved it may be marked as Illegal by the resolving admin. A post that is illegal in this manner cannot subsequently be made legal by any means, except for the legal enactment of a CFJ. An illegal CFJ cannot cause itself to become legal.

Representations of the Gamestate

For gamestate which is tracked in a specific place (such as a wiki page), any alteration of that gamestate as a result of a Employee’s action is (and can only be) applied by editing that data in that place. One wiki update may contain one or more alterations, or one alteration may be split over multiple updates, as long as it is clear what is happening and the alterations are otherwise legal. The wiki merely represents the Gamestate tracked there, and is not the same thing. In the event that the Gamestate and its representations are different, any Employee may correct the representations to comply with the Gamestate.

If a Employee feels that a representation of the gamestate (such as a wiki page) does not match the gamestate, they may either:

Undo the effects of any alteration that led to it, if that alteration did not follow the rules at the time it was made.
Alter the representation to match what they believe to be the correct application of an incorrectly-applied alteration. This may include completing incomplete actions on behalf of the original Employee, if doing so would not require the correcting Employee to make any decisions on behalf of the original Employee.

Instead of repeatedly reverting and re-reverting a disputed alteration, however, Employees are encouraged to raise a Call for Judgement.

The historical fact of the occurrence of a defined game action is itself considered to be gamestate, tracked in the history of whatever resource is used to track the gamestate modified by that action, where possible, or in the wiki page Gamestate Modifications if this is not possible.

Orphan Variables

An Orphan Variable is a dynastic gamestate variable which has neither a location in which it’s tracked, nor a reasonable manner in which it can be determined from other gamestate variables, specified in the Ruleset.

A Employee may not take any dynastic actions that are contingent on the specific value of an Orphan Variable.

Random Generators

The Dice Roller at https://blognomic.com/dice/roll.php can be used to generate random results.

The DICEN command can be used to generate a random number between 1 and N.
The FRUIT command will return a random result from the following options: Lemon, Orange, Kiwi, Grape, Cherry, Tangelo.
The COLOUR (or COLOR) command will return a random result from the following: White, Red, Green, Silver, Yellow, Turquoise, Magenta, Orange, Purple, Black.
The CARD command will return a card with a random suit (either Hearts, Diamonds, Spades or Clubs) and a random value (either Ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King). A card with a value that is either Jack, Queen or King is a face card.
A list of comma-separated values in curly brackets (eg {x,y}) will return one of the values at random.

Any changes to the potential outcomes of the Dice Roller’s random result commands must be made by Votable Matter.

If a Votable Matter proposes a change to this rule that would require server-level access to the BlogNomic site to fully enact its effects, that Votable Matter must name a Employee with such access. Only a Employee with such access may Enact that Votable Matter. If that Votable Matter does not name a Employee with such access, that Votable Matter is Illegal.

If a number or other game variable is selected “at random” or “randomly” from a range of possible values, its value shall always be taken from a uniform probability distribution over the entire range of possible values, unless otherwise specified. This value must be determined by an appropriate roll in the Dice Roller, unless otherwise specified, and which value the roll result corresponds to must be reasonably inferable from the nature of the roll and any comments supplied by the Employee making the roll before or while making the roll. If a selection is explicitly specified as being “secretly” random, the Employee making this determination may do so using a private method of their choosing, instead of the Dice Roller.

Cross-Nomic Relationships

The player (or idle player) named Kevan is BlogNomic’s PodNomic Correspondent. Any player may ask the CEO to become BlogNomic’s PodNomic Correspondent; if they wish, the CEO then may, at their own discretion, change the name of the player in the first sentence of this bullet point to be that of the requestor.

Atomic Actions

An Atomic Action combines otherwise separate game actions into a single action.

All steps of an Atomic Action are considered one action, including the steps of an Atomic Action that is itself a step of a parent Atomic Action.
When a Employee performs an Atomic Action, they must complete all its steps; they must complete them in order; and they may not take any other dynastic action, or achieve victory, until all the steps are complete.
If a rule allows the Employee performing an Atomic Action to skip some of its steps, the skipped steps are considered to have been completed.
If a Employee arrives at a step in an Atomic Action and they cannot perform that step, they undo all the steps they have performed of that Action and are considered never to have performed that Action.
If one or more steps of an Atomic Action were done incorrectly, the Employee must redo the Atomic Action; for that purpose, the Employee uses any legal steps that have already been completed in the illegal Atomic Action and only redoes the illegal ones. (For example, if an Atomic Action consists of rolling a dice and then doing steps based upon its result, the Employee would have to reroll the dice only if they rolled the wrong one in the first place, and would then have to repeat any steps that depended upon the result of that dice; however, if they rolled the dice correctly but took an illegal step later on, the result of the original dice roll would still be used in the redone step.)
For the purposes of determining the ordering or legality of game actions, the time of an Atomic Action shall be the time that it is completed. For Atomic Actions that are redone, the time of completion is the last redone step.

Clarifications

Numbers and Variables

If a set of valid values is not specified in their definition, game variables defined to hold numeric values can hold only non-negative integers. Any action that would set those values below zero is an illegal action unless explicitly otherwise stated in the Ruleset.
Any situation which would require a roll of DiceX when X is zero or lower always yields a value of 0 unless stated otherwise.
All numbers, unless stated otherwise by a rule, are in base ten.
Unless otherwise specified, to “spend,” “pay” or “lose” an amount X of a numeric value “V” means to subtract X from V; to “gain” X of a numeric value “V” means to add X to V; and to “transfer” or “pay” X of a numeric value “V” from A to B means to subtract X from A’s V and add X to B’s V. Unless otherwise specified, only positive amounts can be spent, paid, lost, gained, or transferred, a Employee can spend or pay from only their own values, and a rule that allows Employees to transfer or pay a numeric value to another Employee only allows them to transfer that value from themselves to that other Employee (of their choice unless otherwise stated).
If a Dynastic Action is defined as having a cost X of numeric value V, or defines a requirement to spend, pay, or lose X of numeric value V to accomplish an effect or multiple effects, then the arithmetic effects of spending or payment and the act of carrying out those effects are considered to be subsequent steps in an Atomic Action, with the spending or payment step taking place before the effects step unless stated otherwise.
A Employee who has a choice in whether to take an action defined by a dynastic rule may not take that action if both of the following conditions are true: a) the action’s effects are limited to changing values tracked in gamestate-tracking entities (such as a wiki page), and b) the action would change one or more of those values to an illegal value.
If a rule implies that the result of any calculation should be an integer (for instance, by attempting to store that result in, or add it to, a gamestate variable that can only hold integers), the result of the calculation is instead the result rounded towards 0.
If a game variable has a default value but no defined starting value, then its default value should also be considered a starting value. If a game variable has neither a default value nor a starting value, then both may be considered to be the nearest legal value to zero that it may take (for numerical variables, defaulting to positive if tied), blank (for a text string or list that may be blank), the alphabetically earliest legal text string it may take (for a text string which may not be blank, with the digits 0 through 9 considered to precede “A”), or the list which is alphabetically earliest from the set of lists with the fewest elements (for lists which may not be blank, and considering each list to be a single unpunctuated text string, with the digits 0 through 9 considered to precede “A”).
If the rules that define a game variable are amended, and some previously valid values become invalid as a consequence, any existing variables whose current values would become invalid are instead set to their starting value.
Invalid values for game variables can never be used, even if the values stored in a gamestate-tracking entity remain valid. (for example, if X appears in a formula referring to a value that is a non-negative integer, X must be used as a non-negative integer)
DICEN cannot be rolled in the Dice Roller if N is greater than one million.
If a piece of information is described as being tracked secretly or privately by the CEO (including secretly random selections), then that information may only be revealed by the CEO when the ruleset allows it. If a Employee should already know such a piece of information (in that the CEO has already told them it, or vice versa, and there is no way that the information could have been changed since then), the CEO may repeat it to them.

Rules and Votable Matters

If a new rule is created by a Votable Matter and its location is not noted in that Votable Matter, that new rule is to be placed in the Dynastic Rules.
If a wiki page becomes gamestate as a result of a Votable Matter enacting, that page shall – unless otherwise specified – be reverted to whatever state it was in at the time of that Votable Matter’s submission (and if the page did not exist at that time, it shall be blanked).
Where a Votable Matter would amend the effects of Votable Matter Enactment, this does not apply to its own enactment unless explicitly stated (e.g. a Votable Matter proposing that enacted Votable Matters earn their author a banana when enacted would not earn a banana for its own author, when enacted).
Rules which trigger upon the Resolution of a Votable Matter are the responsibility of the Admin who Resolves it.
Unless otherwise specified, a new Dynastic rule shall be placed at the end of the Dynastic Rules.
If the Admin enacting a Votable Matter reaches a step which cannot be applied immediately (e.g. “two days after this Votable Matter enacts, Employee A gains 1 point”), that step is ignored for the purposes of enactment. Once a Votable Matter has been enacted, it can have no further direct effect on the gamestate.
If a dynastic rule has no text and no subrules, any Employee may delete it from the ruleset.
A rule may be accompanied by one or more illustrations, and an illustration may have a caption. In all situations, unless otherwise explicitly stated, an illustration and a caption to an illustration must be treated as flavour text.

Time

For the purpose of all rules, time in BlogNomic is in UTC.
All references to time must be either specific or defined within the Ruleset to be considered achievable in the gamestate. Abstract concepts of time (e.g. “dinnertime”, “twilight”) cannot be achieved until they fulfil one of these criteria.
Where the month, day and/or year of a calendar date are ambiguous (e.g. “04/10/09”), it shall be assumed that the date is in a day/month/year format.
A Employee may not take more than one dynastic game action at the same time (excluding any actions which have been ongoing for more than three hours).

Spelling and formatting

Superficial differences between the spelling of geographic versions of English, e.g. British English, American English and Australian English shall be construed as irrelevant for the purposes of play.
Employees may correct obvious spelling and typographical mistakes in the Ruleset and their own Pending Votable Matters at any time, including replacing Spivak and gender-specific pronouns with the singular “they”.
A Employee may reformat a list of items in the dynastic ruleset to have bullet points or other appropriate list markup, if doing so would not change the order of that list, nor how any rules interpreted its content.

Names

Within the Ruleset, a word only refers to the name of a Employee if it is explicitly stated that it refers to a Employee’s name.
If a rule would ever have no name, it is instead given the name of the Votable Matter that created it, or (if this is not possible) the name “Unnamed Rule”.
The names of rules and wiki pages (other than the Ruleset) are flavour text.
Subrules can be referred to by a name which incorporates name of the rule they are a subrule of. Example: a subrule of the rule “Gin” is a “Gin Rule”, however the rule “Gin” is not a “Gin Rule” because it’s not a subrule of the rule “Gin”.
When referring to a Votable Matter, the name used in reference to a specific Votable Matter may be simplified by not including braces and any text between the opening and closing braces. i.e. a Votable Matter named “Changes [Core]” could instead be referred to by the name “Changes”.
When referring to a Rule, the name used in reference to a specific Rule may be simplified by not including braces and any text between a pair of opening and closing braces, as long as such a reference would be unambiguous.
Where a Votable Matter refers to a second Votable Matter by name, it is assumed to refer to the most recently posted Votable Matter of that name which pre-dates the first Votable Matter.
When changing their name or joining the game for the first time, a Employee’s (or prospective Employee’s) new name must be between 4 and 30 characters in length, and may only include the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, numbers, underscores, hyphens, full stops and apostrophes.

Prioritisation

If two parts of the Ruleset contradict each other, precedence shall be construed in the following order:

The Appendix has precedence over any other Rule;
If a Core Rule explicitly says it cannot be overruled by a Dynastic Rule, that Core Rule has precedence over a Dynastic Rule, otherwise a Dynastic Rule has precedence over that Core Rule;
If a Special Case Rule explicitly says that it cannot be overruled by a Dynastic Rule, that Special Case Rule has precedence over a Dynastic Rule, otherwise a Dynastic Rule has equal precedence as that Special Case Rule;
If two contradicting parts have equal precedence, the part with more limited scope applies (e.g. if the rules “Employees may Kick each other” and “Employees may not Kick each other on Tuesdays” exist, and it is Tuesday, Employees may not Kick each other);
If two contradicting parts have the same scope, or have scopes that only overlap where they contradict each other, the negative rule applies (e.g. with “Employees may Punch a Spaceman on Friday” and “Employees may not Punch Spacemen on Friday”, then Employees may not Punch Spacemen on Friday).

Mentors

A Employee may have another Employee as a Mentor. Employees who are willing to act as a Mentor are listed on the Mentorships wiki page, and are said to be “Tenured”. An Admin may add or remove their own name, or the name of a Employee who has requested a change on their own behalf, from this list at any time.

If an unmentored Employee requests a Mentor, or a new Employee has joined the game and has no Mentor, the CEO should select a Tenured Employee and ask them to take that Employee on as a Mentee; if they accept, then such a Mentorship is established. The members and starting dates of all active Mentorships are tracked on the Mentorships wiki page, and whenever a new Mentorship is established, the CEO should announce it in a blog post. The CEO should take care to consider game balance when selecting a potential mentor.

A relationship between a mentor and a mentee is a Mentorship. A Employee may dissolve a Mentorship they are part of at any time, by announcing this in a blog post.

If there is no CEO, any Employee who has been active in at least three previous dynasties may act as CEO for the purposes of this rule.

Things that a mentor must do

A mentor must do the following:

Make pro-active contact with their mentee when appointed, and explain the dynamics of the Mentorship system;
Be available to answer any questions that their mentee may have about the game, including explaining the rules, common standards and etiquette of play, proofreading posts and clarifying game events;
Introduce their mentee to the various platforms of the game, including the wiki, Discord, and end-of-dynasty notifications through the Facebook group or Twitter;
If possible, give their mentee a nudge if it appears that they are at risk of becoming Idle;
If they themselves go idle, communicate with their mentee to either continue to support them as an idle Employee or arrange a handover to another mentor if requested.

Things that a mentor should do

The following sets out suggested best practice for Mentorship relationships:

The Mentorship lasts for four weeks or until the next Ascension Address, whichever occurs latest. It can continue informally for longer but after this threshold the mentor is no longer bound by any of the conditions set out in the parent rule to this rule, or any of its subrules.
The mentor can and should advise the mentee on how to proceed in the mentee’s own best interests. This can include making connections with other Employees.
The mentor should consider copying the mentee in on private, game-related communications, where it does not unfairly prejudice their own interests. The mentee should keep this information private without explicit consent from the mentor.
The mentor and mentee may work together to achieve victory. If a mentor achieves victory with support of their mentee then they should, if the mentee wishes it, pass the baton to the mentee.

Things that a mentor should not do

The following sets out a list of things that a mentor should not do in their relationship with their mentee. All of these are considered to be Fair Play rules, as per the rule Fair Play.

The mentor should not sock-puppet, bully, coerce or otherwise manipulate the mentee into performing any game actions.
The mentor should not seek to dissuade the mentee from pursuing other alliances.
A former mentor should not seek to use the fact of a prior Mentorship to influence the former mentee on an ongoing basis.

Synonyms

A dynasty may provide extra theming by using alternative terms for words like “Employee” and “CEO”.

Each term in this list is synonymous with the term in parentheses

Employee (Player)
CEO (Emperor)

When a new Dynasty is started, the Ascension Address may specify new terms for each entry in the above list, provided the newly chosen term does not appear anywhere in the ruleset outside of this rule (though if it only appears in rules which are being removed as part of the Ascension Address, it is fine), and that doing so would not cause two terms in the above list to become synonymous with each other. Doing so causes the old corresponding value (including regional spelling variations) to be replaced by the new value everywhere in the ruleset except in any of the parentheses in the above list.

Ruleset 198

Contents

Core Rules

Ruleset and Gamestate

Employees

Idle Employees

Dynasties

Votable Matters

Votes

Enacting and Failing

Tags

Proposals

Special Proposal Voting

Resolution of Proposals

Calls for Judgement

Victory and Ascension

Fair Play

Dynastic Rules

Boring Box Company

Teams

Departments

Research Lab

Factory

On Strike

Office

Job Titles

Promotions

Incentive Formula

Equity

Issues

Debt

My Other Job's a Yacht

Blackwork Construction Co

Do-Groups

Alan

Special Case

Seasonal Downtime [Active]

Dormancy [Active]

Imperial Deferentials [Active]

Dynastic Distance [Active]

Malign Emperors [Inactive] [Rare]

Dynastic Tracking [Active]

No Collaboration [Inactive] [Rare]

Mantle Limitations [Inactive] [Rare]

Alliances [Inactive] [Rare]

Event Types [Active]

Appendix

Keywords

Imperatives

Time

Other

Gamestate Tracking

Official Posts

Representations of the Gamestate

Orphan Variables

Random Generators

Cross-Nomic Relationships

Atomic Actions

Clarifications

Numbers and Variables

Rules and Votable Matters

Time

Spelling and formatting

Names

Prioritisation

Mentors

Things that a mentor must do

Things that a mentor should do

Things that a mentor should not do

Synonyms

Navigation menu

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