Ruleset 20

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Archivist's note: This is not the final ruleset, being a snapshot taken on the 8th November 2004.

Ruleset and Gamestate

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

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

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

Lords

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 Lord 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 Lord from the moment that they first appear on the roster in the sidebar.

A Lord 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 Lords are Admin Staff, responsible for updating the site and the Ruleset, and are signified as such in the sidebar. Lords who wish to become Admin should sign up with a username for the Ruleset 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 Lords are idle, and should be marked as such in the sidebar. For the purposes of rules other than 1 and 2, idle Lords are not counted as Lords. Admin may render a Lord idle if that Lord has failed to vote for more than a week, or if it has asked to become idle. Admins may un-idle a Lord at their request - the Lord's personal gamestate retains the values it had immediately prior to their idling.

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

Confidence

Each Lord has an amount of Confidence, which may vary during the course of the game. Confidence may not fall below 0 or rise above 200. Any effect which would take Confidence 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 Confidence for setting up new Lords. Within 24 hours of joining the game, and only once, a Lord may nominate a single (other) Lord as being responsible for their joining - the nominated Lord gains 20 Confidence, and the new Lord gains 10 as a reward for nominating.

Confidence is normalized at the beginning of each new dynasty. If a Lord's Confidence was higher than 125 before the Ascension of the new High Lord, 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 Lords begin the game with 100 Confidence.

If at any time a fractional value would occur for Confidence that value is rounded down to the nearest whole number.

Proposals

Any Lord may propose a change to the Ruleset or gamestate by posting an entry with the subject "Proposal : [Title]" (where [Title] is a title of their choosing), and describes the changes they wish to be made.

(A Lord 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. For the purpose of this rule, 1 non-Trivial Proposal is worth 2 Trivial ones. The legal maximum is, therefore, 2 non-Trivials, 4 Trivials, or 1 non-Trivial and 2 Trivials.

Voting

Any Lord 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 Lord on a single Proposal, only the most recent of those Votes is counted. If a Lord 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 High Lord. The vote will count as the same as the High Lord's vote. The High Lord cannot cast a vote of DEFERENTIAL. If there is no High Lord, 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 Lord 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 Lords, 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 Ruleset 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 Lords have voted on it and it still cannot be Enacted, or if the Lord 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 Confidence, or 2 Confidence if it was Trivial. When a Proposal fails, its proposer loses 3 Confidence.

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

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 Confidence from the accounts of all active Lords 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 Lords actively disagree as to the interpretation of the Ruleset, or if a Lord feels that an aspect of the game needs urgent attention, then any Lord 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 Lords may add votes of agreement or disagreement in comments to this entry, using appropriate voting icons (a Lord'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 Ruleset 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 Lord may update any Lord's data via the GNDT, whenever the Ruleset permits it.

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

Lords 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 High Lord and is named according to the number of times which that Lord has been the High Lord (or the High Lord equivalent) (eg. "The First Dynasty of Myke").

The High Lord 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 High Lord or equivalent, interesting rules, large arguments, the winning move, etc. A Dynasty record must accurately reflect the Dynasty it refers to. Lords may submit Dynasty Records to the High Lord - the High Lord may award the submitter 20 Confidence for any Records it uses.

Victory and Ascension

If a Lord 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 Lord 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 Lords 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 High Lord may optionally step in and decide the win's legality.

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

The Hiatus then continues until the new High Lord posts an Ascension Address to the BlogNomic weblog - this should specify the High Lord'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 "Lord", "High Lord" and "Confidence" will be replaced with new theme-appropriate terms. If the new High Lord chooses not to repeal a rule with number over 10, he/she may also replace any keyword in those rules with a new theme-appropriate term. The remaining rules, after the new High Lord's proclamation, shall be renumbered to keep a sequential progression. The new High Lord may also proclaim at the Ascension Address the veto of any Pending Proposals. The failure of said proposals shall incur no Confidence penalty for the proposer.

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

Parties

A Lord’s Party and Vote for Speaker are tracked in the GNDT.

Any Lord may announce the creation of a new Party by posting an entry with the subject “Party Creation: [Party Name]”. Optionally any number of invites may be included in the format “Invite: [Lord Name]”. Lords who are invited in this way may immediately join the Party without requesting permission. If the creating Lord was already in a Party, creating a Party costs 10 Confidence and all other Lords in the Party lose 5 Confidence. Upon announcing the creation of a Party, a Lord's Party is set to that Party. Announcements may not be edited as soon as the announced Party has more than one Lord.

Parties have a Speaker. All Members of a Party must name a Lord, within that Party, which they want to be the Speaker, and they may only change that nomination once per day. At any time, if the totaled number of Electoral Votes of all Lords thus naming a Lord exceeds the totaled number of Electoral Votes of all Lords thus naming the current Speaker, any Member of their Party may change the Party’s Speakership.

If a Party has currently no Speaker, any Member of that Party may change the Party’s Speakership so it goes to the Lord with the higher totaled number of Electoral Votes of Lords naming him.

A Party’s Speakership is indicated by adding a * to the end of the Speaker’s Party name.

Lords who are not in a Party are not considered Lords for rules other than 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 11 and 12.

If a Party has only one Member, that Member is called a Rogue. Rogue Lords are not considered Lords for the purpose of Requesting Audiences with any Party.

If at any time a Lord would be in multiple Parties, they are in the last Party they joined only.

Any time a Lord joins a Party, all invitations that have been extended for that Lord to join other Parties cease to apply.

If an invitation to join a Party has been standing for more than 48 hours, it ceases to apply.

Joining Parties

At any time a Lord may attempt to join a Party by requesting an Audience with that Party, with a topic of "Application".

If the Audience is approved, any Lord may add the Petitioner to the relevant Party, once. If the Lord was already in a Party, he or she loses 10 Confidence and all other Members of the Party lose 5.

If the Audience is rejected, the Petitioner loses 10 Confidence.

Leaving Parties

A Lord of more than 20 Confidence may voluntarily leave a Party at any time for the cost of 20 Confidence. This cost is waived if the Party being left is the Exiles. This clears the Lord's Party status but does not, taken by itself, cause them to join a new Party.

No Lord may be a Member of more than one Party at any given time.

Banishment

At any time a Lord may attempt to banish another Lord from their own Party, by requesting an Audience with that Party, with a topic of "Banish [Lord]".

If the Audience is approved, any Lord may remove the victim from the Party, once. The victim loses 20 Confidence and remaining Members of the Party lose 10.

If the Audience is rejected, the Petitioner loses 10 Confidence.

Chain of Command

This rule takes precidence over Rule 5.

If a Lord is a Member of a Party, not the Speaker of that Party and that Party has a Speaker then a vote of DEFERENTIAL counts the same as the vote of the Speaker of that Party.

If the High Lord is a Member of a Party, and not its Speaker, then they may vote DEFERENTIAL.

Audiences

Lords may request Audiences with any Party for any number of reasons define by other rules - these must be made in the form of entries with a subject of "Audience with [Party]: [Topic]". The poster is known as the Petitioner.

Any Lord in the relevant Party may respond to the Petitioner by posting the vote icon FOR, AGAINST, DEFERENTIAL or VETO in comments to that entry. If there exists more than one vote from a single Lord on a single Audiance, only the most recent of those votes is counted. If a Lord leaves their Party, their vote no longer counts for that Party's Audiences.

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

A vote of VETO may be performed only by the Speaker, and instantly denies the request.

If there are at least half (rounding up) as many FOR as there are Lords in the Party, or if it is more than 48 hours old and more than half of its votes are FOR, then the Audience is considered approved.

If there are at least half (rounding up) as many AGAINST as there are Lords in the Party, or if it is more than 48 hours old and less than half of its votes are FOR, then the Audience is considered rejected.

Confidence Sharing

When a Proposal is enacted, Members of the same Party as the proposer gain 2 Confidence, or 1 Confidence if it was Trivial. When a Proposal fails, Members of the same Party as the proposer lose 1 Confidence.

If the fellow Member is Speaker, double the amount of Confidence gained or lost by that Speaker under this rule.

If the proposer is Speaker, double the amount of Confidence gained or lost by all fellow Members under this rule.

At any time, if a Lord has more Confidence than another Member of his Party, that Lord may transfer as much Confidence as he wants to the other Member. This transfer can't result in the transfering Lord having less Confidence than the receiving Member.

For the purpose of this rule, the High Lord shall be considered as if he was Member of every Party, though not the Speaker of any.

Minimal Quorum:

No Proposal shall be enacted if Quorum is less than 2. This rule will repeal itself when Quorum reaches 4.

Electoral Votes

Each Lord holds a number of Electoral Votes, reflecting how much power that Lord wields in the name of his people. This is tracked by the GNDT.

A Lord may not hold more Electoral Votes than the Speaker of his Party. At any time, if a Lord holds more Electoral Votes than the Speaker of his Party, that Lord’s Electoral Votes shall be reduced to comply with this rule.

There are some boundaries about the number of Electoral Votes a Lord may hold. These boundaries shall be listed here and any action that would bring the number of Electoral Votes held by a Lord to violate those boundaries may be done, but the change shall be capped so the resulting Gamestate doesn’t violate those boundaries:

  • A Rogue Lord may only hold 1 Electoral Vote.
  • A Lord must not hold less than 1 Electoral Vote.
  • The difference between the Electoral Votes held by the Member with the highest number of Electoral Votes and by the Member with the lowest number of Electoral Votes within the same Party shall not be greater than 3.

Electoral Vote Counting

This rule supersedes the second and third paragraphs of rule 6. Instead of using the procedure delineated there, those ones shall be used:

Any Admin Staff may mark the oldest pending Proposal as Enacted and update the Ruleset and/or Gamestate to include the specified effects of that Proposal if any of those conditions is met:

  • The number of Lords voting FOR that Proposal exceeds or equals Quorum and the totaled number of Electoral Votes held by those Lords exceeds the totaled number of Electoral Votes held by the Lords voting AGAINST it;
  • That Proposal is more than 48 hours old and the totaled number of Electoral Votes held by the Lords voting FOR it exceeds the totaled number of Electoral Votes held by the Lords voting AGAINST it;

Any Admin Staff may mark the oldest pending Proposal as Failed if any of those conditions is met:

  • The totaled number of Electoral Votes held by the Lords voting AGAINST that Proposal is enough that it could not be Enacted without one of those votes being changed;
  • All Lords have voted on it and it still cannot be Enacted;
  • The Lord who proposed it has voted AGAINST it;
  • It is more than 48 hours old and the totaled number of Electoral Votes held by the Lords voting AGAINST it exceeds the totaled number of Electoral Votes held by the Lords voting FOR it.

When the proposer votes against his or her own proposal, that vote may not be changed.

Electoral Gain

All possible manners of gaining or losing Electoral Votes shall be listed in this rule.

At any time, if a Lord has more than 100 Confidence, that Lord may spend ALL his current Confidence and increase his Electoral Votes by 1.

Any time an Admin enacts a non-Trivial Proposal, he shall roll a dice. If that dice comes up 5, the Electoral Votes held by the Proposer shall be raised by 1. If that dice comes up 6, the Electoral Votes held by both the Proposer and the Admin doing the enactment shall be raised by 1.

Any time an Admin fails a non-Trivial Proposal, he shall roll a dice. If that dice comes up 6, the Electoral Votes held by the Proposer shall be lowered by 1.

Once within the period of 24 hours after the Speaker of Party has gained an Electoral Vote, that Speaker may spin a propaganda campaign and roll a dice for every member of his Party, except himself. If the Speaker is entitled but fails to spin the campaign for any member of his Party, that member may transfer once 5 Confidence from the Speaker to himself. The Electoral Votes of both the Speaker and/or the target Member shall be altered according to the dice result:

  • 1 - Backfire - Both the Speaker and the Member lose 1 Electoral Vote
  • 2 - Partial Backfire - The Member loses 1 Electoral Vote
  • 3,4 - Nothing happens.
  • 5 - Partisl Success - The Member gains 1 Electoral Vote
  • 6 - Success - Both the Speaker and the Member gain 1 Electoral Vote. The Speaker is not entitled to start another Propaganda campaign over this gain.

Once within the period of 24 hours after the Speaker of Party has gained an Electoral Vote, that Speaker may choose to transfer that Vote to any Member of his Party.

Once within the period of 24 hours after the Speaker of Party was entitled to gain an Electoral Vote, but failed to do so due to a cap to his Electoral Votes, that Speaker may choose to award that Vote to any Member of his Party.

Once within the period of 24 hours after the High Lord has gained an Electoral Vote, he may choose to transfer that Vote to any Speaker of a Party.

Once within the period of 24 hours after the High Lord was entitled to gain an Electoral Vote, but failed to do so due to a cap to his Electoral Votes, he may choose to award that Vote to any Speaker of a Party.

Voting Record

A Lord's Voting Record is tracked in the GNDT entry titled V.R. (for compactness) in the format #(#), where the first number is the General Voting Record and the number in parentheses is the Party Voting Record.

Whenever votes are tallied for a non-Trivial Proposal, the processing Admin must modify the Voting Record of all participating Lords. Add 1 to a Lord's General Voting Record if the Lord's Vote was with the majority, subtract 1 if the Lord's Vote was against the majority. Do the same with the Party Voting Record but use the majority of members of that Lord's Party instead of the general majority. For this determination, a VETO is counted as an AGAINST Vote, and a DEFERENTIAL Vote is counted as FOR or AGAINST or ignored, according to how it was resolved when tallied.

When an Admin has completed updating the Voting Records required for an Official Post for which there is no other Admin reward, they may increase their Confidence by 2.

If a Lord does not have a Voting Record it is set to 0(0).

Supporters

Each Speaker has a percentage of the population supporting their party. This is tracked in the GNDT under Perc (abbreviated). Non-speakers have a blank field for Percent.

Each Party begins with 15% of the population supporting them. If at any time, the combined percent of all of the parties is greater than 100%, subtract 1% from all the parties until the combined percent is less than or equal to 100%.

Each time a non-speaker member of a party has a succesfully passed non-trivial proposal, their party may gain 1% of the population. Each time a speaker has a succesfully passed non-trivial proposal, their party may gain 3% of the population.

If at anytime a party has more than 45% of the population supporting them, every member of that party may gain 10 confidence. That party may not gain more for 36 hours, at which point they may, provided they still have > 45%. This process continues until they have < 45%.

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 Judgment.

  • References to "a day" (as an entity rather than a duration, eg. "Sunday") refer to that day in the timezone to which the Lord'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).
  • Rules which trigger on Enactment or Failure of a Proposal are the responsibility of the acting Admin.
  • 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.
  • The "subject" of a blog entry is the first and only sentence in the Title of an entry. Any entry that does not have exactly one subject is not valid.
  • "Posts" and "comments" refer only to those made to the BlogNomic weblog at blognomic.blogspot.com. Posts following the format specified by a rule are considered Official Posts. If nobody else has commented on it, an Official Post may be altered or removed, otherwise this can only be done as allowed by the Ruleset. Usually, the Admin processing an Official Post edits that Post to reflect its new Status. A non-official post may not through editing of the blog be changed into an Official Post.