Core Rules

Ruleset and Gamestate

This is the Ruleset for BlogNomic; all Mining Conglomerates 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 set metagame parameters for the current dynasty; 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 text of the Ruleset document does not reflect all legal changes that have been authorised to be made to it, any Mining Conglomerate may update it to do so.

The gamestate tracking page for this dynasty is the Global Mining Asset Platform page of the wiki. Unless otherwise stated, all publicly tracked gamestate information is tracked on it.

Mining Conglomerates

A human with access to the blog who is not already a Mining Conglomerate may make a blog post making clear their wish to be a Mining Conglomerate (plural form Mining Conglomerates); in response, an Admin shall add them to the roster in the sidebar, at which moment they become a Mining Conglomerate. (See the FAQ for guidance on how to apply for access to the BlogNomic blog.)

Some Mining Conglomerates are Admins, responsible for updating the site and the Ruleset, and are signified as such in the sidebar. Mining Conglomerates who wish to become Admins should submit a Proposal or CfJ to that effect. An Admin may make a blog post clearly stating their wish to resign under this rule. In response, any Admin may remove them from their post as Admin.

A Mining Conglomerate may cease to be a Mining Conglomerate at any time by posting an entry to the BlogNomic weblog requesting such an action. A human who has ceased to be a Mining Conglomerate in this way may not become a Mining Conglomerate again within the following two weeks.

Idle Mining Conglomerates

A Mining Conglomerate may be either Active or Idle. A Mining Conglomerate is only Active if their name is on the list of currently active Mining Conglomerates in the Sidebar; otherwise they are Idle.

A Mining Conglomerate may request to become Idle at any time by making a post or comment to that effect. An Admin may render a Mining Conglomerate Idle if that Mining Conglomerate has asked to become Idle in an entry or comment from the past 96 hours (4 Days), or if that Mining Conglomerate has not posted an entry or comment in the past 168 Hours (7 days). Admins may render themselves Idle at any time, but should announce it in a post or comment when they do so.

For the purposes of all Gamestate and the Ruleset, excluding the core and appendix Rules “Ruleset and Gamestate”, “Mining Conglomerates”, “Dynasties”, “Fair Play”, “Imperial Tracking”, “Mentors” and any of those Rules’ subrules, Idle Mining Conglomerates are not counted as Mining Conglomerates. The combined term “Idle Mining Conglomerates” can be used to refer to Mining Conglomerates who are Idle even in Proposals or rules that do not treat them as Mining Conglomerates, and any Votable Matter that specifically refers to a named Idle Mining Conglomerate can affect them as if they were Active. Idle admins may act as Admins as if they were Active.

An Admin may make a Mining Conglomerate Active if that Mining Conglomerate is Idle and has asked to become Unidle in an entry or comment from the past 96 hours (4 Days), and Idle Admins may make themselves Active at any time, unless the Mining Conglomerate who would become Active has become Idle within the past 48 hours (2 days), and within the current Dynasty. Admins who are making any Mining Conglomerate Active should highlight the changed status of the relevant Mining Conglomerate and any changes to Quorum to have come about as a result of it as a comment to the entry requesting the change, or as part of their next vote comment if making themselves Active.

When a Mining Conglomerate is made Active, 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 Mining Conglomerate Idled in a different Dynasty), the Mining Conglomerate is given the default value for new Mining Conglomerates, if such a value exists.

When a Mining Conglomerate becomes idle due to inactivity, the Admin must announce the idling in a blog post, and the 168 Hour idle timeout is considered to be reduced to 96 hours for that Mining Conglomerate during the current and subsequent dynasty.

Dormancy

If there are fewer than four Active Mining Conglomerates (not including the Prospect Survey Corps), then BlogNomic is on Hiatus.

Recusants

An Idle Mining Conglomerate may post or vote on a Proposal or CfJ provided that it does not, even conditionally, create, repeal, change, or amend dynastic rules or gamestate defined by dynastic rules (apart from idling or unidling Mining Conglomerates), or uphold, revert, or reject Dynastic Actions. An Idle Mining Conglomerate who makes or votes upon such a Proposal or CfJ is, for the purposes of that Proposal or CfJ, a Recusant. When resolving a Proposal or CfJ, all Idle Mining Conglomerates who are Recusants on that matter are considered to be Active solely for the purposes of determining whether it was legally posted, and for determining Quorum on that matter; and all otherwise valid votes cast by Recusants are considered to be valid votes cast by Active Mining Conglomerates.

Dynasties

BlogNomic is divided into a number of Dynasties. Each Dynasty may be headed by a single Mining Conglomerate, known as the Prospect Survey Corps. If there is no Prospect Survey Corps, the Dynasty is a Metadynasty.

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

If the game is in an Interregnum and the Prospect Survey Corps has posted an Ascension Address during this Interregnum, then Proposals may be submitted as if the game was not in Hiatus. If the game is in an Interregnum, Proposals may be submitted and resolved as if the game was not in Hiatus provided they do not change the Dynastic Rules or Gamestate defined by Dynastic Rules.

Unless otherwise stated by a dynastic or Building Blocks rule, then for the purposes of dynastic and Building Blocks rules, the Prospect Survey Corps is not a Mining Conglomerate.

Each Dynasty is tracked by a number. The current Dynasty Number is 244.

The following Mining Conglomerate is the Prospect Survey Corps: "DoomedIdeas".

Votable Matters

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

Votes

Each Mining Conglomerate 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 Mining Conglomerate‘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-Mining Conglomerate never has a Vote, even if they were a Mining Conglomerate previously and had cast a valid Vote.

If a Mining Conglomerate other than the Prospect Survey Corps casts a vote of DEFERENTIAL, then the Vote of DEFERENTIAL is an indication of confidence in the Prospect Survey Corps. When the Prospect Survey Corps 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 Prospect Survey Corps’s Vote for the purposes of other rules unless otherwise specified. When the Prospect Survey Corps themselves casts a vote of DEFERENTIAL, it indicates an indication of confidence in the votes of the other players; please see the Rules and Votable Matters section of the Appendix for more information on how this is resolved.

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.

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

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

Special Proposal Voting

When a Mining Conglomerate 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 Prospect Survey Corps may use VETO as a voting icon to cast a Vote on a Proposal; when the Prospect Survey Corps casts a vote of VETO on a Proposal, this renders the Proposal Vetoed, even if the Prospect Survey Corps 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 24 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 applied by treating the text in the Proposal as a series of steps starting from the beginning of that Proposal’s text and performing each step until reaching the end of that Proposal’s text, except that if the Admin Enacting it reaches a step which cannot be applied immediately (e.g. “two days after this Votable Matter enacts, Mining Conglomerate A gains 1 point”) or at all (e.g. applying to a rule which does not exist), that step is ignored for the purposes of Enactment; the Admin Enacting the Proposal shall update the Gamestate and Ruleset, and correct any gamestate-tracking entities, as specified in each step that was performed.

Calls for Judgement

If two or more Mining Conglomerates actively disagree as to the interpretation of the Ruleset, or if a Mining Conglomerate feels that an aspect of the game needs urgent attention, then any Mining Conglomerate may raise a Call for Judgement (abbreviated “CfJ”) by posting an entry in the “Call for Judgement” category. A vote of DEFERENTIAL on a CfJ is never considered a valid vote.

In the sentence immediately above, Idle Mining Conglomerates are counted as Mining Conglomerates.

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 does not specify changes to the gamestate nor ruleset, does not specify that any attempt to perform an action should be upheld or rejected, and does not specify 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 Mining Conglomerate (other than the Prospect Survey Corps) 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.

A Mining Conglomerate’s vote on a DoV is encouraged to reflect whether or not they agree with the proposition that the poster has achieved victory in the current Dynasty. A vote of DEFERENTIAL on a DoV is never considered a valid vote. If there is at least one pending DoV, BlogNomic is on Hiatus, no Idle Mining Conglomerate may be made unidle, and no new player joining requests may be administered.

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

It has a FOR Vote from every Mining Conglomerate.
It has been open for at least 24 hours and it has a number of FOR Votes that exceed or equal Quorum.

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.
It is more than 48 hours old and cannot be Enacted

If a DoV is Failed and it had at least one AGAINST vote, the Mining Conglomerate who posted it cannot make another DoV until after 72 hours (3 days) have passed since the time their DoV was Failed.

When a DoV is Enacted, all other pending DoVs are Failed, the Mining Conglomerate who posted the DoV becomes Prospect Survey Corps, and the game enters an Interregnum. The player who Enacted it updates the rule “Dynasties” as specified in “Imperial Tracking”. 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 Prospect Survey Corps must make an Ascension Address by posting an entry in the “Ascension Address” category. The Ascension Address may be altered by its author if it is less than 4 hours old and the Dynastic Reset action has not yet been performed since the initial posting of that Ascension Address. The Ascension Address should specify the Prospect Survey Corps’s chosen theme for the new Dynasty, and it may optionally specifiy one or more of the following:

New dynasty-specific terms as outline in the rule “Synonyms”
A number of dynastic rules to keep (if none are specifed then the entire Dynastic Ruleset is repealed)
Any number of Building Blocks rules to remove or insert, as per the instructions in the Building Blocks section
The name of the gamestate tracking page referred to in the rule “Ruleset and Gamestate” to a different page that does not exist and does not start with the word “Ruleset”
The Prospect Survey Corps’s Imperial Style, which if specified is a set of nonbinding guidelines that the Prospect Survey Corps is encouraged to follow, using the terms defined on the wiki page Imperial Styles.

If it has not been done since the most recent posting of an Ascension Address, the Prospect Survey Corps or any Mining Conglomerate (if it’s the latter, they must wait until at least 4 hours after that Ascension Address has been posted) may perform a Dynastic Reset, which is an atomic action with the following steps:

Create a wiki page called “Ruleset X” where X is the current Dynasty Number (replacing its contents if it already exists)
Increase the current Dynasty Number by 1
Update the Ruleset to reflect any changed terms as outlined in the most recent Ascension Address.
Repeal any dynastic rules which were not listed to be kept in the most recent Ascension Address.
Update the gamestate tracking page referred to in the rule “Ruleset and Gamestate” with the name specified in the most recent Ascension Address, if any. If no name is specified, set the gamestate tracking page to be “Gamestate Tracking X” where X is the current dynasty number
Update the Building Blocks page to reflect any changes to the terms outlined in the rule Synonyms.
Make any specified or automatic changes to the Building Blocks section of the ruleset as described in the most recent Ascension Address.

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 Mining Conglomerate’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. Mining Conglomerates 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 Mining Conglomerate within BlogNomic, and should announce publicly if they control both a non-Idle Mining Conglomerate and any Idle Mining Conglomerates. This extends to exerting full control over the actions of another Mining Conglomerate, defined here as the controlled Mining Conglomerate’s game behavior being functionally indistinguishable from if the controlling Mining Conglomerate was logged into their account and playing through it, over a period of more than a day.
A Mining Conglomerate 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 Mining Conglomerate should not deliberately exploit bugs or unexpected behaviours in the software running the game (ExpressionEngine, MediaWiki or other blognomic.com scripts).
A Mining Conglomerate should not edit their own blog comments once posted, nor those of any other Mining Conglomerate.
A Mining Conglomerate should not edit the “Entry Date” field of a blog post, except as permitted by the rule Date and Time Tracking in the Appendix.
A Mining Conglomerate should not make a DoV primarily to delay the game by putting it into Hiatus.
A Mining Conglomerate 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 Mining Conglomerate 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 Mining Conglomerate must use their own name in the Dice Roller, when rolling dice.
A Mining Conglomerate should not deliberately and unreasonably prolong the performance of a game action once they have started it.
A Mining Conglomerate should not use a Core, Building Blocks, or Appendix rules scam to directly or indirectly cause a Mining Conglomerate to achieve victory. For the purposes of this bullet point, such a scam is one in which rules from one or more of these sections of the ruleset are used to achieve victory in a manner that does not have a dependency on a specific set of dynastic rules.
A Mining Conglomerate should not trade actions in BlogNomic for favors or compensation outside of BlogNomic, nor trade actions in any other game for favors within BlogNomic, nor trade actions or favours in one Dynasty of Blognomic for actions or favours in another Dynasty of Blognomic.
A person with administrative, moderation, or other heightened access to the software running or supporting BlogNomic should not take any action using such heightened access for the purpose of causing any Mining Conglomerate or Mining Conglomerates to gain, receive, maintain, or preserve gameplay advantage unless any of the following is true:
- Such action is required or explicitly permitted by the rules or required to implement an action required or explicitly permitted by the rules.
- A reasonable, impartial, and prudent external observer would deem such action necessary or reasonable for the purpose of supporting, moderating, or administering BlogNomic or such software.

All Mining Conglomerates and idle Mining Conglomerates 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 Mining Conglomerates are encouraged to commit to upholding them to whatever extent is possible.

Dynastic Rules

Years and Phases

The game plays out over a number of turns, which may be referred to as Years; the number of the current Year is publicly tracked (Years are a different type of turn from the turns taken in the development’s Turn Order). Each Year contains two distinct strands of activity, called Phases, as follows:

The Claim Phase, in which the Prospect Survey Corps brings new mining prospects to the market, and Mining Conglomerates stake claims on them to secure mining rights to those Prospects in the upcoming Year; and
The Mining Phase, in which Mining Conglomerates competitively Develop the Mines that they purchased rights to in the previous year.

The Phases in a year occur concurrently. Whenever there are both no Prospects available for Claim and no Mines that can be legally Developed any further then the Prospect Survey Corps may Advance the Year by increasing the Year by 1 and carrying out an Annual Survey.

Throughout the ruleset and gamestate, the terms Mining Conglomerate and Mining Corporation are considered to be synonyms and can be used interchangeably as the term for players (as per the Appendix rule Synonyms).

Tracked Information

Each Mining Conglomerate has a number of Claims and quantities of Electrum, Asbestos, Chert, Passenficksium, and Victory Rocks, each of which are publicly tracked numbers. Each of these defaults to 80% (rounded up) of their mean value among the other Mining Conglomerates, except for the quantity of Victory Rocks, which defaults to 0.

Minerals

Electrum, Asbestos, Chert, and Passenficksium may collectively be referred to as Minerals; Victory Rocks are never a Mineral.

Each Mineral is associated with a different game concept. The Prospect Survey Team is encouraged to veto any proposal that sets out a new way for Mining Conglomerates to improve their position with regards to any of the listed game concepts that does not set out a commensurate cost in the associated Mineral for doing so.

Minerals and Associations
Mineral	Associated game concept
Electrum	Number of Claims
Asbestos	Enhanced output of Features
Chert	Use and availability of Miners
Passenficksium	Increasing Dig Depth on a Development

Surveys

A Prospect has the following characteristics: a flavour-text Name, which must be a single word of 12 characters or less which has not been used for another Prospect in this dynasty, followed by the word ‘Mine’; a Depth, which must be a number between 20 and 100; and an Output, which must be Electrum, Asbestos, Chert, or Passenficksium.

In addition, each Prospect has a list of Features in it and their Depths. This characteristic is privately tracked by the Prospect Survey Corps. The exact Features are not reported in Territory Posts, but the number of Features in each Prospect is.

An Annual Survey is an atomic action with the following steps:

Transfer all Recovering Miners to the Healthy count of the Mining Conglomerate employing them
Transfer all Hospitalized Miners to the Recovering count of the Mining Conglomerate employing them
Generate n Prospects, where n is equal to quorum. For each Prospect, give it a legally compliant name selected from the NSA Project Names list on the wiki, and a Depth randomly selected from the relevant range and an Output selected according to the subrule Focused Prospecting.
Generate a list of Features for each Prospect, according to the rule “Feature Generation”.
Make a Territory Post, a post in the Story Posts category, listing each of the Prospects and their characteristics and the Relative Occurence of all Minerals and Features at the moment of generating the Prospects. Once this post has been made, the Territory is Open and the Claim Phase starts.

If a Territory is Open, and the Year is not 3227, then each Mining Conglomerate may privately communicate with the Prospect Survey Corps to allocate each of their Claims to one or more of the Prospects listed in the most recent Territory Post (only an non-negative integer number of Claims may be allocated to any Prospect, and the total number of Claims allocated must equal the Mining Conglomerate’s total claims). The most recent such message received by the Prospect Survey Corps from each Mining Conglomerate in response to a specific Territory Post is that Mining Conglomerate’s Allocation.

If 72 hours have elapsed since a Territory opened then the Prospect Survey Corps may Award Territories, which is an atomic action with the following steps:

For each Prospect, evaluate the number of Claims made against it by each Mining Conglomerate.
Award each Prospect as follows, working down the list of resolution criteria from top to bottom, skipping all remaining entries if one of the criteria is met:
- If a single Mining Conglomerate placed more than half of the Claims on that Prospect then the right to that Prospect is awarded solely to that Mining Conglomerate.
- If any combination of two or more Mining Conglomerates allocated more than 66% of the Claims on that Prospect then the right to that Prospect is allocated to the smallest such combination of Mining Conglomerates (i.e. that results in the smallest number of Mining Conglomerates), with ties being broken by control (i.e. the configuration whose combined share of the allocated Claims is highest); if there is still a tie then this criteria is not met.
- The right to that Prospect is awarded to all Mining Conglomerates who posted one or more Claim to it.
- The right to the Prospect is not awarded and the Prospect is removed from the gamestate.
Return each Claim to the Mining Conglomerate that made it. For each Claim allocated to a Prospect by a Mining Conglomerate that did not result in a Prospect being Awarded to that Mining Conglomerate, that Mining Conglomerate gains an additional Claim.
Make a post detailing all Claim allocations, the result of all Prospect Awards, and the change in Claims available for the subsequent Year.
Add each Prospect as a publicly tracked Mine. The Claim Phase ends.

Focused Prospecting

As long as the Territory is Open, any Mining Conglomerate may influence the Prospects that will be generated at the start of the next Year in the following way.

By default, all Minerals and all Features have a Relative Occurrence of 1. The Relative Occurence of any Mineral and Feature is privately tracked by the Prospect Survey Corps.

Any Mining Conglomerate may increase the Relative Occurence of any Mineral and any Feature with an integer by performing the following atomic action:

Make a comment on the Open Territory post stating that they increase the Relative Occurence of either a Mineral or a Feature and by how much. They do not have to specify which Mineral or which Feature.
Privately message the Prospect Survey Corps for which Mineral or which Feature they want to increase the Relative Occurence and by how much.
Pay the associated cost which is 10 times the desired increase in Relative Occurence in Asbestos for Features and 20 times the desired increase in Relative Occurence in Passenficksium for Minerals.

When generating the Prospects, the Prospect Survey Corps shall determine the Output by selecting the Mineral randomly distributed according to their Relative Occurence (so if mineral A has Relative Occurence 3 and mineral B has a Relative Occurence 1, the probability of Output A should be three times as high as that of Output B). Similarly, all Features shall also be selected from a random distribution according to their Relative Occurence.

After generating the Prospects including their Features, the Relative Occurence of all Minerals and Features resets to 1.

Mines

Mines are publicly tracked and have the following characteristics: a flavour-text Name, which must be a single word of 12 characters or less which has not been used for another Mine in this dynasty; a Depth, which must be a number between 20 and 100; an Output, which must be Electrum, Asbestos, Chert, or Passenficksium; and an Ownership, which is a list of all Mining Conglomerates who won a right to that Mine when it was a Prospect (along with how many Claims they allocated to it). Mines also have a list of Features that are in them, and each of those Features has a numeric Depth it is at. When a Mine is created from a Prospect it derives the values for all of these characteristics from the Prospect from which it was made.

If a Mining Conglomerate is the only one in in a Mine’s Ownership, they are said to be the Sole Owner of that Mine. If multiple Mining Conglomerates are in a Mine’s Ownership, each of those Mining Conglomerates are said to be a Co-Owner of that Mine.

When a Mining Conglomerate is unidled, as part of unidling they are removed from the Ownership of every Mine in which they are listed.

Features

There are a variety of Features which may be found at specific Depths in Mines. The following Features exist:

Features
Name	Abbreviation	Effect
Deposit	D	Gain 2DICE5 of the Output of the Mine
Victory Rock Monument	VR	Gain 1 Victory Rock
Loose Rock	L	[Negative] Hospitalize 5 + DICE4 of your Miners
Defeat Boulder Monument	DB	[Negative] If you have above the median number of Victory Rocks among all Mining Conglomerates, lose 1 Victory Rock, to a minimum of 0.
Soft Earth	S	[Neutral] Your turn does not end until you take another Dig Action
Aggregate Vein	A	Gain 2DICE5 of a random Mineral which is selected when this Effect is applied
Productive Side Shaft	PSS	Decrease the Dig Depth of this Mine by 10. Randomly select and apply another Feature, rerolling (and not applying) any selections with the [Negative] tag.
Loose Shale	LS	[Negative]Increase the Dig Depth of this Mine by 10. This increase is not considered to have been carried out by the active Party, does not generate any Minerals, and does not trigger any Features that would be triggered by that increase in Dig Depth; those Features are lost and cannot be triggered on this Mine.
Fossils	F	[Neutral] The next Party in Turn Order for this Development (i.e. the one after the party whose turn it currently is) ceases to be a Party to this Development, as they have to fill out paperwork for the Ministry of Antiquities.
Parallel Vein	PV	The Party may spend 50 Electrum to double their total number of Claims.
Secret Tunnel	ST	The Party may spend 100 Electrum to select a Mining Conglomerate listed in the Ownership of this Mine, other than the Mining Conglomerate performing this action, and either increase or decrease (to a minimum of 0) that selected Mining Conglomerate’s Claims by the mean of all Claims (rounded down) on this Mine in that Ownership, removing the selected Mining Conglomerate from that Ownership if their Claims in that Ownership become 0. The next Mining Conglomerate to take a turn is based on the new turn order after this change in Claims, starting just after the Mining Conglomerate that performed this action. The Mining Conglomerate performing this action should describe the change in Claims and the new turn order in a comment on the Development of this Mine as part of performing this action. This new turn order overrides any previous turn order mentioned in the body or comments of this Mine’s Development.

Features may have a number of Tags, which are single words in square brackets as part of their Effect. Tags do not change the result of digging up a Feature, and exist only to group categories of features together for easy reference. For example, the Loose Rock Feature is considered to have the Negative Tag and may be referred to as a Negative Feature.

Feature Generation

The Features for a Prospect are generated by performing the following steps as an atomic action, in which the random selections including dice rolls indicated with “DICE” are performed with a private random generation method, and the random selection of Features is done according to the subrule "Focused Prospecting" of the rule "Surveys":

Determine the number of Features using the formula “Number of Features = DICEX” where X = 3 + (Prospect Depth / 20) rounded down.
For a number of times equal to the number of Features determined from the previous step, roll a random Feature and roll its Depth as a number between 1 and that Prospect's Depth, then add that Feature and its Depth to that Prospect.

Miners

Mining Conglomerates employ the labour of Miners to dig in the Mines they own. Each Mining Conglomerate has a publicly tracked number of Healthy Miners, Hospitalized Miners, and Recovering Miners, all of which default to 0. There is also a publicly tracked number of Miners who are Unemployed which defaults to 0. The number of Unemployed Miners and “Unemployment” are considered synonymous. Whenever the Year is increased, 1 Miner is added to Unemployment.

Miners may not be created or destroyed except as allowed in this rule or via proposal. They may only be transferred between the employ of Mining Conglomerates, Unemployment, and Hospitalization, where otherwise allowed.

When a Mining Conglomerate goes idle or reinitialises, all of their Miners become Unemployed. When a Mining Conglomerate unidles for the first time in the dynasty, they are given 20 newly created Miners. When a Mining Conglomerate unidles after idling previously in the dynasty, Miners are transferred to them from Unemployment until either there are no more Unemployed Miners or they had as many Miners as they did before going idle.

Casualties and Hospitalization

Using some Dig Actions risks injuring your workforce. When a Mining Conglomerate Hospitalizes a Miner, they transfer it from their Healthy count to their Hospitalized count (or, if they don’t have enough Healthy Miners left to Hospitalize, all of their remaining Healthy Miners are Hospitalized). Only Healthy Miners may be Hospitalized. A Mining Conglomerate with no Healthy Miners in its employ is unable to participate in the Development of a Mine, and they are never a Party to Development to any Mine.

Developing

At any time in the Year following the Year in which that Mine was created, a Mining Conglomerate may start a Development on any Mine of which they are listed as the owner, provided that that Mine is neither in Development nor Fully Developed, by making a sticky post in the Story Posts category called “Development: x”, where x is the name of the Mine in question. The body of a Development Post should contain a link to the most recent edit of the ruleset at the time at which the post was made, unless a CfJ amends that Development Post and changes that link; that edit of the ruleset is considered to be the ruleset solely for the purposes of the resolution of that Development. The body of a Development Post should also contain the Turn Order for that Development, as described later in this rule.

If a Mining Conglomerate is the Sole Owner of a Mine and has not yet Developed that Mine, they may optionally choose up to two other Mining Conglomerates and add them to that Mine’s Ownership with 1 Claim immediately before Developing it.

When a Mining Conglomerate makes a Development Post they should attempt to privately notify all other Mining Conglomerates who are listed as owners on that Mine. All such Mining Conglomerate may be referred to as Parties to that Development.

While a Mine is in Development, it has a Dig Depth (which is tracked in the comments to that Mine’s Development Post, and which defaults to 0km, and is synonymous with the Dig Depth of that Development). While a Mine is in Development, Parties to that Development may take Dig Actions upon it in turn, at a rate of one Dig Action per turn, in Turn Order as described in the body of that Development, skipping any Mining Conglomerate in the Turn Order that is not a Party to that Development. Turn Order for a Development is generated by adding the Parties to that Development to that Turn Order, starting with the Party who made the most Claims on the Prospect that the Mine was derived from and proceeding in order to the lowest number of Claims (with ties broken by most Electrum, followed by most total Claims, followed by most Asbestos, Chert, Passenficksium, and Victory Rocks in that order, followed by alphabetical order of the Parties’ names). A Dig Action is carried out by making a post to the relevant Development Post, detailing the Dig Action taken, the Dig Depth following that move, and (if the Dig Depth following that move is less than the Depth of the Mine) which Mining Conglomerate is due to make a move next.

Possible Dig Actions are as follows:

Tap: Increase the Dig Depth of the Mine by a number of your choice between 2km and 4km.
Blast: Increase the Dig Depth of the Mine by DICE10 km, and Hospitalize DICE4 of your Miners.
Strip: Increase the Dig Depth of the Mine by 7km, and Hospitalize 3 of your Miners. If used, the next Mining Conglomerate in turn may not use the Tap Dig Action.
Catalyse: Spend 10 Passenficksium to increase the Dig Depth by a number equal to the number of Claims the User allocated to the Prospect that became this Mine.

Whenever a Party to a Development causes the Dig Depth of that Development to be increased, they gain a quantity of that Mine’s Output equal to the value of the increase.

If a Mining Conglomerate takes a Dig Action that causes the Dig Depth of that Development to exceed or equal the depth of a Feature in that Mine for the first time for that Feature, then they immediately gain the Effect of that Feature as part of the same Dig Action.

If a Party takes a Dig Action that causes the Dig Depth of that Development to exceed or equal the Depth of that Mine then they gain 1 Victory Rock and that Mine immediately becomes Fully Developed. When a Mine is Fully Developed, it may not be Developed any further, its Development Post is closed, and the Mine itself may be removed from the Gamestate.

Equipment

At any time, a Mining Conglomerate which has Ownership over a Subsidiary may Purchase Equipment for that Subsidiary, by spending the Purchase Cost of that Equipment and adding it to the Subsidiary’s Equipment.

A Mining Conglomerate has Access to all Equipment owned by all Subsidiaries that they have Ownership over.

If a Mining Conglomerate is a Party to a Development, and they have not yet performed any Dig Actions on that Development, and they have Ownership over a Subsidiary that has Equipment, make a comment on that Development indicating all of the Equipment to which they have Access that they will be utilising on that Development, paying the Utilisation Cost for all such named Equipment. A Mining Conglomerate gains the Effects of each of the Equipment that they are utilising on a Development, applied to that Development.

Equipment	Purchase Cost	Utilisation Cost	Effects
Safety Gear	10 Chert	An amount of Chert equal to half the Depth, rounded down	Any of your Miners that would be Hospitalized in this Development are instead not.
Superior Mining Drills	10 Passenficksium	An amount of Passenficksium equal to the half the Depth, rounded down	You have access to a special Dig Action: Increase the Dig Depth of the Mine by a random value between 5 and 20.
Survey Probes	10 Asbestos	An amount of Asbestos equal to the half the Depth, rounded down	The first time you would gain the Effect of any Negative Feature on this Development, you instead gain a Victory Rock.
Shadow Investors	10 Electrum	An amount of Electrum equal to the half the Depth, rounded down	You have access to a special Dig Action, but you may only perform it once on this Development: Gain a number of Claims equal to 10% (rounded down) of the current Dig Depth of the Mine to this Development

Solo Development

If a Mining Conglomerate is the Sole Owner of a Mine, for a given Development Post, that Mining Conglomerate may perform an Aggregate Dig Action by doing the following:

Select a Dig Action.
Perform that Dig Action, applying all rules regarding that Dig Action on Dig Depth, Miner status, and any other rules that apply to a change in Dig Depth.
Repeat the above step as many times as that Mining Conglomerate chooses, with the exception that they cannot repeat the above step once the Dig Depth on that Mine has changed by at least 20km since they started performing that Aggregate Dig Action or if that Mining Conglomerate’s Miners becomes 0 or less.
Post the Dig Action selected, the number of instances performed, and the results as a comment to that Development Post.

Forced Development

Mining Conglomerates are beholden to their shareholders, and may under the right conditions be forced to perform actions those shareholders believe would maximize profits.

While a Mine is in Development, if it has been a Mining Conglomerate’s turn in that Mine for all of the past 36 hours, then that Mining Conglomerate becomes a Slacker for that Mine (tracked as their name being struck through on the Ownership of that Mine). Any Mining Conglomerate may force a Slacker to take their turn for that Mine, using the following algorithm:

If the Slacker is able to Tap, they Tap for 4km
Otherwise, if they are able to Strip, they Strip
If they can do neither, they are removed as an Owner of that Mine and are no longer considered a Party to the Development of that Mine

If a Mine has not yet had a Development started for it and the Year has been greater than the Year in which the mine was created for at least 36 hours, any Mining Conglomerate may start a Development on that Mine, regardless of whether or not they are listed as an Owner of that Mine, by making the Development Post for that Mine with the title, post category, sticky post option, and body contents as described in the rule “Developing” (they are not encouraged to privately notify any of the Owners).

A Mining Conglomerate cannot become a Slacker on a Mine if a Valid Turn Delay has been posted to that Mine in the last 36 hours. A Turn delay is a comment made on the mine whose content is “TURN DELAY”, and may only be made if the ruleset or the enactment of a voteable matters specifically allow or require a Turn Delay to be made

If it is after 23:58pm on December 26th 2025, consider a Turn Delay to have been posted to all Mines at that exact time.

Next Dig Actions

When a Mine is in Development, Parties to that Development may specify in a comment on that Development Story Post their Next Dig Actions. If there is a Next Dig Actions, the Next Dig Actions is a (possibly empty) list of Dig Actions, each together with all necessary specifications to perform that Dig Action. The Next Dig Actions of a Party for a Development default to an empty list, and will be the Next Dig Actions as specified in the last comment on that Development specifying Next Dig Actions, either by themselves or by a Performing Party about a Dig Action performed on their behalf as specified in this subrule.

A Party may optionally specify a Condition with their Next Dig Action, which is a non-subjective statement which can be true or false about the Dynastic Gamestate. A Party may optionally specify a Skip with their Next Dig Action, which can be either Yes or No. A Party may optionally specify a Repeat with their Next Dig Action, which can be either Yes or No. A Mining Conglomerate whose turn it is to perform a Dig Action in a given Development is called the Current Party.

If the Current Party has at least one Next Dig Action(s) specified and the first Dig Action of these Next Dig Actions can be performed legally, any other Mining Conglomerate or the Prospect Survey Corps may become the Performing Party for that turn of the development. As an Atomic Action called Perform Next Dig Actions, the Performing Party does the following:

If the Condition on the first Next Dig Action is true or there is no such Condition, they perform the first Dig Action specified in the Next Dig Actions conforming to all specifications for that Action on behalf of the Current Party.
If a Dig Action was completed as part of this Atomic Action and Repeat on the first Next Dig Action is No, they update the Next Dig Actions by removing the first Dig Action from it.
If a Dig Action was not completed as part of this Atomic Action and Skip on the first Next Dig Action is Yes, they update the Next Dig Actions by removing the first Dig Action from it.
They make a comment in that Development specifying which Dig Action was completed and what the result was (if a Dig Action was completed) on behalf of the Current Party.

If it is not legally possible to perform the first of the Next Dig Actions of a Party whose turn it is in a given Development, no Dig Actions can be performed in that Development on behalf of that Party as part of Performing Next Dig Actions (but other dig actions may be performed on behalf of that party if otherwise allowed by the rules, such as performing actions on behalf of slackers) and the player performing the Perform Next Dig Actions atomic action should attempt to privately notify that Party.

Title Chase

if the Year is greater than or equal to 3227, and the Prospector Survey Corps could legally Advance the Year, and a single Mining Conglomerate has more Victory Rocks than any other Mining Conglomerate, then the Prospector Survey Corps may not Advance the Year and that Mining Conglomerate has achieved Victory.

Prospecting

Mining Conglomerates may use means of Prospecting to gain information on the Prospects up for grabs. The following Prospecting Methods exist:

Prospecting Methods
Method	Cost	Effect
Seismic	30 Asbestos, 10 Electrum	Learn the Depths and Tags of every Feature in a chosen Prospect, but not the exact Features they are
Electromagnetic	30 Asbestos, 10 Chert	Learn the Depths of all occurrences of two chosen Features in a chosen Prospect (and which of the two Features each occurrence is)
Wide-Area	30 Asbestos, 10 Passenficksium	Learn the number of occurrences of a chosen Feature in every Prospect currently up for grabs. For each Prospect, there is a 20% chance (secretly randomly determined by the Prospect Survey Corps) that you will learn a 0 instead for that Prospect
Full Suite	80 Asbestos, 1 Victory Rock	Learn the exact Features, and the Depths of those Features, in every Prospect currently up for grabs

The following atomic action, known as Scanning Prospects, may be performed by a Mining Conglomerate while there is an Open Territory:

Pay the Cost for a Prospecting Method of their choice
Make a comment to the most recent Territory Post indicating the Prospecting Method chosen in the previous step
Privately message the Prospect Survey Corps specifying the chosen Prospecting Method and any choices required by the Effect of that Prospecting Method. The Prospect Survey Corps should respond at their earliest opportunity according to the Effect.

At most once in a given Year, a Mining Conglomerate may Scan Prospects with a Prospecting Method of their choice other than Full Suite for free.

Trading

There is a public Market with an unlimited supply of Minerals. When a Mining Conglomerate performs a Trade, they spend X of their Minerals in order to gain Minerals of their choice equal to one-quarter X, where X is a number of that Mining Conglomerate’s choice. Each Mining Conglomerate has one trade per turn they are able to perform during the Claim phase, however the Market is lenient on those with less Victory Rocks; all Mining Conglomerates with the least number of Victory Rocks are able to trade two times per Claim phase instead of one.

Subsidiaries

A Subsidiary is a non-player Entity that is tracked in gamestate tracking as if it were a Mining Conglomerate, but which is not considered to be a Mining Conglomerate and which cannot take actions. A Subsidiary has all of the tracked information of a Mining Conglomerate, with all tracked numerical values having a default of 0, but it cannot own Victory Rocks (if it would gain a Victory Rock it instead does not) and instead has an Board, which is a list of one or more Mining Conglomerates (along with how many Claims have been used by that Mining Conglomerate that Subsidiary - also known as its Weighting).

A Mining Conglomerate cannot transfer Minerals to a Subsidiary unless that Mining Conglomerate has been continuously Active since the second-most-recent Annual Survey.

Subsidiaries may own Equipment, which is publicly tracked.

At any time, but no more than once per Year, a Mining Conglomerate may create a Subsidiary, by giving it a Name and transferring at least one Claim and at least one Mineral from that Mining Conglomerate to it, and setting themselves in its Board (with the number of Claims allocated to it as its Weighting). A Subsidiary’s Name must be unique among all Subsidiaries and Mining Conglomerates, must be 30 characters or less, is considered flavor text, and must not contain the text “Victory Rocks”.

When allocating Claims to a Territory Post, a Mining Conglomerate may also allocate Claims to any Subsidiary in the game. If they do then that Mining Conglomerate is added to the Board of that Subsidiary (if that Mining Conglomerate is not already there), and their allocated Claims are either inserted as new Claims if that Mining Conglomerate was not previously in the Board, or added to that Mining Conglomerate’s existing Claims in the Board if that Mining Conglomerate was already in the Board. The resulting Claims listed in the Board are considered the new Weighting for that Subsidiary.

Ownership of a Subsidiary is determined as follows, working down the list of resolution criteria from top to bottom, skipping all remaining entries if one of the criteria is met:

If a single Mining Conglomerate has a Weighting greater than half of the Weightings on the Board of that Subsidiary then they have Ownership over that Subsidiary.
If any combination of two or more Mining Conglomerates have a Weighting of 66% or more of the combined Weightings on the Board of that Subsidiary then Ownership of that Subsidiary is allocated to the smallest such combination of Mining Conglomerates (i.e. that results in the smallest number of Mining Conglomerates), with ties being broken by control (i.e. the configuration whose combined Weighting is highest); if there is still a tie then this criteria is not met.
All Mining Conglomerates on the Board have Ownership over the Subsidiary.
The Subsidiary has no Ownership and may be removed from the game.

At any time, any Mining Conglomerate with Ownership over a Subsidiary may transfer any amount of Mineral to that Subsidiary. At any time, the full Ownership of a Subsidiary may agree to withdraw any amount of Mineral from a Subsidary to be disbursed amongst themselves as they see fit.

Prospect Seal

All dynastic information privately held by the Prospect Survey Corps is Sealed.

Building Blocks

Building Blocks are rules that can be substituted in and out of the ruleset as needed, usually as a result of an Ascension Address. All rules in the Building Blocks section are ruletext.

Potential Building Blocks rules can be found at the Building Blocks page of the wiki. That page’s contents are not rulestext. When the contents of the Building Blocks page are referred to as ‘rules’ by the ruleset or by a Votable Matter, it should be assumed that said contents are being referred to as potential rules rather than actual rules.

When a Prospect Survey Corps specifies the Building Blocks rules in use for a new dynasty in an Ascension Address, they should specify (by name) the rules from the Building Blocks page that they would like to be included in this section of the ruleset. When a Dynastic Reset is performed, the Building Blocks rules selected in the most recent Ascension Address (if any) must be transcribed faithfully to this section of the ruleset, and any Building Blocks rules not so named in that Ascension Address must be removed from the Building Blocks section.

Whenever the text of a Building Block rule is changed in the ruleset, or a new Building Block rule is added to the ruleset, those changes are also made to the Building Blocks page of the wiki.

Mantle Passing

During an Interregnum, the new Prospect Survey Corps may Pass the Mantle by making a post naming a Mining Conglomerate who was not the last dynasty’s Prospect Survey Corps; the passing Mining Conglomerate then ceases to be the Prospect Survey Corps and the Mining Conglomerate so named becomes the Prospect Survey Corps.

Reinitialisation

If they have not already done so in the current dynasty, A Mining Conglomerate may make a post to the blog announcing that they are Reinitialising; if they do so then they must immediately set all of their gamestate tracked values to their defaults for new players, and if the Prospect Survey Corps is privately tracking any information about them then they should do likewise at their first opportunity. If a Mining Conglomerate has Reinitialised during the current dynasty, then, for the purposes of determining the validity of limited actions, they are considered to have undertaken no actions in this dynasty prior to their most recent Reinitialisation.

Precondition Unidling

A Proposal that would (if adopted) amend the dynastic ruleset or dynastic gamestate, and that was submitted by an idle Mining Conglomerate, is known as Precondition Call.

Idle Mining Conglomerates may submit Precondition Calls as if they were not idle. The author of a Precondition Call is not considered to have a vote on that Proposal while they remain idle, and Recusants may not vote on Precondition Calls

If a Precondition Call enacts, the enacting admin must unidle its author immediately after enacting that Proposal (unless such an unidling would be impossible, perhaps because the author was already unidled)

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 Mining Conglomerate 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 Mining Conglomerate 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 Mining Conglomerate 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 Mining Conglomerate 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 Mining Conglomerates.
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 only 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.
Dynastic Variable: A gamestate variable that exists only due to a dynastic rule and is not mentioned in a non-dynastic rule. (In particular, the identity of the Prospect Survey Corps is not a dynastic variable.)
Effective Vote Comment (EVC): A Mining Conglomerate's Effective Vote Comment with respect to a given Votable Matter is that Mining Conglomerate's Comment to that Votable Matter, if any, that contains that Mining Conglomerate's Vote on that Votable Matter.
Commentary: When posting a blog entry, a Mining Conglomerate 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. Mining Conglomerates , as well as people who are not Mining Conglomerates 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 Mining Conglomerates 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. Mining Conglomerates 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. A Mining Conglomerate cannot achieve victory if achieving that victory relies on matching the contents of any flavour text gamestate that Mining Conglomerate has with the criteria for achieving victory.
Gamestate: Any information which the Ruleset regulates the alteration of. All wiki pages that the rules and Building Blocks explicitly mention (except for the FAQ, the dynastic histories and discussion pages) and any images or Templates contained within (or indirectly invoked by 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 unless a core rule permits doing so for that type of Hiatus. 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.
Indirect Action: An action performed by a Mining Conglomerate or the Prospect Survey Corps where the performance of the action is defined using the phrase “on behalf of” another Mining Conglomerate. When such an action is performed, any gamestate changes are applied as if the latter Mining Conglomerate had performed that action directly, with the exception that the person performing the action may make any decisions necessary to perform that action without regard to the benefit of the latter Mining Conglomerate, unless otherwise specified by the rules for that action.
Post: A blog post published to the BlogNomic weblog at blognomic.com
Quorum: Quorum of a subset of Mining Conglomerates is half the number of Mining Conglomerates in that subset, rounded down, plus one. If the word Quorum is used without qualifying which subset of Mining Conglomerates it is referring to, it is referring to a Quorum of all Mining Conglomerates.
Reject: To reject an attempt to take an action is to retroactively declare the attempt to have been unsuccessful, and to declare that all attempted game actions taken after that attempt were attempted as though the rejected attempt had been unsuccessful. An attempt to take an action can be rejected even if it were originally legal. The opposite of rejecting an attempt to take an action is upholding it.
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.
Revert: To Revert an action or change is both to fully reverse the effects of that change having occurred, and also to consider that change to have not occurred at all. To Revert a document or piece of tracked gamestate to a specific prior state means to return that item to that state, considering the actions that may have changed it since the time of that state to have not occurred. Reverting the gamestate to a specific state does not imply upholding that state.
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.
Sticky Post: A blog post where the “Make Entry Sticky” option has been enabled. Changing the state of this option is not considering altering or modifying the post with regards to the rules on Official Posts. The sticky status of posts should generally be left to the discretion of the Prospect Survey Corps.
Story Post: A Story Post is a post (that is not a Proposal, Call for Judgement, or Declaration of Victory) that follows a format specified by a dynastic rule, and is either in the “Story Post” category, (if it is a Votable Matter) the “Story Post—Votable Matter” category, or in no category. As an exception to the rule against changing the categories of posts in “Official Posts”, if a Story Post is ever in no category, it may be edited into 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.
Seasonal Downtime: On the 24th, 25th and 26th of December, BlogNomic is on Hiatus. In addition, game actions defined by the core rules titled “Mining Conglomerates” and “Victory and Ascension” (with the exception of Voting in DoVs) may not be taken.
Subrule: A subrule is a type of rule that is hierarchically ordered beneath another rule. Rules and proposals that refer to a rule do not also refer to its subrules, unless otherwise specified.
Table of Contents: The directory of section headings that is generated by the MediaWiki software for most pages in the wiki.
Title: The title of a post is never considered to include, for the purposes of any rule, any text that was automatically generated by the blog software as a result of the author putting it into the appropriate category.
Uphold: To uphold an attempt to take an action is to retroactively declare the attempt to have been successful, and to declare that all attempted game actions taken after that attempt were attempted as though the upheld attempt had been successful. An attempt to take an action can be upheld even if it were originally illegal (in which case the retroactive change is made by pretending, for the purpose of calculating the results of that change, that the action was legal). The opposite of upholding an attempt to take an action is rejecting it.
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 Mining Conglomerate 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 only be altered by its author 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.

An official post may be altered by its author if it is less than 30 minutes old and either no Mining Conglomerate has commented on it or (if it is a Votable Matter) if all comments on it contain no voting icon; this provision may be overruled by dynastic or Building Blocks rules.

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 voting icons in any of its comments, the author may change the categories as they wish. Secondly, if a post is less than six hours old and appears to the Prospect Survey Corps to have been intended as a Proposal, and if its author does not already have two Proposals pending, then the Prospect Survey Corps may move it into the Proposal category, causing it to be considered to have been open for voting since the time that the post was first posted.

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.

Date and Time Tracking

The Entry Date field of an Official Post may be modified by its author, an Admin, or the Prospect Survey Corps, only under the following conditions and only in the following ways:

If an Official Post is older than 7 days but needs to remain Sticky on the front page of the Blog then its Entry Date may be edited to the time of the edit, to within a minute, with the original date and time at which it was posted added to the Commentary or flavour text field of that post, in which case the original time of posting remains the time at which it was posted.
If an Official Post has been made visible on the blog within the preceding 6 hours, then the Entry Date field may be amended to match the timestamp for the first revision of the post (i.e. the timestamp for the initially posted version).

Representations of the Gamestate

If authorised by the rules as a result of a Mining Conglomerate’s action, changes to gamestate which is tracked in a specific place (such as a wiki page) do not take effect until the representation of that gamestate has been updated to match the authorised change. 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. Likewise, when performing a sequence of actions in quick succession that would otherwise require multiple comments to be posted in a row to the same blog post, the Mining Conglomerate performing them may combine those comments into a single comment (as long as it is clear which actions were performed), performing any wiki page updates that would otherwise have been performed between the comments immediately after posting the combined comment. 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 Mining Conglomerate may correct the representations to comply with the Gamestate.

If a Mining Conglomerate 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 Mining Conglomerate, if doing so would not require the correcting Mining Conglomerate to make any decisions on behalf of the original Mining Conglomerate.

Instead of repeatedly reverting and re-reverting a disputed alteration, however, Mining Conglomerates 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. Unless the rule defining the action specifies otherwise, this occurrence is 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.

A week (168 hours) after each attempt by a Mining Conglomerate to perform an action, the values to which that attempt changed publicly tracked dynastic variables on their public trackers are automatically upheld, unless the attempt is challenged. (If an attempt does not change the value of a particular variable on the tracker, this does not cause the value of that unchanged variable to be upheld.) An attempt can be challenged in a blog post or comment (e.g. by stating that the attempt may not have succeeded or that the value of the variable is wrong), by making a CFJ that would uphold, reject or revert the attempt, or by making an edit to the tracker that purports to correct the effects of that attempt on publicly tracked dynastic variables (including by reverting its changes on the purported basis that attempted action was illegal).

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

Imperial Tracking

The identity of the current dynasty’s Prospect Survey Corps is tracked in the last sentence of the Core Rule “Dynasties”. Whenever a Mining Conglomerate becomes the Prospect Survey Corps, that sentence changes to “The following Mining Conglomerate is the Prospect Survey Corps: ” followed by that Mining Conglomerate’s name in quotes. Whenever a Metadynasty starts, that sentence changes to “There is no Prospect Survey Corps this Dynasty.”.

All names after the colon in the last sentence of “Dynasties” are considered to be references to Mining Conglomerates, and are flavour text for all purposes other than referencing Mining Conglomerates. If the Prospect Survey Corps changes their name by proposal, the sentence in question is updated to reflect the new name of the Prospect Survey Corps.

The identity of the Prospect Survey Corps is considered to be a gamestate variable that belongs to the game of BlogNomic as a whole, rather than belonging to the Prospect Survey Corps personally.

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 Mining Conglomerate with such access. Only a Mining Conglomerate with such access may Enact that Votable Matter. If that Votable Matter does not name a Mining Conglomerate 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 Mining Conglomerate making the roll before or while making the roll. The Dice Roller is considered to fulfill the uniform probability distribution requirements to meet the purposes of the game. Additionally, when using a private random generation method, it is enough that the Mining Conglomerate performing the selection holds a genuine belief that their random selection method is uniform. If a selection is explicitly specified as being “secretly” random, the Mining Conglomerate making this determination may do so using a private method of their choosing, instead of the Dice Roller.

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 Mining Conglomerate 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 or 72 hours have passed.
If a rule allows the Mining Conglomerate performing an Atomic Action to skip some of its steps, the skipped steps are considered to have been completed.
If a Mining Conglomerate 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 Mining Conglomerate must redo the Atomic Action; for that purpose, the Mining Conglomerate 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 Mining Conglomerate 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 Mining Conglomerate can spend or pay from only their own values, and a rule that allows Mining Conglomerates to transfer or pay a numeric value to another Mining Conglomerate only allows them to transfer that value from themselves to that other Mining Conglomerate (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 Mining Conglomerate 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), false (for variables or states that may only be either true or false), 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”). For the purposes of this bullet point, the names of Mining Conglomerates are not considered to be legal values for game variables, nor for list items within game variables.
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 Prospect Survey Corps (including secretly random selections), then that information may only be revealed by the Prospect Survey Corps when the ruleset allows it. If a Mining Conglomerate should already know such a piece of information (in that the Prospect Survey Corps has already told them it, or vice versa, and there is no way that the information could have been changed since then), the Prospect Survey Corps may repeat it to them. Additionally; if a piece of private information is described as being Sealed; the Mining Conglomerate or Prospect Survey Corps who tracked that information may reveal it during an Interregnum or during any later dynasty.
A range of numerical values stated to be “between” one value and another value is treated as an inclusive range unless otherwise explicitly stated.

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 (or image or Template) becomes gamestate as a result of a Votable Matter enacting, that content shall – unless otherwise specified – be reverted to whatever state it was in at the time of that Votable Matter’s submission (and if the new gamestate 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 a dynastic rule has no text and no subrules, any Mining Conglomerate 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 may not be treated as containing ruletext, and may not be considered to possess any meaning other than that given to it by ruletext, and a caption to an illustration must be treated as flavour text.
When the ruleset calls for the use of a specific tool (such as the dice roller, or an off-domain website, or a specific piece of downloadable software), Mining Conglomerates may not deliberately interfere with the function of that tool except in ways explicitly permitted by the ruleset.
If the Prospect Survey Corps has voted DEFERENTIAL on a Proposal, they (and any other Mining Conglomerates who have voted DEFERENTIAL on it) are not considered to be a Mining Conglomerate for the purposes of totaling quorum on that Proposal.

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 Mining Conglomerate 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.
Mining Conglomerates may correct obvious spelling, punctuation, typographical, and/or formatting mistakes in the Ruleset, the Building Blocks page, and their own Pending Votable Matters at any time, including replacing Spivak and gender-specific pronouns that refer to Mining Conglomerates with the corresponding forms of the singular ‘they’.
A Mining Conglomerate 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.
A Mining Conglomerate may change the layout or design of a gamestate wiki page if doing so would not change how any rules interpreted its content.

Names

Within the Ruleset, a word only refers to the name of a Mining Conglomerate if it is explicitly stated that it refers to a Mining Conglomerate'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 Mining Conglomerate's (or prospective Mining Conglomerate's ) new name must be between 3 and 30 characters in length, and may only include the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, numbers, underscores, hyphens, full stops and apostrophes. A Mining Conglomerate’s name may only be changed as a result of a Proposal approving the change.

Prioritisation

The Ruleset may impose no limitation on the ability of a CfJ to alter the Gamestate or Ruleset. If an enacted CfJ calls for a change that the Ruleset prohibits or considers impossible then the CfJ has priority (with the exception of the prohibition on votable matters making changes that apply to its own enactment). An enacted Proposal has priority over the Dynastic rules or Building Blocks, but may not make changes that are prohibited or contradicted by the Appendix or Core Rules.
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 Building Blocks Rule explicitly says that it cannot be overruled by a Dynastic Rule, that Building Blocks Rule has precedence over a Dynastic Rule, otherwise a Dynastic Rule has equal precedence as that Building Blocks Rule;
If two contradicting parts have equal precedence, the part with more limited scope applies (e.g. if the rules “Mining Conglomerates may Kick each other” and “Mining Conglomerates may not Kick each other on Tuesdays” exist, and it is Tuesday, Mining Conglomerates 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 “Mining Conglomerates may Punch a Spaceman on Friday” and “Mining Conglomerates may not Punch Spacemen on Friday”, then Mining Conglomerates may not Punch Spacemen on Friday).

This document is considered to be, in effect, the only Ruleset for BlogNomic, so long as it is located at at the URL https://wiki.blognomic.com/index.php?title=Ruleset.

Mentors

A Mining Conglomerate may have another Mining Conglomerate as a Mentor. Mining Conglomerates who are willing to act as a Mentor, and who meet the criteria set out in the Tenured Players section of the aftermentioned page, 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 Mining Conglomerate who has requested a change on their own behalf, or may remove the name of any Tenured Player who no longer meets the criteria set out in the Tenured Players section of the Mentorships page, from this list at any time. The Mentorships page is also used to list the names of players who are prohibited from becoming Tenured; this list may only be amended by the effect of a Votable Matter.

If an unmentored Mining Conglomerate requests a Mentor, or a new Mining Conglomerate has joined the game and has no Mentor, the Prospect Survey Corps should select a Tenured Mining Conglomerate and ask them to take that Mining Conglomerate 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 Prospect Survey Corps should announce it in a blog post. The Prospect Survey Corps should take care to consider game balance when selecting a potential mentor.

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

If there is no Prospect Survey Corps, any Mining Conglomerate who has been active in at least three previous dynasties may act as Prospect Survey Corps 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 and Dice Roller, and optionally the game’s Discord and social media feeds
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 Mining Conglomerate 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 Mining Conglomerates .
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 “Mining Conglomerate” and “Prospect Survey Corps”.

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

Mining Conglomerate (Player)
Prospect Survey Corps (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 Building Blocks page or 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 244

Core Rules

Ruleset and Gamestate

Mining Conglomerates

Idle Mining Conglomerates

Dormancy

Recusants

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

Years and Phases

Tracked Information

Minerals

Surveys

Focused Prospecting

Mines

Features

Feature Generation

Miners

Casualties and Hospitalization

Developing

Equipment

Solo Development

Forced Development

Next Dig Actions

Title Chase

Prospecting

Trading

Subsidiaries

Prospect Seal

Building Blocks

Mantle Passing

Reinitialisation

Precondition Unidling

Appendix

Keywords

Imperatives

Time

Other

Gamestate Tracking

Official Posts

Date and Time Tracking

Representations of the Gamestate

Orphan Variables

Imperial Tracking

Random Generators

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

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