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Core Rules

Ruleset and Gamestate

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

It comprises three Sections: 1) the “core rules” of BlogNomic, covering the essential elements of gameplay; 2) the rules of the current Dynasty; 3) modular rules and clarifications, which are persistent but particularly relevant to the current dynasty. Additionally there exists a separate document, called the Ruleset Appendix. The contents of the Ruleset Appendix must be considered ruletext but should, wherever possible, primarily contain clarifications and definitions.

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

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

Monks

Any human may apply to join BlogNomic (if they are not already a Monk) by registering at http://blognomic.com via the Register link in the sidebar, and then making a post making clear their wish to be an Monk (plural form Monks). An Admin shall add them to the roster in the sidebar, at which moment they become a Monk.

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

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

Idle Monks

If a Monk is Idle, this is tracked by their name being removed or concealed in the list of currently active Monks in the Sidebar. For the purposes of all Gamestate and the Ruleset, excluding Rules “Ruleset and Gamestate”, “Monks”, “Dynasties”, “Fair Play”, "Mentors" and any of those Rules’ subrules, Idle Monks are not counted as Monks.

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

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

Votable Matters

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

Votes

Each Monk 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. If a Monk other than the Abbot casts a vote of DEFERENTIAL, then the Vote of DEFERENTIAL is an indication of confidence in the Abbot. When the Abbot 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 Abbot’s Vote for the purposes of other rules unless otherwise specified.

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

• It has a number of FOR Votes that exceed or equal Quorum.
• It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours, it has more than 1 valid Vote cast on it, and more valid Votes cast on it are FOR than are AGAINST.

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

• The number of Monks 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 can either be Pending, Enacted, or Failed. When a Votable Matter is first put forward, it is considered Pending.

Whenever 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 self-killed or vetoed). Comments cannot be made on Enacted or Failed Votable Matters.

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

Tags

Votable Matters have zero or more tags. Tags are represented in the title of a Votable Matter with the format “[X]” (e.g. “[Core] Wording Fix”, where “[Core]” is the tag). Votable Matters require the “[Core]” tag in order to make changes to the Core Rules, the “[Special Case]” tag in order to make changes to the Special Case Rules and the “[Appendix]” tag in order to make changes to the Appendix Rules. Votable Matters other than DoVs require the “[Victory]” tag in order to grant victory to a Monk.

If a Votable Matter would make a modification to the rules and it does not have the tag to make that modification, that Votable Matter will still be able to make that specific modification if any of the following on the following list are true:

• The modification is preceded or followed immediately by an unambiguous statement of which section of the ruleset it takes place.
• The modification specifically states a rule using its number or the name of the stated rule only occurs once in the ruleset.

Proposals

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

Special Proposal Voting

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

Resolution of Proposals

The oldest Pending Proposal may be Enacted by any Admin (by updating the Ruleset and/or Gamestate to include the specified effects of that Proposal, and then setting that Proposal’s status to Enacted) if all of the following are true:

• It is Popular.
• It has been open for voting for at least 12 hours.
• It has not been Vetoed or Self-Killed.

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 Self-Killed.

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.

Calls for Judgement

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

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

• It is Popular.

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

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

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

This Rule may not be overruled by Dynastic Rules.

Victory and Ascension

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When a DoV is Enacted, all other pending DoVs are Failed, and a new Dynasty begins in which the Monk who made the DoV becomes the Abbot.

The new Abbot will make an Ascension Address by posting an entry in the “Ascension Address” category. This should specify the Abbot’s chosen theme for the new Dynasty, and it may optionally also specify:

• That the terms “Monk” and “Abbot” will be replaced with theme-specific terms throughout the entire Ruleset (where the replacement terms are different, and neither includes any words in a form in which they already appear in the non-dynastic Ruleset)
• A number of dynastic rules to keep
• Any number of existing Special Case Rules to be set to a status other than their respective Default Status

When such an Ascension Address is posted, the Ruleset is updated to reflect any changed terms, any dynastic rules which were not listed to be kept are repealed, and any affected Special Case rules have their statuses modified (any Special Case Rules not mentioned in the Ascension Address are set to their respective Default Status). Between the enactment of the DoV and the posting of the Ascension Address, no new DoV may be made and BlogNomic is on Hiatus.

Before an Ascension Address has been posted for a new Dynasty, the Abbot may pass the role of Abbot to another Monk by making a post to that effect.

This rule cannot be overruled by Dynastic Rules as it relates to Declarations of Victory, but it can be overruled in other matters.

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 Monk’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. Monks 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 Monk within BlogNomic, and should announce publicly if they control both a non-Idle Monk and any Idle Monks.
• A Monk 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 Monk should not deliberately exploit bugs or unexpected behaviours in the software running the game (ExpressionEngine, MediaWiki or other blognomic.com scripts).
• A Monk should not edit their own blog comments once posted, nor those of any other Monk.
• A Monk should not edit the “Entry Date” field of a blog post.
• A Monk should not make a DoV primarily to delay the game by putting it into Hiatus.
• A Monk 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 Monk 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 Monk must use their own name in the Dice Roller, when rolling dice.
• A Monk should not deliberately and unreasonably prolong the performance of a game action once they have started it.
• A Monk should not use a core, special case or appendix rules scam to directly or indirectly achieve victory.

Dynastic Rules

Special Case Rules

Special Case Rules can be Active or Inactive. If a Special Case Rule is included in this section of the ruleset then it is active. Inactive Special Case rules can be found in the Ruleset Appendix.

Special Case Rules have a Default Status, which can be Active or Inactive. If the title of a Special Case Rule includes an asterisk, (*) its Default Status is Inactive, otherwise, its Default Status is Active.

Seasonal Downtime

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

Dormancy

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

Dynastic Distance

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