Second Switch Ruleset

Core Rules

Ruleset and Gamestate

This is the Ruleset for the BlogNomic WordPress test; all Designers shall obey it. Henceforth in this document, "BlogNomic" refers to the BlogNomic WordPress test at https://wp.blognomic.com, not the main BlogNomic game at https://blognomic.com, unless otherwise specified.

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

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

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

Designers

Any active Designer of the main BlogNomic game at https://blognomic.com may sign up for a BlogNomic WordPress test account, using the same name and email address they use at the main BlogNomic game, at https://wp.blognomic.com/register. When they have saved their profile fields with “Player status” set to “Active” and appear as an active player in the sidebar, they become a Designer.

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

Some Designers are Admins, responsible for updating the site and the Ruleset, and are signified as such in the sidebar. Admins at the main BlogNomic game shall become Admins of the BlogNomic WordPress test when they become a Designer of the BlogNomic WordPress test, unless they request otherwise, and any Admin at the main BlogNomic game may become an Admin of the WordPress Test game at any time by posting a notice to that effect. Upon the posting of such a notice, any other Admin should make the necessary profile changes at their earliest opportunity and comment to the Notice to confirm that they are complete. Designers of the main BlogNomic game who are not Admins there may not become Admins of the BlogNomic WordPress test.

Idle Designers

If a Designer is Idle, this is tracked by their "Designer status" profile field being set to "Idle", thus removing their name from the list of currently active Designers in the Sidebar. For the purposes of all Gamestate and the Ruleset, excluding Rules “Ruleset and Gamestate”, “Designers”, “Dynasties”, “Fair Play” and any of those Rules’ subrules, Idle Designers are not counted as Designers.

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

When a Designer 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 Designer Idled in a different Dynasty), the Designer is given the default value for new Designers, if such a value exists.

An Admin may render a Designer Idle if that Designer has asked to become Idle in an entry or comment from the past four days, or if that Designer 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 Designer if that Designer 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 Designer who would be Unidled asked to become (or rendered themselves) Idle within the previous four days, and within the current Dynasty.

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

Idle Admins can enact and fail Votable Matters.

Dynasties

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

Votable Matters

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

Votes

Each Designer may cast one Vote on a Votable Matter by making a comment to the Official Post that comprises that Votable Matter with the Vote field set to FOR, AGAINST, or DEFERENTIAL. Additional Vote field values may be permitted in some cases by other rules. A valid Vote is, except when otherwise specified, a Vote of FOR or AGAINST. A Designer’s Vote on a Votable Matter is the vote field value that they have most recently used in any comment on that Votable Matter. Additionally, if the author of a Votable Matter has not voted in a comment to the post, then the author’s Vote is FOR. A non-Designer never has a Vote, even if they were a Designer previously and had cast a valid Vote.

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

Throughout the Ruleset, the capitalization of Vote field values may differ from that used on the actual comment Vote field; these capitalization differences shall be considered irrelevant.

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 Designers 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 must have the tag/s “Core”, “Special Case” and/or “Appendix” to amend the Core Rules, the Special Case Rules and/or the Appendix, respectively.

Votable Matters other than DoVs require the tag “Victory” in order to grant victory to a Designer.

Proposals

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

Special Proposal Voting

When a Designer 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 Lead Developer may make a vote of VETO on a Proposal; when the Lead Developer casts a vote of VETO on a Proposal, this renders the Proposal Vetoed, even if the Lead Developer 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 Designers actively disagree as to the interpretation of the Ruleset, or if a Designer feels that an aspect of the game needs urgent attention, then any Designer 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 Designer (other than the Lead Developer) 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 Designer 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 Lead Developer 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 Designer 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 Designer who made the DoV becomes the Lead Developer.

The new Lead Developer will make an Ascension Address by posting an entry in the “Ascension Address” category. This should specify the Lead Developer’s chosen theme for the new Dynasty, and it may optionally specify that the terms “Designer” and “Lead Developer” 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), and/or list a number of dynastic rules to keep. When such an Ascension Address is posted, the Ruleset is updated to reflect any changed terms, and any dynastic rules which were not listed to be kept are repealed. 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 Lead Developer may pass the role of Lead Developer to another Designer 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 Designer’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. Designers 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 Designer within BlogNomic, and should announce publicly if they control both a non-Idle Designer and any Idle Designers.
• A Designer 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 Designer should not deliberately exploit bugs or unexpected behaviours in the software running the game (WordPress, MediaWiki or other blognomic.com scripts).
• A Designer should not edit their own blog comments once posted, nor those of any other Designer.
• A Designer should not edit the “Entry Date” field of a blog post.
• A Designer should not make a DoV primarily to delay the game by putting it into Hiatus.
• A Designer 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 Designer 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 Designer must use their own name in the Dice Roller, when rolling dice.
• A Designer should not deliberately and unreasonably prolong the performance of a game action once they have started it.
• A Designer should not use a core, special case or appendix rules scam to directly or indirectly achieve victory.

Dynastic Rules

Elementor Basics

When any of the following terms is used in reference to the contents of a page on https://wp.blognomic.com, they refer to their meaning in the Elementor page builder and [its documentation]:

• Section
• Column
• Widget
• Template

Any of the above terms may be preceded by the word “Elementor” for clarity.

When referring to the contents of a page on https://wiki.blognomic.com, including the Ruleset itself, these terms do not refer to their meaning in Elementor unless specified otherwise.

The Second Switch Page

The page at https://wp.blognomic.com/second-switch-page, if it exists, is known as the Second Switch Page or SSP, and is Gamestate. Its WordPress title shall be “Second Switch Page”.

The SSP shall consist of one or more Elementor Sections and their contents.

No SSP Sections may contain any Columns not authorized by the Ruleset. No SSP Columns may contain any Widgets not authorized by the Ruleset. No Designer, even Admins, may change the settings of SSP Sections or Columns from their default settings, except as explicitly permitted by the Ruleset.

The topmost Section on the SSP shall contain one Column, and that Column shall contain one “Page Title” Widget, set to display the page’s title. The settings of this widget may be changed at the discretion of the Lead Developer, provided that the settings do not break any rules.

All other SSP Sections shall collectively be known as the Canvas, and individually known as Canvas Sections.

The Canvas

Only Admins may edit the Canvas, and Admins may only edit it as the Ruleset allows.

All Canvas Sections shall contain between 2 and 4 Columns. All the columns within a Canvas Section must be equally wide, and all together must be the full width of the Section.

All of a Canvas Section’s Columns must contain at least one Widget.

New Widgets being added into empty Columns must follow the following algorithm (depicted here), unless otherwise permitted in the Ruleset:

1. No Widget may be added to an empty Canvas until 2 Widgets are ready to be populated at the same time. (This is implied by the requirements that Canvas Sections must have at least 2 Columns, and that all Columns must have at least one Widget.)
2. The order of Widgets will always be preserved left-to-right then top-to-bottom, in the order that their addition was required or requested.
3. When 2 Widgets are ready to be added, the Admin editing the Canvas will create the first Canvas Section with a two-column layout, then add them.
4. When the 3rd Widget is ready to be added, the Section will have 3 columns.
5. When the 4th Widget is ready, the Section will have 4 columns.
6. When the 5th Widget is ready, the Section will have 3 columns, and a new Section below it will have 2.
7. When the 6th Widget is ready, the older Section and newer Section will both have 3 Columns.
8. When the 7th Widget is ready, the older Section will have 4 Columns and the newer one 3.
9. When the 8th Widget is ready, both older and newer Sections will have 4.
10. When the 9th Widget is ready, the algorithm repeats the pattern started in step 6 above, with the “newer” Section now considered the “older” one, and another new Section created below it.

Designer Templates

All Designers may create one regular Elementor Template (not a Theme Builder or Popup Template), named “[Playername]’s Template”, where [Playername] is replaced by the Designer’s BlogNomic name. Such Templates are known as “Designer Templates”.

After creating their Designer Template, a Designer may make a blog post requesting an Admin to populate it into the Canvas, or, if they are an Admin, announcing that they will do so themselves. No Designer Template may be populated into the Canvas without such a post being made. The Admin should confirm that the Template abides by the Ruleset before populating it, and if it is found not to abide by the Ruleset, the Admin must decline to populate it and comment on the request explaining which rule they think it breaks and why. The creator of the Designer Template must then make a new post requesting that it be populated into the Canvas.

Designer Templates are populated into the Canvas by adding an Elementor “Template” Widget to an empty Column, then choosing the Template.

A Designer Template shall have only one Section, containing only one Column, and shall have no Widgets not permitted by the Ruleset. However, the Designer may change any of their Template’s Sections' settings, Columns' settings, and/or Widgets’ settings — except for Custom CSS, which must remain empty unless otherwise permitted — in any way not forbidden by the Ruleset.

No part of a Designer Template may ever exceed the bounds of its Column on the Canvas by any method, including but not limited to overly large fonts or relative/absolute positioning. This includes all browser widths; therefore, Designers should test their Templates at all browser widths and make width-specific adjustments as supported by Elementor if need be.

A Designer may edit their Designer Template as often as they wish if it is not yet populated into the Canvas. If it is populated into the Canvas, the Designer may edit it in any permissible way as a Daily Action. If a Designer Template on the Canvas is found to break a rule, the Designer may edit it at any time to make it conform to the rules, even if the rules regarding Daily Actions would prohibit it; however, such an edit still counts as a Daily Action for the purposes of determining whether a future edit to this template is legal. Such an edit must be announced in a blog post before being made, and may not make any changes not related to making the Designer Template conform to the rules.

Any Designer may challenge the legality of any other Designer’s Designer Template by making a post to the Votable Matter category tagged with “SSP”, and whose text explains the illegality and proposes a change to the Template to make it conform to the rules. If the post is Enacted, the proposed change shall be made by the enacting Admin. Such a Votable Matter is not required, however; if a Designer can be convinced in any informal way that their Template breaks the rules, they may simply announce their change and make it, as described above.

Permitted Widgets

A Designer Template shall have, as its topmost Widget, an Elementor “Heading” Widget, whose text must always be the same as the Designer Template’s name. The font size of this heading must be less than or equal to 24 pixels or 1.5 rems.

Icon Box or Image Box

A Designer Template may have one of the following: (1) up to two “Icon Box” Widgets, (2) up to two “Image Box” Widgets, or (3) an “Icon Box” Widget and an “Image Box” Widget. No image or icon within the chosen Widget may appear taller than 200 CSS pixels at any browser width. No text within it may have a font size greater than 24 pixels or 1.5 rems. Designers may create or upload any image to which they have distribution rights for use in an Image Box widget, so long as it does not violate any other rules.

Inventory

A Designer Template may have a single "Icon List" widget, with exactly three list items which unambiguously state the number of Products, Ideas, and Clients (collectively called Resources) owned by that Template's Designer. The icons of these three items shall be "Box", "Lightbulb", and "User" respectively. No text within this Widget may have a font size greater than 24 pixels or 1.5 rems.

Income

When updating their Template, a Designer may increase the amount of a Resource they own by at most X, where X is the number of days since their last edit to the Template. This may only be done if the Template (prior to editing) contains an "Image Box" Widget or an "Icon Box" Widget matching that Resource.

An "Image Box" Widget is considered to match:

• Clients, if it contains an image which shows a person.
• Products, if it does not match Clients and contains an image which shows a man-made object.
• Ideas, if it does not match any other Resource.

An "Icon Box" Widget is considered to match a Resource if it contains the icon used to represent that Resource, as defined under "Inventory" in the "Permitted Widgets" subrule.

Special Case

Special Case Rules can be Active or Inactive. A Special Case Rule should be tagged with its status. Otherwise, its status is its Default Status.

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

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

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

Seasonal Downtime [Active]

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

Dormancy [Inactive]

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

Imperial Deferentials [Active]

If the Lead Developer has voted DEFERENTIAL on a Proposal, that vote is instead considered to be valid and either FOR (if more Designers have voted FOR the Proposal than have voted AGAINST it) or AGAINST (in all other cases).

Dynastic Distance [Active]

For the purposes of dynastic rules which do not deal with voting, the Lead Developer is not a Designer.

The Traitor [Active]

The Traitor for a particular Dynasty may be a Designer (including an idle one), or may be nobody, and it defaults to being nobody. The Traitor’s identity in the current Dynasty is tracked privately by the Lead Developer, and the Lead Developer should not share this information with Designers other than the Traitor.

If there is no Traitor for the current Dynasty, and BlogNomic is not on Hiatus, the Lead Developer may secretly randomly select a Designer (other than the Lead Developer) and privately inform them that they are the Traitor for the current Dynasty.

A Traitor is under no obligation to honour any informal promises they have made with other Designers, nor to tell the truth to them, and is encouraged to betray other Designers in order to achieve victory.

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.)

Can

“is able to”

Comment

A blog comment published to the BlogNomic WordPress weblog at wp.blognomic.com. A top-level comment is a comment which is not a reply to another comment.

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 Designers.

Daily Action

If a game action is a Daily Action, each Designer 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 Designer 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.

Dice

References to “DICEX” or “YDICEX” refer to X-sided dice and Y amount of X-sided dice, rolled using the Dice Roller.

Dynastic Action

An action that is defined in the Dynastic rules.

Dynastic Proposal

A Proposal which mandates changes that, even if conditionally, are limited to the creation, deletion, and/or amendment of dynastic rules and/or gamestate defined by dynastic rules.

Effective Vote Comment (EVC)

A Designer’s Effective Vote Comment with respect to a given Votable Matter is that Designer’s Comment to that Votable Matter, if any, that contains that Designer’s Vote on that Votable Matter.

Commentary

When posting a blog entry, a Designer 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.

Flavour Text

If a part of the ruleset is defined as being “flavour text”, it is gamestate and remains part of the ruleset document, but is not considered to have any meaning beyond being a string of characters. Designers are not required to obey flavour text and may not perform any action defined by it, and any statements that flavour text makes about gamestate are ignored.

Gamestate

Any information which the Ruleset regulates the alteration of. All wiki pages that the Dynastic Rules explicitly mention (except for dynastic histories and discussion pages) and any images or Templates contained within those Wiki Pages are assumed to be Gamestate.

Hiatus

If BlogNomic is on Hiatus, Dynastic Actions may not be taken, and Proposals may not be submitted or Resolved. If multiple rules require BlogNomic to be on Hiatus at any given time, BlogNomic will continue to be on Hiatus until no rules require it.

Introduction

The introduction of a rule is the part of that rule’s text before any subrules.

Post

A blog post published to the BlogNomic WordPress weblog at wp.blognomic.com

Private Message

A message sent via BlogNomic’s Private Messages system at wp.blognomic.com.

Quorum

Quorum of a subset of Designers is half the number of Designers in that subset, rounded down, plus one. If the word Quorum is used without qualifying which subset of Designers it is referring to, it is referring to a Quorum of all Designers.

Resolve/Resolution

If used in a context of a Votable Matter, the word “Resolve” means to perform the act, as an Admin, of enacting or failing 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.

Rule

Each individually numbered section of the Ruleset is a rule, including sections that are subrules of other rules.

Shall

“is required to”

Should

“is recommended that”

Sibling Rule

Two rules are “siblings” of each other if they are both direct subrules of the same rule.

Slack

The BlogNomic Slack is located at blognomic.slack.com. Designers may request an invite to the Slack while logged in by clicking the button in the sidebar.

Slack Channel

A Slack Channel is any channel on the BlogNomic Slack. To reference a Slack Channel, use a hash (#) followed by the name of that channel (e.g. #random).

Story Post

A Story Post is an entry in the “Story Post” category.

Subject

The “subject” of a blog entry is the part of the Title of an entry which is after the first colon. If the Title does not contain a colon, then the whole Title is the subject. Any entry whose subject is “” (i.e. an empty string) is not valid.

Subrule

A subrule is a type of rule that is nested within another rule. A Proposal that specifically affects a rule affects all of its subrules; a Proposal that specifically affects a subrule does not affect its parent rule or any other subrule of that rule, unless they are also explicitly cited as being affected by that Proposal.

Table of Contents

The directory of section headings that is generated by the MediaWiki software for most pages in the wiki.

Tag

A Post may have any number of tags applied to it using the WordPress interface. A Rule may have any number of tags applied to it. Rule tags are represented by appending to their title a comma-separated list of such tags, enclosed in square brackets.

TOC

Table of Contents.

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.

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 Designer 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 Designer per week.

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 https://wp.blognomic.com. Any Designer 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.

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

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

Any post that is or is made illegal as a result of an infraction against any of the prohibitions set out in this rule 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.

Representations of the Gamestate

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

If a Designer feels that a representation of the gamestate (such as a wiki page) was altered such that it no longer matches the gamestate (such as by performing an action which was against the Rules as they were at the time of the alteration, or by any other means), they may simply undo the effects of that alteration. Instead of repeatedly reverting and re-reverting a disputed alteration, Designers are encouraged to raise a Call for Judgement instead.

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

Orphan Variables

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

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

Random Generators

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

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

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

If a Proposal proposes a change to this rule that would require server-level access to the BlogNomic site to fully enact its effects, that Proposal must name a Designer with such access. Only a Designer with such access may Enact that Proposal. If that Proposal does not name a Designer with such access, that Proposal 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 DICE roll in the Dice Roller, unless otherwise specified. If a selection is explicitly specified as being “secretly” random, the Designer 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 Designer 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.
• An Atomic Action may direct the Designer performing it to skip some of its steps, which the Designer must do and in which case the skipped steps are considered completed for this rule.
• If a Designer 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 Designer must redo the Atomic Action; for that purpose, the Designer 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 Designer 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” 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” 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, lost, gained, or transferred, a Designer can spend only their own values, and a rule that allows Designers to transfer a numeric value only allows them to transfer that value from themselves to another Designer (of their choice unless otherwise stated).
• A Designer who has a choice in whether to take an action defined by a dynastic rule may not take that action if both of the following conditions are true: a) the action’s effects are limited to changing values tracked in gamestate-tracking entities (such as a wiki page), and b) the action would change one or more of those values to an illegal value.
• If a rule implies that the result of any calculation should be an integer (for instance, by attempting to store that result in, or add it to, a gamestate variable that can only hold integers), the result of the calculation is instead the result rounded towards 0.
• If a game variable has a default value but no defined starting value, then its default value should also be considered a starting value. If a game variable has neither a default value nor a starting value, then both may be considered to be the nearest legal value to zero that it may take (for numerical variables, defaulting to positive if tied), blank (for a text string or list that may be blank), the alphabetically earliest legal text string it may take (for a text string which may not be blank, with the digits 0 through 9 considered to precede “A”), or the list which is alphabetically earliest from the set of lists with the fewest elements (for lists which may not be blank, and considering each list to be a single unpunctuated text string, with the digits 0 through 9 considered to precede “A”).
• If the rules that define a game variable are amended, and some previously valid values become invalid as a consequence, any existing variables whose current values would become invalid are instead set to their starting value.
• Invalid values for game variables can never be used, even if the values stored in a gamestate-tracking entity remain valid. (for example, if X appears in a formula referring to a value that is a non-negative integer, X must be used as a non-negative integer)
• DICEN cannot be rolled in the Dice Roller if N is greater than one million.

Rules and Proposals

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

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 Designer 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

• 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.
• The terms “Player” and “Designer” are synonyms.
• Designers may correct obvious spelling and typographical mistakes in the Ruleset and their own Pending Proposals at any time, including replacing Spivak and gender-specific pronouns with the singular “they”.

Names

• Within the Ruleset, a word only refers to the name of a Designer if it is explicitly stated that it refers to a Designer’s name.
• If a rule would ever have no name, it is instead named “Unnamed Rule”.
• The names of rules are not themselves rule text and have no effect other than being rule names.
• 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 Proposal, the name used in reference to a specific Proposal may be simplified by not including any valid representation of a tag or tags. i.e. a Proposal 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 any valid representation of a tag or tags, and, in the case of Special Case Rules, any asterisks, as long as such a reference would be unambiguous.

Prioritisation

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

1. The Appendix has precedence over any other Rule;
2. A Dynastic Rule has precedence over a Core Rule, unless that Core Rule explicitly says it can’t be overruled by a Dynastic Rule;
3. A Special Case Rule has equal precedence as a Dynastic Rule, unless that Special Case Rule explicitly says it can’t be overruled by a Dynastic Rule;
4. If two contradicting parts have equal precedence, the part with more limited scope applies (e.g. if the rules “Designers may Kick each other” and “Designers may not Kick each other on Tuesdays” exist, and it is Tuesday, Designers may not Kick each other);
5. If two contradicting parts have the same scope, the negative rule applies (e.g. with “Designers may Punch a Spaceman on Friday” and “Designers may not Punch Spacemen on Friday”, then Designers may not Punch Spacemen on Friday).

Mentors

Whenever a new Designer joins the game, the Lead Developer should select an active Designer who has indicated their willingness to act as a mentor and ask them to take that new Designer on as a mentee. The Lead Developer should wherever possible take care to consider game balance when selecting a potential mentor. The approached prospective mentor may decline to act as a mentor, in which case the Lead Developer should continue to approach other prospective mentors until one agrees or there are no available candidates who have not declined. If there are no available candidates then the Lead Developer may act as the new Designer’s mentor themselves, or the new Designer must go without a mentor.

A relationship between a mentor and a mentee is a Mentorship. Whenever a new Mentorship is established, the Lead Developer should announce it in a blog post.

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, Slack, and end-of-dynasty notifications through the Facebook group or Twitter;
• If possible, give their mentee a nudge if it appears that they are at risk of becoming Idle;
• If they themselves go idle, communicate with their mentee to either continue to support them as an idle Designer 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 should last for at least four weeks or until the next Ascension Address, whichever occurs latest. It can continue 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 Designers.
• 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.