Talk:Generic Core Rules

From BlogNomic Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Compressed enactment rules

A pending proposal can only be enacted if all of the following points are true for it:-

  • It has a number of FOR Votes that exceed or equal quorum or 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.
  • It has been open for voting for at least 12 hours.
  • It has not been Vetoed or Self-Killed.

A pending proposal can be failed if any of the following are true for it:-

  • The number of players who are not voting AGAINST it is less than quorum; or
  • It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and cannot be enacted; or
  • It has been Vetoed or Self-Killed.

A pending CfJ is processed like a proposal, but it ignores the minimum 12 hour period, and Vetoing or Self-Killing a CfJ has no effect on it.

A pending DoV is processed like a proposal, but if it has any AGAINST votes and the Emperor has not voted FOR it, its 12 hour period is extended to 24 hours, and it cannot be failed within the first 12 hours. Vetoing or Self-Killing a DoV has no effect on it.

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

Still needs some polish (the 12-hour window could use a name, for reference), but that looks a bit better than I expected. --Kevan (talk) 15:33, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

I feel like we can go a bit further and still be neat:

A pending votable matter can only be enacted if the following points are true for it:-

  • It has a number of FOR Votes that exceed or equal quorum or 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.
  • If it is a proposal, it has been open for voting for at least 12 hours; or, if it is a declaration of victory, it has been open for voting for at least 24 hours.
  • If it is a proposal, it has not been Vetoed or Self-Killed.

A pending proposal can be failed if any of the following are true for it:-

  • The number of players who are not voting AGAINST it is less than quorum; or
  • It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and cannot be enacted; or
  • If it is a proposal, it has been Vetoed or Self-Killed.

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

Removes the finnicky timings around DOV validity but I think that's okay, it wasn't adding much... Josh (talk) 19:41, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Retake

Looking back over this again with a fresh brain, some things which are quite idiosyncratic to BlogNomic and may not be necessary here are:-

  • The word "quorum" (which is only used twice in this Generic Ruleset, and is not how most people would use the word)
  • All the stuff about not rushing to enact Proposals or DoV in fewer than 12 or 24 hours: if this is a generic system that we want random forums and subreddits and Discords and even tabletops to adopt, some are going to be puzzled when their game's first proposal gets instant approval and hits a weird "come back tomorrow!" wall. This probably merits a wider discussion about pacing: it may even be worth having a clock rule embedded in the ruleset ("a Tick is equal to [X] hours... if a Proposal is more than two Ticks old... cannot make another DoV for five Ticks...") and guidance to set that to two minutes, an hour or a day depending on playing context.
  • The minimum-2-votes-to-enact rule is there to stop a particular type of not very common scam, which new Nomics might enjoy encountering and patching.
  • The "If a DoV is Failed and it had at least one AGAINST vote clause" seems extremely niche and I can't even remember why it's there in our own rules (are we being generous in the obscure situation where a DoV times out with no votes cast, or is failed by a faster CfJ?)

Trimming that back gives us:

The oldest pending proposal can be enacted if more than half the players have voted FOR it, or if it's timed out and has more votes FOR than AGAINST. (Proposals which have been Vetoed or Self-Killed can never be enacted.)

The oldest pending proposal can be failed if more than half the players have voted AGAINST it, or if it's timed out and cannot otherwise be enacted, or if it has been Vetoed or Self-Killed.

Proposals time out after 48 hours.

CfJs and DoVs are processed like proposals, except that Vetoing and Self-Killing them has no effect. If a DoV is failed, the player who posted it cannot make another DoV for 120 hours (5 days).

Which is pretty spartan, but I'd personally really like to see a short, understandable ruleset that even the most uninterested member of a group will be able to get to grips with, if you threw this at a bunch of players that had never seen a Nomic. The twiddlier BlogNomic legacy clauses seem like more of a why-is-this-here distraction than a genuinely helping hand. (I appreciate you've already cut some, like the "Emperor has voted FOR" DoV stuff.) --Kevan (talk) 19:13, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Actually this does lose some of the neatness around proposals which have attracted a full set of votes (a 50-50 tie would have to time out as it could be neither passed nor failed, here), so this needs more work. --Kevan (talk) 20:16, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Tantusar's edits

Linking to User:Tantusar/Generic_core_sandbox before the link disappears from Slack and we risk forgetting it was there. --Kevan (talk) 19:24, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Rule-by-rule pass

Giving the whole ruleset another pass, here's what stands out to me:

  • "Gamestate" will be a bit mysterious to someone who's never played BlogNomic. We should make it clear that the group will want to use a second document to track gamestate; or that if they're playing the game tabletop, the locations of chess pieces and poker chips and whatever else are the gamestate.
  • Idling has been trimmed down too far here, to the point where tactical idling will likely occur to someone in every group's first game. We should also be conscious that in some settings, like a corner of a forum, players might not actually want other players joining directly: whether that's other half-interested forum members wandering in (and either messing things up or just saying "what's this, I'll join" and then never returning) or the easy scam of asking half a dozen friends to drop by the channel and say "I join the game and vote FOR my friend's proposal". So I'd cut it back further to:
"A player may join the game at any time, if all existing players agree to this. A player may stop playing at any time by announcing this. If a player rejoins the game, their personal gamestate retains the last legally endowed values it had, if they are still valid; otherwise the player is given the default value for new players, if such a value exists."
  • Are we happy that idling-inactive-player situations can be covered by proposals or CfJs of "remove named player", even if (worst case where ten people on a forum said they'd play and only three are actually responding) the group has to wait for the CfJ to time out?
  • Admins are a fairly BlogNomic-specific concept, mostly because we don't want to give full blog-administration rights to every user. I suppose they also act as a bit of a barrier against over-optimistic "I propose X, and I reckon I can enact it straight away because I've misunderstood a rule, so I enact X and trash a bunch of rules! I win!" scams which confuse the current game situation and might be hard to clear up afterwards. Maybe this ruleset could have the Emperor doing the enactment, leaving open the option for players to propose a wider admin system if they want one.
  • Rounds are good, but they need more explanation of what they're meant to be - this could be misread as the game being a series of rounds, like hands in a trick-taker. ("An individual game of X Nomic is known as a Round. At the end of the Round, the Round rules are repealed." or something.) The ruleset could have an introductory non-rule paragraph setting the stage, instead, but I think it's better to put it all in the ruletext.
  • The whole "Official Entry > Votable Matter > Proposal/CfJ/DoV" thing feels like overkill in a simple ruleset, and phrases like "may cast one vote on a Votable Matter" feel a bit too formal and tautological. I'd be tempted to reframe everything as "proposals" instead: proposals are proposals, votes are cast on proposals, and CfJs and DoVs are like proposals except for enacting differently. I don't think we need to define "official entry" when all we're saying here is "sometimes official entries are votable matters" (there is none of the "you can't change an official entry" stuff that BlogNomic enforces).
  • We should avoid talking about players making "posts", since that doesn't apply to a tabletop group. Easy enough to reword.
  • I can't remember whether DEFERENTIAL is a BlogNomic thing, or common in Imperial Nomics. Are we happy that it's useful enough to be worth the complexity? I suppose it's friendly to new players, and keeps the game moving if early and undecided voters are allowed to shrug.
  • "Ascension Address" seems unnecessary jargon, for the act of saying "shall we play another game?". The idea of "Emperor announces theme" is worth including, but earlier in the ruleset (in "Rounds") rather than after the game has finished.

That's it for now. --Kevan (talk) 11:19, 13 January 2021 (UTC)