Weblog Nomic Ruleset

Core Rules

Ruleset and Gamestate

This is the Ruleset for Weblog Nomic; all Players shall obey it. Section One consists of the "core rules" of Weblog Nomic, covering basic proposal mechanics; Section Two contains the rules of the current dynasty; and Section Three contains the glossary, which exists solely to clarify the remainder of the ruleset. Rules may be referred to by their type, entire number and name or type and name. (e.g. This Rule may be referred to as Rule 1.1 Ruleset and Gamestate or the Rule entitled “Ruleset and Gamestate").

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

Admins may correct obvious spelling and typographical mistakes in the Ruleset at any time, including replacing Spivak pronouns with the singular "they". A typographical mistake is defined as “A mistake in printing, typesetting, or typing, especially one caused by striking an incorrect key on a keyboard.”

Players

Anybody may apply to join Weblog Nomic (if he is not already playing) by registering at http://blognomic.com via the Register link in the sidebar, and then making a post announcing his arrival. An Admin shall add him to the roster in the sidebar and the GNDT, at which moment he becomes a Player.

A Player may leave the game at any time by posting an entry to the Weblog Nomic weblog requesting such an action. A Player may only change his name as a result of a proposal approving the change.

Some Players are Admins, responsible for updating the site and the Ruleset, and are signified as such in the sidebar. Players who wish to become Admins may sign up with a username for the Ruleset Wiki, and submit a Suggestion to make themselves Admins. Existing Admins may be removed from their posts by Suggestion, J, or voluntary resignation. New admins shall be given the GNDT configuration password when they become admins.

Some Players are Idle, and shall be marked as such in the sidebar. For the purposes of the Ruleset, excluding Rules 1.1, 1.2, 1.8 and 1.10, Idle Players are not counted as Players. Admins may render a Player Idle if that Player has asked to become Idle or if that Player has not posted an entry or comment for more than 7 days. In the latter case, the Admin must announce the idling in a blog post. Admins may de-Idle a Player at his request - the Player's personal gamestate retains the values it had immediately prior to his going Idle. If one or more values would be undefined, it is set to the value new Players receive, if such a value exists.

Suggestions

Any Player may submit a Suggestion to change the Ruleset or Gamestate, by posting an entry in the "Suggestion" category that describes those changes (unless the Player already has 2 Suggestions pending, or has already made 3 Suggestions that day).

Suggestions can either be Pending, Enacted, or Failed. When a Suggestion is first put forward, it is considered Pending. A Suggestion may not also be a Justice.

Voting

Any Player may cast his Vote on a Pending Suggestion by making a comment on that entry using a voting icon of FOR, AGAINST or DEFERENTIAL.

If the Player who made a Suggestion has not cast a Vote on it, his Vote is counted as FOR. If a Player uses more than one Voting Icon in comments on a Pending Suggestion, his Vote is the last voting icon he uses. If a Player leaves the game or goes Idle, his Vote is no longer valid. If a Player votes against his own proposal, that vote may not be changed. This is referred to as a Self-Kill.

A vote of DEFERENTIAL is a vote of no opinion, or of faith in the decision of the Emperor. The vote will count as the same as the Emperor's vote. If the Emperor casts a vote of DEFERENTIAL on a proposal, it serves the purpose of cancelling any previous vote on that proposal that was cast by the Emperor. If there is no Emperor, a vote of DEFERENTIAL counts as an explicit vote of abstention.

If no Emperor has voted on a proposal, a vote of DEFERENTIAL on that proposal does not count as a vote for the purposes of rule 1.5.

Enactment

The oldest pending Suggestion may be enacted by any Admin (and the Ruleset and/or Gamestate updated to include the specified effects of that Suggestion) if either of the following is true:-

• It has a number of FOR votes that exceed or equal Quorum, has been open for voting for at least 12 hours, and has not been vetoed or self-killed.
• It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours, it has more than 1 valid vote, more than half of its votes are FOR, and it has not been vetoed or self-killed.

The oldest pending Suggestion may be failed by any Admin, if any of the following are true:-

• It has enough AGAINST votes that it could not be Enacted without one of those votes being changed.
• It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and half or fewer of its votes are FOR.
• It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and has fewer than 2 valid votes.
• The Player who proposed it has voted AGAINST it.
• The Emperor has voted to VETO it

Whenever an Admin marks a proposal, J, or AoV as passed or failed, he must also mark his name, and report the final tally of votes (or the fact that it was self-killed or vetoed).

Suggestions the Emperor has voted to VETO are considered vetoed. Suggestions the author has voted against are considered self-killed unless the Emperor has voted VETO on them, or they have fulfilled one of the other requirements to fail a proposal before the author’s self-kill vote is placed.

When the Emperor votes to VETO a Suggestion, it may be Failed at any time.

Calls for Judgment

If two or more Players actively disagree as to the interpretation of the Ruleset, or if a Player feels that an aspect of the game needs urgent attention, then any Player may raise a Justice (abbreviated J) by posting an entry in the “Justice” category. The post shall go on to describe the issue, and measures that shall be taken to resolve it.

All Players may add votes of agreement or disagreement in comments to this entry, using appropriate voting icons (a Player's later votes overriding their earlier ones). Unfailed Js continue until they reach a Quorum of FOR votes, a Quorum of AGAINST votes, or if there is no hiatus going on, until four days have passed, and if there is a hiatus going on until two days have passed. After this time, if more than half of the cast votes are in favour, the Gamestate and Ruleset shall be amended as was specified. Otherwise, the J fails. A Failed J has no further effect.

Any J that has no effect on the ruleset or gamestate may be automatically failed by any admin.

Gamestate Tracking

Suggestions, Calls for Judgment, and other official posts, as well as specific gamestate information, shall be tracked by the Weblog Nomic blog at http://blognomic.com. Any Player 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.

If no Player has commented on it, an official post may be altered or removed by its author; otherwise this can only be done as allowed by the Ruleset. 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 changed to reflect its status.

A non-official post may not, through editing of the blog or otherwise, be changed into an official post, with the following exception: Whilst a non-official post has been posted for less than five minutes and has no comments, the author may change the categories as they wish.

Voting and comments are accessible through the link at the bottom of every post.

Specific parts of the Gamestate data shall be tracked by the Generic Nomic Data Tracker at http://blognomic.com/gndt/generic.cgi?nomic=blog. Any Player may update any Player's data via the GNDT, whenever the Ruleset permits it.

All updates to the GNDT are logged - if a Player feels that an alteration goes against the Rules (as they were at the time of the alteration), he may simply undo the effects of that alteration. If such an undoing is disputed, a Justice shall be raised.

Players shall be assigned a password for the GNDT when they join the Nomic.

Dynasties

Weblog Nomic is divided into a number of Dynasties. Each Dynasty is headed by a single Player, known as the Emperor, and is named according to the number of Dynasties he has headed (eg. "The First Dynasty of Myke").

The Emperor may vote to VETO any Suggestion.

Victory and Ascension

If a Player (other than the Emperor) believes that he has achieved victory in the current Dynasty, he may make a post to the Weblog Nomic weblog in the Announcement of Victory category, detailing this.

Upon doing so, the game immediately goes into Hiatus, if it hasn’t already. During this time, the only game actions that may be taken are those covered by Rules “Players”, “Voting”, “Calls for Judgment”, “Gamestate Tracking” and “Victory and Ascension”.

Every Player may respond to an active AoV saying whether or not he believes the poster has achieved victory in the current Dynasty (using the FOR and AGAINST icons).

The Announcement of Victory may be resolved after 24 hours, or after 12 hours if the Emperor has voted on it. Upon resolution, if a Quorum of Players have voted on the AoV and more than half of those votes were in favour, then the AoV passes - otherwise the AoV fails, and if no other AoVs are still pending, the Hiatus ends.

When an AoV passes, all other active AoVs are failed, and a new Dynasty begins with the Player who made the AoV as its Emperor. (That Player may pass this role to another Player at this point, if he wishes.) The Hiatus continues until the new Emperor posts an Ascension Address to the Weblog Nomic weblog - this shall specify the Emperor's chosen theme for the new Dynasty, and may optionally include a proclamation that any number of Dynastic Rules will be repealed, and that any keywords will be replaced with new theme-appropriate terms.

An AoV may not be started in the period between a passing AoV and that AoV’s Ascension Address. When an AoV is failed, if it has a number of AGAINST votes that exceed Quorum, the Player who posted it cannot make another AoV until after 120 hours (5 days) have passed since the time their AoV was failed.

A Announcement of Victory may not also be any other type of Official Post unless the rules concerning that type of Official Post explicitly state otherwise.

Fair Play

The following are Weblog Nomic’s rules of fair play. If any of the rules are found to have been broken, a proposal or J may be made to remove the perpetrator from the game, and bar them from rejoining.

• A single person should not control more than one Player within Weblog Nomic.
• A Player should not “spam” the Weblog Nomic 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 Player should not deliberately exploit bugs or unexpected behaviours in the software running the game (ExpressionEngine, MediaWiki or the GNDT).
• Instead of deleting content from a blog post which has at least one comment, the content should either be struck through with <strike> tags, or replaced with a link to a copy of the same content on the wiki.
• A Player should not edit their own blog comments once posted, nor those of any other Player.
• A Player should not edit the "Entry Date" field of a blog post.
• A Player should not make or edit a post such that its title does not broadly match its URL title.
• A Player should not make an AoV primarily to delay the game by putting it into Hiatus.

Dynastic Rules

King Anthony's Crown

Arthexis may not veto proposals. This takes precedence over all other rules.

Glossary

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. (eg. 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 Weblog Nomic weblog at blognomic.com

Daily Action

If a game action is a Daily Action, each Player able to perform it may take that action once per day, but not more than once every six hours.

Day

References to a "day" (as an entity rather than a duration, eg. "Sunday") refer to that day in the timezone of the Weblog Nomic blog, which is considered to be GMT for all purposes.

Dice

References to "YDICEX" refer to Y X-sided dice, rolled within the GNDT. To roll dice, post DICEX in the comments field of the GNDT, replacing X with the number of sides on the die you wish to roll.

Effective Vote Comment (EVC)

A Player's Effective Vote Comment with respect to a given Suggestion means that Player’s Comment to that Suggestion (if any) that contains that Player’s Vote on the Suggestion that is given effect in accordance with Rule 1.4 when the Suggestion is Adminned.

Flavour Text

When posting a blog entry, a Player 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.

Gamestate

Any information which the Ruleset regulates the alteration of.

May

"is permitted to"

Post

A blog post published to the Weblog Nomic weblog at blognomic.com

Quorum

Quorum is equal to half the number of Players, rounded down, plus one. If a Rule or other Gamestate document refers to a Quorum of some subset of Players (such as a Quorum of Players who share a particular Gamestate attribute, but excluding all other Players) then Quorum is equal to half the number of Players who share that Gamestate attribute, rounded down, plus one. If the words quorum and Quorum are ever different, they effectively mean the same thing.

Shall

"is required to"

Should

"is recommended that"

Story Post

A Story Post is an Official Post that is not a member of any specific category of Official Posts mentioned or defined in a Core Rule (excluding Official Post).

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.

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, an IMP http://blognomic.com/images/vote/imperial.gif shall represent a vote of DEFERENTIAL, and an Imperial Seal (currently http://blognomic.com/images/vote/seal.gif) shall represent the Imperial Veto.

Week

References to a "week" refer to the period of time between the start of a Monday and the end of the following Sunday.

Weekly Action

If a game action is a Weekly Action, each Player able to perform it may take that action once per week, but not more than once every twenty-four hours.

Clarifications

Numbers and Variables

• Unless otherwise specified, game variables defined to hold numeric values can hold only non-negative integers, and any action that would set those values below zero instead sets them to zero. 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: When “X” is a number, to spend X of a numeric value “V” means to subtract X from V (i.e. replace V with V-X).
• No action may be taken which would require setting a gamestate variable to an illegal value. (e.g. spending X of a numeric value that must be non-negative when the subtraction would result in a number which is negative).

Rules and Suggestions

• 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.
• Where a Suggestion would amend the effects of Suggestion Enactment, this does not apply to its own enactment unless explicitly stated (eg. 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 Enactment or Failure of a Suggestion are the responsibility of the Admin who Enacts or Fails it.

Time

• For the purpose of all rules, time in Weblog Nomic is in GMT.
• 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 (eg. "04/10/09", it shall be assumed that the date is in a day/month/year format.
• Any duration reference to a given day (i.e. “Sunday” or “August 2nd"), unless otherwise stated, inclusively begins at 0:00:00 GMT on the mentioned day and inclusively ends at 23:59:59 GMT on the same day.

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.