Welcome to BlogNomic, a self-modifying game where changing the rules is a move. Players make blog posts proposing alterations to the ruleset, discussing and casting votes in the comments: if enough vote in favour, the rules are changed and play continues.

The game has been running since 2003 and resets every month or so. Have a look around the wiki for more information and history, or join our Discord. New players are always welcome to join the game at any time.

Wednesday, May 21, 2025

Proposal: [Core] [Recusant] Core proposal standardisation

Amend “Recusants” in “Drafters” in the Core Rules by replacing this text:

An Idle Drafter may post or vote on a Votable Matter provided that its effect is entirely limited to amending the non-dynastic ruleset.

with this text:

An Idle Drafter may post or vote on a Votable Matter provided that its effect does not include, even conditionally, the creation, deletion or amendment of dynastic rules or gamestate defined by dynastic rules.

The earlier proposal “Only Humans” was intended by its author to allow Recusant votes, but did not because the category of proposals described in the Recusants rule excludes some non-dynastic proposals. This is intended, if I phrased it correctly, to alter the rule to bring it more in line with the definition of a dynastic proposal.

(On another note, it strikes me that this almost-a-metadynasty is a great time to look at any other core rules fixes people have been putting off to consider at a better time; I’d love to hear if there are any!)

Proposal: Selection of the Fittest

Add the following to the end of the rule Rating:

No Drafter may change a Draft or add a new Plan after noon UTC on Friday 30 May. No Drafter may change or add a Review, or make a new Citation, after noon UTC on Saturday 31 May. If a single Drafter has the highest Rating at noon UTC on Monday 2 June then they have achieved victory; if no single Drafter can achieve Victory at that time then no Drafter has achieved Victory.

If the game is not resolved at that time then we’ll have to find some other way through, possibly by CfJ.

Proposal: New and Improved

In the rule “Reviews”, add a subrule named “Requests” with the following text:

A Request is a blog post in the Story Post category in which the author summarizes any changes they made to their current Draft and requests new Reviews. If a Drafter hasn’t done so within the past 24 hours, they may post a Request.

Making it a little easier for Drafters to notify each other that sufficient changes were made to be worthy of new Reviews for a Plan.

Proposal: Highly Unrated

In the rule “Rating”, add the following text:

If a Drafter has no Reviews meant for them, their Rating is 0.

Dealing with the “undefined” Rating for a median with no values.

Proposal: Only Humans

Add the following to the end of the Community Guidelines as a new section, called Guidelines for Content:

It is generally preferred, except where explicitly permitted by the dynastic ruleset, that players avoid the use of generative AI or LLMs when producing content for the game. This includes non-gamestate content such as dynastic banners or dynastic history text.

Proposal: Citation Impeded

In “Essays and Citations”, replace “If a Citation is Popular” with:-

If a Citation is Popular and was posted more than 24 hours ago

Per comments on the fix CfJ that unrelatedly dropped this from 48 hours to zero, I don’t think these should be running at CfJ speed when an equally valid manually-proposed addition to the Mandates would run for 24 hours. Giving everyone a chance to discuss a Mandate and change minds on it seems like a good thing.

Wednesday, May 21, 2025

Proposal: That’s cool, but have you considered…

Create a subrule of Reviews, called “Feedback”, with the following text:

There is a publicly tracked list of Feedback, defaulting to empty. Feedback is a flavor text string of at most 500 characters, along with the name of the idle Drafter who created it and the name of a Drafter that it is meant for. Feedback may only be created by Idle Drafters, and may only be meant for non-Idle Drafters. Idle Drafters are not allowed to create multiple pieces of Feedback all meant for the same Drafter, though they are allowed to replace any of their previous Feedback with different Feedback, so long as it is still meant for the same Drafter. Feedback should include genuine feedback on the Plan of the Drafter it is meant for, as well as information as to whether or not the Idle Drafter who created the Feedback would be willing to unidle in order to join the Dynasty represented by the Plan. Feedback is not included in any calculations of Score.

As I suggested in the comments on the proposal “Up to the Jury”, a way for Idle Drafters to add Reviews without being able to influence scoring (as Feedback does not have scores). We can change this later, but for now, it seems like a safe bet to keep Idle Drafters from being able to increase or decrease anyone’s Scores.

Proposal: Up to the Jury

Withdrawn. Failed by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 21 May 2025 19:54:59 UTC

In the rule “Reviews”, replace the following text:

There is a publicly tracked list of Reviews, defaulting to empty. A Review is a flavor text string of at most 500 characters, and Scores for Theme, Mechanics and Style (where each Score is a number ranging from 1 to 5), along with the name of the Drafter who created it and the name of a Drafter that it is meant for. As an Action, any Drafter may add a Review. Drafters are not allowed to create a second Review meant for a particular Drafter if they already have an existing Review meant for said Drafter, though they are allowed to replace any of their previous Reviews with another Review, so long as it is meant for the same Drafter. A Drafter may not create a Review meant for themself. A Review should include genuine feedback on the Plan of the Drafter it is meant for.

with this text:

There is a publicly tracked list of Reviews, defaulting to empty. A Review is a flavor text string of at most 500 characters, and Scores for Theme, Mechanics and Style (where each Score is a number ranging from 1 to 5), along with the name of the Drafter or Idle Drafter who created it and the name of a Drafter that it is meant for. As an Action, any Drafter or Idle Drafter may add a Review. Drafters and Idle Drafters are not allowed to create a second Review meant for a particular Drafter if they already have an existing Review meant for said Drafter, though they are allowed to replace any of their previous Reviews with another Review, so long as it is meant for the same Drafter. A Drafter may not create a Review meant for themself. A Review should include genuine feedback on the Plan of the Drafter it is meant for.

Due to the core idea of this dynasty being quite influential for the interest of anybody considering un-idling in the next dynasty, opening up reviews to idle players may be respectful to their opinions and interests! I think this could increase engagement in both this and the next dynasty.

Call for Judgment: Acting while citing

Enacted popular, 6-0. Josh

Adminned at 21 May 2025 12:15:37 UTC

Change the gamestate (including the history of performed dynastic actions) to what it currently would be if the second list item in “Essays and Citations” had never been part of the ruleset.

Change the text of “Essays and Citations” to read:

As a weekly action, a Drafter may make a Citation, a blog post in the Story Post: Votable Matters category that highlights a passage from an essay held in the Essays category on the Blognomic wiki that was authored by a Drafter or idle Drafter other than themselves. In the same post, they should distil the passage thus highlighted into a sentence that begins “A Plan should” or “A plan should not”; said sentence should represent a sincere attempt to convey the render the sense of the highlighted passage into a precept that can be legally followed by a Drafter when composing a Plan, and is known as that Citation’s Suggestion.

If a Citation is Popular, its author or any admin can mark it as Enacted and add that Citation’s Suggestion to the list of Mandates in the rule Mandates, preceded by an ID number that is not being used by any existing Mandate or any Mandate in the proposal queue.
If a Citation is Unpopular, its author or any admin can mark it as Failed.

Making a Citation is currently defined as an Atomic Action with two steps: making the Citation then, 48 hours later, resolving the Citation. However, Atomic Actions are atomic – you can’t do something else while you’re performing them. As such, making a Citation locks you out of dynastic actions for 48 hours.

This is clearly unintended, and needs urgent attention because some players are locked out of the game. As such, the first sentence of this CFJ removes the action lock (and effectively upholds actions that were performed despite it, as long as they didn’t have another reason to be illegal), This also contains a rewrite of the “Essays and Citations” rule to remove the problem. (I also got rid of the 48-hour minimum, instead using the same rules for enacting/failing that CFJs currently use.)

Story Post: Citation: Evolving Gameplay

The essay Advice for Emperors describes how to build mechanics that support both casual and competitive players:

Different players approach BlogNomic in different ways, and while an Emperor doesn’t have to ensure that all of their concerns are equally met, it is helpful to carry certain archetypes in mind when considering the mechanical flow of the ruleset.

At a default level, you should aim to ensure that there is a simple starter mechanic that any player can perform without having to understand the whole ruleset. Holding a ruleset in your head and modelling how it works is a skill, and a rare one; most players want to dip a toe in and see where it leads. Having a single, simple action that new players can perform that doesn’t require them to understand second-and third-order knock-on effects will act as an on-ramp that will allow casual and new players to engage with the game. Those players won’t always actually be competitive, but that isn’t the point. The point is for them to be involved, and to give those players who do want to play to win a complex ecosystem in which to operate.

Add the following as a new Mandate:

A Plan should contain at least one simple dynastic action with straight-forward effects on the gamestate as well as the mechanics to include more complex dynastic actions and effects.

Proposal: Fit to Print

Popular, 6-0. Enacted by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 21 May 2025 15:14:44 UTC

Add a new rule named “Rating” with the following text:

Each Drafter has a number named Rating which is a derived value using the following formula, where any scores referred to in the formula are among all Reviews meant for that Drafter:

Rating = (Median value of all Mechanics scores + Median value of all Theme scores + Median value of all Style scores) x Number of Mandates in that Drafter’s Claims

The start of determining which Drafters have the top Plans. Eventually we will probably want a way to lock this in, or perhaps vet the Claims since right now they are up to each Drafter to determine.

Redrafting the blog style

A couple of comments I have about the current styling of the blog:

  • The blog sidebar has been very narrow for a few dynasties now; it got made narrower at some point and hasn’t been widened again. (I’m not sure whether space was taken from it to widen the margins, or whether it lost width for some other reason.) IIRC, the “Pending Calls for Judgement” used to fit on one line, but currently wraps onto two. At least on my browser, the table doesn’t quite fit into the sidebar at the moment (“Trapdoorspyder” + “Claims” + “Investigations” take up all the available horizontal space on their own), and the narrow width also makes the reviews harder to read – so this might be a good time to widen it again, if we can find horizontal space for it.
  • We’ve had REVISE votes for a few dynasties now, and it’s probable that they’ll become something of a permanent fixture now that the edit window has been removed. At the moment, we’re using the ARROW icon for them because it was the only available voting symbol that didn’t already have a use. I’m wondering whether it might make sense to come up with a new icon specialised for the purpose (although if we changed the image to something other than arrow.gif, we’d probably need to change the ruleset because it currently defines REVISE votes in terms of the image filename). It would seem fitting to finally have a complete proposal-revising system in a dynasty that’s all about drafting things, and while it’s using the generic icon, it still feels a bit incomplete.

Proposal: Obsolete Opinions

Popular, 7-0. Enacted by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 21 May 2025 15:12:45 UTC

In the rule “Reviews”, add the following text:

When a Drafter edits their Plan or changes their Plan Link, they may choose to remove all Reviews that were meant for them within 30 minutes of making that edit or that Plan Link change. If that Drafter chooses to remove Reviews that were meant for them, they must remove all such Reviews.

Based on suggestions from “Updated Editions”, a Drafter can remove old Reviews, but if they do so, they must remove all the ones for them, not pick and choose.

Story Post: Citation: Build Chunks

Enacted popular, 6-0. Josh

Adminned at 21 May 2025 12:17:29 UTC

The essay Avoiding Dead Ends calls out the following risk:

Silent Gameplay
Situation
One or more core mechanics of a dynasty require few or no gamestate changes to perform. This may be minimal (players rolling dice in the die roller, updating the wiki for a minority of their results and never announcing anything on the blog) or could even be entirely secret (players sending private orders to the Emperor, which update secret variables).
Result
To a casual player of the game, it looks like nothing much is happening: even a game with active wiki gameplay can seem stagnant if the variables are subtle and the player doesn’t check the wiki page history. In cases where the main game actions are secret and invisible, even the most attentive player of the game may not know whether anyone else is actually playing. If some players start to assume that no game is really being played, they’re inclined to give up and idle out.
Solutions
Add noise to the game by having some of the larger game actions require a post to the blog, or have a mechanic that generates “game news” summaries periodically.

Therefore add the following as a new Mandate:

A Plan should require that dynastic gameplay be conducted largely in public, or should contain some reasonably frequent public-facing update of the Emperor.

Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Proposal: Patch Notes

Unpopular, 1-5. Josh

Adminned at 21 May 2025 12:19:44 UTC

Add a subrule to “Drafts and Plans” called “Revisions”

A Revision is a draft whose name contains a “/” and for which the section before that “/” is the name of another draft and the section after the “/” is the name of the Drafter who created the Revision. The contents of a revision should match that draft, but with one or more changes applied to it, and is considered to be a Revision of that Draft.

Revision are considered to be gamestate. If a Drafter has not already created a Revision for a Plan which is not their own, they may create a Revision for that Plan at any time. The list of each revision for a given plan is publicly tracked on the gamestate tracking page.

The Drafter who created a Revision is permitted to edit it, except in ways that would cause it to no longer be a Draft.

Proposal: Updated Editions

Revisable, 2-0 with 3 REVISE votes. Failed-revise by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 20 May 2025 14:18:55 UTC

If there is a rule named “Drafts and Plans”, add the following text to that rule as a new paragraph:

Each Drafter other than the Supervisor has a publicly tracked Draft Date, which is blank if that Drafter’s Plan Link is blank. If a Drafter’s Plan Link is not blank, that Drafter’s Draft Date is the date and time to the minute rounded down that the wiki page containing the Draft named in that Drafter’s Plan Link was last edited.

In the rule “Reviews” replace “and the name of a Drafter that it is meant for” with:

, the date and time to the minute rounded down that Review was created, and the name of a Drafter that it is meant for

It’s going to be a pain to constantly check everyone’s drafts for edits, and to match up when a Review was done vs the latest edit to a Draft, so let’s make these dates sync up explicitly.

This is especially helpful if a Review was submitted for a Draft that was then subsequently changed significantly or even wholesale replaced with an entirely different one.

Sunday, May 18, 2025

Proposal: Re: Re: Re: Minor Changes

Reached quorum 7 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 20 May 2025 08:04:51 UTC

If the proposal “A Few Small Suggestions” failed, this proposal does nothing. Otherwise:
After the sentence “As an Action, any Drafter may add a Review.” add the text:

Drafters are not allowed to create a second Review meant for a particular Drafter if they already have an existing Review meant for said Drafter, though they are allowed to replace any of their previous Reviews with another Review, so long as it is meant for the same Drafter. A Drafter may not create a Review meant for themself.

If any Drafter has multiple Reviews meant for the same Drafter, remove all of said Reviews except the first one. If any Drafter has a Review meant for themself, remove it.

 

To prevent Score farming via posting multiple Reviews for yourself or other players.

Proposal: Redrafting the drafts

Illegal third proposal. Josh

Illegal admining overturned. Josh


Reached quorum 6 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan, but 26 minutes early, so undone.


Enacted by JonathanDark, but 6 minutes early, so undone again.




Enacted by JonathanDark on time.

Adminned at 19 May 2025 20:14:34 UTC

Create a new dynastic rule, “Drafts and Plans”, placing it at the start of the dynastic ruleset:

A Draft is a page on the wiki, created after 03:54:00 UTC on 18 May 2025, that contains a summary of the gameplay for a hypothetical future dynasty, together with at least two hypothetical dynastic rules that might exist in the early stages of that dynasty. The content of each Draft is flavour text, except for the purposes of a) determining whether or not that Draft is in fact a Draft and b) determining whether or not that Draft complies with a Mandate. The names of Drafts are flavour text.

Each Drafter other than the Supervisor has a publicly tracked Plan Link, which is either blank or the name of a Draft that Drafter created. Plan Links are flavour text. A Drafter can set their own Plan Link to any valid value at any time (except during Hiatus). The Draft named by a Drafter’s Plan Link is known as that Drafter’s Plan.

While a Draft is a Plan, it is considered gamestate. The Drafter who created it is permitted to edit it, except in ways that would cause it to no longer be a Draft.

“Drafts and Plans”, except with more standard wording for preventing text injection.

Proposal: One Star

Reached quorum 6 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 19 May 2025 19:13:01 UTC

In the rule “Reviews”, if it exists, replace

A Review is a flavor text string of at most 500 characters,

with

A Review is a flavor text string of at most 500 characters, and Scores for Theme, Mechanics and Style (where each Score is a number ranging from 1 to 5),

If any Reviews exist, set all their Scores to 3.

Putting the Scores into the Reviews. (There may be better categories.)

Writer’s block

I love this theme but it is definitely too intensive for my availability right now, sorry. Please idle me.

Proposal: Score Board

Revisable, 0-0 with 4 REVISE votes. Failed-revise by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 18 May 2025 18:45:09 UTC

Add a rule named “Scoring” with the following text:

Each Drafter has a publicly tracked number named Score that defaults to 0 and must be between 0 and 10.

As a Daily Action called a Scoring, a Drafter may select a Drafter other than themselves who has a non-blank Plan Link, and then increase or decrease the selected Drafter’s Score by 1, provided the resulting Score is a legal value. A Drafter’s Score may not be decreased from a performance of a Scoring more than once in a 24-hour period.

Any time a Drafter’s Plan Link is changed, that Drafter’s Score is reset to 0.

A simple method for scoring Plans, with protection against piling on one Drafter to decrease their score too quickly. If people want to pile on to increase one Drafter’s score quickly, that’s perfectly acceptable.

Proposal: A Few Small Suggestions

Reached quorum 7 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 19 May 2025 16:21:04 UTC

Create a new Rule called Reviews with the following text:

There is a publicly tracked list of Reviews, defaulting to empty. A Review is a flavor text string of at most 500 characters, along with the name of the Drafter who created it and the name of a Drafter that it is meant for. As an Action, any Drafter may add a Review. A Review should include genuine feedback on the Plan of the Drafter it is meant for.

A way for players to add feedback on each others’ Plans.

Proposal: The New Zahndorf Literary Review

Reached quorum 7 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 19 May 2025 16:19:55 UTC

If Proposal: The Wires Behind the Buzzer was not enacted then this proposal has no further effect.

Add a new dynastic rule to the ruleset, called Essays and Citations, with the following text:

As a weekly action, a Drafter may make a Citiation. Making a Citation is an atomic action with the following steps:
* Make a Citation post, which is a post to the blog in the Story Post: Votable Matters category, highlighting a passage from an essay held in the Essays category on the Blognomic wiki that was authored by a Drafter or idle Drafter other than themselves. In the same post, they should distill the passage thus highlighted into a sentence that begins “A Plan should” or “A plan should not”; said sentence should represent a sincere attempt to convey the render the sense of the highlighted passage into a precept that can be legally followed by a Drafter when composing a Plan.
* When the Citation Post can be closed (see below), close it, marking it as Popular or Unpoplar based on the votes cast upon it. If it was Popular at the time that it was closed, add the sentence that it contained to the list of Mandates in the rule Mandates, preceded by an ID number that is not being used by any existing Mandate or any Mandate in the proposal queue.

A Citation Post is open when it is posted and can be closed if it has been open for 48 hours or more. While it is open, it may be voted on, as per the rule Votes.

Sunday, May 18, 2025

Proposal: The Wires Behind the Buzzer

Reached quorum 7 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 19 May 2025 09:41:57 UTC

Create a new dynastic rule, “Mandates” (in the text below, the * represents the start of a list item):

This rule contains a list of Mandates, each of which is a recommendation that Plans should have some specific (but potentially subjective) property, together with a two-digit ID number that is unique among Mandates. Failing to follow a Mandate does not on its own cause a Plan to be invalid.

A proposal which would (if enacted) change the list of Mandates, and whose text would make no other changes to the ruleset or gamestate, is known as a Mandate Proposal.

The list of Mandates is as follows:
* 10: Plans should not envision Dynasties for which a player would be at a significant disadvantage if they checked the game no more often than once every 24 hours.

Each Drafter has a publicly tracked list of Claims, a possibly empty list of ID numbers of Mandates (without duplicates). At any time, except during Hiatus, a Drafter may change their Claims to the list of ID numbers of Mandates that they believe their own Plan satisfies (the list may not contain any ID numbers of Mandates that they do not believe their own Plan satisfies).

The other main mechanic: you can make recommendations about people’s Plans, either in an attempt to shape future dynasties to a type of gameplay you want, or simply as an attempt to make the Plan-writing task harder. These recommendations are known as Mandates, and are (at least for the time being) modified by proposal: so you’ll have to convince a quorum of people that your Mandate improves the game.

I have started with a Mandate that should be uncontroversial (we already have this advice in the Community Guidelines). The ID numbers are primarily to make the tracking page neater.

Proposal: Drafting Board

Withdrawn—Clucky

Adminned at 18 May 2025 22:03:28 UTC

Create a new dynastic rule, “Drafts and Plans”:

A Draft is a page on the wiki, created after 03:54:00 UTC on 18 May 2025, that contains a summary of the gameplay for a hypothetical future dynasty, together with at least two hypothetical dynastic rules that might exist in the early stages of that dynasty. The contents of a Draft are not rulestext, and the meaning of each rule is interpreted without reference to the name of Drafts and without reference to the content of Drafts (for example, if a rule uses a term and it is not defined in the Ruleset, the term has its standard English meaning (or no meaning if the standard English meaning does not apply) even if a Draft attempts to define it; and if a rule attempts to refer to something by name, it cannot name something in a Draft, nor the Draft itself).

Each Drafter other than the Supervisor has a publicly tracked Plan Link, which is either blank or the name of a Draft that Drafter created. Plan Links are flavour text. A Drafter can set their own Plan Link to any valid value at any time (except during Hiatus). The Draft named by a Drafter’s Plan Link is known as that Drafter’s Plan.

While a Draft is a Plan, it is considered gamestate. The Drafter who created it is permitted to edit it, except in ways that would cause it to no longer be a Draft.

One of the basic mechanics: you have public Plans for a future dynasty that you can change as much as you want. I’m expecting all or most of the dynastic mechanics to interact with this, e.g. by letting players give feedback on Plans, placing restrictions on what Plans can contain, or coming up with scoring criteria that Plans can meet (which might or might not have anything to do with how the hypothetical future dynasty they contain would play out).

If more than half the playerlist gets excited about a particular Plan and wants to start playing that hypothetical dynasty immediately, you can do that – just vote through a proposal that gives its author a win. If that doesn’t happen (and I suspect it probably won’t, although I’m not sure), the dynasty will be about coming up with scoring criteria for Plans, and trying to adapt your Plan to get yourself a good score.

I have become a player in the dynasty so that I can take part in scoring and feedback mechanics, but by not being able to make a Plan, I am locked out from the main scoring mechanics and thus am unlikely to meet any victory conditions.

Ascension Address: A Drafting Task

The Drafters filed into the drafting room, eager to take on their first assignment, but with some trepidation. Would they really be able to live up to the standards of such a large nomic?

They started reading the task they were given. “Write a summary of the gameplay for a hypothetical future BlogNomic dynasty, together with at least two hypothetical dynastic rules that might exist in the early stages of that dynasty.” Well, that seemed simple enough. New Emperors did that all the time, often at short notice.

A buzzer sounded, and the task description got a little longer. It was asking for changes, adding restrictions, twists to make the job of drafting harder. Still, one new requirement wasn’t too bad; all that was needed was a few changes here and there, maybe rethinking an idea or two.

Then the buzzer sounded again, and again, and again. Restrictions piled up: anything from well-thought-out “don’t do this, or it’ll cause problems in your dynasty” advice, to somewhat eclectic gameplay preferences which somehow all had to be satisfied simultaneously, to totally arbitrary rules that seemed to be there for no reason to trip people up. It was going to be a long day.


Change Agent to Drafter and Concierge to Supervisor. Repeal all dynastic rules. Remove “Reinitialisation”, “Virtual Actions”, and “Precondition Unidling” from the list of Building Blocks; include “Everyone’s Playing” (adding it) and “Revisions Allowed” (retainng it). Change the gamestate tracking page to “Drafting Board”. Imperial Styles: Guide, Hands-Off, Wildcard.

Saturday, May 17, 2025

Moving forwards

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to dedicate enough time to BlogNomic in the near future to properly run a dynasty (especially as the main theme I have in mind requires a Casual level of Imperial tracking, which I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to provide).

Normally in this situation I’d pass the mantle (it was the original purpose of the mantle-pass rule), but due to anti-pooling measures, mantle-passing isn’t available at the moment. Additionally, some people have (weirdly) started valuing player success via dynasty-as-Emperor count rather than win count (e.g. all the various “mantle roll” agreements we’ve historically seen don’t make sense unless you do that), which gives a perverse incentive to start a dynasty and immediately abandon it, rather than letting someone else start a presumably better dynasty. Finally, as far as I can tell, the core rules actually mandate that I must post an Ascension Address and don’t give any option not to (the rule says “If the game is in an Interregnum then the new Concierge must make an Ascension Address” which, according to our usual precedents, allows players to treat the Ascension Address as having been posted even if I don’t actually make one).

As such, I can see four main lines forwards:
1. a proposal for a core rules change, or a dynastic rule to override the core rules, to allow for a mantle pass and let someone else run a dynasty (but, it might be hard to decide who to pass to, given that this was a purely solo win with no agreements other than temporary single-Break-In agreements with my randomly selected team);
2. I start a dynasty and try to muddle through it as best I can, but it’s at risk of collapsing due to a disengaged Emperor possibly failing to do tracking properly or to guide enough of the gameplay for the other players to build a ruleset (but this is not hopeless – I may be able to devote enough time to at least keep the dynasty going, although it’s unlikely that anything spectacular would happen);
3. I start a dynasty but, early in the dynasty, let someone else take over as Emperor via dynastic rule (I think I can create gameplay compatible with doing that);
4. “BlogNomic has a perfectly good way to determine who should run a dynasty – it’s called a dynasty” – start a new short dynasty whose purpose is to decide how to continue, in the style of ais523 III

I am also not convinced by my theme idea; it falls into the area of “I’m envisioning a particular sort of gameplay but we might not be able to implement it correctly” that has plagued most of the dynasties recently (since I unidled, there have been many dynasties where I clearly understood the Imperial vision, but actually translating it into rules was much harder and the ruleset ended up not matching the vision at all).

Do people have suggestions on what the best option to move forwards might be (any of the above, or perhaps an option I’m missing?).

Agents afterwards

There’s a lot of hidden information that could do with being revealed, and a lot of potentially interesting topics to discuss with respect to strategy in the dynasty, so here’s a post-dynastic discussion thread.

Call for Judgment: [Appendix] Proposals in Interregnum are broken

Reached quorum 5 votes to 1. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 16 May 2025 17:17:33 UTC

In the subrule “Other” of the Appendix rule “Keywords”, in the definition of “Hiatus”, change

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.

to

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.

The ability to make and resolve proposals during Interregnum is currently broken, because the appendix prevents proposals being made and resolved during Hiatus unconditionally, and although the core rules permit doing so during Interregnum, they define Interregnum as a type of Hiatus and the core rules are unable to override the appendix.

This needs urgent attention because there’s a (non-dynastic) proposal pending at the moment and someone might try to illegally resolve it otherwise, meaning that we’d end up with the ruleset tracker being different from the actual ruleset.

Declaration of Victory: Looking good on camera

FOR Votes greater than 2/3rds of the number of Agents, 8-0, and the Concierge has Voted FOR. Enacted by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 16 May 2025 23:19:44 UTC

“If a particular Agent currently has more Successes than every other Agent, and also had more Successes than every other Agent immediately prior to the most recent Breaking In action, and also gained more than 1 Fame or more than 1 Infamy in the most recent Breaking In action, that Agent has achieved victory. “

I had more Successes than every other Agent before the most recent Break-In and still do, and gained 2 Infamy (my Infamy was set to 0 and then to 2). As such, despite being caught by the Camera Trap, I have achieved victory.

The Fifth Break-In

A whirr of a security camera, a flash of torches, a shout in the night.

Burglar DoomedIdeas encountered Guard Qenya.

Burglar Ais523 encountered a Camera Trap.

Thursday, May 15, 2025

Proposal: A Chip Off [Building Blocks]

Timed out, 4-0. Enacted by JonathanDark per the rule Dynasties.

Adminned at 17 May 2025 19:44:39 UTC

Remove the following text from the rule “Building Blocks”:-

Some rules on the Building Blocks page are listed as being Recommended; if the new Concierge makes no statement on Building Blocks rules to be included in their Ascension Address then the Recommended Building Blocks are considered to have been selected.

I don’t think the game needs to have Recommended Building Blocks. (It doesn’t have any defined right now, with Edit Window having been repealed.)

If a rule is considered to be the usual, default way to play BlogNomic, that should be written in Core. If we want to be able to toggle such a rule, we can have a Building Block that turns it off (as we do for eg. Low-Player Mode).

Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Patrol Assessment: Guard Noise

A familiar-sounding door hinge creaks again.

One Guard has a route with F in the 4th and 9th Spots.

This is a rerun of the previously invalid Patrol Assessment.

Call for Judgment: Shenanagain

Fewer than a quorum not voting AGAINST. Failed 0 votes to 4 by Kevan.

Adminned at 15 May 2025 16:59:45 UTC

Remove the rule “Shenanigan Detection” from the dynastic ruleset (rather than the Shadow ruleset).

Set the current Phase to Planning the Break-In.

Because We’re Being Literal amended the Shadow ruleset rather than the True one (I didn’t notice it would resolve that way until after I’d change the phase), so we’re still stuck in Setting Patrols until we repeal it properly.

Patrol Assessment: Guard Noise

An unoiled door squeaks twice.

One Guard has a route with F in the 4th and 9th Spots.

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Call for Judgment: Because we’re being literal

Reached quorum 5 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 14 May 2025 15:02:42 UTC

Repeal “Shenanigan Detection”.

The potentially buggy part of the rule is “Until a Shenanigan Resolution resolution has been posted, the Phase is always Setting Patrols”. Shenanigan Resolution is an atomic action, not a blog post, so it doesn’t get posted. A Shenanigan Resolution resolution is currently undefined; I think it’s reasonable to define it as “a performance of the Shenanigan Resolution atomic action” but that doesn’t get posted either.

It would be possible to fix the rule in question, but given that it isn’t intended to do anything now that no Shenanigans were detected, repealing it seems simpler and easier.

The Shenanigans

No Shenanigans were detected.

Monday, May 12, 2025

Proposal: Blind Spot

Popular, 6-1. Enacted by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 13 May 2025 14:12:54 UTC

In “The Break-In”, replace “If the Spot at that position in that Agent’s Route has an Extra Spot that is Connected to it” with:-

If the Spot at that position in that Agent’s Route has an Extra Spot (at that position in that Agent’s Route) that is Connected to it

Uphold the Concierge’s attempted performances of the “If the Spot at that position in that Agent’s Route has an Extra Spot” steps in the Break-In Action they undertook on the 10th of May.

Enact a new rule, “Room Service”:-

At any time the Concierge may update the Fame, Infamy and Successes of Agents to the values they would currently have if the most recent Break-In action had instead been processed under the interpretation that “has an Extra Spot that is Connected to it” included Extra Spots set by other Agents, and then repeal this rule.

The Concierge may not perform any dynastic actions outside of this rule while this rule exists.

As discussed in comments on What Happened Last Night, the Extra Spot step of Breaking-In is ambiguous. Its presumably-intended reading is that each Extra Spot only applies to the Spot at the same point in the same Agent’s route; I read it more literally and interpreted it as applying to all Spots in that Agent’s route; Clucky points out that if read literally it should actually apply to all Spots in all Agents’ routes.

This amends the Extra Spots step to explicitly reflect its spirit, and reruns the Break-In under the most literal interpretation of it, if my attempt at a literal interpretation was insufficiently so.

Sunday, May 11, 2025

Proposal: Did someone call Shenanigans?

Quorum Reached—Passes 5-0

Adminned at 13 May 2025 02:09:27 UTC

If https://blognomic.com/archive/what_happened_last_night1 passes, this proposal does nothing.

Add a new rule called “Shenanigan Detection” and give it the following text

The Agents named JonathanDark, Darknight, qenya and Clucky should each at their earliest convivence, privately communicate with the Concierge either a claim of “Shenanigans” or “No Shenanigans”.

Once all four Agents have done so, the Concierge should once time perform a “Shenanigan Resolution” which is an atomic action consisting of the following steps
- If at least one of the Agents listed above (JonathanDark, Darknight, qenya or Clucky) claimed “No Shenanigans” make a post to the blog indicating that the no Shenanigans were detected
- If instead all four agents listed above (JonathanDark, Darknight, qenya and Clucky) claimed “Shenanigans”, make a post to the blog indicating that Shenanigans were detected and list the following information that was privately tracked by the Concierge for each of those Agents at the time that the most recent Breaking In was performed:
* That Agent’s complete Route
* That Agent’s Groundwork, if it was non-blank
* That Agent’s Skill and Flaw

Until a Shenanigan Resolution resolution has been posted, the Phase is always Setting Patrols and the Concierge may not perform the Patrol Assessment action

What we know is, that under multiple people’s interpretation of the rules, my, qenya, JonathanDark and Darknight’s actions should not have resulted in Darknight being encountered.

This puts two options on the table—one of us isn’t being honest, or Kevan’s interpretation of the rules doesn’t line up with our interpretation of the rules. This allows us each formally to secretly declare to Kevan that we’re being honest. If we all tell Kevan we’re being honest, he has to post everything and we can then figure out why his interpretation of the rules doesn’t line up with ours. If one of us bails, indicates that even if there are some discrepancies around how Kevan is interpreting the rules, the overall result probably wouldn’t have changed and we can just play on.

Proposal: What Happened Last Night?

Withdrawn. Failed by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 12 May 2025 14:27:57 UTC

Add a new rule named “The Reveal” with the following text:

Before the next performance of Patrol Assessment, at their earliest convenience the Concierge must perform a Reveal, which is an action in which the Concierge submits a Story Post containing the following information that was privately tracked by the Concierge for each Agent at the time that the most recent Breaking In was performed:
* That Agent’s complete Route
* That Agent’s Groundwork, if it was non-blank
* That Agent’s Skill and Flaw

If the Concierge no longer has the above information, the Concierge must instead indicate that in that Story Post. After the Concierge performs a Reveal, they should repeal this rule.

There has been some debate on whether or not the most recent Breaking In was processed correctly. Unfortunately, we need a full reveal of everyone’s Routes, Prep, and Skills/Flaws to know for sure. Since we’re close to the end of the dynasty, this should be ok to reveal, and only then can we possibly correct the rules or attempt any sort of gamestate adjustments. This needs to be a rule that the Concierge can act on in case this Proposal is enacted by someone other than the Concierge, but the rule gets repealed after the action described in it is performed.

Saturday, May 10, 2025

Proposal: The Two-dynastic Scoreboard

Fewer than a quorum not voting AGAINST. Failed 1 vote to 4 by Kevan.

Adminned at 12 May 2025 09:07:03 UTC

Create a new rule, “Success Continuity”:

This rule cannot be repealed by Dynastic Reset. Once a Dynastic Reset completes, the text of this rule changes to “Each Agent has a publicly tracked count of Successes, defaulting to the median value of Successes among all other Agents, rounded down.” and (at the same time as the previous change) each Agent’s Successes is set to the number of Successes they had immediately prior to the most recent enactment of a Declaration of Victory (or to its default value if they were not an Agent at that time), except that if the Custodian is an Agent their Successes are set to 0.

Iterating on the interdynastic scoreboard idea, and making it even simpler – instead of making Successes last through all dynasties, why not just keep the value around for the next dynasty (to give players an incentive to do well in this dynasty even if they can’t win it?). Note that there is no guarantee that they would be used for anything next dynasty, but it is possible that because the statistic is avaliable, it will be used for something.

I think that something like this will be required to make the dynasty function if “Acceleration” fails. If “Acceleration” succeeds, it’s less important but still functions correctly.

The Dynastic Reset will replace words in this rule to match the new theme, so the rule works even across theme changes.

Proposal: Acceleration

Fewer than a quorum not voting AGAINST. Failed 1 vote to 4 with an IMP DEF, by Kevan.

Adminned at 12 May 2025 09:00:47 UTC

In “Guards and Burglars”, change:

If a particular Agent currently has more Successes than every other Agent, and also had more Successes than every other Agent immediately prior to the most recent Breaking In action, that Agent has achieved victory.

to

If a particular Agent currently has more Successes than every other Agent, that Agent has achieved victory if at least one of the following statements is true:
* That Agent had more Successes than every other Agent immediately prior to the most recent Breaking In action;
* That Agent is a Guard, and has at least two more Successes than every Burglar;
* That Agent is a Burglar, and has at least two more Successes than every Guard.

 

Under the current ruleset, a victory is guaranteed at the end of the current round, because nobody is able to catch up. (Incidentally, “Clucky, I challenge you!” would have stopped this scenario occuring – forcing a round 5 that was meaningful – but it got voted down.)

There are two possible solutions to this: a) change the victory condition to be more difficult, making the gameplay more meaningful, or b) skip directly to the win without spending time on meaningless gameplay in between.

I don’t know how much interest players have in continuing to play. Last night’s results looked somewhat like two of the Burglars had given up (12 Infamy with no Guard encounters makes it likely that there was no attempt by them to steal anything and they just idled at, e.g., G), but because so much about what happened is kept secret, I don’t know whether or not I’m interpreting those correctly – and one way to find out is to ask, and one way to ask is to make a proposal. Are players happy with the current gameplay, or would they rather move on?

(I also note that “make the victory condition more difficult” has the issue that once a player is one round from winning, the other players on their team might not have an incentive to help the team win, causing the dynasty structure to break down. I think that if we want to continue play rather than accelerate to the win, we will have to either add a random factor to the victory condition, or make Successes matter beyond the dynasty somehow.)

Proposal: Round and Round We Go

Reached quorum 6 votes to 0 with an IMP DEF. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 12 May 2025 09:00:03 UTC

If “A More Meaningful Round of Play” is not enacted, the rest of this Proposal has no effect.

In the rule “Guards and Burglars”, replace “more than 1 Fame or 1 Infamy” with “more than 1 Fame or more than 1 Infamy”

Proposal: A More Meaningful Round of Play

Reached quorum 4 votes to 0 with an IMP DEF. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 12 May 2025 08:59:15 UTC

In the rule “Guards and Burglars”, after the text “and also had more Successes than every other Agent immediately prior to the most recent Breaking In action,” add the following text:

and also gained more than 1 Fame or 1 Infamy in the most recent Breaking In action,

A little less broken than my previous proposal. The near-winner just needs to gain Fame or Infamy. It’s possible for everyone else to gang up and stop them, but it would take some serious coordination, and it’s still possible for the near-winner to win even with everyone else working against them.

Call for Judgment: Even More Explicit

Reached quorum 4 votes to 1 with an IMP DEF. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 12 May 2025 08:58:13 UTC

In the rule “The Sideline”, replace the text “For the purposes of The Break-In, if an Agent is Sidelined they are not considered to be a Guard or a Burglar unless explicitly stated otherwise”, with the following text:

A Sidelined Agent who would be a Burglar if they were not Sidelined is considered a Sidelined Burglar. A Sidelined Agent who would be a Guard if they were not Sidelined is considered a Sidelined Guard. For the purposes of The Break-In, a Sidelined Guard is not considered to be a Guard and a Sidelined Burglar is not considered to be a Burglar, unless explicitly stated otherwise.

Set the Agent named Clucky’s Infamy to 8.

Clucky’s CfJ but with the fix to the rules as well

Proposal: A Meaningful Round of Play

Withdrawn. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 11 May 2025 12:26:15 UTC

In the rule “Guards and Burglars”, after the text “and also had more Successes than every other Agent immediately prior to the most recent Breaking In action,” add the following text:

and also gained Successes in the most recent Breaking In action,

I don’t usually like trying to alter the win condition when someone is on the precipice of winning, but in this case there’s a game-breaking issue where this current round is completely pointless under the current win condition.

With this proposal, it at least requires the player who has almost won to make sure they and their team win in order to achieve victory. Thus, it’s not stealing away the victory, just making it make more sense to continue this round to the end of it.

We have to play this round to the end for the wincon to trigger anyway, so let’s make it worthwhile to play for real.

Call for Judgment: Explicit Enough

Timed out 1 vote to 3. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 12 May 2025 16:29:18 UTC

Set the Agent named Clucky’s Infamy to 8

Kevan is trying to argue that “For each Sidelined Burglar, set their Infamy to be the average Infamy of all Burglars, rounded down.” isn’t “explicitly stating otherwise” in regards to Sidelined Agents not being guards or burglars. Feels pretty explicate to me. So fixing my Infamy.

The Fourth Break-In

A quiet yet unsuccessful evening for the burglars, who left the building empty-handed.

Burglar Darknight encountered Guard JonathanDark.

No Camera Traps were triggered.

Thursday, May 08, 2025

Proposal: More timekeeping

Reached quorum 6 votes to 1. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 10 May 2025 13:47:51 UTC

In “Rumors”, change

If they have not done so within the past 24 hours, as a Virtual Action an Agent may add a string to the Rumors.

to

If they have not done so since the most recent Break-In, as a Virtual Action an Agent may add a string to the Rumors.

If it is the Planning the Break-In phase, make this change to both the dynastic ruleset and shadow ruleset, rather than just the shadow ruleset.

So it turns out that there is actually a reason to want to spam Rumors on a schedule, once every 24 hours. (No, I’m not going to publicly say what it is, at least not right now.) I don’t want to do that and I don’t think anyone else wants to do it either, so let’s just close off the timing scam?

Wednesday, May 07, 2025

Proposal: Let’s See What You’ve Won

Reached quorum 7 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 09 May 2025 08:53:11 UTC

In both the dynastic ruleset and the shadow ruleset, in the rule “The Break-In”, in the Breaking In atomic action, after the text “plus 4 for every artifact they are holding.” add the following text:

Privately inform that Burglar of the Trait and Type of each Artifact that they are holding, if any, or the fact that they are not holding any Artifact.

Per Kevan’s comments on Taking Stock, Burglars should find out which Artifacts, if any, they managed to escape with.

Proposal: Off the Books

Fewer than a quorum not voting AGAINST, failed 2 votes to 5 with an IMP DEF. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 09 May 2025 08:51:45 UTC

Add a new rule called “Bets” with the following text:

Each Agent has a Bet which is privately tracked by the Concierge and is either empty (which is the default) or consists of the following:
* Type, which may be Guard or Burglar
* Patsy, which is the name of an Agent other than that Agent

As a Virtual Action, an Agent who is not a Civilian may set their Bet to empty, or may set the Type and Patsy of their Bet, as long as the Patsy’s Bet is either empty or does not have both that Agent as its Patsy and the same Type as that Agent’s Bet.

In the rule “The Break-In”, in the Breaking In atomic action, just before the step “Set Rumors to an empty list” insert the following steps:

* For each non-Civilian Agent that has a non-empty Bet, if that Agent’s Bet Type matches the type of Agent whose Successes were increased in the previous step, increase that Agent’s Successes by 1 and increase the Successes of that Bet’s Patsy by 1, otherwise decrease that Agent’s Successes by 1 and decrease the Successes of that Bet’s Patsy by 1.
* Set each Agent’s Bet to empty

A way to increase Successes by guessing which side is going to win. The Patsy is there to cover up which Agent placed the Bet, and also to ensure that an Agent who places a Bet ropes in someone else to share the success or failure.

Tuesday, May 06, 2025

Proposal: Taking stock

Timed out 1 vote to 4. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 09 May 2025 08:50:12 UTC

In “The Break-In”, change

Post a blog entry announcing the end of the Break In, and naming all Burglars

to

Post a blog entry announcing the end of the Break In, specifying the Location of each Artifact, and naming all Burglars

If it is the Planning the Break-In phase and at least five EVCs contain the word “tonight”, then make these changes to both the dynastic and shadow ruleset, rather than just the shadow ruleset.

It feels like a bit of a let-down that when Artifacts get stolen, neither the Burglars nor the Guards discover who stole them. And it’s strange that a Guard can intercept a Burglar and prevent them getting away with an Artifact, but remain unaware that any of that happened (they discover that they caught a Burglar but not whether the Burglar had anything on them at the time). I think the game would be more fun if there were a little more context available for the two sides to celebrate or commiserate as appropriate.

The edited step comes before the step that sets up Artifacts for the next round, so it will report on the Artifacts at the end of the round that just completed.

Proposal: Behind the Pillar

Reached quorum 5 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 07 May 2025 19:26:17 UTC

In “The Break-In”, replace the word “Discovered” with “Sightings”.

“Discovered” feels like slightly the wrong word to be using here, for possibly suggesting a two-way confrontation.

Patrol Assessment: Guard Noise

Doors creak and slam around the old hotel.

One Guard has a route with I in the 4th and 9th Spots. Another has a route with N in the 4th and 9th Spots.

Monday, May 05, 2025

Proposal: Job Done [Building Blocks]

Reached quorum 8 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 06 May 2025 15:45:03 UTC

In the “Virtual Actions” Building Block, replace “If the action is successful, apply any specified effects on the gamestate and/or perform any specified actions on behalf of the Agent.” with:-

If the action is successful, apply any specified effects on the gamestate and/or perform any specified actions on behalf of the Agent, and indicate to the Agent that their action has succeeded.

Explicitly notifying on success as well as failure would be useful.

A Long Night

Lendunistus idles out after seven days with no posts or comments. Quorum remains 5.

Saturday, May 03, 2025

Proposal: The Real Decoy

Popular, 5-1. Enacted by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 04 May 2025 19:27:03 UTC

In the rule “Preparation”, add a row to the table with the following text;

|-
! Plant Decoy
|
* The unique type and trait of an Artifact that exists in the publicly tracked list of Artifacts and is not in the Target of another unresolved Plant Decoy initiated by a Guard.
* The letter of a Spot that meets all of the following criteria:
** Is not an Ingress or a Station
** Is not the Location of an Artifact
** Is not in the Target of another unresolved Plant Decoy initiated by a Guard.
|| Onsite || If the Agent is a Guard, the Location of the specified Artifact is privately tracked by the Concierge to be the Spot specified in that Plant Decoy action rather than the original Location of that Artifact, but the publicly tracked Home of that Artifact remains unchanged. If the Agent is not a Guard, this Prep has no Effect.

Including qenya’s fix to avoid two Guards targeting the same Artifact, and also fixed a scam where Burglars could submit Plant Decoy to block an Artifact and/or a Spot using the “another unresolved Plant Decoy” phrasing.

Saturday, May 03, 2025

Proposal: Third Time is the Bait and Switch Charm

Revisable, 0-0 with 2 REVISE votes. Failed-revise by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 03 May 2025 17:07:32 UTC

In the rule “Preparation”, add a row to the table with the following text;

|-
! Plant Decoy
|
* The unique type and trait of an Artifact that exists in the publicly tracked list of Artifacts
* The letter of a Spot that meets all of the following criteria:
** Is not an Ingress or a Station
** Is not the Location of an Artifact
** Is not the Target of another unresolved Plant Decoy
|| Onsite || If the Agent is a Guard, the Location of the specified Artifact is privately tracked by the Concierge to be the Spot specified in that Plant Decoy action rather than the original Location of that Artifact, but the publicly tracked Home of that Artifact remains unchanged. If the Agent is not a Guard, this Prep has no Effect.

Maybe this is the final version?

Proposal: More Bait More Switch

Revisable, 1-0 with 2 REVISE votes. Failed-revise by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 03 May 2025 03:59:46 UTC

In the rule “Preparation”, add a row to the table with the following text;

|-
! Plant Decoy
|
* The unique type and trait of an Artifact that exists in the publicly tracked list of Artifacts
* The letter of a Spot that meets all of the following criteria:
** Is not an Ingress or a Station
** Is not Connected to an Ingress or a Station
** Is not the Location of an Artifact
** Is not the target of another unresolved Plant Decoy
|| Onsite || If the Agent is a Guard, the Location of the specified Artifact is privately tracked by the Concierge to be the Spot specified in that Plant Decoy action rather than the original Location of that Artifact, but the publicly tracked Home of that Artifact remains unchanged. If the Agent is not a Guard, this Prep has no Effect.

 

A revised version of the earlier Bait and Switch proposal that fits with the latest revision to Preparation.

Proposal: The Interdynastic Scoreboard

Fewer than a quorum not voting AGAINST. Failed 2 votes to 6 by Kevan.

Adminned at 04 May 2025 13:53:19 UTC

In the “Building Blocks” section of the ruleset, create a new rule, “Interdynastic Scoreboard”:

Each Agent and idle Agent has an Interdynastic Score, tracked on the [[Interdynastic Scoreboard]] wiki page (only nonzero scores are listed individually – zero scores are combined into a single “everyone else” entry). Interdynastic Score is a number defaulting to 0. When this rule is added to the ruleset, if it was in the ruleset previously, each Agent and idle Agent regains the Interdynastic Score they had at the time that this rule was repealed (if any).

Rules other than this one can only change an Agent’s Interdynastic Score as a consequence of a Declaration of Victory, and only by increasing it. An Agent’s Interdynastic Score cannot be increased by more than 100 over the course of a single dynasty. When writing proposals that add victory conditions, Agents are encouraged to make that proposal also amend the dynastic ruleset such that upon the enactment of a Declaration of Victory, it increases each Agent’s Interdynastic Score by a number from 0 to 100 based on how close that Agent was to winning.

At the end of the last paragraph of “Guards and Burglars”, add

When a Declaration of Victory is enacted, each Agent gains Interdynastic Score equal to that Agent’s Successes, times 100, divided by the maximum number of Successes across all Agents, rounded to the nearest integer.

One common problem that BlogNomic has is that it’s single-winner, and that means that a) players who don’t have a chance to win don’t have much of a reason to do anything, and b) in dynasties where pooling of resources is possible, that encourages players to randomly select who to pool resources onto, giving players who are behind a nonzero chance to win, but often making most of the dynasty’s conventional gameplay pointless in the process.

I’ve thought for a while that it would make sense to give players a reason to try to improve their own position in the dynasty even if they are too far behind to win – that way, players who were too far behind would have something to do, and players would have an incentive not to pool (or at least, not to spend too much on pooling) because they would be hurting their own score. But because the position has to be measured at the end of the dynasty, it has to be something that persists into future dynasties. Making it a simple scoreboard, where each player is scored from 0 to 100 based on how well they did in the dynasty, seems to have the desired properties.

At present, Interdynastic Score doesn’t do anything, but it might in the future – I have been considering that maybe it would be safe to reintroduce mantle-passing rules as long as players were restricted to only passing the mantle to players who had had few dynasties compared to their Interdynastic Score counts (so that players couldn’t intentionally hurt their own position in the dynasty in return for a mantle pass, which is the reason why we repealed mantle-passing). But I’ll leave that for future proposals, and just stick to the simplest possible implementation for now.

Proposal: In and Out the Back Door 2

Timed out 4 votes to 1 with an IMP DEF. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 04 May 2025 13:52:46 UTC

In the Effect of the Prep “Back Door” in “Preparation”, change

Until the end of the next Break-In, the specified Spot is considered to connect to “Grounds” for the purpose of determining whether Routes submitted by Burglars are complete.

to

Until the end of the next Break-In, the specified Spot is considered to connect to “Grounds” for the purpose of determining whether Routes submitted by Burglars are complete, as long as that lettered Spot appears at least twice in that Route.

Reproposing this, but now affecting the correct rule.

Thursday, May 01, 2025

Proposal: In and Out the Back Door

Revisable 0-1 with 3 REVISE votes. Failed-revise by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 02 May 2025 20:33:31 UTC

In “The Back Door”, change

When this action is performed, until the next Break-In action has completed, the specified Spot is considered to connect to “Grounds” for the purpose of determining whether Routes submitted by Burglars are complete.

to

When this action is performed, until the next Break-In action has completed, the specified Spot is considered to connect to “Grounds” for the purpose of determining whether Routes submitted by Burglars are complete, as long as that lettered Spot appears at least twice in that Route.

Yet another fix suggestion for the 100% Burglar strategy. Normal routes that use Back Doors will probably use them twice – once to enter and once to leave – so this disallows the Back Door + Quick + Distraction snipe strategy via requiring the Burglar to stay around longer, whilst not meaningfully stopping anything else.

Proposal: Scaling 2

Fewer than a quorum not voting AGAINST. Failed 2 votes to 4 with 1 DEF and an IMP DEF, by Kevan.

Adminned at 03 May 2025 06:40:25 UTC

Make these changes to both the main and shadow rulesets

Add “The Round Number is publicly tracked on the gamestate tracking page and defaults to 4”

In “The Break-In” replace

If any Burglar who Encountered no Guards during this atomic action is holding at least one Artifact, increase the Successes of all Burglars by one, including Sidelined Burglars; otherwise, increase the Successes of all Guards by 1, including Sidelined Guards.

with

If any Burglar who Encountered no Guards during this atomic action is holding at least one Artifact, increase the Successes of all Burglars by the round number, including Sidelined Burglars; otherwise, increase the Successes of all Guards by the round number, including Sidelined Guards.
Increase the Round Number by 1

Replace Agent’s successes with the following

ais523: 6
Clucky:  6
Darknight: 3
DoomedIdeas: 5
JonathanDark: 0
lendunistus: 1
qenya: 4
trapdoorspyder: 2

Proposal: Bait and Switch

Revise-Withdrawn, 1-1 with 5 REVISE votes. Failed-revise by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 02 May 2025 19:28:29 UTC

In the rule “Preparation Actions”, add a subrule named “Decoy” with the following text;

“Plant Decoy” is a virtual Preparation Action that any Guard can perform, and the following must be specified to perform it:
* The unique type and trait of an Artifact that exists in the publicly tracked list of Artifacts
* The letter of a Spot that is not an Ingress or a Station, is not Connected to an Ingress or a Station, and is not the Location of an Artifact

When Plant Decoy is resolved, the Location of the specified Artifact is privately tracked by the Concierge to be the Spot specified in that Plant Decoy action rather than the original Location of that Artifact, but the publicly tracked Home of that Artifact remains unchanged.

This is the counterplay for the “Back Door + Distractions” play by the Burglars. It’s prevented from being too powerful by the fact that you can only Decoy one Artifact per Guard that is able to perform a Preparation Action. The Burglers can still use “Back Door + Distractions”, but now they have to guess at which Artifact is not a Decoy.

I didn’t want to make this a “any Agent can perform” because then we get into multiple Agents planting a Decoy on the same Artifact and which one would take priority. Suggestions are welcome if we really want to enable Burglars to Plant Decoys as well.

Proposal: [Appendix] [Building Blocks] Anonymous Actions

Popular, 7-0. Enacted by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 02 May 2025 19:24:28 UTC

In the Appendix rule “Representations of the Gamestate”, replace:

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

with

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

In the Building Blocks rule “Virtual Actions”, add the following text:

When the performance of a Virtual Action causes the modification of publicly tracked gamestate, the Concierge should publicly track the historical fact of the occurrence of that Virtual Action on behalf of the Agent who initiated that Virtual Action, using the Concierge’s own name in that public tracking, and privately track the historical fact of the occurrence of that Virtual Action using the name of the Agent who initiated that Virtual Action.

Similar to what qenya was suggesting in the comments on Rumor Mill, but allowing the Concierge to track the occurrence of the gamestate change publicly while only required to track the original initiator of the Virtual Action privately rather than publicly.