If Proposal: writing is hard failed, add a new rule to the ruleset, entitled “Intelligence”, whose body text is the same as the first paragraph of the rule that would have been created by the aforementioned proposal.

Add a new rule to the ruleset, entitled Science!:

Research Projects are scientific goals, towards which each Caveman may strive. Research projects may be ‘pending’ or ‘complete’, and are tracked in the wiki. At any time there may be no more than four pending Research Projects available. Research Projects may also be referred to as “learn thinks”.

Any Caveman may propose a new Research Project by making a Research Proposal (which may also be referred to as a “learn grunt”). Research Proposals must be made in the Story post category, must have a title in the format of “Research Proposal: [x]” or “learn grunt: [x]” (where [x] is the name of the Research Proposal), and must have body text that contains the following information:

* Prerequisites. Each Research Project must have either one or two existing, complete Research Projects as a prerequisite. The Caveman putting forward the Research Proposal may chose which Research Projects to use as a prerequisite, but no complete Research Project may be a prerequisite for more than two complete or pending Research Projects - if a Research Proposal passes that would have the effect of making a complete Research Project a prerequisite for a third then that Research Proposal instead has no effect.

* Cost. Each Research Project has a cost, which must be paid in Science, to be completed. The cost of a Research Project is defined as the cumulative costs of its prerequisite and all of its antecedents (i.e. the prerequisite’s prerequisite, the prerequisite’s prerequisite’s prerequisite, etc), divided by the number of immediate prerequisites it has.

* Effect. Each Research Project must detail a scientific advance for the race, which may optionally have a gamestate effect.

If a Research Proposal contains all of these elements then it is considered valid, and may be voted upon. A Research proposal is considered to be a Votable Matter for the purposes of rule 1.4 and should be resolved according to rule 1.5. If a Research Proposal passes then it may be added to the wiki page as an open Research Project. If it fails then it ceases to be gamestate.

Each Caveman may chose to allocate their Intelligence to an open research project. These allocations are tracked in the “learn” column in the GNDT, in which each Caveman may name one open Research Project to receive their allocation. This allocation may be changed as a weekly action.

If no Caveman has done so within the preceding five days, a Caveman may at any time convene a scientific convention, which may also be referred to as a “hard think”. They do so by making a comment to the GNDT that simply says “Scientific Convention” or “hard think”. They must then deduct the value of all Intelligence allocated to each Research Project from that Research Project’s cost.

When a Research Project’s cost is zero then it becomes complete and its effect is immediately applied to the gamestate.