Are we going for more of a define-actual-plausible-rules for MC, then, rather than the unstructured ambiguity of the “traditional” game? I don’t have a problem with either, I just don’t want to be proposing argue-amongst-yourselves mechanics when we’re actually going for a coherent ruleset.

Anyway, 

I’ll obviously go with whatever people vote for, but “unstructured ambiguity” sounds like it might be too tricky to play an actual game of BlogNomic with, given the speed and the fragmented nature of the medium we’re working in. I’m possibly just being unimaginative, though.

Oh, no, I have a tendency to overreach with these things, it just feels like a shame to be using the Mornington Crescent IP and not having something that’s very slightly ambiguous and/or interpretive.

True, but then again this is a Nomic, there’s bound to be some arguments over the interpretations of ambiguous rule interactions, as we go along.

(I do have notes somewhere for a Crescent game where players have a pile of tokens and take turns to make arbitrary moves, which can be vetoed, but vetoing requires a clear explanation of the illegality (“You can’t move directly over an opponent’s piece! Not in Brighton ‘78 rules! What were you thinking?”) and the expenditure of one token, and that explanation then instantly becomes canon for the remainder of the game.)

That’s exactly what I was working towards with my last prop!

You’re right, though, it probably wouldn’t fly very well here.

(Also it seems like it has the Munchkin problem - it’s impossible to win unless everyone else has run out of tokens, and thus the means to stop you, and whoever’s turn it is when that DOES happen effectively wins by default. Which Munchkin proves to be an unsatisfactory mechanic.)

(I’d hope that by the time that everyone had run out of tokens, the game would be constricted enough - “can’t cross opponent’s pieces, can’t end your turn on an interchange, can’t move more than three stops per turn, all players must remain on stations with different first letters” - that it would take another dozen or so fairly strategic moves to actually win. I should pull out my London Underground teatowel and give it a playtest some time.)

(I do have notes somewhere for a Crescent game where players have a pile of tokens and take turns to make arbitrary moves, which can be vetoed, but vetoing requires a clear explanation of the illegality (“You can’t move directly over an opponent’s piece! Not in Brighton ‘78 rules! What were you thinking?”) and the expenditure of one token, and that explanation then instantly becomes canon for the remainder of the game.)

Reminds me a bit of Mao.

As an aside, and I’m sure some [Kevan] already know this, but there was actually a Mornington Nomic on the web at one time: http://dunx.org/mornomic/

[Travis] I may have actually started up Mornington Nomic, I don’t remember. And it looks like it ended more or less ten years ago this week, so I guess this could be considered a form of tribute. Very different game, though - we were trying to build a stable, reusable ruleset, and were using it to play multiple copies of the game simultaneously. Good fun, but very complex, and not what I’m trying to achieve here.