Game-direction

From Nomicapolis

Revision as of 21:22, 28 November 2006

Nomicopolis is off to a pretty good start right now. It'll be a bit bumpy while we get used to the rules and the wiki format. This page is intended to be the "message board" for draft proposals and ideas for proposals. Feel free to add sections and comment on anything.

Dayd Wins

And this is why: Dayd recieves 200 (positive) points for being Dayd. As per rule 116 there is no rule governing all means of how a player may gain points. As per 208 the first player to achieve 200 (positive) points wins. If anyone contests the validity of this rule Judgement may be invoked. Applejuicefool is Judge as he has achieved the most votes in the immediate election following the inception of rule 321. In the event that the decision is not overturned I will revoke my 200 points and an immediate vote/debate of rule 339 should be conducted.

Nice try, but I believe I can outlogic this one without the need for a CFJ.

1. . There are two options: 1 - Your 200 points are the result of a rule change. 2 - They are not.
2. . In the first case - It is an illegal rule change.

• By 116, rule changes may only occur when other rules allow them. No other rule allows this.
• This rule change is destructive of play, and so may be debated before it take effect (111). You did not allow for that debate before declaring your rule change in effect.
• Your rule change was proposed in an improper way, by 108 and 306.
• You did not allow a minimum of 24 hours debate on your proposal (313).
• There was not a quorum for the vote on your proposal (304).
• Voting on your proposal did not last at least 24 hours (313).
• The proposed rule mentions your name (324).

1. . In the second case - I choose to ignore it; you DO NOT have 200 points.

• By 101, all players must abide by the rules. There is no rule by which you acquired 200 points, so I do not have to abide this event.
• By 116, whatever is not prohibited or regulated by a rule is permitted and unregulated. Thus there is no rule prohibiting me from single-handedly disallowing your ill-gotten 200 point gain (or that of anyone else who tries the same thing). 69.94.164.119 16:22, 28 November 2006 (EST)

305

324 passed today bringing the total number of mutable rules to 25. This has caused the repeal of 305. From now on, players may gain or lose points. --TomFoolery 11:06, 28 November 2006 (EST)

Citizens

As you know, I have a proposal in debate which would create Citizens of Nomicapolis. Some people have had questions about what the purpose of these Citizens is. Here are some of the ideas I had:

We could use them as the basis of a Nomicapolis economy. Citizens could be assigned roles to create materials, process those materials into products, and consume those products. Players could start businesses in which they employ these Citizens, possibly earning Nomicapolis money with which they could purchase points.

We could track players' approval ratings among the citizenry. That way, the citizens themselves might actually "elect" players to certain positions, based on this approval rating. The approval rating might depend on factors such as having one's proposals adopted, score, voting record, etc. We might say the player with the lowest approval rating has some penalty.

Population might increase and decrease through natural cycles and/or through vagaries of the economic system.

Simulacrum made the point that this adds a level of complexity to Nomicapolis, and worried about our ability to handle the increasing complexity. Nomic is a game which is all about increasing complexity. By its very nature of changing and generally increasing rules, Nomic is intended to become more complex as it goes.

That said, this rule doesn't dictate that anything needs to be done with the citizens; it simply puts the "raw materials" in place, giving us something to work with should we decide we want to mess with it. Applejuicefool 11:16, 28 November 2006 (EST)

314

314 keeps getting moved so I am going to protect it for a while. -- Simulacrum 09:28, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

"Breaking" 111

A comment was made in the debate on 326, and I didn't catch it in time or I would have included this in the debate. The comment was to the effect "This proposal breaks rule 111 because it consists of two rule changes." Rule 111 doesn't forbid proposals which contain more than one rule change. It perhaps implies that these are illegal, but all it really stipulates is that players may "suggest amendments" or "argue against the proposal" if the proposal contains multiple rule changes. Applejuicefool 09:55, 27 November 2006 (EST)

Obviously that was my impression as well, but to eliminate any possible argument about the subject I have split the proposal into two, 326 and 334. Another good reason to have a Judge. TomFoolery 10:21, 27 November 2006 (EST)

Thoughts on simplicity

Before I get to the meat of my topic, I suggest we adopt the convention of adding new "threads" to the top of this page. Dayd kicked it off with his post below, and I'll go with that. Either top or bottom would be fine, but if we put them at the bottom, you have to scroll farther to find the new stuff. Good call, Dayd. Also, I'd suggest we archive this at some point...

At any rate: Dayd posted a comment along with his vote on 323 to the effect of "Keep it simple, stupid." First I'll assume he's merely quoting the old saying and not calling me stupid. Second, I want to think about the idea of simplicity. As anyone can see by looking, 323 is easily the longest proposal or rule thus far. I could have made the proposal itself a lot simpler, as Dayd is apparently suggesting. One alternate proposal I could have made: "This rule creates the position of Supreme Grammarian. The Supreme Grammarian is elected by simple majority and may summarily correct spelling and/or grammar errors in any rule or proposal. The Supreme Grammarian may be removed from office by a supermajority vote. The Supreme Grammarian may resign his post at any time." That's about the simplest I can conceive of making this rule. The problem with making a simple rule is that it's complicated to enact. There are way too many questions about how this rule should be enacted.

If you look at my actual proposal, it's complicated, true. But it leaves very few questions about how it should operate. It outlines very clearly how the SG is nominated and elected, what his powers and responsibilities are, what the limitations on those powers are, and how the SG may be removed from office. In short, I believe that the more completely a rule outlines its intended use, the easier it is to use.

Another example of what I mean: Take a gander at rule 317, a rule I voted for, albeit with some reservation, because I made a stink about the term "consensus" and Dayd graciously fixed it. If we hit a snag and the game ended today, who would win? There is NO provision in 317 that covers this situation...Simulacrum and Sinblox are currently tied for the most points. Now there are a few points that could be raised: Sinblox is inactive, surely he can't win, right? Wrong - the rule simply says "...the player..." not "the active player...." Well, then, certainly Simulacrum and Sinblox would be declared co-winners and the game would be a tie, right? Wrong! 317 doesn't mention co-winners or ties in any way. In fact, it is quite clear - "the player [singular] with the most points is the winner." So I guess we'd be screwed and the whole game would be a wash, just because this particular rule is nice and simple.

Here's another situation involving the same rule (I'm not picking on your rule, Dayd, I basically picked it at random): If one player gains the lead, they can basically hold the entire game hostage to his whim. How? He just argues strenuously that a rule change he doesn't like is illegal. He doesn't even have to offer any reasoning. He just has to hold out that this rule is illegal, no matter what. So everybody else disagrees. But then, the "...legality of a rule change cannot be determined with finality," and the game ends, and he wins. Or if everyone else gives in, he has managed to singlehandedly thwart the majority. And he can just do it again and again. Another problem that could be fixed, with just a bit more complication in the rule itself. Applejuicefool 21:31, 24 November 2006 (EST)

Players

There are six active players right now.

If anyone knows of any people who may be interested, this game could easily take on a few more players.

As per rule 304 only two players are needed to do business

I think we better get more players soon, because it is getting harder and harder to introduce new players to the game since the game get's more and more complicated. I know a forum at utopiatemple.com where we might be able to recruit some. Does anyone think that is a good idea?
--Shivan 17:15, 16 November 2006 (EST)

I agree that we could use some new players, heck, I would be happy if all players listed in the census were active. However, I would caution against using forums that aren't nomic-specific or dealing with at least gaming in general. Any posting of links on sites otherwise might be considered spam and would be flagged as such. If you are already a community member of the aboved-mentioned site and are in good standings there, then I would encourage you to contact one of the moderators or admins and ask if it would be appropriate. I just don't want to give this wiki a bad reputation.

Having said that, I want let everyone know that I did a little search and found that we are currently ranked #28 on the list of most visited wikis hosted on editthis.info. I don't know if that is really something to proud of or not, I would assume so. Also, I entered the search terms: active nomic games on google.com and Nomicapolis showed up on the first 100 listings in the results (near the bottom of the page), so we are... out there. It gave me an idea, perhaps we could look through those search results and try to find websites that might be receptive of plugs or announcements of a game that is active and accepting new players.

I've also been mulling over an idea of maybe e-mailing political science and/or law professors and instructors at colleges and universities in hopes of getting their students involved here maybe for extra credit. But like I stated above, I don't like spam and that idea is as close as one can get to it. --Simulacrum 01:03, 17 November 2006 (EST)

Seeing how I am a political science major I have been putting out general feelers so see who might be interested in playing. I am considering doing some advertisement at least in my local realm. --Dayd 11:00, 17 November 2006 (EST)
Utopiatemple is deticated to gaming.

Nomic Positions

The following are Player Positions that might be achieved. The current outline is elected. I think another possibility is to make it rotating based on the Census starting with #1 on the Census the first month.

Minister of Order / Gamemaster (for lack of a better name)

Should create a position for what Simulacrum does right now, even though we give it to him? Keeping an eye on thresholds, making sure points are more or less correct and such...

Governor General?

I haven't yet proposed this, I'd just like to get some feedback on it.

Governor General:

1. There shall always be a player designated "Governor General". This player's authority is activated when a player has the won the game or the game is unplayable or when there is unanimous consent for their powers to be activated.
2. The Governor General is elected by a simple majority. The Governor General may be recalled from their position at any time by a simple majority.
3. The Governor General may resign at any time without consequence.
4. When the Governor General's powers are activated their role is to make the game playable again. To do so, they have the authority to repeal rules, amend rules and to reset any attributes such as point counts of all players to an equal amount. The Governor General should make the minimum amount of changes possible to make the game workable again and should make all players equal in status.
5. Any changes the Governor General makes when their powers are activated is completely up to their discrestion, but may be over ridden by unanimous consent (excluding the Governor General in this vote.)
6. Once the Governor General's powers have been activated and they have finished making the game playable and equalizing players, they shall no longer be Governor General and a new election for this title shall be called. This does not preclude this player from becoming Governor General again.

In theory I'm in favor of player differentiation such as unique roles for players. I had been toying with the idea of proposing the position of Supreme Grammarian whose job is to summarily correct grammar and spelling errors in the rules. I have an English degree and am certified to teach English (though I'm teaching science - go figure) and minor errors occasionally glare out at me. This game is the ultimate rules-lawyer game and these errors could potentially be abused. Another idea would be the Metanomic General. This position would rotate through the players - once its power is used, the position would automatically rotate to the next player on the census. The power is this: The Metanomic General would devise a meta-rule which provides some stylish limit or outline which rule change proposals must follow in order to be considered proper. A meta-rule would last a month, at which time the next MG would implement his meta-rule. Examples might be: Rule proposals must be in verse; Rule proposals may not use the letter "e"; Rule proposals must consist of a single sentence; etc.

Anyway, the Governer General is a good idea. I think that, if winning simply resets the game, then there should be some in-game benefit for previous game winners - that way there's some built-in incentive to win. Applejuicefool 22:06, 15 April 2006 (PDT)

I like those suggestions, especially the Supreme Grammarian. My nomic experience is pretty limited but I have seen well-meaning rules exploited by very minor loop holes, so someone who can copy edit would be good in keeping our rules tight. sinblox 19:18, 16 April 2006 (PDT)

I agree that the idea of a Governer General is a good one, I also think that the Supreme Grammarian would definately be worthwhile. I would prefer that the Metanomic General be contained into a sub-game with some sort of award for active participation. This is only because I am not good at that sort of thing but I am willing to try it out. Simulacrum 22:54, 17 April 2006 (PDT)

Speed up rulemaking

I feel there is a need to make some rules regarding clarifications of rules. Sometimes a rule may be unclear or contradicting. There should be a possibility of having an ammendment of such a rule passed faster than normal rules.

I do not think any speed rules need to be introduced. I think the current system will allow for rules to be added quickly. Also part of the game is to create a tangled web of rules that do contradict so that you can "win" not that I really want to "win".

We could enact a rule where the game would go to "Committee of the Whole" mode, where we could enact ammendments by unaminous consent of players active within the last x days. This would address grammar issues, dead-references (which has been around since almost the beginning, and backwards implementation of certain rules such as rule 306. While implementing the committee we could just edit the rules in question and not have actually make new rules to replace them. The game could also go into committee as a whole in the extreme circumstance that a paradox is discovered and we wish to not go into the endgame. This idea is potentially dangerous though. Any thoughts?

Yes perhabs we could declare a state of "law cleaning". During the next few days laws that corrected minor errors and carified things could be passed very quicky. Or alternatively compose a big list of errorfixes into a "lawpackage" and then vote only once for all the fixes. (Maybe the items in the list would still be individual laws for the sake or order, but passed as one) --Shivan 17:31, 16 November 2006 (EST)

Rules with non-existant references

Rule 111, an immutable rule, refers to a Judge. Addressed by 321.

Rule 212 still refers to turns and needs to be amended. Also it refers to a Judge, which stated earlier has been abolished. Adressed by 317.

Rule 306 Refers to Rule 105 that was transmuted. NOT ADDRESSED YET.

Rule 309 Is the transmuted Rule 105 that is the same as rule 104 and needs to be repealed. Addressed by 316.

Updated by --Tucana25 23:20, 25 November 2006 (EST)

More advanced Nomic / RPG nomic

I thought maybe we should try to make nomic more advanced by making more types of points. For example if you had held an office and did a good job you would be awarded some "confirdence points", it would give a bonus for election for a office, or if someone in a office suddenly goes inactive then player with the highest number of confirdence points takes over. I also thought of making an actual economic system, by adding Nomic$, you could exchange them for normal points.--Shivan 00:45, 17 November 2006 (EST)

I was thinking of introducing a form of currency called Subers that would replace our use of points, with subers players could eventually buy elections or pay-off fellow players for voting in their favor. Corruption?... nah economics! --Simulacrum 02:42, 18 November 2006 (EST)

Also I find it a but funny that Shivan mentioned that it would be lame that this game would play like WOW then mention adding some sort of RPG element... heh heh --Simulacrum 02:42, 18 November 2006 (EST)

Wow is lame becuase the numbers increase but gameplay remains the same. In nomic the gameplay changes constantly.--Shivan 13:25, 20 November 2006 (EST)

Nomic Economy?

I thought of starting up a nomic economic system? I very open to your ideas. The argument against an economic system is that the points already seem to rule the game. But of course we could just make a rule that allows money to be converted to points. Does anyone have any ideas? What could the money be used for?

About time (no pun)

I don't know if anybody else has come across this but I see that this wiki is displaying at least two different timezones. One is UTC which is the wiki software default, the other looks like the server's local time EST. I personally have no way of correcting this as it requires editting a php file on the server. I have requested that our host on editthis.info reset our global timezone to UTC (a neutral time, in my opinion). In the meantime, I would like to request that players do not propose any further rule-changes that implement a narrowly defined window of action of less than 48 hrs (though I'm not really worried about it,) and also be somewhat lenient in enforcement of the rules if there may be a question of lag or whatnot. I do not think that major problems exist but I just wanted to let y'all know.

Example of what I am talking about:

• 05:10 is time in UTC as of this edit using {{subst:CURRENTTIME}}
• 00:10, 18 November 2006 (EST) is a sig timestamp that is labeled as EST using ~~~~~.

I want those two to be the same so that there is no confusion as to if voting began to early or if some one missed the deadline etc.

By the way (sorry about the rambling), speaking of timezones, where is everyone else located? I am in Texas of US and my timezone is CST—Central Standard Time which is -6:00 (UTC). Simulacrum 00:10, 18 November 2006 (EST)

Hey! Me too! I live in Big Spring, which is about 40 miles east of Midland on I-20. As for the time thing, perhaps anybody with a time critical post (proposers, voters, etc.) should just add the CURRENTTIME thing to their posts. Maybe we should make that a rule? Or amend 306 to include it? Applejuicefool 10:10, 18 November 2006 (EST)

Well that's interesting...I'm located in Indiana EST and I changed my setting to display local time. Did anyone else do that as well? I mean it's hard for me to believe that my local settings are having global impact. Also since that wiki is set for UTC that is the offical game time. I don't know if that's understood, but that was what I was working with even though I'm EST. --Dayd 10:05, 18 November 2006 (EST)

Alright, after pulling my hair out over the past few hours I have found a work-around for the time issue. If you want your comments, votes, or anything else to be timestamped in UTC format, you will need to edit your preferences like so, in the text field labeled Nickname place the following text:

-- [[User:<Yourusername>|]] {{subst:CURRENTTIME}}, {{subst:CURRENTDAY}}
 {{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTYEAR}} (UTC)

Maybe we should just use EST as the offical time zone. Since that is the "offical" time zone of the wiki. It would be easier to check the time since you can preview a page and it will give you the "offical" time. Course I guess the other would work too if you changed your sig. This way just sounds like more work. --Dayd 10:07, 28 November 2006 (EST)