Proposal: UNGHHHH

Append the following text to rule 18:

Once per day, a Horde may attempt to exert its influence over a single Horde it has Dominated. It does this by making a comment in the GNDT of "Influence [HordeName]: DICE" where [HordeName] is the name of a Horde whose Allegiance is set to the Horde making the comment. If the DICE roll is a 5 or 6, then the Influential Horde (as the Horde who has successfully exerted its influence shall be henceforth called) may immediately force the Dominated one to perform a single action from the following list:

1) It may move the Horde to any other location to which it could legally move, even if that Horde has already moved that Day.

2) It may force the Horde to attack a Protagonist. This attack goes through normally, except that, if this attack kills the Protagonist, then all the rewards go to the Influential Horde.

3) It may force the Horde to cast a vote, that cannot be changed, on a pending proposal. This is done by making a comment to said proposal with the text "[HordeName] decides to vote this way," and the appropriate vote.

Timed out at 6-5. Enacted by Cayvie, 27th of Dec at 7:00.
-5 to Josh, TrumanCapote, 75thTrombone, Simon, and Chronos for not voting.

Point of Order

I just noticed, when writing a proposal on movement limits and remembering a previous one that tried to do the same thing, that Shuffling down the Expressway passed, but the changes haven't actually been implemented in the rules yet, or if they have, it got changed back somehow. (I did a skim-reading of proposals after it, but none seemed to indicate that it should have reverted upon their enactment.)

Proposal: Smells like Human Courage (Trivial)

In rule 13, Courage, reword:

At the end of every day that a non-trivial proposal fails, the Courage increases by 1, or 2 if one such failed proposal was proposed by the Overlord.

to

Each day, the first time a non-trivial proposal fails, the Courage increases by 1. In addition to this, the first time each day that a non-trivial proposal proposed by the Overlord fails, the Courage increases by 1. These effects stack if the first failed proposal of the day was proposed by the Overlord.

(Making it something that occurs at the same time as proposals getting administrated is probably better than the current nebulous "at the end of the day, it happens somehow" situation.)

Reached Quorum. Enacted by Cayvie, 26th of Dec.

Proposal: Condo Have No King

add:

• a GNDT column titled "vote-strength"
• to the end of Rule 5:

• A Horde's vote is often modified by its vote-strength. A Horde's vote-strength is the ratio of its enacted proposals to its failed proposals rounded down to the third decimal. Vote-strength is tracked by a column in the GNDT.

change:

• the passage in Rule 6 that reads:

• Quorum is equal to half the number of Hordes, rounded down, plus one.

  If the oldest pending Proposal's FOR votes exceed or equal Quorum, or if it is more than 48 hours old and more than half of its votes are FOR, then any Admin Staff may mark that Proposal as Enacted, then update the Ruleset and/or Gamestate to include the specified effects of that Proposal.

  If the oldest pending Proposal has enough AGAINST votes that it could not be Enacted without one of those votes being changed, or if all Hordes have voted on it and it still cannot be Enacted, or if the Horde who proposed it has voted AGAINST it, or if it is more than 48 hours old and most of its votes are AGAINST, then any Admin Staff may mark that Proposal as Failed. When the proposer votes against his or her own proposal, that vote may not be changed.

to:

• Quorum is equal to half the number of Hordes multiplied by their constituent Hordes' vote-strengths, rounded down, plus one.
  

  If the oldest pending Proposal's FOR votes multiplied by their constituent Hordes' vote-strengths exceed or equal Quorum, or if it is more than 48 hours old and its FOR votes multiplied by their constituent Hordes' vote-strengths exceed half of its total votes multiplied by their constituent Hordes' vote-strengths then any Admin Staff may mark that Proposal as Enacted, then update the Ruleset and/or Gamestate to include the specified effects of that Proposal.

  If the oldest pending Proposal has enough AGAINST votes that it could not be Enacted without one of those votes being changed, or if all Hordes have voted on it and it still cannot be Enacted, or if the Horde who proposed it has voted AGAINST it, or if it is more than 48 hours old and its AGAINST votes multiplied by their constituent Hordes' vote-strengths exceed its total votes multiplied by their constituent Hordes' vote-strengths, then any Admin Staff may mark that Proposal as Failed. When the proposer votes against his or her own proposal, that vote may not be changed.

The contents of this proposal is by no means retroactive. Therefore, everyone's vote-strength should start at one(1) upon passage of this proposal.

Josh, forgive me.

No way of passing. Failed by Cayvie, 26th of Dec.

Quorum is 9

And yea, for Dirk, knowing not the sibilance of his accord, voted not for seven days, and was beaten thrice with a rod and idled, in accordance with the ruleset.

Yom Huledet Sameach

Happy Birthday, Cayvie.

Proposal: Metaclysm

[ Removing all rewards for having proposals enacted, and also the admin rewards for enacting them. There's been a bit of a sea change against Brain-rewards for proposals, lately - am intrigued to see if a complete detachment, making Brains an almost entirely game-level variable, would still work. ]

Remove the paragraphs beginning "When a Proposal is enacted" and "Whenever an Admin Enacts a non-Trivial Proposal" from Rule 6.

Reached Quorum. Enacted by Cayvie, 26th of Dec. +10 to Kevan, +5 to Cayvie. For the last time in a while.

Forum on scamming

Hey, y'all.

I was wondering if we might talk about a way to codify our feelings on exploiting loopholes in the rules. I know a lot of us disagree, but I also think we're cool enough to get the other side and strike a balánce.

From what I've seen, I think most of us agree that there's a grey area when it comes to scamming. Some scamming is clever, cute, and undeniably legit; some is just linguistic gerrymandering.

• E.G.: My move last Dynasty where I had Sirrus marry Juila without her accepting the proposal? There were some obvious deficiencies in the wording, I did it once, got a laugh, and then proposed a fix. I think that was okay.



• E.G.: My planned move last Dynasty where I would have declared victory, pointing out that the Victory rule says you can declare victory when you have achieved that Dynasty's victory condition, along with how the victory condition didn't explicitly say it was a victory condition? NOT okay. Would've been stupid and awful and you all would've hated me.

SO. What I'm proposing is that we figure out some way to articulate what's okay scamming and what's stupid. We'll never get the grey area totally out, but it might help if we define it.

Examples of what such an amendment might add to the rules:

• Punishment for repeatedly exploiting the same loophole, or failsafes against it. Maybe we could incorporate some kind of freeze when a new loophole is exploited, that would allow amendment before it's milked for all it's worth. (Note that a series of repetitive actions might only exploit the loophole once.)



• Emphasis that theme rules should be worded very carefully to prevent unintended behavior. Like when Cayvie radioed in with no living members. Yes, this is common sense in reality, but BlogNomic ain't reality, and most such stipulations are trivial to write in. We could 1) Encourage voting against proposals when such loopholes are caught, or 2) create a mechanic by which to amend loopholey proposals midvote.



• Some kind of nebulous code of ethics that somehow articulates the level of analness that we find unacceptable. Hard, but maybe worth a shot?

These are just first things to come to mind. In any case, maybe in this thread we can hash this stuff out, find some concrete words to describe what we think, and formulate a proposal.

Proposal: New and Improved!

In Rule 4 - Proposals, replace:

A Horde can state in his Proposal's title that the Proposal is Trivial, if they feel that it only makes minor changes, or is otherwise unworthy of reward.

with:

A Horde can state in his Proposal's title that the Proposal is Trivial, if they feel that it only makes minor changes, or Super-Trivial, if they feel that it is unworthy of reward.

Also, after the phrase:

For the purpose of this rule, 1 non-Trivial Proposal is worth 2 Trivial ones

add:

and a Super-Trivial proposal is worth the same as a Trivial one

In Rule 6 - Enactment, replace:

When a Proposal is enacted, its proposer gains 10 Brains, or 2 Brains if it was Trivial.

with:

When a Proposal is enacted, its proposer gains 10 Brains, 2 Brains if it was Trivial, or 0 brains if it was Super-Trivial.

Also, replace:

Whenever they Enact a Trivial Proposal

with:

Whenever they Enact a Trivial or Super-Trivial Proposal

[This formalizes an action that is happening more and more frequently, players adding a 'no reward' phrase to the end of their proposal. Let's make things a little easier on ourselves.]

Timed out at 4-8. Failed by Cayvie, 26th of Dec. -3 to Royce, -5 to Truman Capote, Ornithopter, Quazie, Simon, and 75thTrombone

proposal: re-word self-trivial

reword this in rule 5

If the Horde who made a proposal casts an explicit 'FOR' vote and marks it as trivial, then it auto-trivials the proposal. In the event of a self-trivial the Horde who made the proposal or an admin may add [trivial] to the proposal title.

to

If the Horde who made a proposal casts an explicit 'FOR' vote on said proposal and marks it as trivial, then this self trivial auto-trivials the proposal. In the event of a self-trivial the Horde who made the proposal or an admin may add [trivial] to the proposal title.

there shall be no gaining of brains whatsoever from this proposal

Reached Quorum. Enacted by Cayvie, 24th of Dec.

More Loophole

Do to a loophole in rule 5 any Horde who makes a proposal can autotrivialize any proposal although autotrivialing doesn't do anything do to another loophole in rule 5.

Notice: +1 Courage Increase Due

The new Courage rule specifies that the increase must happen at the end of the day (a bit annoying). This is a reminder for anyone on the GNDT at midnight to add +1 to the Human's Courage, as some non-trivial proposals failed today.

Proposal: Keyword Conflict [Trivial]

[I just realized that defining a "Day" Cycle could cause confusion with any "once per day" rules. Since the glossary definition overrides any rule, the only effect I can see is that the Day Activity bonus is always on (we are always in a day, according to the glossary). I was sloppy with that rule, sorry everyone!]

In the rule Day and Night replace instances of "Night" with "Nighttime" and "Day" with "Daytime".

[What do you think about changing the glossary entry on keywords? I think a rule should always supersede a glossary item (reverse of the current system). It might be nice to redefine a "day" sometimes.]

Reached Quorum. Enacted by Cayvie, 24th of Dec. +2 to Smith, +2 to Cayvie

Proposal: Ninja Zombies! Pirate Zombies! ZOMBIE JESUS!

Add the following to Rule 12: Zombies:

A horde may, at any time, expend 15 Brains multiplied by the number of Zombies it has to become a Psychic Zombie horde. This is tracked in the GNDT by putting an asterisk (*) next to that horde's number of Zombies.

Whenever a Pyschic Horde would loose Zombies, it may instead loose the same amount of brains. It may at any time sacrifice one of its zombies to gain 15 Brains. Any time a Psychic Horde would gain new Zombies, it must expend 15 Brains on top of any other costs. If at any time a Psychic Horde is reduced to 0 Zombies, it ceases to be Psychic.

Non-psychic zombies fear and despise psychic zombies, and the feeling is mutual. If a location contains both psychic and non-psychic Hordes, all Hordes in that location reduce att Attck or Grarh dice results, and all Activity rewards, by 1, to a minimum of zero.

A non-psychic Horde cannot enter or leave a location that has Psychic Horde's barricade in place, and vice versa.

For ease of definition, Pyschic and Non-Psychic may be refered to as a Horde's caste.

Amend the description of the activity Barricade in Rule 15 to the following:

* Barricade. Requires at least ten Zombies. The location that the Horde is in becomes Barricaded. All Hordes of the opposite caste in that Location have an asterisk added to their Location.

If Proposal: Yours is the Earth passes, add the following to the rule that it creates:

Pyschic Hordes may not be dominated.

Could not reach quorum. Failed by Cayvie, 24th of Dec. -3 to Josh

Proposal: I hate Universal [trivial]

Add a new Protagonist:

Van Helsing
Universal IP:Van Helsing is immune to all Attacks and Grarhs. The Horde that kills him may declare victory.

Slayer of the Undead: If ever Van Helsing is in the Graveyard, he may never be moved from there.

Create Van Helsing in the GNDT. Set his location to the Mall.

Could not reach quorum. Failed by Cayvie, 24th of Dec, -3 to Josh

Proposal: Yours is the Earth

Enact a new rule, entitled "Allegiance and Domination", which reads:

Each Horde has an Allegiance to a single Horde, which may be themselves. Each Horde starts off holding Allegiance to themselves. All uses of "Horde" in this rule include Hordes with 0 Zombies.

Once per day, a Horde with at least 7 Zombies may attempt to Dominate a single other Horde in the same location as themselves. The Dominating Horde makes a "Dominate (Targeted Horde's Name): DICE" comment to the GNDT. The result is subtracted from the Dominating Horde's Zombies, and added to the targeted Horde's Zombies. If, after this, the Dominating Horde has more Zombies than the targeted Horde, the targeted Horde is Dominated by the Dominating Horde.

Once Dominated, the Allegiance of a Horde, as well as the Allegiance of all Hordes who held Allegiance to that Horde, is changed to the Allegiance of the Dominating Horde. If a Horde Dominates the Horde to whom they owe Allegiance, those Allegiances are changed to the Dominating Horde, instead.

(For example: A holds Allegiance to B. If A dominates C, then C and everyone who holds Allegiance to C will now hold Allegiance to B. If instead, A dominates B, then B, and everyone who holds Allegiance to B (including A) now holds Allegiance to A.)

(Hopefully an eventual victory condition will be to have every Horde hold allegiance to one Horde, making that Horde win, but I want to see if this isn't broken first before adding that rather important clause. Note, this will (possibly, assuming people go for it) change the Large Zombie Hordes Lurking In The Graveyard situation by forcing them to get out and move around in order to Dominate other hordes, as well as giving away potentially large amounts of Zombies to try and spread their influence.)

Timed out FOR. Enacted by Cayvie, 24th of Dec, 7:40 PM. +10 to Ben, +5 to Cayvie, -5 to TrumanCapote, Dirk, Ornithopter, and Rodney.

Proposal: Act Two

Give Bub 100 Health and move him to a random Location. (If he's been deleted from the Protagonist list somehow, add him back as he was.)

Add three new Protagonists:-

Logan. Experimentation - Doctor Logan is capturing the city's more intelligent zombies for research. If a Horde performs an Activity in the same Location as Logan, it loses one Zombie immediately afterwards. If Logan and Bub are in the same Location, Bub may not have his Location changed.

Rhodes. Armed - if a Horde sustains casualties when attacking Captain Rhodes, those casualties are doubled.

Roger. Roger has no special abilities.

Logan starts in the Hospital, Rhodes starts in the Town Centre and Roger starts in the Mall.

Timed out FOR. Enacted by Cayvie, 24th of Dec. +10 to Kevan, +5 to Cayvie, -5 to Josh, TrumanCapote, 75thTrombone, Ben, Dirk, Ornithopter, Rodney, and Royce.

Proposal: Know that for destruction dice / Are also great / And would suffice. [Trivial]

The second sentence of Rule Courage currently reads:

Whenever a Horde attacks the Humans, that Horde loses Zombies equal to the Courage, plus (if there are more Rampaging than Shambling Hordes) the difference between the number of Rampaging Hordes and the number of Shambling Hordes.

Replace this sentence with:

Whenever a Horde attacks the Humans, that Horde rolls a die (using the GNDT) and loses the following number of Zombies: for a roll of 1 or 2, half the Courage, rounded down; for a roll of 3 or 4, the Courage; for a roll of 5 or greater, twice the Courage. If there are more Rampaging Hordes than Shambling Hordes, add 1 to the roll when determining the number of Zombies lost.

Cosmologicon plainly abstains (refrains) from gaining Brains for the passage of this proposal.

12-0 Reached Quorum. Enacted by Smith, 23rd of Dec. +2 to Smith.

Proposal: Night Moves (trivial)

In rule 17 - Night and Day, change

A Horde may double the dice results of Attacks or Grarhs they make against Humans or Protagonists during the Night.

to

A Horde may double the number of Zombies and/or Brains it would gain from an Attack or Grarh against the Humans made during the Night. Also, a Horde may double the effects of any attack made on a Protagonist during the night.

Right now, it has us doubling dice results, which gets kind of silly, as, if I roll a 6 against a Protagonist, I can just choose to double it, and make it a 12, on which nothing happens.

13-0. Reached Quorum. Enacted by Smith, 23rd of Dec. +2 to Cayvie, +2 to Smith.

Proposal: Protagonist Fixings, Yum!

In rule 16 - Protagonists, change:

Protagonists may be attacked by Hordes by posting a comment to the GNDT

to

A Horde may, once per day, attack any Protagonist in the same Location as them by posting a comment to the GNDT

(Currently you can make any number of attacks against protagonists, regardless of locations. This could use fixing, in addition to the dice-doubling thing.)

10-2 (Auto-Trivial) Reached Quorum. Enacted by Smith, 23rd of Dec. +2 to Ben, +2 to Smith.

Proposal: The Call of the Mall

Add a new Activity:-

Call. The Horde must be in the Mall. A chosen Horde, drawn by the muzak, may then be moved to the Mall as if it were moved normally (provided that such a movement would be legal if that Horde had made it themselves).

12-2 (6 FOR marked trivial). Reached Quorum. Enacted by Smith, 22nd of Dec. +2 to Kevan, +2 to Smith.

Proposal: Where I was going with this ....

Add to Rule 4, Proposals:

Proposals cannot offer rewards or penalties as a result of how a Horde votes on that, or any other, Proposal.

[As I've demonstrated, the results can be catostrophic. The veto power is a good catch for this sort of thing, but you can never have too much security. What would have happened if KnightKing was out of town when I proposed 'Have fun with this'? ]

3-11 cannot be enacted without cov. Failed by Smith, 22nd of Dec. -3 to Royce.

Idle Me, Please

I need to do the holiday thing, so could an admin please idle me. I'll probably be back in 1.5-2 weeks.

Proposal: Teh

create a new rule entitled "Categorical Imperatives" in which:

There are certain tenets that all zombies hold dear and sacred. They keep these tenets engraved on stone monuments that are prominently displayed in all the zombie courthouses. Currently the monuments read:

1. I <3 David Hume.
2. Foetuses are portable.
3. Cheese is awesome.

5-11. Cannot be enacted without cov. Failed by Smith, 22nd of Dec. -3 to Aaron.

spelling error!

fix 'have' in the second sentece of rule 14 to' has' please, thanks

Proposal: Have fun with this

Create a new rule, 'Gone', with the following text:

If a Horde becomes Gone, their brains and zombies are set to zero. A Horde who is Gone cannot gain brains or zombies in any fashion, and cannot vote. If a Horde has over 100 zombies, it becomes Gone.

All Hordes who vote for this proposal will gain 80 Zombies.

All Hordes who vote against this proposal become Gone.

Vetoed. Failed by Smith, 22nd of Dec. -3 to Royce.

Call For Judgement

Cayvie recently put forth (and acted on) the opinion that the movement rule doesn't actually restrict a Horde from moving if the location they are moving to is already over the size limit. I disagree, and that while both viewpoints are arguably interpretations of the rule, the one that I suggest, that "you can't move if, after moving, the total zombie population in the location would be over the size limit, regardless of whether or not it was before you moved," is the one that we have all been playing under, and equally importantly, the one under which the rule actually models what it claims to model.

Vote FOR if you agree with me, and AGAINST if you agree with Cayvie. I don't propose to undo Cayvie's actions, because that would be a hassle, and very soon it'll probably be mandatory to move all 0-horde zombies to the graveyard anyway. This is purely to establish precedent over how we're interpreting the movement rule.

As an aside, so only vote based on above stuff although I would like to hear a few opinions, I'd like to say that the joys of playing Nomic, for me at least, come from trying to win within a set of rules, even as those rules change about you. However, it's becoming more and more clear that a large number of players, possibly even a majority, consider the main highlight of the game not to be trying to model zombies rampaging through a city or warlords battling for reputation or whatnot, but instead poring over large blocks of text looking for a pretext to break the rules, and then arguing about how their interpretation is correct and the rule doesn't actually restrict play in any meaningful way. I even concede that, while not my ideal game, this is fun on a few levels, but I'd like to know if that's really what most of the players consider Blognomic to be "about", as opposed to a small but vocal minority.

6-4. Call for Judgement Passes. Enacted by Smith, 31st of Dec.

Proposal: Crowding

The current wording on population caps is a bit wonky; if a place is overfilled, anyone can move there.

Change

The Location of each Horde is tracked in the GNDT, and Hordes may move to any new Location at any time, unless such a movement would mean that the total number of Zombies in that Location exceeded its Size. New Hordes enter the game in the Graveyard, even if this would overfill it.

to

The Location of each Horde is tracked in the GNDT, and Hordes may move to any new Location at any time, unless, after said change of Location, the number of Zombies in that Location would be greater than its Size. New Hordes enter the game in the Graveyard, even if this would overfill it.

Each Horde who votes on this proposal has the option of including a 3-digit number along with his or her vote (only the most recent per Horde counting, of course.)
If this proposal is enacted, I will go to www.random.org and generate a random 3-digit number. The Horde (myself not included) whose chosen number is closest to this number without going over shall gain Brains equal to their guessed number divided by 10, rounded down. If two people choose the same number, the one who chose it earlier is the only one who counts.

4-10. Cannot be enacted without COV. Failed by Smith, 22nd of Dec. -3 to Cayvie.

Proposal: Will of the Living

[ Making Protagonist movement random, rather than Zombie-controlled. Also hints at some sort of simple location adjacency. ]

In Rule 16 (Protagonists), replace the paragraph beginning "Protagonists may have their locations changed" with:-

Protagonists may have their locations changed by any Horde in the same location, no more than once per day. This is done by posting a comment of "Move on: DICE" to the GNDT, with the following results:-

* 1-3: Nothing happens.
* 4: Protagonist moves to the Location listed after their current one, in Rule 11 (or the first, if at the last).
* 5: Protagonist moves to the Location listed before their current one, in Rule 11 (or the last, if at the first).
* 6: Protagonist moves to the Location which contains the most Zombies, if such a distinct Location exists.

Failed by Kevan, 19th of December - self-kill. -3 to Kevan.

Proposal: Shuffling down the Expressway [Trivial]

In The City change:

The Location of each Horde is tracked in the GNDT, and Hordes may move to any new Location at any time, unless such a movement would mean that the total number of Zombies in that Location exceeded its Size.

To:

The Location of each Horde is tracked in the GNDT, and once per day Hordes may move to any new Location, unless such a movement would mean that the total number of Zombies in that Location exceeded its Size.

Enacted by Kevan, 21st of December - reached quorum. +2 to Smith, +2 to Kevan.

Proposal: Noon of the Dead [Trivial]

Add a rule Day and Night:

Define the Cycle to be the "tens" digit of the Calendar.

Whenever the Calendar is in an odd Cycle it is Night, whenever it is in an even Cycle it is Day.

Zombies are more aggressive at Night, and more docile during the Day.

A Horde may double the dice results of Attacks or Grahrs they make against Humans or Protagonists during the Night.

A Horde may halve their Brain eating requirements of the Horde Activities they perform during the Day.

Remember that Brains are rounded down by rule 3, so eating 1.5 Brains would round the loss to 2 Brains.

Reached quorum. Enacted by Cayvie. +2 to Smith and Cayvie.

Proposal: Game Over, Continue? (Y/N) [Trivial]

Add the following to the end of Rule 12, Zombies:

If a Horde ever ends up with 0 Zombies, it immediately moves to the Graveyard.

Move all Hordes that have 0 Zombies at the time of enactment of this proposal to the Graveyard.

Reached quorum. Enacted by Cayvie. +2 to Heiwa and Cayvie.