Cycle 15/Ruleset Draft

todo:

• items (eg crystals are an item)
• judges
• proposals

open questions:

explicity prevent backwards movement?

how to specify movement?

How to specify the board?

Nomic Rules

Time

General

All times mentioned in this ruleset are in UTC. Days start at 00:00 UTC. Weeks start on Monday 00:00 UTC.

Phases

Each week is divided into two phases:

Phase I: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday

Phase II: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

Players

Any person may become a player by posting a message setting forth their intent to do so in the channel ⁠#game-actions, provided they have not been a player at any point in the past seven days. A player may cease being a player by sending a message that sets forth their intent to do so in #⁠game-actions.

Proposals

Proposals are made by sending a message in the channel #proposals.

A 👍 or 👎 reaction from a player on a Proposal message at the time when the voting period ends constitutes a vote in favor or against, respectively. If a person's vote is unclear (excluding abstentions), it is considered to be against.

At the end of its voting period, a proposal takes effect if it is popular (as defined for its type) and the message in which it was submitted has been neither deleted nor edited. If more than one proposal would otherwise take effect simultaneously, they take effect in the order in which they were created.

The class of a proposal must be one of the classes listed below. When a proposal is submitted, the submitter may specify its class. if no class is specified, the proposal class defaults to Standard.

Urgent Class Proposal

The voting period of an urgent proposal begins at the time it is submitted and ends two days (48 hours) after. An urgent proposal is popular if it has no more than two votes against it.

Rules to the contrary notwithstanding, only a reputable player can submit an urgent proposal. Urgent proposals should only be used to correct the game to its intended state and to maintain playability.

Standard Class Proposal

The voting period for a standard proposal is the phase that started after the proposal was submitted. A standard proposal is popular if it has more votes in favor than votes against.

Judges

There shall be a sole Judge, responsible for resolving rules disputes. An incumbent Judge can be removed with the assent of two players, but they should not be removed except for abuse of office. A person can cease being the Judge by publicly stating so.

A request for justice shall take the form of a question or statement. The proper response to a question is an answer to that question, and the proper response to a statement is the truth value of that statement.

Upon formal submission of a request for justice by a person other than themself in #request-for-justice, the Judge shall, as quickly as possible, issue a response to the request. This response shall be binding only to the extent that it reasonably directly pertains to the request, and only to the extent that it does not blatantly and obviously contradict rules text while still considering the expressed or clearly implied legislative intent.

Within 4 days of a judge issuing a ruling, a public vote of confidence on that ruling can be initiated in #request-for-justice. Votes may be cast in such a vote for a period of 2 days after initiation. Votes are to be cast by 👍 or 👎 reactions on a clearly designated poll message; if a person's vote is unclear, it is to affirm the judgement. A ruling is overturned if strictly more players vote in favor of overturning than affirming.

A ruling may be overturned by the Judge who made it within one week of being made. When a ruling is overturned in this manner, the Judge shall then issue a new ruling on the initial request, which shall be binding in the same manner as the original ruling.

An overturned ruling shall have no bearing on the interpretation of the rules or of the gamestate.

Any reputable player may become a candidate for the Judge by sending a message in the channel #judge-elections. If there are any Judge candidacies put forward during a week, the player whose message is both popular and has the most 👍 reactions from players becomes the Judge once that week ends. A Judge Candidacy message is popular if it has more 👍 than 👎 reactions from players on its initiating message. Ties are broken in favor of the player with the earliest text message during that week.

Items

Items are entities defined as such by the rules. Items can be owned by players. When an item's owner cannot reasonably be determined using publicly available information, or if it would be owned by a non-player, it is instead destroyed.

For an entity to gain an item is for that item to be created in that entity's possession. To grant an entity an item is to create it in that entity's possession.

For an entity to lose an item is for that item to be destroyed from that entity's possession. To revoke an item from an entity is to destroy it from that entity's possession.

Reputable players can trade items with other reputable players.

Trading

A trade is an exchange or transfer of items between two entities, with each entity giving a specified finite set of items to the other.

When otherwise authorized, a trade between two players takes place when both players explicitly consent to the trade in #trades within 7 days of each other.

Actions

When defining a game action that can be performed by sending a message, the rules should specify a channel where the game action can be taken. If the rules enable performing an action by sending a message without providing for a specific channel, the action can be taken by sending a message in #game-actions. Similarly, if the rules provide that a game action can be taken without making any provision for any method to take that action, the action can be taken by sending a message in #game-actions.

Actions that are to be performed by sending a message are done by sending a message in the appropriate channel that clearly and unambiguously sets forth intent for the action to be taken.

A player is "reputable" if they have continuously been a player for the previous seven days or if they have continuously been a player from a time that was within 3 days of the round starting.

Whenever a player performs an action that would modify the information that the players generally agree should be tracked, that player should make a reasonable effort to track the outcome of the action in the generally-agreed-upon applicable location.

Random Choices

A person shall not deliberately select random values for a rules-defined action without intending to use those values to the best of their ability to resolve that action.

If a person has selected some or all of the random values necessary to perform an action, they shall not discard the valid specifications in order to attempt a substantially similar action with the goal of obtaining different random values. If there is consensus that a preponderance of the evidence exists, or if a Judge ruling, not overturned, finds that a player has done such a thing, all attempts other than the first are deemed to be invalid and to not have affected the gamestate.

Dice Rolls

A rule that requires a selection of an NdK value, for non-negative integer N and positive integer K, is requiring the random selection of N rolls of a K-sided die.

If not otherwise specified, this produces the sum of N rolls of a K-sided die; that is, the sum of N independent selections of integers from 1 to K, using a uniform random distribution. If N is zero, the sum is zero.

If a rule requires a dice roll with a target number x, this instead produces the number of independent selections that meet or exceed the target number and can be abbreviated as "x+". For example, if a rule requires a dice roll with a target number of 3, this can be abbreviated to "3+".

Game Rules

Initialization

If there are no spaces, then a number of spaces are created for each N from 0 to 39. Each space N connects to space N+1, except for space 39, which connects to space 0. Then this rule is repealed.

Board

All players exist on a board with a number of “spaces”. Spaces can be connected to multiple others. Each player starts on the 0 space. Connections between spaces are one-directional unless otherwise specified.

Movement

Every phase, as an action, a player can roll 1d10 by posting to #game-actions. This is how many spaces they move their player from their current space.

When moving, if there is only one connection, a player automatically takes that connection. Otherwise, they must choose to connect any space that the space connects to.

If a player does not specify choices they must make, they fail to move.

Choices

Anytime the rules say a player chooses something, that player must post a valid option to #game-actions.

Space-specific conditions/rules

Space 39

Space 39 connects to space 0. It does not connect to space 40, so players cannot move from space 39 to space 40.

Winning

Crystals are an item.Every time a player moves from space 39 to space 0, even if they do not land on space 0, they gain one crystal.

The first player to get over 15 crystals and have 5 or more more crystals than any other player wins.