Nomic
Encyclopedia
Nomic is a game
created in 1982 by philosopher Peter Suber
in which the rules
of the game include mechanisms for the players to change those rules, usually beginning through a system of democratic voting.
Nomic actually refers to a large number of games based on the initial ruleset laid out by Peter Suber in his book The Paradox of Self-Amendment. (The ruleset was actually first published in Douglas Hofstadter
's column Metamagical Themas
in Scientific American
in June 1982. The column discussed Suber's then-upcoming book, which was published some years later.) The game is in some ways modeled on modern government
systems, and demonstrates that in any such system where rule-changes are possible, a situation may arise in which the resulting laws are contradictory or insufficient to determine what is in fact legal. Because the game models (and exposes conceptual questions about) a legal system and the problems of legal interpretation, it is named after (), Greek
for "law
".
While the victory condition in Suber's initial ruleset is the accumulation of 100 points
by the roll of a die
, he once said that "this rule is deliberately boring so that players will quickly amend it to please themselves." Players can change the rules to such a degree that points can become irrelevant in favor of a true currency
, or make victory an unimportant concern. Any rule in the game, including the rules specifying the criteria for winning and even the rule that rules must be obeyed, can be changed. Any loophole in the ruleset, however, may allow the first player to discover it the chance to pull a "scam" and modify the rules to win the game. Complicating this process is the fact that Suber's initial ruleset allows for the appointment of judge
s to preside over issues of rule interpretation.
Initially, gameplay
occurs in clockwise order, with each player taking a turn. In that turn, they propose a change in rules that all the other players vote on, and then roll a die to determine the number of points they add to their score
. If this rule change is passed, it comes into effect at the end of their round. Any rule can be changed with varying degrees of difficulty, including the core rules of the game itself. As such, the gameplay may quickly change.
Under Suber's initial ruleset, rules are divided up into two types: mutable and immutable. The main difference between these is that immutable rules must be changed into mutable rules (called transmuting) before they can be modified or removed. Immutable rules also take precedence over mutable ones. A rule change may be:
Alternative starting rulesets exist for Internet and mail games
, wherein gameplay occurs in alphabetical order by surname
, and points added to the score are based on the success of a proposed rule change rather than random dice rolls.
instead of a democratic process to validate rules. Others combine Nomic with an existing game (such as Monopoly
, chess
, or in one humorously paradoxical attempt, Mornington Crescent
). There is even a version in which the players are games of Nomic themselves. Even more unusual variants include a ruleset in which the rules are hidden from players' view, and a game which, instead of allowing voting on rules, splits into two sub-games, one with the rule, and one without it.
Online versions often have initial rulesets where play is not turn-based; typically, players in such games may propose rule changes at any time, rather than having to wait for their turn.
One spin-off
of a now-defunct Nomic (Nomic World) is the Fantasy Rules Committee, which adds every legal rule submitted by a player to the ruleset until the players run out of ideas, after which all the "fantasy rules" are repealed and the game begins again.
The fictional game Calvinball, played by the main characters in the comic strip
Calvin and Hobbes
, is sometimes compared to Nomic. However, Calvinball appears to have a permanent rule that the same rules may never be used twice; a nomic, at least in its initial state, has no truly permanent rules.
has been running since 1993. The longevity of nomic games can pose a serious problem, in that the rulesets can grow so complex that current players do not fully understand them and prospective players are deterred from joining. One currently-active game, BlogNomic, gets around this problem by dividing the game into "dynasties"; every time someone wins, a new dynasty
begins, and all the rules except a privileged few are repeal
ed. This keeps the game relatively simple and accessible. Nomicron is similar in that it has rounds — when a player wins a round, a convention is started to plan for the next round. Several rounds experimented with an alternate form of ruleset made up of books and pages.
Another facet of Nomic is the way in which the implementation of the rules affects the way the game of Nomic itself works. ThermodyNomic, for example, had a ruleset in which rule changes were carefully considered before implementation, and rules were rarely introduced which provide loopholes for the players to exploit. B Nomic, by contrast, was once described by one of its players as "the equivalent of throwing logical hand grenades."
This is essentially part of the differentiation between "procedural" games, where the aim (acknowledged or otherwise) is to tie the entire ruleset into a paradoxical condition during each turn (a player who has no legal move available wins), and "substantive" games, which try to avoid paradox and reward winning by achieving certain goals, such as attaining a given number of points.
While Nomic is traditionally capitalized as the proper name of the game it describes, it has also sometimes been used in a more informal way as a lowercased generic term, nomic, referring to anything with Nomic-like characteristics, including games where the rules may be changed during play as well as non-gaming situations where it can be alleged that "rules lawyer
s" are tinkering with the process used to amend rules and policies (in an organization or community) in a manner akin to a game of Nomic.
Game
A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements...
created in 1982 by philosopher Peter Suber
Peter Suber
Peter Suber is the creator of the game Nomic and a leading voice in the open access movement. He is a senior research professor of philosophy at Earlham College, the open access project director at Public Knowledge, a senior researcher at SPARC , and a Fellow at Harvard's and...
in which the rules
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
of the game include mechanisms for the players to change those rules, usually beginning through a system of democratic voting.
Nomic actually refers to a large number of games based on the initial ruleset laid out by Peter Suber in his book The Paradox of Self-Amendment. (The ruleset was actually first published in Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics...
's column Metamagical Themas
Metamagical Themas
Metamagical Themas is a collection of eclectic articles written for Scientific American during the early 1980s by Douglas Hofstadter, and published together as a book in 1985 by Basic Books ....
in Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
in June 1982. The column discussed Suber's then-upcoming book, which was published some years later.) The game is in some ways modeled on modern government
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...
systems, and demonstrates that in any such system where rule-changes are possible, a situation may arise in which the resulting laws are contradictory or insufficient to determine what is in fact legal. Because the game models (and exposes conceptual questions about) a legal system and the problems of legal interpretation, it is named after (), Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
for "law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
".
While the victory condition in Suber's initial ruleset is the accumulation of 100 points
Score (gaming)
In games, score refers to an abstract quantity associated with a player or team. Score is usually measured in the abstract unit of points, and events in the game can raise or lower the score of different parties...
by the roll of a die
Dice
A die is a small throwable object with multiple resting positions, used for generating random numbers...
, he once said that "this rule is deliberately boring so that players will quickly amend it to please themselves." Players can change the rules to such a degree that points can become irrelevant in favor of a true currency
Currency
In economics, currency refers to a generally accepted medium of exchange. These are usually the coins and banknotes of a particular government, which comprise the physical aspects of a nation's money supply...
, or make victory an unimportant concern. Any rule in the game, including the rules specifying the criteria for winning and even the rule that rules must be obeyed, can be changed. Any loophole in the ruleset, however, may allow the first player to discover it the chance to pull a "scam" and modify the rules to win the game. Complicating this process is the fact that Suber's initial ruleset allows for the appointment of judge
Judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and in an open...
s to preside over issues of rule interpretation.
Gameplay
The game can be played face-to-face with as many written notes as are required, or through any of a number of Internet media (usually an archived mailing list or internet forum).Initially, gameplay
Gameplay
Gameplay is the specific way in which players interact with a game, and in particular with video games. Gameplay is the pattern defined through the game rules, connection between player and the game, challenges and overcoming them, plot and player's connection with it...
occurs in clockwise order, with each player taking a turn. In that turn, they propose a change in rules that all the other players vote on, and then roll a die to determine the number of points they add to their score
Score (gaming)
In games, score refers to an abstract quantity associated with a player or team. Score is usually measured in the abstract unit of points, and events in the game can raise or lower the score of different parties...
. If this rule change is passed, it comes into effect at the end of their round. Any rule can be changed with varying degrees of difficulty, including the core rules of the game itself. As such, the gameplay may quickly change.
Under Suber's initial ruleset, rules are divided up into two types: mutable and immutable. The main difference between these is that immutable rules must be changed into mutable rules (called transmuting) before they can be modified or removed. Immutable rules also take precedence over mutable ones. A rule change may be:
- the addition of a new mutable rule
- an amendment to a mutable rule
- the repeal of a mutable rule
- the transmutation of a rule from mutable to immutable
- or the transmutation of a rule from immutable to mutable
Alternative starting rulesets exist for Internet and mail games
Play-by-mail game
Play-by-mail games, sometimes known as "Play-by-post", are games, of any type, played through postal mail or e-mail. One example, chess, has been played by mail for centuries . Another example, Diplomacy, has been played by mail since the 1960s, starting with a printed newsletter written by John...
, wherein gameplay occurs in alphabetical order by surname
Surname
A surname is a name added to a given name and is part of a personal name. In many cases, a surname is a family name. Many dictionaries define "surname" as a synonym of "family name"...
, and points added to the score are based on the success of a proposed rule change rather than random dice rolls.
Variants
Not only can every aspect of the rules be altered in some way over the course of a game of Nomic, but myriad variants also exist: some that have themes, begin with a single rule, or begin with a dictatorDictator
A dictator is a ruler who assumes sole and absolute power but without hereditary ascension such as an absolute monarch. When other states call the head of state of a particular state a dictator, that state is called a dictatorship...
instead of a democratic process to validate rules. Others combine Nomic with an existing game (such as Monopoly
Monopoly (game)
Marvin Gardens, the leading yellow property on the board shown, is actually a misspelling of the original location name, Marven Gardens. The misspelling was said to be introduced by Charles Todd and passed on when his home-made Monopoly board was copied by Charles Darrow and thence to Parker...
, chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
, or in one humorously paradoxical attempt, Mornington Crescent
Mornington Crescent (game)
Mornington Crescent is a spoof game, featured in the BBC Radio 4 comedy panel show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, which satirises complicated strategy games....
). There is even a version in which the players are games of Nomic themselves. Even more unusual variants include a ruleset in which the rules are hidden from players' view, and a game which, instead of allowing voting on rules, splits into two sub-games, one with the rule, and one without it.
Online versions often have initial rulesets where play is not turn-based; typically, players in such games may propose rule changes at any time, rather than having to wait for their turn.
One spin-off
Spin-off (media)
In media, a spin-off is a radio program, television program, video game, or any narrative work, derived from one or more already existing works, that focuses, in particular, in more detail on one aspect of that original work...
of a now-defunct Nomic (Nomic World) is the Fantasy Rules Committee, which adds every legal rule submitted by a player to the ruleset until the players run out of ideas, after which all the "fantasy rules" are repealed and the game begins again.
The fictional game Calvinball, played by the main characters in the comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
Calvin and Hobbes
Calvin and Hobbes
Calvin and Hobbes is a syndicated daily comic strip that was written and illustrated by American cartoonist Bill Watterson, and syndicated from November 18, 1985, to December 31, 1995. It follows the humorous antics of Calvin, a precocious and adventurous six-year-old boy, and Hobbes, his...
, is sometimes compared to Nomic. However, Calvinball appears to have a permanent rule that the same rules may never be used twice; a nomic, at least in its initial state, has no truly permanent rules.
Online play
The game of Nomic is particularly suited to being played online, where all proposals and rules can be shared in web pages or email archives for ease of reference. Such games of Nomic sometimes last for a very long time – AgoraAgora (Nomic)
Agora is a game of Nomic which was founded in June 1993 and has been played almost continuously since then. The game was created after the demise of Nomic World, a previous game of nomic, which created demand for a new game amongst some of its players...
has been running since 1993. The longevity of nomic games can pose a serious problem, in that the rulesets can grow so complex that current players do not fully understand them and prospective players are deterred from joining. One currently-active game, BlogNomic, gets around this problem by dividing the game into "dynasties"; every time someone wins, a new dynasty
Dynasty
A dynasty is a sequence of rulers considered members of the same family. Historians traditionally consider many sovereign states' history within a framework of successive dynasties, e.g., China, Ancient Egypt and the Persian Empire...
begins, and all the rules except a privileged few are repeal
Repeal
A repeal is the amendment, removal or reversal of a law. This is generally done when a law is no longer effective, or it is shown that a law is having far more negative consequences than were originally envisioned....
ed. This keeps the game relatively simple and accessible. Nomicron is similar in that it has rounds — when a player wins a round, a convention is started to plan for the next round. Several rounds experimented with an alternate form of ruleset made up of books and pages.
Another facet of Nomic is the way in which the implementation of the rules affects the way the game of Nomic itself works. ThermodyNomic, for example, had a ruleset in which rule changes were carefully considered before implementation, and rules were rarely introduced which provide loopholes for the players to exploit. B Nomic, by contrast, was once described by one of its players as "the equivalent of throwing logical hand grenades."
This is essentially part of the differentiation between "procedural" games, where the aim (acknowledged or otherwise) is to tie the entire ruleset into a paradoxical condition during each turn (a player who has no legal move available wins), and "substantive" games, which try to avoid paradox and reward winning by achieving certain goals, such as attaining a given number of points.
While Nomic is traditionally capitalized as the proper name of the game it describes, it has also sometimes been used in a more informal way as a lowercased generic term, nomic, referring to anything with Nomic-like characteristics, including games where the rules may be changed during play as well as non-gaming situations where it can be alleged that "rules lawyer
Rules lawyer
A rules lawyer is a participant in a rules-based environment who attempts to use the letter of the law without reference to the spirit, usually in order to gain an advantage within that environment. The term is commonly used in wargaming and role playing game communities, often pejoratively, as...
s" are tinkering with the process used to amend rules and policies (in an organization or community) in a manner akin to a game of Nomic.
See also
- List of games with mutable rules
- MaoMao (game)Mao is a card game of the Shedding family, in which the aim is to get rid of all of the cards in hand without breaking certain unspoken rules...
- BartokBartok (game)The game of Bartok, also known by a number of other names, such as Wartoke, Warthog, Bartog, Bentok, Last One Standing or Bong 98, is a card game where the winner of each round invents a new rule which must be obeyed for the remainder of the game...
- DvorakDvorak (game)Dvorak is a customizable card game that begins with a deck of blank index cards. These index cards are written and drawn upon by players before or during the game...
- 2121 (drinking game)21 is a drinking game. The game progresses by counting up from 1 to 21, with the player who calls "21" suffering a drinking penalty before the next round starts. The loser may add one new rule to the game, and starts the new round.-Rules:Players are arranged in a circle, facing inwards...
- 1000 Blank White Cards1000 Blank White Cards1000 Blank White Cards is a party game played with cards in which the deck is created as part of the game. Though it has been played by adults in organized groups in several cities and college campuses, 1000 Blank White Cards is described as well-suited for children in Hoyle's Rules of Games...
- King's CupKings (drinking game)Kings is a drinking game that uses playing cards. It is common among university students in Canada, South Africa, Chile, New Zealand, Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Lebanon and Belgium. Players must drink and dispense drinks based on cards...
External links
- The Original Initial Ruleset, as created by Peter Suber
- nomic.net contains a Nomic Wiki, the Nomic FAQ, a Nomic Bulletin Board, links to Internet Nomics, a large archive of dead games, and a variety of other resources.
- The Nomic page of Peter Suber contains, among other things, a list of Nomic games past and present.
- agoranomic.org is the homepage of Agora NomicAgora (Nomic)Agora is a game of Nomic which was founded in June 1993 and has been played almost continuously since then. The game was created after the demise of Nomic World, a previous game of nomic, which created demand for a new game amongst some of its players...
, one of the oldest living nomics. - The Fantasy Rules Committee, which originated as a sub-game of another nomic but has since grown into a game in its own right. Arguably the oldest living nomic.