Welcome to BlogNomic, a self-modifying game where changing the rules is a move. Players make blog posts proposing alterations to the ruleset, discussing and casting votes in the comments: if enough vote in favour, the rules are changed and play continues.

The game has been running since 2003 and resets every month or so. Have a look around the wiki for more information and history, or join our Discord. New players are always welcome to join the game at any time.

Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Proposal: You can’t be distracted from the giant hole in the wall

In “Distractions”, change

even if their Location values are the same.

to

even if their Location values are the same, unless the Burglar is Located at a Spot at which “Create a Back Door” was performed since the end of the last Break-In.

As seen during the last Break-In, there’s a strategy in the current ruleset that gives a 100% chance of success for the Burglars: create a Back Door next to an Artifact, and Quickly grab it using your Extra Spot, entering and leaving during the period of the Distraction. As far as I can tell, there is no Guard-side counterplay to this available in the current ruleset, so unless something is done to fix the situation, the Burglars will always win. This is a targeted fix against that specific interaction: if you use a Back Door rather than a regular Ingress, then you can’t also use a Distraction in order to enter and leave before the Guards have a chance to react.

Proposal: Scaling

Make these changes to both the main and shadow rulesets

Add “The Round Number is publicly tracked on the gamestate tracking page and defaults to 4”

In “The Break-In” replace

If any Burglar who Encountered no Guards during this atomic action is holding at least one Artifact, increase the Successes of all Burglars by the round number, including Sidelined Burglars; otherwise, increase the Successes of all Guards by the round number, including Sidelined Guards.
Increase the Round Number by 1

If quorum of EVCs on this proposal include the phrase “Adjust it” then replace Agent’s successes with the following

ais523: 6
Clucky:  6
Darknight: 3
DoomedIdeas: 5
JonathanDark: 0
lendunistus: 1
qenya: 4
trapdoorspyder: 2

We tried this with the fishing dynasty and I think it went pretty well. This would give people like JonathanDark a shot to catch up,

The Third Break-In

A seemingly short and uneventful night at the Hotel Nagelburg, but many hours later the security team chance across signs of forced entry, and realise that not everything is where it was.

Burglars encountered no Guards. No Camera Traps were triggered.

Proposal: Rumor Mill

Add a new rule named “Rumors” with the following text:

Rumors is a list of flavor text strings that is publicly tracked, defaulting to an empty list, where each string in the list is no more than 100 characters and may only include the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, numbers, underscores, hyphens, full stops, spaces, and apostrophes.

If they have not done so within the past 24 hours, as a Virtual Action an Agent may add a string to the Rumors.

In the rule “The Break-In”, just before the step of Breaking In that starts with the text “Post a blog entry”, insert the following step:

* Set Rumors to an empty list

Anonymous statements, true or false, might be useful for Agents to rat each other out or confuse the opposite team.

Proposal: Windows of Opportunity

In the rule “The Hotel”, after the text “A Spot is an Ingress if and only if it appears on the List of Ingresses, which is a publicly tracked list of Spots.” insert the text “By default, C, G, N and X are Ingresses.”

In the rule “Assessing the Patrols” add the following text:

There is a Guard Timer, which is a time and date that is privately tracked by the Concierge and contains the most recent time and date among the following events:
* The time and date the Concierge most recently performed Breaking In
* The time and date of the most recent enactment or failure of an Accuasation
* The time and date of the most recent change of a Guard’s route

While the current phase is Setting Patrols and there are no Pending Accusations, if it has been at least 48 hours since the time and date of the Guard Timer, and the Concierge should perform Secret Entrances, which is an atomic action with the following steps:
* Collect the set of Spots where each Spot meets all of the following criteria:
** Is not an Ingress and is not adjacent to an Ingress
** Is not in the Home(s) of any Artifact and is not adjacent to the Home(s) of any Artifact
* From the set of Spots in the preceding step, secretly randomly select a Spot and add it to the List of Ingresses.

In the rule “The Break-In” insert the following text as the first paragraph of the rule:

There is a Burglar Timer, which is a time and date that is privately tracked by the Concierge and contains the most recent time and date among the following events:
* The time and date the Concierge most recently performed Patrol Assessment
* The time and date of the most recent enactment or failure of an Accuasation
* The time and date of the most recent change of a Burglar’s route

While the current phase is Planning the Break-In and there are no Pending Accusations, if it has been at least 48 hours since the since the time and date of the Burglar Timer, the Concierge should perform Security Enhancements, which is an atomic action with the following steps:
* If there is at least one Artifact with the Mundane trait, secretly randomly select one such Artifact, secretly randomly select a non-Mundane trait, and set that Artifact’s trait to the result.
* If no Artifacts were selected in the previous step, secretly randomly select an Artifact that has the Antique or Keycard type and set that Artifact’s type to Evidence.

In the same rule, just before the step of Breaking In that starts with the text “Post a blog entry”, insert the following step:

* Reset the List of Ingresses to its default value

The idea is that if the Guards delay too long in setting routes, that gives time for the Burglars to discover an additional way into the Hotel.

Similarly, if the Burglars delay too long in breaking in, that gives the Guards time to set up extra Security around an Artifact or swap Artifact types.

If an Agent is delaying things for a team, they can use an Accusation to try to kick out the offender and avoid the issue.

48 hours after a team can start planning a route plus 48 hours after an Accusation is resolved (in addition to the 24-48 hours of that Accusation pending) plus 48 hours after each route submission should be plenty of time.

Proposal: Measure Twice, Blowtorch Once

Rename “Preparation Actions” to “Preparation”, repeal its subrules, and reword the rule to the following:-

Each Agent has a piece of Groundwork, which is either blank, or a specific Prep and (if that Prep specifies a required Target) a described Target for it. Groundwork is tracked privately by the Concierge. Preps and their Effects, required Targets and Onsite/Offsite statuses are:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Prep !! Target !! Status !! Effect
|-
! Back Door
| A lettered Spot that does not contain an Artifact || ''Offsite'' || Until the end of the next Break-In, the specified Spot is considered to connect to “Grounds” for the purpose of determining whether Routes submitted by Burglars are complete.
|-
! Camera Trap
| A lettered Spot || Onsite || Any time a Burglar’s Location becomes equal to the specified Spot, that Burglar is considered to have Encountered a Camera Trap.
|-
! Distraction
| A number from 1 to 12 || Onsite || Burglars are not considered to have the same Location as Guards while the Minute is the specified number, even if their Location values are the same.
|-
! Power Cut
| none || Onsite || Burglars are never considered to encounter Camera Traps, the Alarmed effects of Artifacts do not apply, and Keycards can’t be taken.
|-
! Training
| A Skill and a Flaw (which are not Opposites of each other) || ''Offsite'' || The Agent’s Skill and Flaw are set to the specified Skill and Flaw.
|}

An Agent is Capable if there are at most 2 other Agents whose Fame is greater than or equal to theirs, or if there are at most 3 other Agents whose Infamy is greater than or equal to theirs.

If a Capable Agent’s Groundwork is blank or an Onsite Prep, they may change their Groundwork as a virtual action. When an Agent’s Groundwork is set to an Offsite prep, its effect is applied immediately.

If any Preparation Actions were taken during the current phase, they have no further effect. If any Training Preparation Actions were taken during the current phase, the Concierge should undo their effects. The Concierge may repeal this paragraph from the ruleset once those effects have been undone, or if no such actions were taken.

Add a step after the third in the bullet list in “The Break-In”:-

* Apply the effects of all Groundworks which are Onsite Preps; these apply until the end of the current Break-In

Maybe a bit strict that Agents can’t change their mind about a Preparation Action, even when it’s one of the three that won’t take effect until the Break-In actually starts. This alters the rule’s structure to be a variable that players can set and (if they aren’t Training or Back Dooring) switch to something else any time before the Break-In.

Monday, April 28, 2025

Story Post: Accusation: lendunistus

Quorum of Burglars supporting after 24 hours. Enacted 3-1 by Kevan.

Adminned at 29 Apr 2025 08:10:59 UTC

Since Clucky’s Accusation wasn’t a Votable Matter.

Sunday, April 27, 2025

Proposal: Thieving, Redone

Reached quorum 8 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 29 Apr 2025 08:22:42 UTC

In the subrule “The Break-In”, replace the text

For each Burglar who is the only Agent at a Spot which contains an Artifact, set that Artifact’s location to be that Burglar’s name.

with the text

For each Burglar who is the only Burglar at a Spot which contains an Artifact, set that Artifact’s location to be that Burglar’s name.

If there are at least 5 EVCs on this proposal that contain the word “caught”, instead replace the text

For each Burglar who is the only Agent at a Spot which contains an Artifact, set that Artifact’s location to be that Burglar’s name.

with the text

For each Burglar who is the only Burglar at a Spot which contains an Artifact (not counting Burglars who have Encountered a Guard this Break-In), set that Artifact’s location to be that Burglar’s name.

Preventing Guards from simply sitting on Artifacts and stopping all burglary attempts, while still allowing Burglars to trip over each other if they plan wrong.

Proposal: Hair Trigger

Withdrawn. Failed by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 28 Apr 2025 21:59:19 UTC

Remove the bullet point “It has been open for voting for at least 24 hours.” from the “Accusations” rule.

I don’t think we really need to wait for a full day, here, if the group have agreed to eliminate someone.

Proposal: 2 Power 2 Up

Unpopular, 2-6. Failed-revise by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 28 Apr 2025 21:58:46 UTC

Add a subrule to “Routes” called Power Moves

Each position in a route may have a Power Move associated with it. Power Moves may be Traditional or Special. Each route by default may only contain up to 1 Traditional Power Move. Routes may not contain Special Power Moves unless explicitly stated otherwise.

Make Extra Spots a subrule of Power Moves and give it the following text

Extra Spots are Special Power Moves. When specifying an Extra Spot, an Agent must specify another Spot which is Connected to the Spot at the given position of in their Route they wish to perform the Extra Spot Power Move.

Make a subrule of Power Moves called “Smoke Canister”

Smoke Canister is an Traditional Power Move. If a position in an Agents route has a Smoke Canister, then no Burglars at that Spot can be encountered if the current Minute is equal to the Smoke Canister’s position

Make a subrule of Power Moves called “Focus”

Focus is an Traditional Power Move. If a position in an Agent’s route has a Focus, then that Agent may still be encountered by Burglars if the current Minute either matches the Focus’s position or is one more than the Focus’s position, despite the effects of the rules Smoke Canister or Distractions

Story Post: Accusation: lendunistus

Nothing personal, just business. One less guy to worry about betraying us.

Proposal: One Day Away From Retirement

Popular, 8-0. Enacted by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 28 Apr 2025 14:00:05 UTC

Enact a subrule to “Guards and Burglars” named “Retirement”:-

Each Agent may or may not be Retired; this status is publicly tracked. At any time, an Agent may change whether or not they are Retired.

In “Guards and Burglars”, replace “If there are any Civilians and it is the Setting Patrols phase” with:-

If there are any non-Retired Civilians and it is the Setting Patrols phase

In “Assessing the Patrols”, replace “and there are no Civilians” with “and there are no non-Retired Civilians”.

Reproposal of the Pink Slip idea that just omits Retired Agents from the next team selection, rather than fully idling them.

Clockwatching

The Clocktower proposal had feedback to “just ask people” and I’ve now withdrawn it, so here’s a blog post with that question.

How long do people generally expect to take to submit their Routes this dynasty, not including time taken waiting for private negotiations to get responses?

Patrol Assessment: Guard Noise

Some curtained windows of the hotel glow late into the night, and voices can be heard from the streets below.

One Guard has a route with E and E in the 4th and 9th Spots. Another has a route with O and O in the 4th and 9th Spots. A third has a route with V and V in the 4th and 9th Spots.

Proposal: Speed Bump Ahead

Reached quorum 6 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 28 Apr 2025 08:18:33 UTC

If the proposal “Power Up” passes, this proposal does nothing.
Replace the text of the subrule “Extra Spots” with the text

An Extra Spot is a Spot in an Agent’s Route that is not counted as part of the Route itself with respect to the length of that Route. When setting or changing their Route, if an Agent is allowed to have one or more Extra Spots in their Route, they must identify each Extra Spot and its position in their Route in order for it to be counted as an Extra Spot. An Agent cannot have multiple Extra Spots in the same position in their Route, and each of an Agent’s Extra Spots must be Connected to the Spot they share a position with. By default, an Agent’s Route does not have any Extra Spots. Agents may not have Extra Spots in their Route unless explicitly allowed by a rule.

In the Effect description for the Skill “Quick”, replace the text

that Agent may specify up to two Extra Spots with their Route

with

that Agent may specify up to four Extra Spots with their Route

Currently, if a Guard starts at Station I and stays there for all 12 Minutes, they can specify that their Extra Spots are K (connected to I) and Q (connected to I), and that applies to every repeat of I in their Route. This means that the Guard is simultaneously in Spots I, K, and Q for every Minute of the Break In. A single Guard being able to camp 3 Spots for the entire Break In is a bit much, so I propose we allow each Quick Agent to only have 1 Extra Spot per Minute, with 4 total Extra Spots per Break In.

Saturday, April 26, 2025

Proposal: Power Up

Withdrawn to revise. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 27 Apr 2025 21:37:17 UTC

Add a subrule to “Routes” called Power Moves

Each position in a route may have a Power Move associated with it. Power Moves may be Traditional or Special. Each route by default may only contain up to 1 Traditional Power Move. Routes may not contain Special Power Moves unless explicitly stated otherwise.

Make Extra Spots a subrule of Power Moves and give it the following text

Extra Spots are Special Power Moves. When specifying an Extra Spot, an Agent must specify another Spot which is Connected to the Spot at the given position of in their Route they wish to perform the Extra Spot Power Move.

Make a subrule of Power Moves called “Flashbang”

Flashbang is an Traditional Power Move. If a position in an Agents route has a Flashbang, then no Burglars at that Location can be encountered if the current Minute is equal to the Flashbang’s position

Make a subrule of Power Moves called “Focus”

Focus is an Traditional Power Move. If a position in an Agents route has a Focus, then that Agent may still be encountered by Burglars during the current Minute either matches the Focus’s position or is one more than the Focus’s position, despite the effects of Flashbang or Distractions

Proposal: Too many thieves

Fewer than a quorum not voting AGAINST. Failed 1 vote to 5 by Kevan.

Adminned at 27 Apr 2025 21:36:38 UTC

In “The Break-In”, change

For each Burglar who is the only Agent at a Spot which contains an Artifact, set that Artifact’s location to be that Burglar’s name.

to

For each Spot that contains an Artifact and at least one Burglar (not counting Burglars who have Encountered a Guard this Break-In), set that Artifact’s location to the name of a secretly randomly chosen such Burglar.

It’s weird that if you have two Burglars on a Spot, neither of them gets to steal the Artifact (even if one of them got caught earlier!), and that mechanic maybe makes the game more guard-sided than it really should be.

Proposal: Making The Guards Stretch Their Legs

Withdrawn. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 27 Apr 2025 21:35:26 UTC

In “Valuables”, change this text:

Selected Spots may not be any Spots which are listed as Points of Ingress, nor may they be adjacent to any such Spots, and they may not be the Grounds

to this text:

A selected Spot may not be any Spot that is listed as an Ingress or a Station, nor may it be any Spot that is adjacent to an Ingress but not a Station, and it may not be the Grounds.

Last Break-In had the issue that the Artifact positioning almost automatically protected an Artifact. lendun and I were aiming for the Concealed Antique, but could only realistically cover two of the three possible locations, because one was a Station. This time, it’s even harder, because there’s an Artifact known to be at a Station as well. These Artifacts are virtually impossible for the Guards to fail to defend, which is not very interesting.

I also relaxed the adjacency rule because otherwise there would be only one valid Spot on the board (L), and tidied up the wording a little.

Proposal: From One Spot to Another

Reached quorum 5 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 27 Apr 2025 21:34:49 UTC

In the subrule Valuables of the rule The Hotel, replace the text

Selected Spots may not be any Spots which contained artifacts immediately prior to the previous Breaking In action.

with the text

Selected Spots may not be any Spots which are listed as Stations.

Since “Lobby Boy” now makes the placing of Valuables random, the restriction on Valuables repeating their Spots no longer seems necessary. Since Guards will most likely camp Valuables now that Ingresses can be bypassed via Back Door, it seems reasonable to at least require that Valuables not be placed directly on Stations.

Proposal: Putting In Your Pink Slip

Withdrawn. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 27 Apr 2025 11:53:31 UTC

In the rule “Guards and Burglars” add a subrule named “Retiring” with the following text:

There is a publicly tracked list named Retiring in which each entry contains the name of an Agent, defaulting to an empty list.

At any time, an Agent may add their name to Retiring or remove their name from Retiring.

In the rule “The Break-In”, add the following just before the last step in Breaking In:

* For every Agent whose name is in Retiring, remove that Agent’s name from Retiring and idle that Agent.

Several Agents wanted to wait to idle until Breaking In was performed. The problem is that the teams are then set up for the next round, and if they idle at that time, the teams will continue to be unbalanced most likely.

This method lets the Agents who want to idle do so at the end of Breaking In before team assignments occur.

Note that this only really works because the Concierge happens to also be an Admin. If the Concierge wasn’t an admin, this would be a little more tricky.

The Second Break-In

Burglars made their way into the hotel having been tipped off about a few valuable antiques left forgotten and undusted on public display there. Two ran into guards, and although the others kept a low profile, they ultimately left empty-handed.

Burglar JonathanDark encountered Guard DoomedIdeas.

Burglar Lendunistus encountered Guard Darknight.

No Camera Traps were triggered.

Proposal: The Clocktower

Withdrawn. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 27 Apr 2025 11:53:04 UTC

To “Phases”, add a paragraph:-

Each Agent has a publicly tracked Clock value, representing the number of hours that they generally expect to take to submit their Routes this dynasty (not including time taken for private negotiations that may delay this). An Agent may change their Clock at any time.

Probably worth foregrounding the question of how quickly people are expecting the game to run, with Qenya and Lendunistus now having been due for 86 hours. If we have a clear majority and some outliers, it’d be good to know that that’s what’s happening.

Saturday, April 26, 2025

Proposal: Perfectly Balanced

Reached quorum 6 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 27 Apr 2025 11:52:41 UTC

Add the following to “Routes”

Each Agent can also has a Bid which is privately tracked by the Concierge and is a integer between 1 and 10 inclusive and defaults to 1. An Agent may change their Bid as a virtual action.

Add a subrule to “Guards and Burglars” called “The Sideline”

An Agent may be Sidelined but defaults to not being Sidelined. For the purposes of The Break-In, if an Agent is Sidelined they are not considered to be a Guard or a Burglar unless explicitly stated otherwise

Add the following steps to the start of to the Break In

* If there are more Guards than Burglars, randomly select a Guard which has the lowest Bid among all Guards and make them Sidelined. Repeat this process until the number of Guards equals the number of Burglars
* If there are more Burglars than Guards, randomly select a Burglar which has the lowest Bid among all Burglars and make them Sidelined. Repeat this process until the number of Burglars equals the number of Guards

In “The Break In” after the step “For each Burglar that encountered no Guards, set their Infamy to 12 minus the number of spots in their Route that are Grounds, minus 2 (to a minimum of 0) if they encountered a Camera Trap, plus 4 for every artifact they are holding.” add the following steps

* For each Sidelined Guard, set their Fame to be the average Fame of all Guard, rounded down.
* For each Sidelined Burglar, set their Infamy to be the average Infamy of all Burglars, rounded down.

In “The Break In” replace “If any Burglar who Encountered no Guards during this atomic action is holding at least one Artifact, increase the Successes of all Burglars by one; otherwise, increase the Successes of all Guards by 1.” with

* If any Burglar who Encountered no Guards during this atomic action is holding at least one Artifact, increase the Successes of all Burglars by one, including Sidelined Burglars; otherwise, increase the Successes of all Guards by 1, including Sidelined Guards.

In “The Break In” replace “The Agents disperse: set every Agent to be a Civilian, all Locations to blank, all Routes to blank.” with

* The Agents disperse: set every Agent to be a Civilian, all Locations to blank, all Routes to blank, all Bids to 1 and make every Agent no longer Sidelined

The idea is that if the teams are unbalanced, we randomly pick people so they don’t count for the round anymore. They can still score a success, but they can’t catch people or properly steal stuff.

The bid system allows a group working together to know whose route is going to go last. But of course its all secret so you could betray people and bid higher.

This opens the door to simply end a round early, cutting off people who haven’t submitted a route, and stuff remaining balanced. Also helps handle people going idle

Proposal: Rat Catchers Redeux

Popular, 5-0 with reduced quorum due to Concierge voting DEF. Enacted by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 26 Apr 2025 17:36:12 UTC

Add a new rule named “Accusations” with the following text:

An Accusation is a Story Post - Votable Matter with a title that starts with the text “Accusation:” followed by the name of an Agent. The author of an Accusation is the Accuser for that Accusation, and the Agent named in an Accusation title is the Accused for that Accusation. Members of an Accusation are the set of all Agents (including the Accuser) whose type (Guard or Burglar) are the same as the Accuser.

If the current Phase is Planning the Break-In, any Agent may post an Accusation if all of the following criteria are true:
* That Agent is not a Civilian
* The Accused is same type of Agent (Guard or Burglar) as that Agent
* The Accused does not have more Successes than that Agent
* There is not a Pending Accusation whose Accuser is the same type of Agent (Guard or Burglar) as that Agent
* There have been less than 2 Accusations posted since the most recent performance of Breaking In

When determining an Accusation’s Quorum, Popular, or Unpopular status, only the Members of that Accusation are included. Votes on an Accusation by Agents that are not Members of that Accusation are treated as invalid.

The oldest Pending Accusation may be Enacted by any Admin if all of the following are true:

* It is Popular.
* It has been open for voting for at least 24 hours.
* It has not been Withdrawn.

The oldest Pending Accusation may be Failed by any Admin, if any of the following are true:

* It is Unpopular.
* It has been Withdrawn.

When an Accusation is Enacted, the Admin Enacting it must change the type of that Accusation’s Accused to Civilian.

In the rule “The Break-In”, after the text “If every Agent has a complete Route,” add the text “and there are no Pending Accusations,”

Same as before except I added criteria where the Accused cannot have more Successes than the Accuser, to prevent the scenario that ais523 described where the Agents that are behind in victory simply BAMPAM the leader.

Missing Route reminder

Per the Reminders rule, this is a notification that the game is still waiting for the remaining Burglars Lendunistus and Qenya to submit their Routes. They were reminded to do so more than 24 hours ago.

(For game speed context: the current “Planning the Break-in” phase began at 17:30UTC on Tuesday. Two plans had been received from Burglars within the first 25 hours. It’s now been 65 hours.)

Thursday, April 24, 2025

Proposal: Lest we become too successful

Popular, 6-0. Enacted by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 26 Apr 2025 17:32:55 UTC

As a new paragraph at the end of “Guards and Burglars”, add:

If a particular Agent currently has more Successes than every other Agent, and also had more Successes than every other Agent immediately prior to the most recent Breaking In action, that Agent has achieved victory.

I think we need a victory condition before we’ve had too many Break-Ins – otherwise the players who are behind are unlikely to vote for one, and the dynasty will eventually end up collapsing due to lack of victory condition (this sort of thing tends to happen a lot when we don’t have an early victory condition, because after a while the set of players in contention grows too small for them to be able to vote for one).

I tried to pick a victory condition that seems achievable within a reasonable length of time, given how slowly the Break-Ins are going, without being too likely to be decided by random chance.

Proposal: I Smell a Rat

Timed out 0-2 with 3 REVISE votes. Failed-revise by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 26 Apr 2025 17:32:17 UTC

Add a new rule named “Accusations” with the following text:

An Accusation is a Story Post - Votable Matter with a title that starts with the text “Accusation:” followed by the name of an Agent. The author of an Accusation is the Accuser for that Accusation, and the Agent named in an Accusation title is the Accused for that Accusation. Members of an Accusation are the set of all Agents (including the Accuser) whose type (Guard or Burglar) are the same as the Accuser.

If the current Phase is Planning the Break-In, any Agent may post an Accusation if all of the following criteria are true:
* That Agent is not a Civilian
* The Accused is same type of Agent (Guard or Burglar) as that Agent
* There is not a Pending Accusation whose Accuser is the same type of Agent (Guard or Burglar) as that Agent
* There have been less than 2 Accusations posted since the most recent performance of Breaking In

When determining an Accusation’s Quorum, Popular, or Unpopular status, only the Members of that Accusation are included. Votes on an Accusation by Agents that are not Members of that Accusation are treated as invalid.

The oldest Pending Accusation may be Enacted by any Admin if all of the following are true:

* It is Popular.
* It has been open for voting for at least 24 hours.
* It has not been Withdrawn.

The oldest Pending Accusation may be Failed by any Admin, if any of the following are true:

* It is Unpopular.
* It has been Withdrawn.

When an Accusation is Enacted, the Admin Enacting it must change the type of that Accusation’s Accused to Civilian.

In the rule “The Break-In”, after the text “If every Agent has a complete Route,” add the text “and there is no Pending Accusation,”

I think we need something more interactive to jazz up this dynasty. Everything is secret info and there’s not a whole lot of excitement while folks are planning their routes.

Since it’s on-theme for Guards and Burglars to betray their side and cooperate for mutual benefit, how about a way to rat out the traitors?

Proposal: Inside Job

Popular, 6-0. Enacted by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 26 Apr 2025 17:26:33 UTC

In the subrules of “Preparation Actions”, replace all instances of “that only Burglars can perform” and “that only Guards can perform” with “that any Agent can perform”, then replace all instances of “after a Burglar performs” and “after a Guard performs” with “after an Agent performs”.

No narrative reason why subversive agents couldn’t choose to take these actions against the interests of their team.

Proposal: Lights Out

Reached quorum 6 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 25 Apr 2025 10:52:29 UTC

Add a subrule to “Preparation Actions” called “Cutting the Power”:-

“Cutting the Power” is a virtual Preparation Action that only Burglars can perform. When this action is performed, until the next Break-In action has completed, Burglars are never considered to encounter Camera Traps, the Alarmed effects of Artifacts do not apply, and Keycards can’t be taken.

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Proposal: Second Chances

Reached quorum 7 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 24 Apr 2025 18:28:18 UTC

In the rule “Guards and Burglars”, insert the following text as the second paragraph:

Each Agent has a Protecting and Thieving, which are both publicly tracked numbers that default to 0 (unless otherwise specified in other rules).

In the same rule, replace the bulleted list with the following text:

* If there are more Burglars than Guards, make them a Guard and increase their Protecting by 1
* If there are more Guards than Burglars, make them a Burglar and increase their Thieving by 1
* If there are as exactly many Guards as Burglars:
** If their Thieving is greater than their Protecting, make them a Guard and increase their Protecting by 1
** If their Protecting is greater than their Thieving, make them a Burglar and increase their Thieving by 1
** If neither of the above are true, make them either a Guard or a Burglar in a secrely random manner, then increase their Protecting by 1 if they were made a Guard or their Thieving by 1 if they were made a Burglar

In the rule “Guards and Burglars”, add a subrule named “Career History” with the following text:

The default values for Protecting and Thieving are defined per Agent as follows:

* ais523: 2 Protecting, 0 Thieving
* Clucky: 2 Protecting, 0 Thieving
* Darknight: 2 Protecting, 0 Thieving
* DoomedIdeas: 1 Protecting, 1 Thieving
* JonathanDark: 0 Protecting, 2 Thieving
* lendunistus: 1 Protecting, 1 Thieving
* qenya: 1 Protecting, 1 Thieving
* SingularByte: 0 Protecting, 2 Thieving
* Trapdoorspyder: 1 Protecting, 1 Thieving

Fixed the increase amount this time from “Always the Bridesmaid, Never the Bride” comments

Proposal: Always the Bridesmaid, Never the Bride

Withdrawn to revise. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 23 Apr 2025 18:43:44 UTC

In the rule “Guards and Burglars”, insert the following text as the second paragraph:

Each Agent has a Protecting and Thieving, which are both publicly tracked numbers that default to 0.

In the same rule, replace the bulleted list with the following text:

* If there are more Burglars than Guards, make them a Guard and increase their Protecting
* If there are more Guards than Burglars, make them a Burglar and increase their Thieving
* If there are as exactly many Guards as Burglars:
** If their Thieving is greater than their Protecting, make them a Guard and increase their Protecting
** If their Protecting is greater than their Thieving, make them a Burglar and increase their Thieving
** If neither of the above are true, make them either a Guard or a Burglar in a secrely random manner, then increase their Protecting if they were made a Guard or their Thieving if they were made a Burglar

Set the Protecting and Thieving of each Agent to the following:

* ais523: 2 Protecting, 0 Thieving
* Clucky: 2 Protecting, 0 Thieving
* Darknight: 2 Protecting, 0 Thieving
* DoomedIdeas: 1 Protecting, 1 Thieving
* JonathanDark: 0 Protecting, 2 Thieving
* lendunistus: 1 Protecting, 1 Thieving
* qenya: 1 Protecting, 1 Thieving
* SingularByte: 0 Protecting, 2 Thieving
* Trapdoorspyder: 1 Protecting, 1 Thieving

When the Guards and Burglars are otherwise equal, this determines whether the next pick becomes a Guard or a Burglar depending on which they were more of in the past, so that everyone might get a chance to be a Guard or a Burglar at some point, on average, without putting people on the same team every time either. It’s still possible due to random luck that an Agent might always be one or the other.