The desk operators in the Telegram Office are coolly courteous and unfailingly professional.
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.
Thursday, June 12, 2025
Telegram Office: 12 June 25 (17 comments) The desk operators in the Telegram Office are coolly courteous and unfailingly p
Friday, June 13, 2025
Shipwrecked
I’ve started a summer class that’s turned out to be pretty intensive, much more so than I expected. I’m idling for the time being just for sake of sanity preservation.
Quorum drops to 4.
Proposal: Standard Format
In the Tenet Syntax for Production Line, as well as in each City’s Culture, replace each instance of the phrase “every 3 days” with the text “concluding 2 days after it was initiated”.
If a quorum of EVCs on this proposal include the word “slow”, instead replace each instance of the phrase “every 3 days” in the Ruleset and each City’s Culture with the text “concluding 3 days after it was initiated”.
“Every 3 days” doesn’t fit with the format of the rest of the Tenet Syntaxes, so I recommend we change it. I also think it might help with player interest if we speed up the game a little, but if the rest of the playerbase doesn’t agree, we can keep it at 3 days using “slow”.
Proposal: Left to Rot
In the rule “Culture and Tenets”, add the following Tenet Syntaxes to the table:
-
| Expiration Date || ‘As a Timed Action, every 2 days, remove two {x} from your first available Warehouse that contains the maximum Resources for that Warehouse type {y}’ || 2 || For 0 additional Praxis, {x} is the text “publicly randomly selected Resources”, and {y} is blank. For 3 additional Praxis, {x} is a Resource other than Praxis, and {y} is the text “and add 1 Praxis to that same Warehouse”
Add the Expiration Date tenet to the Capital’s Culture with {x} and {y} set as if 0 additional Praxis was spent when adding this Tenet.
A alternative idea to make room in your Warehouses. You can either use the Capital’s tenet to remove random Resources for no gain, or spent some Praxis to be able to convert specific Resources to Praxis.
Proposal: A Leg Up
Add the following Tenet to the Culture of the City known as Phosphatidylinositol:
As a Timed Action, every 3 days, remove two Coal and one Waste from your first available Warehouse and add one instance of Machinery to your first available Warehouse.
Chosen based on Phosphatidylinositol’s current Resources and Specialization. Should allow for some storage-clearing and a leg up after joining later in the Dynasty.
Proposal: Unanimous Fast DoVs [Core]
In “Victory and Ascension”, replace the following bullet point:-
* It has a number of FOR Votes greater than 2/3rds of the number of Cities, it has been open for at least 12 hours, and either the Capital has Voted FOR it or it has no AGAINST Votes.
with:-
* It has a FOR Vote from every City
A recusant proposal.
It seems a bit of a mismatch that we’ve slowed proposal enactment from 12 to 24 hours, giving more players a chance to contribute and to potentially turn the voting around on big issues, but a DoV (the biggest issue of all!) can still pass after 12 hours with some players yet to speak.
Looking over the last ten victories, this bullet fired nine times: seven of those DoVs were unanimous after 12 hours, and two were enacted after 12 hours with some players (in one case a single player, in another three) yet to comment on it. So setting the bar at “unanimity” for a quick DoV seems doable.
Thursday, June 12, 2025
Proposal: More Dupes, More Glitches
In each City’s Culture, replace every instance in each Tenet of the text “your Warehouse” with “your first available Warehouse”.
Changing the rule didn’t change the existing Tenets because those are “constructed” from the Tenet Syntax.
Call for Judgment: Rules are Rules
Popular, 4-0. Enacted by JonathanDark.
Adminned at 13 Jun 2025 18:42:09 UTC
In the rule “Warehouses”, replace each instance of the phrase “May contain” with the phrase “Can only contain”. If any Warehouses contain more Resources than their Blueprint permits, remove the Resources most recently added to said Warehouses until each Warehouse only contains the amount of Resources it’s Blueprint allows.
The fix for Fields, but also for Warehouses.
Call for Judgment: Agricultural Zoning
Popular, 4-0. Enacted by JonathanDark.
Adminned at 13 Jun 2025 18:40:48 UTC
In the rule “Resources”, replace the text “If a City has fewer than ten Resources in its Fields” with “If a City has fewer than five Resources in its Fields”.
I think it makes it more interesting to stick with the five-resource limit for the Fields. I didn’t want to correct the illegal gamestate until I knew whether or not we can get agreement on Fields only having five Resources, or if we needed to backtrack and make Fields hold ten Resources and uphold the illegal gamestate changes.
Proposal: Special Economic Zone
Unpopular, 1-4. Failed by JonathanDark.
Adminned at 13 Jun 2025 18:39:35 UTC
Add a new bullet point to the first list in the rule The Cities and the Sea, bolding the word Lucre:
* An amount of Lucre, defaulting to zero.
Add a new subrule to the rule Resources, called Lucre:
A City’s Lucre is a representation of its overall wealth. Whenever a City moves a Resource from the Manifest of their own Boat to a Warehouse owned by another City they increase their Lucre by 1, plus 1 if it is a Produced Resource. Whenever a City moves a Resource from the Warehouse of a City other than themselves to the Manifest of their Boat they increase the Lucre of the City whose Warehouse they moved the Resource from by 1, plus 1 if it is a Produced Resource.
In the rule Cargo change the word ‘good’ to ‘Resource’.
Add a new rule to the ruleset, called Treasure Fleet:
A City’s Trading Heft is calculated as follows:
* A starting value of 0
* +1 for each Lucre held by that City
* +1 for every three Resources held in Warehouses or Manifests by that City
* +2 for each Boat owned by that CityIf a single City has the highest Trading Heft on or after 4 July 2025 then no further dynastic actions may be taken, no initiated Timed Actions may resolve, and that City has achieved Victory.
Story Post: Harbourmaster’s Report, 12/06/25
No boats are due to arrive today. DoomedIdeas’ City will be producing one Vehicles.
Sorry for having been absent yesterday, I’m grappling with a spot of illness.
Wednesday, June 11, 2025
Proposal: Dupduplication Gliglitch
Popular, 5-0. Enacted by JonathanDark.
Adminned at 12 Jun 2025 22:16:53 UTC
In the rule “Culture and Tenets”, replace each instances of the phrase “your Warehouse” in the Tenet Syntaxes with the text “your first available Warehouse”.
At the end of the first paragraph in the rule “Warehouses”, add the following sentence:
Warehouses are ordered by age, with the earliest created Warehouse being considered the first Warehouse.
Tuesday, June 10, 2025
Announcement of Mentorship
Phosphatidylinositol is to be mentored by JonathanDark.
Josh: I’m volunteering to be a Mentor to Phosphatidylinositol
I’d like to volunteer to mentor Phosphatidylinositol, whenever you have the time to officially assign the Mentorship
Intention to Become a City
I hope that this post is sufficient for me to join the game. I apologise if there was a template or category I was meant to post this in.
Proposal: Duplication Glitch
Revisable, 0-0 with 2 REVISE votes. Failed-revise by JonathanDark.
Adminned at 11 Jun 2025 18:08:55 UTC
In the rule “Culture and Tenets”, replace all instances of the phrase “your Warehouse” in the Tenet Syntaxes with the text “one of your Warehouses”.
Duplication Glitch
In the rule “Culture and Tenets”, replace all instances of the phrase “your Warehouse” in the Tenet Syntaxes with the text “one of your Warehouses”.
To solve the issue of having multiple Warehouses prevent Tenets from working properly.
Call for Judgment: Sailing is Special
Timed out, 3-1 with 1 DEF and Capital voting AGAINST. Enacted by JonathanDark.
Adminned at 12 Jun 2025 16:35:28 UTC
Uphold the Setting Sail Timed Actions and the Active Timed Actions that have been publicly tracked as initiated, and the changes to gamestate from resolving those Timed Actions that were completed, from the beginning of the dynasty through June 10, 2025 13:03
In the rule “Timed Actions”, after the text “Each individual City may only have 3 incomplete Timed Actions active at once” add the following text:
, except for Setting Sail Timed Actions, which do not count towards this limit.
Ever since we added a rule for a limit of 3 incomplete Timed Actions, we forgot to consider that Setting Sail is a Timed Action and should have limited the other Active Timed Actions to 2 + any Boats that were still Setting Sail. Rather than enforcing that limitation for Setting Sail, I think we should carve out an exception for Boats.
If folks would rather go the other way, I’d recommend a competing CfJ, as either way we need to handle the currently illegal gamestate representation.
Proposal: Cultural Tourist
Popular, 5-0. Enacted by JonathanDark.
Adminned at 11 Jun 2025 21:54:40 UTC
In the rule “Routes”, after the text “the Destination it had when it was In Transit during that Setting Sail action”, add the following text:
, and if there is a set of Tenets in the Culture of the Location of that Boat that is not in the Culture of the City that owns that Boat, a publicly randomly selected Tenet from that set is added to the Culture of the City that owns that Boat
Tenets in the Culture from other Cities gets copied to your Culture automatically and mandatorily through your Boats, as suggested by Josh
Story Post: Harbourmaster’s Report, 10/06/25
We have received docking requests from the following craft:
Shadow of Arkham, registered to Darknight, arriving at DoomedIdeas City.
Furthermore we register a delivery of 3 Praxis to ais523 City’s Warehouses.
Monday, June 09, 2025
Telegram Office: 09 June 3225
Messages transmitted to you, through the air waves.
Call for Judgment: Ghost Ship
Popular, 6-1. Enacted by JonathanDark.
Adminned at 10 Jun 2025 13:52:34 UTC
If the EVC of the City called ais523 on this CfJ contains the name of a single City then they may set the Location of their Boat to that City.
Add the following to the end of the rule Routes:
If a Boat whose Location is In Transit ever has their Location become an invalid value (for instance, because the Destination City has become idle) then they may freely change their Destination to another legal value.
Story Post: Harbourmaster’s Report, 09/06/25
Ships! Ships on the horizon!
At 11:16, DoomedIdeas’ DaveKat will arrive at Darknight City.
At 12:46, ais523’s unnamed ship will dock with Kevan, although it’s unclear what that means with Kevan being idle.
At 21:11, Darknight’s Night Stalker will arrive at Darknight City.
Monday, June 09, 2025
Proposal: Cultural Appropriation
Revisable, 0-0 with 5 REVISE votes. Failed-revise by JonathanDark.
Adminned at 10 Jun 2025 13:57:30 UTC
In the rule “Culture and Tenets”, add the following to the Tenet Syntaxes:
|-
| Assimilation || When a Boat that you own is Docked at a City other than your own, you may copy a Tenet from that City’s Culture to your Culture, if you do not already have that exact Tenet and if you have not copied any Tenets from any City’s Culture in the past 48 hours, by paying Praxis equal to the base cost of that Tenet plus {x} || 1 || {x} is 5 minus the amount of Praxis spent above the base cost to add this Tenet to your Culture, but {x} can be no lower than 2
|-
| Appropriation || When a Boat that you own is Docked at a City other than your own, you may remove a Tenet from that City’s Culture and add it to your Culture, if you do not already have that exact Tenet and if you have not removed a Tenet from any City’s Culture in the past 48 hours, by paying Praxis equal to the base cost of that Tenet plus {x} || 3 || {x} is 10 minus the amount of Praxis spent above the base cost to add this Tenet to your Culture, but {x} can be no lower than 4
Copy or steal another City’s Tenet by choosing to spend more Praxis up front or more for each copy
Proposal: Capital Cravings
Withdrawn. Failed by JonathanDark.
Adminned at 10 Jun 2025 13:56:27 UTC
Each City has a publicly tracked number of Honors defaulting to 0.
There is a publicly tracked Demand which is either empty or a list of Produced Resources, defaulting to empty. If the Capital has not done so in the past 168 hours, or if the Demand is empty, they should set the Demand to empty and then add 3 publicly randomly selected Produced Resources to the Demand, in which the Demand may contain duplicates.
When a City moves Produced Resources from a Boat that they own into the Warehouse of the Capital, as an atomic action for each Produced Resource moved in this way, if an instance of that Produced Resource is currently in the Demand, that City may remove one instance of that Produced Resource from the Demand and increase their Honors by 1.
Satisfying the Capital’s current Demand gets you Honors. Could be Fool’s Gold, a spendable resource, or a path to victory.
Story Post: Harbourmaster’s Report 8 June 25
Still no ships, but I see that the Praxis mines are spun up - forecasting 3 completed Praxis generation actions each for ais423, JonathanDark and Trapdoorspyder, and one for DoomedIdeas.
Proposal: Cultural Capital
Popular, 5-0. Enacted by JonathanDark.
Adminned at 10 Jun 2025 13:54:17 UTC
In the rule Construction, change “As a Daily Action, a City may create a Construction as defined by the table below, with the Resource Cost being taken from any of their Warehouses.” to read:
The following is a list of Constructions that can be build. The listed Resources must be spend when building any given Construction.
In the rule Culture and Tenets, add the following as new Tenet Syntaxes:
| Construction Crews || ‘As a Timed Action, concluding 1 day after it was initiated, spend Resources from your Warehouse to build a Warehouse Construction.’ || 2 || None
| Shipyard Crews || ‘As a Timed Action, concluding 1 day after it was initiated, spend Resources from your Warehouse to build a Boat Construction.’ || 3 || None
Saturday, June 07, 2025
Story Post: Habourmaster’s Report 7 June 25
Calm seas.