In the rule “Reviews”, replace the following text:

There is a publicly tracked list of Reviews, defaulting to empty. A Review is a flavor text string of at most 500 characters, and Scores for Theme, Mechanics and Style (where each Score is a number ranging from 1 to 5), along with the name of the Drafter who created it and the name of a Drafter that it is meant for. As an Action, any Drafter may add a Review. Drafters are not allowed to create a second Review meant for a particular Drafter if they already have an existing Review meant for said Drafter, though they are allowed to replace any of their previous Reviews with another Review, so long as it is meant for the same Drafter. A Drafter may not create a Review meant for themself. A Review should include genuine feedback on the Plan of the Drafter it is meant for.

with this text:

There is a publicly tracked list of Reviews, defaulting to empty. A Review is a flavor text string of at most 500 characters, and Scores for Theme, Mechanics and Style (where each Score is a number ranging from 1 to 5), along with the name of the Drafter or Idle Drafter who created it and the name of a Drafter that it is meant for. As an Action, any Drafter or Idle Drafter may add a Review. Drafters and Idle Drafters are not allowed to create a second Review meant for a particular Drafter if they already have an existing Review meant for said Drafter, though they are allowed to replace any of their previous Reviews with another Review, so long as it is meant for the same Drafter. A Drafter may not create a Review meant for themself. A Review should include genuine feedback on the Plan of the Drafter it is meant for.

Change the gamestate (including the history of performed dynastic actions) to what it currently would be if the second list item in “Essays and Citations” had never been part of the ruleset.

Change the text of “Essays and Citations” to read:

As a weekly action, a Drafter may make a Citation, a blog post in the Story Post: Votable Matters category that highlights a passage from an essay held in the Essays category on the Blognomic wiki that was authored by a Drafter or idle Drafter other than themselves. In the same post, they should distil the passage thus highlighted into a sentence that begins “A Plan should” or “A plan should not”; said sentence should represent a sincere attempt to convey the render the sense of the highlighted passage into a precept that can be legally followed by a Drafter when composing a Plan, and is known as that Citation’s Suggestion.

If a Citation is Popular, its author or any admin can mark it as Enacted and add that Citation’s Suggestion to the list of Mandates in the rule Mandates, preceded by an ID number that is not being used by any existing Mandate or any Mandate in the proposal queue.
If a Citation is Unpopular, its author or any admin can mark it as Failed.

The essay Advice for Emperors describes how to build mechanics that support both casual and competitive players:

Different players approach BlogNomic in different ways, and while an Emperor doesn’t have to ensure that all of their concerns are equally met, it is helpful to carry certain archetypes in mind when considering the mechanical flow of the ruleset.

At a default level, you should aim to ensure that there is a simple starter mechanic that any player can perform without having to understand the whole ruleset. Holding a ruleset in your head and modelling how it works is a skill, and a rare one; most players want to dip a toe in and see where it leads. Having a single, simple action that new players can perform that doesn’t require them to understand second-and third-order knock-on effects will act as an on-ramp that will allow casual and new players to engage with the game. Those players won’t always actually be competitive, but that isn’t the point. The point is for them to be involved, and to give those players who do want to play to win a complex ecosystem in which to operate.

Add the following as a new Mandate:

A Plan should contain at least one simple dynastic action with straight-forward effects on the gamestate as well as the mechanics to include more complex dynastic actions and effects.

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

Each Drafter has a number named Rating which is a derived value using the following formula, where any scores referred to in the formula are among all Reviews meant for that Drafter:

Rating = (Median value of all Mechanics scores + Median value of all Theme scores + Median value of all Style scores) x Number of Mandates in that Drafter’s Claims

A couple of comments I have about the current styling of the blog:

• The blog sidebar has been very narrow for a few dynasties now; it got made narrower at some point and hasn’t been widened again. (I’m not sure whether space was taken from it to widen the margins, or whether it lost width for some other reason.) IIRC, the “Pending Calls for Judgement” used to fit on one line, but currently wraps onto two. At least on my browser, the table doesn’t quite fit into the sidebar at the moment (“Trapdoorspyder” + “Claims” + “Investigations” take up all the available horizontal space on their own), and the narrow width also makes the reviews harder to read – so this might be a good time to widen it again, if we can find horizontal space for it.
• We’ve had REVISE votes for a few dynasties now, and it’s probable that they’ll become something of a permanent fixture now that the edit window has been removed. At the moment, we’re using the ARROW icon for them because it was the only available voting symbol that didn’t already have a use. I’m wondering whether it might make sense to come up with a new icon specialised for the purpose (although if we changed the image to something other than arrow.gif, we’d probably need to change the ruleset because it currently defines REVISE votes in terms of the image filename). It would seem fitting to finally have a complete proposal-revising system in a dynasty that’s all about drafting things, and while it’s using the generic icon, it still feels a bit incomplete.

In the rule “Reviews”, add the following text:

When a Drafter edits their Plan or changes their Plan Link, they may choose to remove all Reviews that were meant for them within 30 minutes of making that edit or that Plan Link change. If that Drafter chooses to remove Reviews that were meant for them, they must remove all such Reviews.

The essay Avoiding Dead Ends calls out the following risk:

Silent Gameplay
Situation
One or more core mechanics of a dynasty require few or no gamestate changes to perform. This may be minimal (players rolling dice in the die roller, updating the wiki for a minority of their results and never announcing anything on the blog) or could even be entirely secret (players sending private orders to the Emperor, which update secret variables).
Result
To a casual player of the game, it looks like nothing much is happening: even a game with active wiki gameplay can seem stagnant if the variables are subtle and the player doesn’t check the wiki page history. In cases where the main game actions are secret and invisible, even the most attentive player of the game may not know whether anyone else is actually playing. If some players start to assume that no game is really being played, they’re inclined to give up and idle out.
Solutions
Add noise to the game by having some of the larger game actions require a post to the blog, or have a mechanic that generates “game news” summaries periodically.

Therefore add the following as a new Mandate:

A Plan should require that dynastic gameplay be conducted largely in public, or should contain some reasonably frequent public-facing update of the Emperor.

Add a subrule to “Drafts and Plans” called “Revisions”

A Revision is a draft whose name contains a “/” and for which the section before that “/” is the name of another draft and the section after the “/” is the name of the Drafter who created the Revision. The contents of a revision should match that draft, but with one or more changes applied to it, and is considered to be a Revision of that Draft.

Revision are considered to be gamestate. If a Drafter has not already created a Revision for a Plan which is not their own, they may create a Revision for that Plan at any time. The list of each revision for a given plan is publicly tracked on the gamestate tracking page.

The Drafter who created a Revision is permitted to edit it, except in ways that would cause it to no longer be a Draft.

If there is a rule named “Drafts and Plans”, add the following text to that rule as a new paragraph:

Each Drafter other than the Supervisor has a publicly tracked Draft Date, which is blank if that Drafter’s Plan Link is blank. If a Drafter’s Plan Link is not blank, that Drafter’s Draft Date is the date and time to the minute rounded down that the wiki page containing the Draft named in that Drafter’s Plan Link was last edited.

In the rule “Reviews” replace “and the name of a Drafter that it is meant for” with:

, the date and time to the minute rounded down that Review was created, and the name of a Drafter that it is meant for

If the proposal “A Few Small Suggestions” failed, this proposal does nothing. Otherwise:
After the sentence “As an Action, any Drafter may add a Review.” add the text:

Drafters are not allowed to create a second Review meant for a particular Drafter if they already have an existing Review meant for said Drafter, though they are allowed to replace any of their previous Reviews with another Review, so long as it is meant for the same Drafter. A Drafter may not create a Review meant for themself.

If any Drafter has multiple Reviews meant for the same Drafter, remove all of said Reviews except the first one. If any Drafter has a Review meant for themself, remove it.

Create a new dynastic rule, “Drafts and Plans”, placing it at the start of the dynastic ruleset:

A Draft is a page on the wiki, created after 03:54:00 UTC on 18 May 2025, that contains a summary of the gameplay for a hypothetical future dynasty, together with at least two hypothetical dynastic rules that might exist in the early stages of that dynasty. The content of each Draft is flavour text, except for the purposes of a) determining whether or not that Draft is in fact a Draft and b) determining whether or not that Draft complies with a Mandate. The names of Drafts are flavour text.

Each Drafter other than the Supervisor has a publicly tracked Plan Link, which is either blank or the name of a Draft that Drafter created. Plan Links are flavour text. A Drafter can set their own Plan Link to any valid value at any time (except during Hiatus). The Draft named by a Drafter’s Plan Link is known as that Drafter’s Plan.

While a Draft is a Plan, it is considered gamestate. The Drafter who created it is permitted to edit it, except in ways that would cause it to no longer be a Draft.

In the rule “Reviews”, if it exists, replace

A Review is a flavor text string of at most 500 characters,

with

A Review is a flavor text string of at most 500 characters, and Scores for Theme, Mechanics and Style (where each Score is a number ranging from 1 to 5),

If any Reviews exist, set all their Scores to 3.

I love this theme but it is definitely too intensive for my availability right now, sorry. Please idle me.

Add a rule named “Scoring” with the following text:

Each Drafter has a publicly tracked number named Score that defaults to 0 and must be between 0 and 10.

As a Daily Action called a Scoring, a Drafter may select a Drafter other than themselves who has a non-blank Plan Link, and then increase or decrease the selected Drafter’s Score by 1, provided the resulting Score is a legal value. A Drafter’s Score may not be decreased from a performance of a Scoring more than once in a 24-hour period.

Any time a Drafter’s Plan Link is changed, that Drafter’s Score is reset to 0.

Create a new Rule called Reviews with the following text:

There is a publicly tracked list of Reviews, defaulting to empty. A Review is a flavor text string of at most 500 characters, along with the name of the Drafter who created it and the name of a Drafter that it is meant for. As an Action, any Drafter may add a Review. A Review should include genuine feedback on the Plan of the Drafter it is meant for.

If Proposal: The Wires Behind the Buzzer was not enacted then this proposal has no further effect.

Add a new dynastic rule to the ruleset, called Essays and Citations, with the following text:

As a weekly action, a Drafter may make a Citiation. Making a Citation is an atomic action with the following steps:
* Make a Citation post, which is a post to the blog in the Story Post: Votable Matters category, highlighting a passage from an essay held in the Essays category on the Blognomic wiki that was authored by a Drafter or idle Drafter other than themselves. In the same post, they should distill the passage thus highlighted into a sentence that begins “A Plan should” or “A plan should not”; said sentence should represent a sincere attempt to convey the render the sense of the highlighted passage into a precept that can be legally followed by a Drafter when composing a Plan.
* When the Citation Post can be closed (see below), close it, marking it as Popular or Unpoplar based on the votes cast upon it. If it was Popular at the time that it was closed, add the sentence that it contained to the list of Mandates in the rule Mandates, preceded by an ID number that is not being used by any existing Mandate or any Mandate in the proposal queue.

A Citation Post is open when it is posted and can be closed if it has been open for 48 hours or more. While it is open, it may be voted on, as per the rule Votes.

Create a new dynastic rule, “Mandates” (in the text below, the * represents the start of a list item):

This rule contains a list of Mandates, each of which is a recommendation that Plans should have some specific (but potentially subjective) property, together with a two-digit ID number that is unique among Mandates. Failing to follow a Mandate does not on its own cause a Plan to be invalid.

A proposal which would (if enacted) change the list of Mandates, and whose text would make no other changes to the ruleset or gamestate, is known as a Mandate Proposal.

The list of Mandates is as follows:
* 10: Plans should not envision Dynasties for which a player would be at a significant disadvantage if they checked the game no more often than once every 24 hours.

Each Drafter has a publicly tracked list of Claims, a possibly empty list of ID numbers of Mandates (without duplicates). At any time, except during Hiatus, a Drafter may change their Claims to the list of ID numbers of Mandates that they believe their own Plan satisfies (the list may not contain any ID numbers of Mandates that they do not believe their own Plan satisfies).

Create a new dynastic rule, “Drafts and Plans”:

A Draft is a page on the wiki, created after 03:54:00 UTC on 18 May 2025, that contains a summary of the gameplay for a hypothetical future dynasty, together with at least two hypothetical dynastic rules that might exist in the early stages of that dynasty. The contents of a Draft are not rulestext, and the meaning of each rule is interpreted without reference to the name of Drafts and without reference to the content of Drafts (for example, if a rule uses a term and it is not defined in the Ruleset, the term has its standard English meaning (or no meaning if the standard English meaning does not apply) even if a Draft attempts to define it; and if a rule attempts to refer to something by name, it cannot name something in a Draft, nor the Draft itself).

Each Drafter other than the Supervisor has a publicly tracked Plan Link, which is either blank or the name of a Draft that Drafter created. Plan Links are flavour text. A Drafter can set their own Plan Link to any valid value at any time (except during Hiatus). The Draft named by a Drafter’s Plan Link is known as that Drafter’s Plan.

While a Draft is a Plan, it is considered gamestate. The Drafter who created it is permitted to edit it, except in ways that would cause it to no longer be a Draft.

The Drafters filed into the drafting room, eager to take on their first assignment, but with some trepidation. Would they really be able to live up to the standards of such a large nomic?

They started reading the task they were given. “Write a summary of the gameplay for a hypothetical future BlogNomic dynasty, together with at least two hypothetical dynastic rules that might exist in the early stages of that dynasty.” Well, that seemed simple enough. New Emperors did that all the time, often at short notice.

A buzzer sounded, and the task description got a little longer. It was asking for changes, adding restrictions, twists to make the job of drafting harder. Still, one new requirement wasn’t too bad; all that was needed was a few changes here and there, maybe rethinking an idea or two.

Then the buzzer sounded again, and again, and again. Restrictions piled up: anything from well-thought-out “don’t do this, or it’ll cause problems in your dynasty” advice, to somewhat eclectic gameplay preferences which somehow all had to be satisfied simultaneously, to totally arbitrary rules that seemed to be there for no reason to trip people up. It was going to be a long day.

Change Agent to Drafter and Concierge to Supervisor. Repeal all dynastic rules. Remove “Reinitialisation”, “Virtual Actions”, and “Precondition Unidling” from the list of Building Blocks; include “Everyone’s Playing” (adding it) and “Revisions Allowed” (retainng it). Change the gamestate tracking page to “Drafting Board”. Imperial Styles: Guide, Hands-Off, Wildcard.

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to dedicate enough time to BlogNomic in the near future to properly run a dynasty (especially as the main theme I have in mind requires a Casual level of Imperial tracking, which I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to provide).

Normally in this situation I’d pass the mantle (it was the original purpose of the mantle-pass rule), but due to anti-pooling measures, mantle-passing isn’t available at the moment. Additionally, some people have (weirdly) started valuing player success via dynasty-as-Emperor count rather than win count (e.g. all the various “mantle roll” agreements we’ve historically seen don’t make sense unless you do that), which gives a perverse incentive to start a dynasty and immediately abandon it, rather than letting someone else start a presumably better dynasty. Finally, as far as I can tell, the core rules actually mandate that I must post an Ascension Address and don’t give any option not to (the rule says “If the game is in an Interregnum then the new Concierge must make an Ascension Address” which, according to our usual precedents, allows players to treat the Ascension Address as having been posted even if I don’t actually make one).

As such, I can see four main lines forwards:
1. a proposal for a core rules change, or a dynastic rule to override the core rules, to allow for a mantle pass and let someone else run a dynasty (but, it might be hard to decide who to pass to, given that this was a purely solo win with no agreements other than temporary single-Break-In agreements with my randomly selected team);
2. I start a dynasty and try to muddle through it as best I can, but it’s at risk of collapsing due to a disengaged Emperor possibly failing to do tracking properly or to guide enough of the gameplay for the other players to build a ruleset (but this is not hopeless – I may be able to devote enough time to at least keep the dynasty going, although it’s unlikely that anything spectacular would happen);
3. I start a dynasty but, early in the dynasty, let someone else take over as Emperor via dynastic rule (I think I can create gameplay compatible with doing that);
4. “BlogNomic has a perfectly good way to determine who should run a dynasty – it’s called a dynasty” – start a new short dynasty whose purpose is to decide how to continue, in the style of ais523 III

I am also not convinced by my theme idea; it falls into the area of “I’m envisioning a particular sort of gameplay but we might not be able to implement it correctly” that has plagued most of the dynasties recently (since I unidled, there have been many dynasties where I clearly understood the Imperial vision, but actually translating it into rules was much harder and the ruleset ended up not matching the vision at all).

Do people have suggestions on what the best option to move forwards might be (any of the above, or perhaps an option I’m missing?).

There’s a lot of hidden information that could do with being revealed, and a lot of potentially interesting topics to discuss with respect to strategy in the dynasty, so here’s a post-dynastic discussion thread.

In the subrule “Other” of the Appendix rule “Keywords”, in the definition of “Hiatus”, change

If BlogNomic is on Hiatus, Dynastic Actions may not be taken (except where the rule defining the action explicitly requires it to be taken during Hiatus), and Proposals may not be submitted or Resolved.

to

If BlogNomic is on Hiatus, Dynastic Actions may not be taken (except where the rule defining the action explicitly requires it to be taken during Hiatus), and Proposals may not be submitted or Resolved unless a core rule permits doing so for that type of Hiatus.

“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, and also gained more than 1 Fame or more than 1 Infamy in the most recent Breaking In action, that Agent has achieved victory. “

I had more Successes than every other Agent before the most recent Break-In and still do, and gained 2 Infamy (my Infamy was set to 0 and then to 2). As such, despite being caught by the Camera Trap, I have achieved victory.

A whirr of a security camera, a flash of torches, a shout in the night.

Burglar DoomedIdeas encountered Guard Qenya.

Burglar Ais523 encountered a Camera Trap.

Remove the following text from the rule “Building Blocks”:-

Some rules on the Building Blocks page are listed as being Recommended; if the new Concierge makes no statement on Building Blocks rules to be included in their Ascension Address then the Recommended Building Blocks are considered to have been selected.

A familiar-sounding door hinge creaks again.

One Guard has a route with F in the 4th and 9th Spots.

Remove the rule “Shenanigan Detection” from the dynastic ruleset (rather than the Shadow ruleset).

Set the current Phase to Planning the Break-In.

An unoiled door squeaks twice.

One Guard has a route with F in the 4th and 9th Spots.