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, June 03, 2025

Proposal: The Means of Production

If any of the proposals “New Horizons”, “Breadbaskets”, or “Clocks” were not enacted, the rest of this Proposal has no effect.

In the rule “The Cities and the Sea”, in the bulleted list in that rule, add the following bullets:

* A Specialization, which specifies a Produced Resource and is empty by default.
* A Task, which specifies a Timed Action and a Completion Time, both of which are empty by default.

In the rule “The Cities and the Sea”, replace the sentence beginning with “When a City Initiates” with the following text:

When a City Initiates, they perform it as an atomic action with the following steps:
* Privately indicate to the Capital where on the map their Location is.
* Update the destination of their starting Boat to be the name of a City other than themselves, of their choice.
* Set their Specialization to be one of the Produced Resources

In the rule “Breadbaskets”, add a subrule named “Production” with the following text:

Produce is a Timed Action. Whenever a City has an empty Task, and that City has at least 3 Raw Resources in their Warehouse, they may Produce. When a City Produces, as an atomic action they do the following:
* Remove 3 Raw Resources of their choice from their Warehouse.
* Set their Task to Produce.
* Set that Task’s Completion Time to a publicly randomly selected minute between two to three days after that Produce was initiated.

The Completion Time of a Produce Task is the time at which that Produce is resolved. When a Produce is resolved for the City that initiated it, one instance of the Produced Resource named in that City’s Specialization is added to that City’s Warehouse, and that City’s Task is set to empty.

A simple way to make Produced Resources. I didn’t want to get into ingredients just yet, but as a later enhancement we could require specific Raw Resources to make specific Produced Resources.

Proposal: Founders Keepers

If there is a rule named “The Cities and the Sea”, in that rule, replace the text “Whenever a City joins the dynasty for the first time,” with the text “If a City has not done so during this dynasty,”

Changing the text so that there is a way for a City to Initiate if they were already in the dynasty since the beginning, as well as a City that joins at any time during the dynasty.

Proposal: Narumitsu

If the proposal “New Horizons” failed, this proposal does nothing. Otherwise, add a subrule “Names” to the rule Boats, with the following text:

At any time, as an Action, a City may Name any unnamed Boat in their possession. The Names of Boats are flavour text, and are limited to a string of at most 25 characters. The Names of Boats are publicly tracked. When the Capital posts a Harbourmasters Report, for each Timed Action that involves a Boat, the Name of the Boat must be listed alongside the Timed Action it pertains to.

I want to name my Boats. Also, this might make it easier to tell who sent what Boats, or to track Boats, which is nice.

Adrift

Verba is idled out after seven days without making any posts or comments. Quorum drops to 5.

Call for Judgment: Minimum Viable Randomness

Add the following as a third sentence in the final paragraph in the rule Random Generators:

The results of the Dice Roller are considered to be sufficiently random to meet the purposes of the game.

I think we may be overcomplicating this - the error involved is tiny.

Proposal: Breadbaskets

Add a new rule, “Resources”:-

The Resources that exist in the world of the Inland Sea are divided into those which are Raw (Coal, Fruit, Grain, Iron, Oil and Waste) and those which are Produced (Electronics, Machinery, Steel and Vehicles).

If a City has fewer than ten Resources in its Warehouse, it may:
* Add one instance of a randomly-selected Raw Resource to its Warehouse; or
* Add one instance of a Raw Resource already present in its Warehouse, to its Warehouse

Proposal: Provocateurish

Add the Building Block rule “No Private Communication”.

Create a new dynastic rule named “One Blog For All” with the following body:

For the purposes of the rule “No Private Communication”, discussions conducted on the BlogNomic Discord server are considered to be private communications, even if the rule says they aren’t.

If nobody has done so within the last 48 hours, the Capital or any City should make a new blog post titled “Discussion Thread: {year}-{month}-{day}”, where {year}, {month} and {day} are replaced with the current year, month and day respectively. Cities are encouraged to conduct all discussions related to dynastic gameplay in these Discussion Threads.

Proposal: Clocks

Add a new dynastic rule, called Timed Actions:

A Timed Action is a type of action which is initiated by a City or Capital and which completes or resolves at a set, specified time without any further intervention from the performing City. For the purposes of determining the ordering or legality of game actions, the initiation and completion of a Timed Action are distinct events. Timed Actions do not count as dynastic actions for the purposes of the prohibition on carrying out multiple game actions in the rule Time.

When a Timed Action is defined in the ruleset it must have a method by which its resolution time is set at the time at which it is initiated, and how it can be automatically resolved at the time of its completion. A Timed Action may not require a decision or choice be made at the time of its resolution.

As a daily action, the Capital should post a Harbourmasters Report, which is a story post that lists all Timed Actions that are due to resolve during that day.

Add the following as a final bullet point to the list in the rule Boats:

* An Arrival Time, which can be blank (if the Boat’s Location is a City) or a specific date and time (if the Boat is In Transit). Must be set as per the rule Routes when initiating a joining City.

If there is a rule called Boats, add the following as a subrule to it, called Routes:

Setting Sail is a Timed Action that requires a specific Boat as its subject. Whenever a City owns a Boat whose Location is a City, they may Set Sail with that Boat as its subject.

When a Boat is Set Sail by a City, its Location is set to In Transit, with the City it just left as its Origin and the City of the performer’s choosing as its Destination; and its Arrival Time is set to a publicly randomly selected minute between two and five days after the time at which that Timed Action was initiated (such as through the use of DICE4320 + 2880 in the roller).

Proposal: New Horizons

Add a new dynastic rule, called The Cities and the Sea, adding Wikimedia formatting markup where necessary to preserve the bold text in the bulleted list:

The map to the right is the map of the Inland Sea. The Capital may update it at any time such that it reflects the location of each City. [[File:Container Draft map.png|thumb]]

Each City has the following publicly tracked information, with the Capital also having any information that is presented in bold:
* A location, which is publicly tracked through the [https://wiki.blognomic.com/index.php?title=File:Container_Draft_map.png Container Draft Map] and which defaults to blank.
* A number of Boats. By default, each City has one Boat.
* A Warehouse, which holds up to ten Resources and defaults to empty.

Whenever a City joins the dynasty for the first time, they may Initiate. When a City Initiates, they should privately indicate to the Capital where on the map their Location is, and should update the destination of their starting Boat to be the name of a City other than themselves, of their choice.

Add a new dynastic rule, called Boats, with the following text:

Each Boat has the following publicly tracked information:
* A type, which can be a Cog and is a Cog by default.
* A Location, which can be the name of a City (including the Capital) or In Transit (x,y), where x is the name of the City of origin and y is the City of destination; by default it is In Transit, where the City of Origin is itself and the City of Destination should be chosen during Initiation.
* A Manifest, which holds up to three Resources and defaults to empty.

Add a link to the Inland Sea map to the sidebar of the Blog.

Ascension Address: The Inland Sea

To be the Captain of a ship at sea is to be the undisputed sovereign of a nation. You have territory, which must be carefully stewarded is she is to continue to support your lives and welfare; you have borders, outside which lies the enemy, cold and hostile.

And above all else, you have people. Mark my words, to be the Captain of a ship at sea is more than mere rulership. Any slick-toothed clown can be a President. To be a Captain, you need more. It takes the fortitude of a priest, the discipline of a drill sergeant, the clear vision of a strategist, and the iron-clad certainty of the undisputed King, appointed by the divine right of God.

The sea is our destiny. It connects us more surely than the treachery of roads. We will build great ships, and we will need great Captains. That is how our culture will flourish.

- President Tarquin O’Seele, Regional Capital, 12 May 32xx

Throughout the dynastic ruleset, change Drafter to City and change Supervisor to Capital. Set the gamestate tracking page to the Inland Sea page of the wiki. Keep the Revisions Allowed Building Block and add Reinitialisation and Precondition Unidling.

The sketch set out in the Container Draft wiki page gives a rough idea of where this is headed, but note that it is non-binding on either me or on players; I’m keen to explore the space.

Provocateur, because I’ve tried other styles and they never stick.
Libertarian.
Powerhouse, although I don’t see this being a massively Emperor-heavy dynasty.
Scam-neutral.
Oblivious.
Wildcard.
Timekeeper. I am keen that there is no virtue to being online at the exact minute a boat comes in - I’d be happy to consider proposals that allow actions to be prepared and triggered based on predictable occurances.

Monday, June 02, 2025

The Filing Cabinet

A post-dynastic thread for the Tenth Dynasty of ais523.

Sunday, June 01, 2025

Declaration of Victory: The Shipping Forecast

After 12 hours, and with over 2/3rds of Drafters voting FOR and none AGAINST, enacted 7-0. Josh

Adminned at 02 Jun 2025 08:14:18 UTC

By some combination of the Winning Plan and the passage of Proposal: Shortcut, I have achieved Victory.

Story Post: The Contents of the Winning Plan

The Contents of the Winning Plan are as follows:

==Summary==
The theme of the game is based around container ships trading between ports around an inland sea.

[[File:Container Draft map.png|thumb]]

Hey, a game about container ships, like the classic board game Container! That seems great, pack it up, job done, no more idea needed. Right?

No more idea needed, right?

===Maybe!===
Because it’s a nomic, we can make it weird.

We don’t have to; it can be a game about setting up routes, building infrastructure, and managing local rivalries. We’ve done that kind of thing before and it works. Fixed-variable turn durations would be my mechanical twist - boats generate their route duration randomly when they’re launched, with the time required being fixed at the point of generation. In that regard it would be more of an idle game, with resource generation and maybe a bit of inventory management playing a more active part.

But it could also be very weird. What if the things being transported weren’t just goods but could also in fact be rules? So say that each player is a City, with some boats and a warehouse, but it also had a Culture - a private ruleset of rules that affected only it and its nearest neighbours. Culture is randomly generated at fixed intervals and through set formats, and can (maybe must) be transported too and from Cities along with cargo.

The Emperor is also a city, and their Culture is the Ruleset. Rules in the Capital’s Culture affect everybody, and a subset of the Captial’s rules can also be piled onto shipping containers and ferried between the various rulesets in the game along with goods.

Rules only apply when they’re not on a boat; when they’re in Ruleset City they apply to everyone, but when they’re in an individual player’s city they only apply to that player and their neighbours.

==Some rules==
===Cities===
Each City is marked on the Map, has a grid reference, and is considered Proximate to any other City that is in the same grid reference square or is in a grid reference square that is orthogonally adjacent to it.

Each City has a Storehouse which can contain Goods. The Goods in each City’s Storehouse is publicly tracked and defaults to blank.

Each City has its own Culture, a document that holds any number of Tenets. For non-Capital Cities, a City’s Culture is held a page in the wiki which is publicly tracked and which is itself gamestate. The Tenets of a Culture are considered ruletext only for the City that owns that Culture and any Cities that are Proximate to it.

The Dynastic Ruleset contains within it a subsection for the Regional Ruleset. The Regional Ruleset is considered to be a Culture for the Capital City according to this rule, except that the rules held in the Regional Ruleset apply to all Cities.

There is also a Culture that holds all rules that are currently loaded onto Boats. All tenets on the Boats’ Culture have no effect, unless otherwise stated.

If a City has no Tenets in its Culture then it must produce one as set out in the rule Tenets before taking any further dynastic actions.

====Tenets====
When a City is required to produce a Tenet, it does so as follows:
‘‘The rest of this rule is purposefully blank, to avoid over-defining the dynasty in advance, but I imagine something a bit madlibs-y - some fill-in-the-blanks sentences and some look-up tables that allow players to Produce, Consume, Build etc.’‘

===Boats===
Each City has one Boat. Each Boat has a type (which defaults to Carrack); a Location, which may be the name of any City or In Transit (x,y) where x is the name of the City of origin and y is the City of destination, defaulting to the name of the City that owns it; and a Manifest, which may contain up to three Goods and one Tenet, or nothing, defaulting to nothing.

At any time a City may Load a Boat that they own that is in any City. Loading a Boat entails moving Goods from the City that the Boat is in to the Boat in question, up to its capacity; whenever a Boat is Loaded it must also take a Tenet from the Culture of the City it is in. When a Goods or a Tenet is loaded into a Boat it ceases to be in the City it was loaded from.

Once a Boat has been Loaded, it is Launched - its Location becomes In Transit (with the City it was just in as its origin and a destination of its owners’ choosing). When a Boat is Launched its arrival time is generated as determined by its type; the arrival times for each Boat that is in transit is publicly tracked. When the arrival time of a Boat that is In Transit passes, its Location it set to the Destination city, its arrival time is blanked, and the Boat’s Owner may elect to move any Goods to the Storehouse of the City they are in; if they do, any Tenets they are carrying are also to the Culture of the City they are in.

As a daily action, the Capital City should post a Manifest to the blog detailing which Boats in transit are due to arrive at which Destinations at which times.

==Iterations==
* Boat upgrades. I imagine that at first a Boat’s travel time is a randomly determined period in a wide range (a specific minute within 1 to 5 days of departure, say) while upgrading shortens the range but allows for some selectivity (a specific minute within 2-3 days randomly selected, plus or minus up to 120 minutes selected by the owner). You could also have more Boats.
* Goods. Goods would be generated by rules (each sub-ruleset could start with ‘x Good is generated on a regular basis’ as a rule - which could of course be stolen). Would they have distinct effects? Would they just be a victory condition? Could they ever be owned by the City that generated them, or do they have to be exported to cease being inert?
* Piracy Rules. Rules that only have an impact when they are on a boat.
* I don’t envisage combat being a part of this, beyond stealing each others’ rules.
* The madlib generation of Tenets can be flexible or rigid. I don’t have a firm view on that.

==Imperial Styles==
Provocateur, because I’ve tried other styles and they never stick.
Libertarian.
Powerhouse, although I don’t see this being a massively Emperor-heavy dynasty.
Scam-neutral.
Oblivious.
Wildcard.
Timekeeper. I am keen that there is no virtue to being online at the exact minute a boat comes in - I’d be happy to consider proposals that allow actions to be prepared and triggered based on predictable occurances.

It was authored by Josh. Note that due to a bug in the victory condition, I believe that Josh has not actually achieved victory from this (I will explain in the comments).