Oblivious

[packbat]

A number of you are probably aware of the Nomic I am associated with - nomicide. It's in that irritating between-games idle stage right now, the one where we should be trying to make new rulesets but we're just off doing our own stuff, but it's been a pretty successful Nomic while it's going, and I'm pretty proud to be involved in it. (Incidentally, if you ever want me to brag, ask me how I won the first game. It was brilliant.)

Anyway, I just opened a poll to vote for the Head of the Constitutional Convention (pretentious, eh?) where all the players could vote for any player to become Head. Being a player, I of course immediately voted myself for the players I thought would be good.

The next day, the second vote had come in (I told you it was idle), and I opened the post to see who was winning. A moment later, noticing I had two votes in the poll, I realized the horrible fact: I had voted for myself!

Comments

[hallan.livejournal.com]

So how did you win the first game?

Hallan

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Okay, so there's this persistent problem in Nomics of how you enforce the rules, right? I mean, if you require that some particular player post a sonnet in the comments to the proposal post every week, they can just not do it. So one of the players came up with a rule to penalize breaking the rules (http://community.livejournal.com/nomicide/926.html#rule_335):

If a player has broken a rule, and there is no other explicit penalty outlined in the rules for the infraction, then:

1. The first player to have appropriately informed the player of the potential infraction while there was still an opportunity to correct it is awarded 15 points, and the player who failed to act on the warning and broke the rule anyway is penalized 15 points.
   
2. If the infraction occurred unnoted, and the time of opportunity to comply with the rule has passed, the first player to point out the infraction in a new post is awarded 10 points, and the player who committed the infraction is penalized 10 points. However, if the first player to point out the infraction in a new post is the player who committed it, that player is awarded 20 points for "getting away with it".

These penalties and rewards may only be applied to infractions that occur after the passage of this rule. An infraction is said to occur at the moment that it becomes too late to correct.

It wasn't a bad rule, really - it didn't accomplish what it was intended to, but that's because the player in question had been penalized down to some ridiculously deep negative score and didn't care any more. However, it had a subtle error.

To wit, it penalized each violation of a rule, not each act (or non-act) violating the rules. And one thing that almost all Nomics have in common is Rule 101, which opens, "All players must abide by all rules then in effect..." Hence, any violation of any rule could be re-penalized as a violation of Rule 101 for even more bonus points!

So I waited until my last proposal had been passed, and called in a stack of new rules violations (http://community.livejournal.com/nomicide/31933.html). Which sufficed to pull me over the top.

(Ironically, I almost lost anyway due to a subtle conflict between two other rules, but luckily for me the player who would have benefited decided to let me have the crown.)

Man, your inbox today must be full of nothing but comments from me.

[the-zaniak.livejournal.com]

I have a question:

Just clarify for me - you just repenalised all the people who had previously broken rules (and been penalised in the first place), right? Or did you find them guilty of a new infraction of rules?

No way! One, I send all the LJ stuff to a separate box, and two, active_apathy made one comment too!

[packbat.livejournal.com]

The latter - they'd been penalized for breaking various rules before, but not until I made my play had they been penalized for breaking Rule 101. The effect was to repenalize them for rules they'd already paid for breaking, but, in fact, they had extra rules violations they hadn't been caught for.

[chanlemur.livejournal.com]

See, this is why I restrict myself to writing funny comic strips about talking dogs.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Probably the healthy alternative!