BlogNomic History

Round One

When BlogNomic began, it had no Emperor rule or Dynasty structure - this initial Round (which didn't even know it was a Round) had no Ascension Address, and began as a straightforward unthemed Nomic.

Adam, Ben, Craig, Don, Erik, Kevan, Kosta, Lyndse, Mikey, Myke, Noelle, OA, Ole, RavenBlack, Xylen.

The Ruleset: The initial Ruleset was kept on BlogNomic itself as the first entry. Only later was it moved to TWiki.

The GNDT: Kevan adapted a Nomic Data Tracker from an earlier nomic and put it in the sidebar.

Points (Ben 1/14/03) The precursor to Gold, Lead, Power, Life Force, etc. Initially, points were simply a score for the game; Ben later successfully proposed that points be used for money or an equivalent, and they could be transferred to other players at will.

Blogs: Until the First Dynasty of Est, each player was required to maintain a weblog outside of BlogNomic. Weblogs were a major part of BlogNomic in its initial incarnation. Players were encouraged to post regularly.

Karma (Kevan 1/17/03) A Karma rating was given to each player; other players used it to rate "...good or bad Blog entries, or behaviour within the game."

Alliteration Sundays (Raven 1/14/03; Later Glittering Prizes Kevan 1/23/03) Each player was given points for using Alliteration in their own weblogs on Sunday; this later became encouragement to make posts in Haiku or other unusual forms, and the Sunday restriction was changed to once each week.

First Government Proposal (Erik, 2/5/03) Didn't pass, but an interesting one. Created two political parties based on points and karma, and suggested a way to become "Dictator."

The Gameboard (Erik, 2/12/03) Put a game board in the ruleset, which was later moved to another location (now obsolete). The gameboard lasted for quite a long time, and references remained in the ruleset until recently.

After a while, several players seemed to dislike the lack of victory condition, and general agreement favored a fresh start. Myke had the highest point total, and with a donation of 33 points by Kevan, reached 1200, the total suggested in the Dynasty proposal (4/7/03 by Myke, Enacted by Kevan 4/8/03).

Essentially, victory was awarded to the player with the most points, by majority vote, and the concept of Dynasties was created.

Myke, the first Emperor of Blognomic, writes:

Well, Round One... was I think the best. I'm not all about the extremely complex parts of a Nomic, and I preferred it much more when it was simpler. Also, Round One was incredibly rooted in our Blogs, which is a quality that seems to have passed out of BlogNomic. (I noticed the proposal to get rid of daily post points.... was saddened.) Kevan's Kaleidoscope spin-off game might be good as a record, as it is a simplified version of Round One.

Another thing worth mentioning would be that the original RuleSet was kept in BlogNomic itself (as the first entry) and only later on was it moved to the TWiki site. The GameBoard was another side-game that was hosted on TWiki, that might also be noteworthy. Unfortunately, it wasn't really put together well, and repeated attempts to link it to Blogs failed, and it was disbanded. In GameBoard history, the first scam of it, when 2 players (Don and... Erik maybe?) got online and traded turns back and forth (before an establishment of stricter turn-rules) and grabbed the entire board... began heated discussions about the nature of a Nomic, and that the true winner was one who was able to bend the definitions of the rules taken literally and find the scam. I'm not proud to say that I voted with the "thought behind the rule" mindset rather than the "letter of the law" side. Ah, well.