Nomic

Nomic is a game that can be played in person or over the Internet in which the rules of the game are subject to change based on player's actions. Usually, at least initially, the rules are changed by democratic voting. "Nomic" actually refers to a large number of games based on the initial ruleset laid out by Peter Suber[?] in his book The Paradox of Self-Amendment. The game is in some ways modeled on modern government systems, and demonstrates that any rule-changing system can get into a situation in which the laws are contradictory or insufficient to determine what is legal.

Although the victory condition in Suber's initial ruleset is the accumulation of 100 points by the roll of a die, players change the rules to such a degree that points can become irrelevant in favor of a true currency, or make victory an unimportant concern. Any loophole[?] in the ruleset, however, may allow the first player to discover it the chance to pull a "scam" and modify the rules to win the game. Complicating this process is the fact that Suber's initial ruleset allows for the appointment of Judges to preside over issues of rule interpretation.

The above paragraph refers to Peter Suber's initial ruleset specifically because not only does almost every aspect of the rules get changed in some way over the course of a game of Nomic, but also myriads of variants exist: some that have themes, some that begin with a single rule, some that begin with a dictator instead of a democratic process to validate rules, some that combine Nomic with an existing game (like Monopoly or Chess), and even one in which the players are games of Nomic themselves. Even more unusual variants include a ruleset in which the rules are hidden from players' view, and a game which, instead of allowing voting on rules, splits in to two subgames, one with the rule, and one without it.

One offshoot of a now-dufunct Nomic (Nomic World) is the Fantasy Rules Committee (http://www.sir-toby.com/archives/FRC/), which adds every legal rule submitted by a player to the ruleset until no more rules are possible. Then, all the "fantasy rules" are repealed and the game begins again.

Internet Nomic games in English use Spivak pronouns frequently so that the rules can refer to indefinite players easily without using "he or she".

Games of Nomic sometimes last for a very long time - Agora has been going on continuously ever since 1993. According to [1] (http://www.dfw.net/~ccarroll/agora/), "Agora itself was started following the collapse of another nomic, Nomic World, which was the first known MUD-based nomic."

External links

• A Nomic thesis on the "Mousetrap" (http://www.nomic.net/~nomicwiki/index.php/MousetrapThesis), published by a player of Agora demonstrates the complicated legal, cultural, and psycological elements of Nomic.
• The Nomic page of Peter Suber (http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/nomic.htm), among other things, contains a very long list of Nomic games past and present.
• nomic.net (http://www.nomic.net/) contains a Nomic Wiki, the Nomic FAQ, a Nomic Bulletin Board, and a variety of other resources.
• Nomic card game "Dvorak" (http://www.dvorakgame.co.uk)