From s2119737@cse.unsw.edu.au Fri Sep 2 21:58:38 1994 Newsgroups: alt.fan.hofstadter,rec.games.abstract From: Malcolm Ross Kinsella Ryan Subject: Nomic FAQ (updated 29 Aug 94) Nntp-Posting-Host: flute09.orchestra.cse.unsw.edu.au Organization: School of CompSci & Eng, Uni Of NSW, Oz Date: Mon, 29 Aug 1994 08:34:23 GMT The NOMIC Frequently Asked Questions List ----------------------------------------- Compiled by: Malcolm Ryan Last Modified: 29 Aug 94 Contents: --------- 0. Where can I get this FAQ? 1. What is Nomic? 2. Where can I get the rules? 3. Is Nomic being played on the Net? Where? 4. What is this talk of Meta-Nomic? 5. What is/was Nomic World? Where is it now? 6. What other Nomic-like games are there? 7. Books and references. 8. Acknowledgements. ANSWERS: -------- 0. Where can I get this FAQ? This FAQ is can be FTP'ed from ftp.cse.unsw.edu.au in the directory /pub/doc/nomic/FAQ. An HTTP version also exists at: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~s2119737/nomic-faq.html The http version of this file is probably more up-to-date, but I will strive to keep the two in roughly the same state. Any sites interested in mirroring this file are welcome to do so. Please contact me so that I can include you in this section. ---- 1. What is Nomic? Asking the question "What is Nomic?" is like asking the question "What is a hacker?" or "What is Zen?" - people tend to get all mystical and cryptic, and you end up with no real idea at all. :) Nomic is a game, and it is a lot of FUN! Unlike most games, the rules of nomic are not written in stone. In fact, the object of the game is to make changes to the rules of the game. Players start off following some "initial ruleset", which dictates how the rules can be changed. Once a rule change has been made, players then follow this new rule set. Most importantly, the rules about how rule changes are made can themselves be changed! This is where it tends to get mystical, because as a result of these rule changes, the game you are playing will change from moment to moment. The nature of the rule changing mechanism might change from democratic to capitalist, to communist, to whatever. Or the ability to chnage the rules might be removed entirely - perhaps the game will turn into chess, or tag, or snap. The future of the game is entirely in the hands of the players. Most nomic enthusiasts seem to enjoy playing nomic in order to experience the possibilities of different kinds of lawmaking processes, and also to exercise their ingenuity in trying to discover loopholes in the rules which give unusual results - mostly to the benefit of the player. (This is called "scamming", and is lots of fun! :) >> In my commentary on the game (only in my book? or also in SciAm?) I distinguish 'procedural' from 'substantive' games. In substantive games, players play to earn points and win. In procedural games, they try to tie the rules into knots, either for the logical fun of it or in order to win by paradox rather than by points. -- Peter Suber For the record, Nomic was conceived and designed by Peter Suber, and first published in Douglas Hofstadter's column "Metamagical Themas" in Scientific American in 1982, and later in Hofstadter's book, by the same name. Peter revised the rules and published them in his own book, "The Paradox of Self Amendment" in 1990. See section 6 below, for references. ---- 2. Where can I get the rules? * via FTP: Peter Suber's original rules set is available at ftp.cse.unsw.edu.au, in the directory: /pub/doc/nomic/rules.txt If anyone has any other Nomic-related files which they would like to be put up for FTP, just mail me and I'll see if I can include them at this site. * via WWW: Michael Norrish has a lot of Nomic related information in a World Wide Web page at: http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~trost/nomic/ (actually, this is a mirror of Michael's page, kept by Bill Trost, for use outside New Zealand. New Zealanders may prefer to access the original, at: http://www.comp.vuw.ac.nz/~michael/games/nomic/) This page (currently) includes: - Suber's initial Nomic rule set. - Rules & other information for Agora and Tabula email games. - Information regarding Nomic World MUD, including the intial rules set and history files. There are also various WWW pages dedicated to individual online games. These are listed with the games in 3 below. ---- 3. Is Nomic being played on the Net? Where? There are currently, to my knowledge, four Nomic games being played by email (sometimes called ENomic) at various sites on the Net. Their players describe them as: * Agora (aka Yoyo) Agora Nomic is the largest and most dynamic game of Nomic ever played. It has been in existence since July 1993, and since that time has voted on proposals at an average rate of about 50 per month. At time of writing (August 1994), there are about 190 active rules, and this number is growing, albeit quite slowly, since most proposals now concern themselves with amending or repealing previous rules. The "feel" of play in Agora Nomic is somewhat akin to being a member of parliament or congress, with all the social interaction which that implies. Hence Agora Nomic can seem formidable to the inexperienced player. However, this is largely offset by the uniquely welcoming and encouraging attitude Agora Nomic and its constituent players take towards new participants. Also, please note that the address of the game has now changed. Our new address is and new players may subscribe to this list by sending mail to with "subscribe nomic-discussion" in the body in the body of the message. We are using as a backup, but all mail should be directed to teleport.com. The official mail (proposals, rule sets, phone books) are distributed on the mailing list, which can be subscribed to, by sending "subscribe nomic-official" to . * Tabula (aka Reed) We are conducting an dignified Nomic game at a relatively leisurely pace, with the intent of giving the participants plenty of time to take care of the other details of their life (work, classes, whatever). The game is designed to continue indefinitely, with Speakerhood passed on to a winner whenever some players receive 100 points (at the moment). Many participants have stated an interest in modifying the ruleset simply for exploring the design of rulesets. Subscriptions to the mailing list and the Ruleset may be obtained by mailing nomic-request@reed.edu . We are currently limited to <= 8 players; to join, listen to the list for a while, and then petition the current players for entry. * Fantasy Rules Committee (aka frc) The Fantasy Rule Game is a Nomiclike Game which is, like Nomic, played via a server. People propose Rules of which the only requirement is that they are consistent with all valid earlier Rules. The last Player succeeding in posting a valid Rule wins. Of course the Game stands and falls with a little bit of cooperation. A (first) Rule like "Rules are only valid if posted by me" is legal, winning and No Fun. Rounds may last from either a few Rules to more than 30. The latter record was set for a Round were the theme was the creation of a new language. Other themes were Scrabble, Logical puzzles, Limericks. More than 20 Rounds have been played since the game was invented about one and a half year ago as a `Committee' on the defunct Nomic Mud. If you want to play, you have to subscribe to the server: a message to will do. The subject doesn't matter and the body should contain a line like "subscribe frc". If the body contains "help" on a line of its own you'll get instructions. If you send mail to you'll get back instructions specific to frc. The server itself has for address . Any message sent there will bounce to all people subscribed to the list. For more info, check out anonymous ftp at ftp.nvg.unit.no:/pub/frc. * Valparasio (aka valpo) c/o: Paul Nord Our nomic game has been running for about a year and a half now. Going on the 30th proposal. It started independently of the knowlege of any other game. It is therefore properly called "The One True Nomic". For information about our game, I suppose that you can write to me. None of the other players want their names disclosed at this time. The game operates out of Valparaiso University in Valparaiso Indiana. Initialy it was started by a few VU alums and some students. The rules are not made public. We have a shared account that we use to hold the rules. Valpo now has a WWW page at http://kepler.valpo.edu/nomic/index.html * Gnomic Information provided by Garth Rose (Ambassador for Agora Nomic): I have made contact with another eNomic through our own former Member and PROSIRUP Founder Delphin. It is called Gnomic, and its address is gnomic@FHI-Berlin.mpg.de. One subscribes via gnomic-request@ the same address by sending: HELP SUB gnomic REV gnomic in the body of the message. There is a gnomic ftp site at denver.rz-berlin.mpg.de. It has the Ruleset, among other things. It's in German - enjoy! There is also a gnomic WWW page at: http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/gnomic/gnomic.info.html. * Fascist (According to Scott de Brestian & Chuck Carroll) This may be common knowledge for all I know but while browsing the WWW today I found a Nomic-like game called Fascist. It's really kind of an anti-Nomic. They have an Emperor, and he alone decides what rules get adopted. Sounds like a good candidate to declare war on. Anyway, the e-mail address given is Denis Howe if the Ambassador or anyone else wants to look it up. They have a pretty complete WWW page, with the current Rules and everything (and even proposal histories) at: http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/fascist/fascist.html * Ed McGuire's E-mail Nomic Ed McGuire has started a new E-mail Nomic game, using Suber's initial Rule set. E-mail him for more info. ---- 4. What is this talk of Meta-Nomic? With the recent proliferation of Nomic games online, some people have begun talking about starting a game of "Meta-Nomic" - that is, a game of Nomic in which each of the existing games act as "players". The idea is loosely based around the mapping of nomic games to nations in the real world. So Meta-Nomic would make some provisions for trade and negotiation between "nations", somewhat like the UN. Of course, the most attractive thing to most advocates of Meta-Nomic is the possibility of Inter-Nomic WAR. ---- 5. What is/was Nomic World? Where is it now? Nomic World was a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) run by Geoff Wong and Steve Gardner at Monash Uniersity, in Australia. Its sole purpose was to run an extended game of Nomic. In its heyday, NW had over thirty players, >from places all around the world, making it the largest (known) game of Nomic in the world! Nomic world lasted for about 9 months, before the wizards were forced to shut it down due to system problems and lack of time to administer it. In that time, several hundred rules were made, and multiple scams pulled off (with various degrees of success.) To find out more about Nomic World, read Steve Gardner's excellent game summaries, which are part of Michael Norrish's WWW page. (See Q2 above) Nomic world is currently in limbo. There has been some discussion of it being resurrected at another site. If anyone is interested in doing this, the old MUD code can be provided, and I would gladly give you any assistance I can. Please email me. >>I consulted the 'framers' of this game and suggested an innovation to the initial set of rules which (I believe) they adopted. Instead of having players propose rules in serial, they should do so in parallel, and then occaisonally vote on some of the accumulated proposals. That would not only permit a much larger number of players to participate, but it would simulate a legislative body better than the original rule set. -- Suber The initial rules from Nomic World are available for FTP from ftp.cse.unsw.edu.au in the file: /pub/doc/nomic/nwrules.txt Steve Gardner's summaries of the history of Nomic world are also at that site, in the file: summary.txt ---- 6. What other Nomic-like games are there? [If anyone knows of any others, I would love to include them. - MALCOLM] * Bartok (aka Bartog?) A card game, which begins very much like Uno, except that each time a player wins a round, e gets to invent a new rule. Generally, new rules are restricted by the players' sense of fairness, and meta-rules are not allowed. The game is complicated by the initial rule that "If a player asks a question, e must pick up a card." This game is meant to be very silly, and can be lots of fun. I have put the a file containing the initial rules, and some suggested extras which I have played successfully in the past, up for ftp at ftp.cse.unsw.edu.au: pub/doc/nomic/bartog.txt [Research is currently underway as to the origin of this game, and the true spelling of its name. Any info would be appreciated. - MALCOLM] * Mao Mao is similar to Barto[gk] but with the following important variations: 1) New players are not told the initial rule set (which is slightly different >from the Bartok one, and varies slightly depending on which group is playing it) 2) When someone goes out, they invent a new rule, which they do not tell the other players. Gareth Rees has made a WWW page containing "the public rules of the game MAO" at: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/gdr11/mao-public.txt ---- 7. Books and references. * Title: "The Paradox of Self-Amendment, A Study of Logic, Law, Omnipotence, and Change." Author: Peter Suber Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing Date: 1990 ISBN: 0-8204-1212-0 Description (by Suber): PSA is the first (so far the only) book-length study of self-reference problems in law. It focuses on one such problem from American constitutional law, but in the discussion of it ranges widely over other problems and other jurisdictions. That one central problem is whether the amendment clause of the constitution can be used to amend itself. Alf Ross, a notable jurist and logician, argued that it cannot. I argue that it can, and show in addition that self-amendment has frequently occurred in fact. In the process of showing the permissibility of self-amendment, I discuss much of the law of the U.S. federal amending process, the theological paradox of omnipotence, the nature of paradox, legal rationality, and legal change. Nomic is Appendix 3 of the book. I can't recommend that every avid Nomic player buy the book, for it costs $70 US. But I can recommend that they persuade their local library to do so! The book would be helpful for anyone who took a serious theoretical interest in the game or in the logic of self-amendment. I can recommend this essay-length synopsis of the main argument of the book: Peter Suber, "The Paradox of Self-Amendment in American Constitutional Law," _Stanford Literature Review_, vol. 7, nos. 1-2 (Spring-Fall 1990) pp. 53-78. * Title: "About Nomic: A Heroic Game That Explores the Reflexivity of the Law" Author: Douglas R. Hofstadter Published: Scientific American, 246 (June 1982) pp16-28 Description: An early version of the rules, taken from the unpublished text of "The Paradox of Self-Amendment", with explanation and commentary by Suber about the purpose of the game and the possible directions it could take. * Title: "METAMAGICAL THEMAS: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern" Author: Douglas R. Hofstadter Publisher: Penguin Books ISBN: 0-14-008534-3 Description: A reprint of the his Scientific American articles, along with some extra discussion and feedback from readers. ---- 8. Acknowledgements. I'd like to thank the following in helping me to construct this FAQ. Karl Anderson Paul Bolchover Scott de Brestian Chuck Carroll Doug Chatham Steve Gardner Peter Hollo Oerjan Johansen Ed McGuire Nelson Minar" Michael Norrish Gareth Rees Garth Rose Cameron Simpson Peter Suber Bill Trost