Nomic

Rules are what you make of them (and the introduction of Tentative Tuesday)

After an early burst to get this project off the ground, I publish one article a week. Friday, hopefully at 1pm.¹ Why Friday? It just felt right. Why once a week? Uh, ditto. That’s the pace I think I can maintain. But that pattern is not a rule.

Not that rules are always sacrosanct. I’ve gotten rules wrong, sometimes vastly improving my experience but usually resulting in an unplayable mess. I play many games with variant rules. Rules are a social contract.

Although ‘construct’ might be a better word (for games at least). We play by the rules because we’ve agreed that makes it fun. Memorably while trying a new, obscure CCG one other player had perhaps eight copies of the same card, where four was the limit.

When called on it, he simply said “I don’t follow that rule.”

Rules are a funny thing. Perhaps that’s why a game about modifying the rules was invented by a philosopher.

Nomic is simply words, so no picture is really great. The rules of Nomic were first published in this book, so that’s the picture. Image by BGG User “pronoblem”

Peter Suber’s Nomic is designed to explore aspects of legal systems, in particular amending the rules.

What is a rule to people with the power to change the rules? Article V of the US constitution states the process for an amendment. Can you amend Article V? Suber discusses this in The Paradox of Self-Amendment, which I haven’t read. Thankfully he also summarized the book in a speech, but the discussion of this is (thankfully) beyond our scope. We’re here for the games.

Nomic is nothing more than a set of words that describe the rules. (You’ll need a die and a scratchpad to track points, but also a bunch of paper to track the rules changes).

Nomic has immutable rules (that cannot be changed) and mutable rules. Each turn, the current player proposes a new rule or an amendment to existing rules. Players vote on it, and it passes or not. The the active rolls a die and gets that many points, then the next player gets a turn.

100 points wins. Suber deliberately made it an annoyingly high number to encourage players to propose alternate victory conditions … which brings up an interesting point. Why would We vote for a rule likely to give You a victory?

The more interesting way to win is to create a paradox and be unable to finish your turn.

Because of it’s nature, Nomic works incredibly well as a play by email (or blog, or discord, or website) game. It’s all words and votes. (Points are easily trackable).

Now, Nomic might be the most obscure game I’ve written about. Partially that’s because it is never sold in stores, you hear about it via word of mouth. I have in fact played a game² but if you haven’t … well, you are in the vast majority.

And Nomic hasn’t really spawned a big following (at least among gamers who aren’t primarily legislators, legal theorists or philosophers). Do I really consider it a candidate for The 100 Most Influential Games of the 20th Century?

No, although it has spawned a number of variants, but those are just as obscure. Maybe I’m wrong and there’ll be an outpouring of votes for it.

If nothing else it is one of the more interesting experimental games of last century, and I wanted to make note of it, even if I think that it shouldn’t be on the list. To that end I’ve started “Tentative Tuesdays,” where I put up a game that I recognize probably won’t make the cut. Not every (or even most) Tuesdays. Just now and then, when the mood strikes me.

There’s no rule against it.

Update — See Rick Heli’s comment below for some games I had forgotten that might have been influenced by Nomic.

1. Although I have misread a button and published at 1am more than once, and sometimes forgot to set the time, so it was the same time of day as when I hit publish.

2. Or perhaps two, when I was in grad school and had plenty of time because I skipped classes to a level that I would not have dared to reveal prior to retirement.