Radio Free Nomic

Player Information


What is Nomic?

Nomic is a game in which changing the rules is a move. In that respect it differs from almost every other game. The primary activity of Nomic is proposing changes in the rules, debating the wisdom of changing them in that way, voting on the changes, deciding what can and cannot be done afterwards, and doing it. Even this core of the game, of course, can be changed.

Peter Suber, creator of Nomic

You can find out more about Nomic in the Nomic FAQ, maintained by Malcolm Ryan, or on the Nomic Bulletin Board. maintained by Doug Chatham.

A game of Nomic is chiefly defined by its rules. You can read the initial and current rules of RFN. Douglas R. Hofstadter recommends The gist of Nomic is to be found in Rule 202, which should be read first. This is particularly important in RFN, and you may wish to examine the changes made to Rule 202 between the start of the game and now. You may also wish to examine Proosals 316 and 318

As Suber says, the most fundamental level of Nomic play takes place by submitting Proosals to alter the rules in some way, and then voting on them. You can read RFN's Proosal Archive, or take a look at our Current Proosals.

Occasionally disagreements or uncertainties about the rules can arise. These are settled by CFJs, which you can read in the CFJ archive.

If you want to play RFN, please, do so. You'll probably need to at least look over the current rules beforehand, but reading the entire proosal or CFJ archive can safely be left until later.


Mailing list

The address for the mailing list is rfn@tic0.net

In order to be added to this list, send mail to the Speaker asking, preferrably nicely. This mailing list is kindly provided for us by Tic0.


Voting

For your vote to be counted, you must send your vote to the Speaker. The recommended way of doing this is to send a message to gmd@earthling.net with the subject RFN: Vote p789 for - only with the correct proosal number and vote. ;-)

While it is also acceptable to email the Speaker with your vote in the body of the message, or with a different subject line, or even over the mailing list, this way is recommended because it not only makes things easier for the Speaker by automagically moving your votes to a separate folder, it also sends you a reply confirming your votes.


Proosals

Proosal is RFN's word for what other, inferior, Nomics refer to as a proposal. A proosal is submitted by sending it to the Speaker. Again, you can do this publicly, but that's just silly.

A proosal, to quote Rule 225, "may contain any number of rule changes or alterations to the game state." So one proosal could, in theory, make separate modifications to all of the rules, create a new rule, and then give every player 1000 Donuts. If you want to create a large number of interconnected new rules, this allows you to do so in one proosal. Which is a Good Thing, generally.

One point to remember when writing a proosal is that you need to specify a name and number for any rules it creates; while this is not, strictly speaking, essential, it does make for a much nicer ruleset. It is even more important to remember to specify that your proosal is in fact creating a rule; failure to do so will result in a proosal which does nothing, and in your proosal being mocked by many players.


CFJs

To initiate a Call For Judgement, send a message to the Speaker asking for a call for judgement on a statement. It is traditional to include some reasoning with this, to give the judge some idea what you're talking about.

At some point, you will be selected to judge a CFJ. When this happens, you have 3 days to either accept or decline judgement by emailing the Speaker. After that, you have up to a week to deliver your judgement (True, False, or Undecided) - this must be sent to the mailing list.


Abbreviations etc.

Oftentimes we abbreviate things in RFN, usually we refer to things by their initials. For example, illuminati fnord is usually abbreviated to if.

Proosals, Calls For Judgment, and Bug-Hunts are often abbreviated too. For example, P666 is Proosal 666, CFJ 123 is Call for Judgment 123. (Actually, Call For Judgement is almost never written out; CFJ is the term usually used).

RFC stands for Request For Comment. This is an informal way of asking people for their comments on a proosal you are thinking of submitting; you may want to do this to see if people will support it, or to iron out any problems in the proosal before you submit it.

APTCR is an abbreviation for As Per The Current Rules - this is not used. I only include it here because, for historical reasons, I find this one quite funny.


Star Wars

As most people will probably know, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace was released in the US on May 19th, 1999, in the UK on July the 16th, 1999. It's pretty much the film of the decade, as you would expect.

You can find more information about Episode I at http://www.starwars.com/. The trailers are available for download there, but a quicker, easier, more seductive way of getting them is to go to http://www.countingdown.com/ and download it from one of the mirrors they list.

Did I mention it was good? Because it is. Especially Darth Maul.


Other Stuff

This page is provided as a sort of FAQ type thing for RFN, and is primarily aimed at new players, or those thinking of joining. If existing players find it useful, then that's good too.

Please feel free to suggest any information, links, or whatever to be put on this page.

If you want to know something else about RFN:
Read the rules
Look on the index page


Go back to the index page
Email the Speaker, illuminati fnord.