For a while, AckaNomic was at war with Agora. From my (Agoran) perspective, the Ackan NomicWar rules were intended just to be silly. However, included in the rules was a provision penalizing any player of an enemy Nomic (assuming they were also a player of AckaNomic). An Agoran/Ackan conspiracy tried to seize power in Acka by declaring most Ackan players to be Honorary Agoran Players. However, before the conspiracy could complete the takeover, AckaNomic amended the rule to close the loophole.
On Fri 16 July 1999, Tom Mueller (Studge in Acka) sent email to the players of Agora saying, in part:
- I have a one person (in Acka) emperor scam in Acka that requires your help to pull off.
E went on to outline the situation: Acka's rules contained a declaration of war on Agora and required that all Agoran players who were registered in Acka should be thrown in Jail. Players in Jail could not vote. Tom suggested a plan to exploit this by having Agora declare all Ackan (except Tom) as "honourary players" of Agora. When all Ackans were subsequently imprisoned by their own Rules, Tom as the only legitimate voter would make emself Emperor (or "Agoran Governor") of Acka. The idea had merit, and several Agorans expressed their interest.
Things became more serious a few days later when another Ackan player /dev/joe spotted the bug and posted a proposal to fix it. (Tom suspected that 'some Agoran "peace-nik" has informed on us', although this was never proven. /dev/joe may just have spotted the loophole, as Tom had done, but decided to fix it rather than exploit it.) The race was on to make and pass an "Honourary Players" proposal in Agora before the bug-fix could take force in Acka. Tom also conspired with another Ackan to block the bug-fix.
Agoran player Wes quickly submitted the following proposal:
PROPOSAL Honourary Players
Create a Rule with the following text:
The Registrar may cause any person to become an Honourary
Player Without 2 Objections by posting such to the Public Forum
identifying in some unambigous manner the person (or persons)
being honoured in this way. No current Player may ever become
an Honourary Player, and any Honourary Player who becomes a
current Player shall immediately cease to be an Honourary Player.
Honourary Players are not considered to be Players with respect
to the Rules or any other Nomic Entity within Agora Nomic, but
shall be considered Players of Agora Nomic to all persons,
organizations, nomics and other entities which exist entirely outside
of the Agora Nomic Rules
This proposal was quickly adopted, creating Agoran Rule 1904, and the Registrar made all Ackans (except Studge) Honourary Players of Agoran.
Meanwhile a "thread split" in Acka produced confusion over the results of the outcome of the bug-fix proposal. Depending on the outcome of the split, the bug-fix may have passed or failed. Tom requested a recount of the results, and when things seemed to be going eir way, submitted the scam proposal:
Proposal 4295 An Alternative To Democracy Studge Due: Wed Aug 11 13:35:59 1999 Sphere: Anti-Canada Kamikaze Alliance [It has come to my attention that no other player seems to send in "obvious" win attempts or emperor attempts that rely on nothing more than the rampant discordianism of Acka. Therefore, I decided to sacrifice my proposal record and score to regularly offer Acka what it so desperately needs: A Discordian Alternative to the perfidy of Tyrannical Democracy.] Amend Rule 1 by appending to the bottom the following EMPEROR delimited text. EMPEROR The player able to take the name of Studge is able to amend, repeal, and/or create rules, and otherwise modify the ruleset and gamestate as a public action. EMPEROR
What happened next? I don't know. That's where my records end, and I don't remember ever hearing the conclusion. Did the scam succeed?
Hint from an Agoran's partial archive: an amendment of R1904 was later proposed which would remove the second half of the second paragraph. It came with a rationale that "Agora no longer tries to tell other Nomics about reality which, as we saw with Acka, is pointless". Looks like the scam failed, then. R1904 was repealed sometime in 2000 or the first half of 2001.