Subject: The PaulWay Guide To Mornington Nomic

From: "Wayper, Paul" <WayperP@p...>
Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 09:07:41 +1000

The PaulWay Guide to Mornington Nomic

Or

Across the Jubilee with Map, Rules and bits of string.

Introduction:

Mornington Crescent is, as any fule kno, that quintessential brain-stretcher
popularised by the BBC radio show I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. For those who
still live in daub-and-wattle huts in the middle of Peru, the essence of
Mornington Crescent is to get to the eponymous station by moving along the
London Underground. The rules can be difficult to find at best, since most
libraries refuse to stock them and the internet site of the International
Mornington Crescent Society is often completely absent from the internet
entirely.
Nomics, on the other hand, are a generic form of meta-game popularised by
Douglas Hofstadter. Their basic mode of play is to modify the rules of the
game; winning is often achieved by putting the game in an unplayable state.
The more formalised Nomics start with a body of rules defining how players
go about changing things; they often involve a Speaker to co-ordinate the
entire process. Often, in Nomics, a 'sub-game' will develop which can
affect the winning conditions.
Mornington Nomic is the combination of those two concepts. Started back in
??? by Kevan Davis, it was a (startlingly successful) attempt to codify the
more popular rules of MC and play conventions into an actual playable game.
It has evolved many times, from a very blunt and often very confusing game
into one with a surprising amount of regularity. This has come at the cost
of having almost 300KB of rule documents - an array bewildering even for
experts in MN.
This document is an attempt to explain the basics of play and afford new
players to MN an easy way to get a grip on how to actually play the game
without having to learn the entire game. Please forward all comment on
whether I have actually succeeded in this aim to myself, PaulWay, using the
address "paulway@e...".
Document History
Version	Date	Author	Changes
0.1	15/5/2000	PaulWay	Initial document drafting - wrote the
Introduction.

How it works

The game of MN functions on two fronts:
The Nomic:
The Nomic side of MN is where new rules get drafted, proposed, voted on, and
(if they pass) added into the ruleset. The rules recognise specific objects
or titles when they are capitalised; when a term is capitalised it is
because the person who proposed the rule wanted it to be recognised as being
governed by a specific set of rules. This is not necessarily always the
case, and references to a player (as distinct from a Player) may still be
governed by rules. It all depends on context.
People are split into three groups, the Speaker, other Players in MN, and
everyone else. Only the former two are actually playing MN - everyone else
just watches on. The Speaker has a specific set of duties set out by the
rules, among which are the collection and distribution of Proposals and the
publishing of the results of the voting. Section 0.3 covers the rules
specifically relating to Players and the Speaker, but most of the ruleset is
about how the Speaker, the Players, and the Rules interact.
In the Nomic side, time is divided up into Weeks. Most Nomic actions take a
week to perform - if you propose something this week, it's published next
week. If you vote this week, the proposal passes or fails next week. There
are a few actions which can be taken instantly, such as the Speaker
proposing an Emergency Proposal to cure some particular immediate problem
with the rules; most of the time you wait for a week.
Players make Proposals according to Section 0.4, in which they propose to
make changes to the rules. To make a Proposal, you draft one up and send it
in an email to the Speaker, who sends it out with all the others at the
start of the next Week. The Subject field of the email should start with
the words "MN: Proposal" otherwise the Speaker may not accept it (they can
be lenient if they're not pressed for time). A general guide to formatting
a Proposal is:

Proposal - The name of the Proposal [Proposal Type (see Rule 0.4.1)]
The body of the Proposal. This is where you write what you want to happen
if the Proposal passes. In the case of an enactment, you just write the
body text of the new rule. If otherwise, you write a slightly more verbose
description of what you want to occur. Try to be specific rather than
general, because ambiguity is a big problem and we try to avoid it where
possible.
{In curly braces, you can insert whatever 'commentary' text you want. This
has no effect on the Proposal but is a way of communicating your thoughts
and rationales for this Proposal to the other Players when they vote on it.
You can include your name if you want to, but it's not necessary.}

When you vote, you do so by sending an email to the Speaker. Once again,
you should put "MN: Votes" in the sart of the Subject line so that the
Speaker knows what to do with it. On each line, include the proposal number
and your vote. I use the form:

Proposal 391: FOR
Proposal 392: PASS
Proposal 393: AGAINST

If you don't vote on a proposal, you're assumed to be passing. However,
each proposal must have a number of votes on it otherwise it doesn't reach
quorum. This means that if the number of people who don't vote (abstain) on
a proposal is larger than the number of people who voted (even if they
PASSed) then the proposal is automatically rejected. This is to avoid the
situation where a player takes advantage of some lull in the proceedings to
put a controversial proposal into the works and then get eir cronies to vote
for it while the majority are asleep. In practice, this rarely happens, and
people just forget to vote.
Voting is something you should do every week.
In general, the Nomic side exists to provide a medium for adding to the
rules for MC. It's generally frowned upon to try and enact Nomic rules
which affect MC states - e.g. enacting a rule which gives a specific player
(e.g. yourself) three Gold Tokens. Also frowned upon is trying to put the
Nomic in an unplayable state - again because the Nomic side is merely a
vehicle for organising changes to the MC rules.

The Games of Mornington Crescent
Each Game is embodied in a Game State Document (GSD). It consists of a
header which details the 'state of play', a series of Turns submitted by
Players, and mail footers from both the list and the player's own footers -
these are ignored for the purposes of evaluating the GSD. Each GSD
comprises a single game of MC and resides on one individual discussion list
on Egroups, which is used exclusively for the purpose of posting discussion
related to that game alone.

Paul Wayper -- DPI IS&S ITO Computer Systems Officer
SigClean 1.5a prevents all errors in transcription, transmission, and
reception of eMail, destroys sig and email viruses, and stops flames.
Report all bugs to the author. SigClean is FreeWare. (c) 1998-9 PJW

---

From: gthoele@G...
Date: 16 May 2000 17:37:00 +0100

Hallo Wayper,!

Very fine. I could probably be interested in playing MN as a new player, 
and as there seems to be a bit of activity now...
>still live in daub-and-wattle huts in the middle of Peru, the essence
By the way, i live in the middle of nowhere, a 3500 people german rural 
village.

--
Gunnar Thöle