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PerlNomic - An Experiment in Cooperative Coding
Anonymous Coward writes "PerlNomic is a game consisting of CGI scripts which allow you to submit proposals to alter ... the scripts themselves. All proposals must be approved by a voting process--at least for now. The game is styled after Peter Suber's Nomic. Deep knowledge of perl is helpful, but not required." Nomic is a really excellent game if you like mental puzzles, but somewhat difficult to get off the ground.
The rules for Nomic also have a distinction between immutable and mutable rules, kind of like a file-lock on really important system files, to enforce important restrictions (like a player may quit at any time, the game is not legally binding, you are never forced to perfore an action before being allowed to quit, etc) and keep them protected. However, it is possible to make immutable rules mutable in order for them to be changed, and that's when the game gets really weird.
Also, almost nobody wins by making it to 100 points (by the initial rules of the game). 9 times out of 10 the rules are ammended to allow another winning condition that is either easier or harder to achieve. A lot of times Nomic games are created just to keep them going for as long as possible. In many ways it's like a grown-up blend of AD&D and politics.
Nomic is really fun to mix with other games. Specifically my friends and I would play a mix of Nomic and Monopoly we'd call Nominopoly, and games would last for literally days or weeks. Mixing Nomic with a card game (essentially this is similar to Mao) is fun as well, especially if there's drinking involved.
A good starting place is suber's original nomic game:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/nomic.htm
The idea was to make a game out of making rules for the game. So each
turn, a player proposes a change to the rules, and people vote on it
and stuff. (This is usually done with people in a room writing on
index cards and posting to a bulletin board, though sometimes it is
played over email.) But when players disagree on the interpretation
of a rule, they call to a "judge" (who is just another player) to sort
it out for them.
Now think perl, and think self-modifying code, and think web forms
instead of index cards. No judges needed, because the script either
runs or it doesn't, and whatever the scripts allow are the "rules".
Now think obfuscated code, and hidden loopholes, and unfortunate
little bugs that allow you to get way more points than we expected you
would get when we all voted on your proposal.
That's the idea, anyway.
What a cool way to run a Nomic game!
Now I get it. ... So basically it is a game of politics where you win by beating the system.
For the sake of greater understanding I will point out two things, and then a very not-concise draft-quality discussion of Nomic, which you are free to ignore.
1) Trying to "get" Nomic usually causes one to grow dizzy and pass out. As with most things, you'll eventually discover something about it that you hadn't noticed before, and suddenly "get it" much better than you did before. This cycle of enlightenment won't ever really stop, unless you're, like, the Buddha, or Don Knuth, or something.
2) "A game of politics where you win by beating the system." is a reasonable explaination of what Nomic begins as, when playing by the original rules. It is neither a literal interpretation of the rules, nor a adequate description of the possibilities of what the game may become.
(I point these things out because I find Nomic deeply interesting, not because I think anyone else is wrong for not seeing it this way.)
For instance, winning is itself defined by a rule. In Suber's original Nomic, the initial winning condition is to score 100 points, and another rule says that the winning condition can't be changed to anything other than scoring a number of points.
The literal approach would be to get as many proposals passed as possible, by giving the other players reasons to vote for them, and to be on the winning side of every other vote. This, itself, is a deep game.
The "beat the system" approach (which never fails to excite people new to the game) involves trying to create rule paradoxes or very primitive combos, or invoking loopholes. Often, though, the game devolves into a kind of tug-of-war between people trying to craft incorruptable rules (patching every hole) and people trying to win by some clever master stroke (arguing over what the definition of "is" is). The game is still very "play-to-win", and winning usually means making a number bigger or 'killing off' the other players. It is still zero-sum.
It's beyond this, you start getting into the really fun part. It basically happens when people consciously or unconsciously agree to cooperate. Winning ceases to be the point (even if it is, in the rules) -- it's about continuing play. It becomes non-zero-sum.
This takes some getting used to, but it makes for the most interesting and stimulating games.
What happens when you : eliminate the rule that says the game is over when one player wins? eliminate winning altogether? eliminate voting? eliminate the first rule, the one that says players must abide by the rules? At what point does it stop being a game?
The last example should highlight the fact that what happens is entirely dependent on the players.
If you ever watch group improvisation (comedy, theater, jazz, or just children playing), you might notice that it works because each player accepts what the other players give them.
If Actor A says to Actor B : "Hi, Doctor B!", then B immediately becomes a doctor. If Doctor B says "Hi, Nurse A!" right back, then A becomes a nurse, even if he wanted to be a patient.
When it doesn't work, it's usually because someone rejects what the other players give, or tries to steer the act in another direction. If I touch you and say "Tag, you're it!" and you say "Oh, no I'm not!", well then we've got a pretty crappy game of Tag.
This isn't to say you should just except any change that another player offers -- but rather that your criteria for accepting or rejecting them becomes more about fun, and continuing the game, than than winning or losing. It's like having a conversation, not having an argument.
If you're interested in Nomic conceptually (rather than seeing it as "just" a game to be played) I can reccommend several books:
James Carse's Finite and Infinite Games, Herman Hesse's Magister Ludi, and Peter Suber's own The Paradox of Self-Amend
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
> The initial set is a fully-functional game, with a winning condition and everything
Suber's initial rules are completely unsuited for any online play, because they are serial. If someone quits and doesn't tell anyone, the game hangs forever. Or just doesn't log in for a week. Nothing gets people bored like one "round" in the initial game taking a month. Suber's ruleset also refers to "the player to the left" at least once...
Rule 101 doesn't say you have to obey the rules -- that's inherent in the definition of "rule", and you simply can't make that a rule without infinite regress. Its purpose is that it's a highest-precedence rule that says you must obey all the rules in effect, thus pre-empting a whole class of rules that repeal provisions of other rules without specifically amending or editing those rules themselves. Of course some games do have strange and amusing definitions of "in effect" (Calvinball anyone?)
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