Concept

Nomic

Summary
Nomic is a game created in 1982 by philosopher Peter Suber, the of which include mechanisms for changing those rules, usually beginning by way of democratic voting. The game demonstrates that in any system where rule changes are possible, a situation may arise in which the resulting laws are contradictory or insufficient to determine what is in fact legal. Its name derives from the Greek for "law", νόμος (nomos), because it models (and exposes conceptual questions about) legal systems and the problems of legal interpretation. All aspects of Nomic are variable; the players can vote to change the rules to whatever sort of game they want to play. The initial was designed by Peter Suber, and was first published in Douglas Hofstadter's "Metamagical Themas" column in the June 1982 edition of Scientific American. Hofstadter discussed Suber's book The Paradox of Self-Amendment, in which Suber defined the game thus: 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. Initially, gameplay occurs in clockwise order, with each player taking a turn. In that turn, they propose a change in rules that all the other players vote on, and then roll a die to determine the number of points they add to their score. If this rule change is passed, it comes into effect at the end of their round. Any rule can be changed with varying degrees of difficulty, including the core rules of the game itself. As such, the gameplay may quickly change. The game can be played face-to-face with as many written notes as are required, or through any of a number of Internet media (usually an archived mailing list or Internet forum). Under Suber's initial ruleset, rules are either mutable or immutable.
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