Nomic and Universalis

[xiombarg]

Are either of you, Mike or Ralph, familiar with Nomic? Were you familiar with it when you designed Universalis? What about anyone else who's played Univeralis -- any of you played Nomic as well?

The reason I mention it is as a self-modifying game, Nomic and its variants might have some ideas that can be turned into Gimmicks.

(I've also added a mention of Univeralis to the Nomic Wiki in the NomicLikeGames area, since I think the currency system of Universalis could be an interesting add-on to Nomic.)

I realized when considering this that my love of Nomic is one of the reasons I loved Univeralis -- I love being able to change and establish ground-rules, like in Nomic, and I love tinkering with settings -- and Univeralis allows me to do both.

[Valamir]

Actually, I'd never heard of it at all until well after Uni was in print.  I think it was...Jonathan Walton or perhaps JB Bell who pointed out its similarities to Nomic to me.

Those similiarities are probably a good thing, in so far that there's an established base of people who enjoy this sort of play that I wasn't aware of.  May even be why sales have been so good.

[Mike Holmes]

It might have been JB or Nadev who turned us on to Nomic, I can't remember either.

Anything strike you right off as potential Gimmicks, Loki?

Mike

[xiombarg]

Anything strike you right off as potential Gimmicks, Loki?

Well, I'm just brainstorming here, but here are three off the top of my head...

* There's the meta-Gimmick of making some Gimmicks more important than others. That is, you could have a Gimmick where you can designate a Tenet as highly important to what everyone is doing (perhaps through unanimous vote), and that Tenet counts much more in Challenges than normal. Nomic's "immutable" and "mutable" rules bring this to mind.

* The Polynomic Ruleset inspires an idea: An "Alternate Universe" Gimmick. This would require some serious recordkeeping, but imagine if, at the end of a scene, you could split off a "mirror scene" for X number of coins, which starts out the same way (same Time, Place, and initial Components), but can then be taken in a different direction. Players can then continue the story's timeline from the original scene or from the "alternate" scene. (I'd probably make it so whoever splits off an "alternate" timeline becomes the record-keeper for that timeline.)

This would allow for multiple stories -- with multiple endings -- all drawing on common Components. Perhaps there could be further Gimmicks for "pruning" alternate timelines people have lost interest in.

For some reason, I think this might be very useful in a Unversalis game based on comic books. ;-D

* Instead of the regular Challenge system, how about this, based on Rule 212 of the original Nomic ruleset?

Judgement Gimmick. [Replaces the Challenge system.]

If players disagree about the legality of a move or the interpretation or application of a Gimmick or Fact, then the player who spent Coins before the current player's turn is to is to be the Judge and decide the question. Disagreement for the purposes of this rule may be created by the insistence of any player. This process is called invoking Judgment.

When Judgment has been invoked, no one may Interrupt or pass the turn without the consent of a majority of the other players.

The Judge's Judgment may be overruled only by a unanimous vote of the other players taken before the next Coin is spent. If a Judge's Judgment is overruled, then a player chosen at random from those remaining (i.e. not the one of the previous Judges or the player on whom Judgement had been called) becomes the new Judge for the question, and so on. If all Judges are overrulled, well, then, the player on whom Judgement was called can continue without further Judgements regarding that action.

New Judges are not bound by the decisions of old Judges. New Judges may, however, settle only those questions on which the players currently disagree and that affect the completion of the turn in which Judgment was invoked. All decisions by Judges shall be in accordance with all the Facts and Gimmicks then in effect; but when Tenets and Facts are silent, inconsistent, or unclear on the point at issue, then the Judge shall consider game-custom and the spirit of the story before applying other standards.

Okay, it's a bit long-winded, being based on Nomic and all, but the idea here is to create a system of authority not based on Coins, which could be interesting. If you want to bring the Coins back in, perhaps players can bid to become the Judge for a dispute.

[Valamir]

Interesting.  Might be a way of bringing a pseudo GM into the game the way some other gimmicks try to set up a more traditional PC.

I'll throw that up next time I do an update to the site.

[xiombarg]

Interesting.  Might be a way of bringing a pseudo GM into the game the way some other gimmicks try to set up a more traditional PC.

Yeah, that was sort of the idea. I guess my feeling is that sometimes Facts should weigh more than they do mechanically (i.e. not all Facts are equal), and it's nice to empower a human being to make that tough judgement call. I imagine it would come up more often in "campaign" play.

[Mike Holmes]

One could, I suppose, declare a Fact twice with all that it would imply.

Mike

[xiombarg]

One could, I suppose, declare a Fact twice with all that it would imply.

Sure, but what if you want the Fact to count twice only in some situations, and not in others? That is, not only are Facts unequal -- but unequal in different contexts.

There's nothing wrong with the way Universalis does it now. It's just some people might pefer an alternative. That's the whole point of a Gimmick, right?

[Mike Holmes]

Absolutely. I just like to look for ways to use the rules unaltered to do things. For example, by declaring to different but overlapping facts, you might be able to accomplish what you're proposing above. For example, Bob is Mayor of Townsville, and Bob was elected Mayor last year both could be used if someone did something that would contradict his position. OTOH, if someone only stated that Bob was elected many years ago, only the one would be pertinent.

That all said, I get what you're going for. In fact that's exactly the same sort of ideas that I get from looking at Nomic; means for making more custom detailed methods to enforce things. As such I'd definitely encourage people to check it out, and emply whatever floats their boat.

Mike

[Tony Irwin]

One could, I suppose, declare a Fact twice with all that it would imply.

Sure, but what if you want the Fact to count twice only in some situations, and not in others? That is, not only are Facts unequal -- but unequal in different contexts.

There's nothing wrong with the way Universalis does it now. It's just some people might pefer an alternative. That's the whole point of a Gimmick, right?

Mike made a point once that really stunned me and opened my eyes to how Facts work - the only weight they have is what people choose to give them through challenging statements that oppose the Fact.

So if I create a fact, elves have pointy ears, that fact has no impact on the game until someone challenges to stop someone creating an elf without pointy ears. My Fact has no weight until someone challenges an attempt to ignore it. You can have bunches of facts and tenets that get completely ignored in the story you're creating, either because its too cool for people to want to challenge, or they've got no coins to challenge with.*

The idea of a judge really sounds interesting - can you give me a play example where you might have preferred that method?

* If you ensure that you always have coins equal to half of the sum of all other players' coins (and plus 1 extra) then you'll always be able to give weight to your fact.

[xiombarg]

The idea of a judge really sounds interesting - can you give me a play example where you might have preferred that method?

I've only gotten to play Universalis once, cut me some slack here...

As I said before, I was just brainstorming some ideas from Nomic. And I find it interesting that no one's commented on the "Alternate Universe" Gimmick, which I find much more interesting than the Judge thing which, as Ralph says, is more or less bringing back in a light version of a standard RPG GM.

I mean, even during the one time I played Universalis, I found myself thinking: "What if that scene had gone differently?"

[Valamir]

The alternate universe thing is pretty intriguing actually.  It would be pretty easy as long as you were very anal about record keeping.  You'd need a scene record which basically numbered every scene and kept track of the major events and such of the scene.  Every Component record then would have to be set up so that each of the purchased Traits were numbered as to what scene they occured in.

At whatever point you wanted to rewind to an earlier scene and see what happens in an alternate universe you'd copy all of the Component records, leaving off all of the traits that happened in later scenes.  You'd copy all of the scene records stoping at the last common scene, label all of that Universe B, and continue play; setting all the Universe A stuff aside.

An interesting application I think would be for one group to play a game halfway through, long enough so that the main characters and overall plot line are pretty well established.  Then stop and copy all of the above records and had them out to 2 or 3 OTHER groups of players each of whom (including themselves) then finish play from that point.  

It would be quite interesting to see where play  leads the respective stories...where they are similiar and where they are different.

[xiombarg]

An interesting application I think would be for one group to play a game halfway through, long enough so that the main characters and overall plot line are pretty well established.  Then stop and copy all of the above records and had them out to 2 or 3 OTHER groups of players each of whom (including themselves) then finish play from that point.  

It would be quite interesting to see where play  leads the respective stories...where they are similiar and where they are different.

This is exactly the sort of thing I was thinking of, yes.

I imagine some sort of electronic storage method would make this a lot easier, as you imply. A Wiki, perhaps. Wasn't a Wiki used for online Universalis at some point?

[Mike Holmes]

And still is:
http://www.lostthoughts.org/byzantinedesigns/index.php

Also Nev is doing another project on that server via Wiki using freeform  that works exactly as you describe it. I have no doubt that the two could be combined.

Mike