Nomic
Nomic is a genre of games whose rules are self-referential and can be changed by players.
The original initial rule set was formulated by Peter Suber in his book The Paradox of Self-Amendment . Above all, it specifies how rules can be changed. He lays down some "immutable" rules and some mutable rules, including the goal of the game to win 100 "points". Since the rule that determines that an immutable rule cannot be changed, but is itself mutable, ultimately every rule of the game can be changed.
In addition to explicit rules, the aim of many Nomic games is to “win” the game and the implicit rule that the player who introduces and enforces a rule change that creates a paradox - that is, leads to rules contradicting each other - wins. A player who is the first to recognize a paradox that has existed for a long time also wins.
There is also a variant of playing Nomic, where you start without any rules and only get involved with the first rules in the course of the game.
Nomic can be played synchronously like a normal board game or asynchronously via e-mail , in wikis or as a postal game . Many games run for years.
Legacy games
A special form of commercial Nomic games are known as legacy games. In these, the game material is destroyed in the course of the game, modified with stickers and additional material is added in further rounds, so that the game and its rules change in each game. Well-known titles are Pandemic Legacy , Risk Evolution and Charterstone.
literature
- Douglas R. Hofstadter : Nomic: a game that explores back-reference in the legal system. In: Spectrum of Science. August 1982, no. 8, p. 8 (also contained in Hofstadter's collection of columns Metamagical Themes , German Metamagicum ).
Web links
- Appendix 3 of "The Paradox of Self-Amendment"
- Starting rules by Peter Suber (German translation)
- Revised German Nomic rules
- Formalizing Nomic: working on a theory of communication with modifiable rules of procedure (Gerard AW Vreeswijk, University of Limburg, Department of Computer Science)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Legacy Games. Spieletreff Duisburg, accessed on March 26, 2018 .
- ↑ Legacy. BoardGameGeek, accessed March 26, 2018 .