I wrote:
You might want to dig through Pumpkin Patch Nomic's old rules on
letter farms: http://www.nomic.net/deadgames/pumpkinpatch/EdRules.html
Briefly, instead of Equation Factories, they had Word Machines:
1) A word machine is a list of words (in the OED) where each word
consists of the same letters in the same order as the previous
word (if any), except that one letter is added/changed/removed.
2) Word machines are built by spending all the letters in all the
words. Letters can be spent to add them to a machine, or gained
by taking them out of a machine, provided that the machine
continues to obey the standard restriction.
3) The owner of a machine can spend all the letters in the first word
to gain all the letters in the last word.
Here are some more things that I found amusing: Patch Bastard, Critter
Zone, Alternate Universe (a variation of Truthiness), Ogre Nad. They
also had something akin to partnerships, but limited from the start.
