I'd really appreciate some feedback on the following, in particular
whether the ###-delimited section should be removed or not, but also
generally.
--- A PLAYERS' GUIDE TO THE GAME OF AGORA ---
Table of Contents
-----------------
I. What is nomic?
II. What is Agora?
III. The Mailing Lists
IV. Registering
V. The Rules
VI. Proposals
VII. CFJs
VIII. Offices
IX. The Economy
X. Conclusion
XI. See also
I. What is nomic?
If law-making is a game, then it is a game in which changing the
rules is a move. Law-making is more than changing the rules of
law-making, of course, and more than a game. But a real game may
model the self-amending character of the legal system and leave
the rest out. While self-amendment appears to be an esoteric
feature of law, capturing it in a game creates a remarkably
complete microcosm of a functional legal system.
-- Peter Suber, inventor of nomic, The Paradox of
Self-Amendment. (Peter Lang Publishing, 1990, but now out of
print.)
A nomic is a system of rules that provides means for itself to
be amended arbitrarily. Nomics can be games, micronations,
simulations, and/or sovereign states.
-- Rule 2368 (Nomic Definitions).
II. What is Agora?
Agora is a nomic, but not just any nomic. Agora is the "wisest,
noblest, eldest, and most interesting of all active email nomics",
according to Rule 1727, and I heartily concur. This guide will focus
on the specifics of how to play Agora, but if you want to learn a
little more about Agora and its history, a visit to
http://agoranomic.org/ is a good place to start. In fact, if you
haven't already, I'd advise you read it now, then come back to this
guide.
To be a bit more specific, Agora, like most other nomics, has a
ruleset, which tells you what you can and can't do; a bunch of
players, who participate in the game; proposals to change the rules,
which players vote on; and a judicial system to resolve matters of
controversy. These are the core elements of the game.
III. The Mailing Lists
Agora is played over five mailing lists, so the first thing you'll
need to do is subscribe to them. Wait, FIVE MAILING LISTS!? I know, it
seems intimidating, but it's not as bad as it sounds. Two of the lists
are backups in case the first three go down (yeah, we take things very
seriously) and one is the list for officers' reports. Normally you
will only use "agora-business", for playing the game, and
"agora-discussion", for talking about the game.
To subscribe to the mailing lists, go to http://agoranomic.org/ which
has links to all five lists.
Just about everything you can do in the game is done "by announcement"
or by "publishing" something. You do both of these things by sending a
message to a public forum (all of the mailing lists are public apart
from agora-discussion, which is for discussion only), usually
agora-business. To do something "by announcement", you simply send a
message stating that you do that thing, e.g. you register by sending a
message saying "I register".
The lists tend to be high volume, so most players either redirect
Agoran messages from their inbox into a separate folder or use a
different address for playing Agora. I myself use three Gmail labels:
"Agora" for messages to all the forums other than agora-official,
"Agora Judicial" for messages to agora-official with "[CotC]" in the
subject line and "Agora Official" for all other messages to
agora-official. I imagine each player has their own preference. While
you decide on yours, it's probably best to send all of the messages
into one label/folder.
If you use Gmail, there's a handy way to set up filters: click the
arrow in the top right-hand corner of a message from the list and
select "Filter messages like this". There should be something like
'list:"agora-discussion.agoranomic.org"' in the "Includes the words"
box. Then click "Create filter with this search" and select the
options for skipping the inbox and applying a label.
See Rule 478 (Fora) for more information on fora and messages.
IV. Registering
Now you're on the mailing lists, messages should start coming in. Most
of them won't make any sense to you, which is fine. You can either
register straight away by sending a message to agora-business saying
"I register", or watch the game for a while and try to get the hang of
things before you join. It's up to you. You can even ask to be listed
on the Registrar's report as a Watcher, either by sending a message to
the lists or by contacting the Registrar directly.
Once you've sent that message - "I register" - you're a player. It's
as simple as that really. New players have no particular obligation to
do anything, but this guide will tell you about some of the things you
can take part in: proposals, voting, CFJs, offices and the economy.
See Rule 869 (How to Join and Leave Agora) for more information on registering.
V. The Rules
But first, a brief interlude about the rules. Newly registered players
should recieve copies of the rules from the Rulekeepor. The rules can
be hard to understand for new players because the rules are
interconnected in lots of different ways and they are mostly fairly
jargon-dense. I would advise new players not to get too hung up about
completely deciphering the ruleset as soon as they start to play. It's
more important to get involved in the game, and you'll learn as you
go.
See Rule 1681 (The Logical Rulesets) for more information on the rulesets.
###
I'd also like to briefly explain a few of the concepts related to the
Rules, just to give you a taster. Don't worry if this doesn't make
sense to you at the moment: it will do later. The first concept is
"Power". Every entity (thing) has a Power, a non-negative number,
associated with it. Everything has Power 0 except where the Rules say
otherwise. Rules themselves can have Power 1 through 4 inclusive,
including any fraction in that range. Entities with a Power can only
be created, changed or destroyed by an entity with equal or higher
Power.
The second concept is "precedence". Rules with higher power take
precedence over rules of lower power. So, if two Rules conflict, we
take what the one with the higher power says to be true. (If two Rules
with the same power conflict, the one with the lower ID number takes
precedence.)
Finally, allow me to introduce the concept of an "Adoption Index", or
AI. Proposals get a power equal to their AI when they are adopted and
the higher the AI, the more votes the proposal needs to pass. So,
rules with higher power take precedence and are harder to amend. This
is like the US Constitution, which is much harder to amend than normal
laws and takes precedence over them.
See Rule 1688 (Power), Rule 2140 (Power Controls Mutability), Rule
2141 (Role and Attributes of Rules) and Rule 1030 (Precedence between
Rules) for more ---information on Power and precedence.
###
VI. Proposals
Proposals are the mechanism by which we amend the rules and change the
gamestate. (The gamestate is the existence and attributes of entities
defined by the rules, roughly.) This section will aim to provide a
brief overview of the proposal system.
The first step in the long road to getting a proposal adopted is
writing it. For guidance, see my example proposal:
{
Example Proposal
AI 3
PF 30
Enact a Power-3 Rule with the following text:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do
eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut
enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris
nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Amend Rule 1234 (Example Rule) by deleting the second paragraph and by
replacing "foo" with "bar".
Repeal Rule 1001 (The Responsibilities of Agorans).
Award 1,000,000 Yaks to Walker.
}
The first thing to point out about this example proposal is that it
uses curly brackets to make it clear where it starts and ends. You
don't have to use curly brackets, just anything that makes it clear
what is and what isn't inside the proposal. Note also that rule text
inside the proposal is indented for clarity and readability.
Then comes a title for reference, an adoption index and a proposal
fee. The adoption index should be the same as the highest-power rule
your proposal enacts, amends or repeals. The proposal fee is how many
Yaks (the Agoran currency) you get paid if the proposal passes.
The proposal uses three magic words "enact", "amend" and "repeal".
These refer to creating, changing and deleting a rule, respectively.
When you refer to rules, use the ID number as well as the title to
make it easy for everyone to refer to the rules you are talking about
and know what your proposal does.
Finally, I've added a gamestate change to show that changing the rules
isn't the only thing that proposals can do.
The next stage, for a large proposal, is submitting a proto. A proto
is a draft version of your proposal which you post to the discussion
forum for feedback from other players. Most proposals, however, do not
need to go through this stage, as long as you are confident that your
proposal does what you want it to do. If you're not sure, ask someone
for advice.
Once you think your proposal is ready to be voted on, it's time to
submit it. You do this by sending it to the agora-business mailing
list and saying that you submit it. Then, next time the Promotor - the
officer in charge of proposals - does a distribution, you should see
your proposal included. A distribution is where the Promotor starts
the voting on a bunch of proposals.
To vote on a proposal, you send a message saying that you vote "FOR",
"AGAINST" or "PRESENT" on it. (A vote of PRESENT counts towards quorum
but otherwise has no effect on the result.) Most of the time players
do this in reply to the Promotor's distribution message.
After a week, the voting period ends and no more votes can be
submitted. Soon, the Assessor - the officer in charge of collecting
all of the votes - will publish the results. This is called
"resolving" the Agoran decisions on the proposals. When the decisions
are resolved, the proposals which got enough votes are ADOPTED and
their proposed changes take effect.
For more information about submitting proposals, see Rule 2350
(Proposals). See also Rule 1607 (Distribution), Rule 683 (Voting on
Agoran Decisions) and Rule 955 (Determining the Will of Agora).
VII. CFJs
A CFJ, or "Call for Judgement", also known as a judicial case, is used
to resolve a controversy. There are two main types of CFJ: inquiry
cases and criminal cases.
In an inquiry case, the judge has to rule on the truth or falsity of a
statement. For example, "This CFJ is an example". The judge would
probably rule TRUE in this case. There are also other judgements than
TRUE and FALSE, such as IRRELEVANT and UNDECIDABLE. (See Rule 591).
If you want to call an Inquiry CFJ, just send a message saying "I CFJ
on:", followed by the statement you want to know about. For example,
"I CFJ on: I am a player."
In a criminal case, the judge has to rule on two questions: firstly
whether the defendant is GUILTY or NOT GUILTY, and then if they are
GUILTY, on what their sentence should be. Sentences range from
DISCHARGE, which has no effect, to fines, to EXILE, which is for the
most serious of offenses. (See Rule 1504).
To call a criminal CFJ, you post a message saying something like: "I
initiate a criminal case accusing Player X of violating Rule Y by
doing Z." When initiating a criminal case, you must always specify the
defendant, the alleged action (or inaction) that made them break the
rules and the rule you think the player has broken.
There is also a special type of criminal case called an infraction
(Rule 2416). Infractions are used to fine players for small crimes.
You initiate an infraction case in the same way as a criminal case,
specifying the defendent, the violated rule and the alleged
action/inaction. Unless the infraction is successfully contested, the
defendent pays a standard fine and you get a standard reward for
initiating it.
If you want to start judging cases yourself, send a message saying "I
sit." Soon enough a message will start come through assigning a case
to you. Once assigned, you have a week to make your judgement. See
Rule 1871 (The Standing Court) for more information on becoming a
judge.
VIII. Offices
An office is a position defined by the rules for keeping track of
different parts of the game and exercising certain executive powers.
For example, the Registrar keeps track of who's a player, the Yak
Herdor keeps track of how many Yaks everyone owns and the Promotor
keeps track of proposal submissions. See Rule 1006 (Offices).
Most officers have a weekly or monthly report which they publish to
agora-official so that everyone knows what is going on in their part
of the gamestate.
Offices can also have duties. For example, the Promotor distributes
(starts the voting) on proposals and the Assessor collects the votes
after the voting period has finished.
If the holder of an office becomes inactive or deregisters, anyone can
assume the office and start performing its duties. The other way to
become an officer is to win an election. Elections can be initiated
under the conditions in Rule 2154 (Election Procedure).
IX. The Economy
It's a good idea to reward players for doing things like writing
successful proposals, being a judge and being an officer. In
recognition of this, Agora often has an economy which provides players
with in-game rewards.
Agora's current economy is based around 'Yaks', which stands for 'Yet
Another Kurrency System' (Rule 2398). You get Yaks for performing
tasks like the ones in the previous paragraph, and you can spend them
on things like getting proposals distributed (Rule 2405) and getting
extra votes (Rule 2389).
X. Conclusion
I hope this guide has provided you with a decent overview of how the
game of Agora works. There's certainly a lot more to Agora than I have
covered in this guide, as you will discover, and a lot of the
technical stuff has been brushed over. This guide should, however,
give you a strong grounding on which you can start playing Agora and
learning the rules.
If you have any suggestions or comments, please contact the Helpor,
who should be the player who sent you this guide. If not, check the
IADoP's report.
XI. See also
Along with this document you should recieve the FAQ and the Glossory
from the Helpor and copies of the rules from the Rulekeepor. If you
haven't, please contact someone about that.
The following websites also have a lot of useful information about Agora:
Agora's Homepage - http://agoranomic.org/
Rulekeepor and Horton - http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~charles/agora/
Clerk of the Courts - http://cotc.psychose.ca/
Murphy's site (Agoran History) - http://zenith.homelinux.net/awj.php
omd's site (A previous Rulekeepor) - http://agora.qoid.us/
Zefram's site (Historical archives) - http://www.fysh.org/~zefram/agora/
