Ron's Info-Closet Annex

Thu, 23 Oct 2003

Meta-Gaming 101

Just about six months ago I was interviewed in email by W. Eric Martin of TwoWriters.net for an article in Games magazine about "rule-changing games", which I call "transfinite games".
The article was called "Meta-Gaming 101" and appeared in the September 2003 issue of Games. Although the interview seems to have informed the article significantly, not much of it was explicitly quoted. (And if you're looking for the "Center for Ludic Strategy", I assure you that you're really looking for the Center for Ludic Synergy.) Thus, I am reproducing the interview below, with Eric's permission. I have changed nothing except for abbreviating the header, deleting my .signature, and making the hyperlinks "live".
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 18:07:38 -0800
To: "W. Eric Martin" <eric@cluestick.org>
Subject: Re: Questions about rule-changing games
From: Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe@ludism.org>

On Fri, Mar 21, 2003 at 04:51:27PM -0500, W. Eric Martin wrote:
> Thanks for responding so quickly!  As suggested, I've included my
> questions below.  My deadline for the article is the end of March,
> so if you can answer the questions by Friday, March 28, that should
> give me enough time to incorporate your answers.
>
> Please don't feel obligated to answer everything, but the wealth of
> knowledge you display on your Web sites and in your articles
> inspired me to keep adding questions.

Thank you very much.  I've answered everything I could.  If any of my
answers do not seem cogent, please let me know.

> 1. How would you like your attribute to read?

Founder of Seattle Cosmic Game Night and the Center for Ludic Synergy,
Gamemaster of the Kennexions Glass Bead Game, and card-carrying Pope.

> 2. You list Nomic as an interest on your home page; what about the
> game appeals to you?  Why single out Nomic when all other games are
> grouped as "board games, card games, and role-playing games"?

That's just my crufty home page, which has evolved over more than 15
years.  My online bookmarks have quite a different breakdown.
However, I do have a sentimental attachment to Nomic because for two
and a half years, I played a face-to-face game as an undergraduate at
Yale.  Further, Peter Suber's Nomic Initial Set is the best
thought-out, most balanced ruleset of its sort I have seen.  More to
the point, Nomic can encompass all the other types of games mentioned;
during our college game, we frequently subsumed games of Illuminati,
Nuclear War, Black Spy (Alan Moon's Hearts variant), and even Cosmic
Encounter.  We called these little pockets of other games
"barlafumbles" in Nomicspeak, the artificial language of my college
game.

> 2a. What common elements, if any, do you find in the Nomic games
> you've played?  I've run across many games online that introduce
> colors, money, and locations, for example; are these quirks of
> particular players, or is this to be expected from our collective
> gaming experience?

Every Nomic group varies, but there are often similarities because
Nomic players like to introduce features of the real world that
interest them.  Since Nomic is a political game, these include awards,
titles, offices, and political parties, as well as the items you
mentioned.  These are all _imaginary objects_ or properties, and I
think this partly stems from the fact that many Nomic players are
computer geeks, and a computer programming technique called
"object-oriented programming" has been very popular.  In fact, in
Nomic's first online heyday (the mid to late 1990s), there were a
couple of experimental intergame computer protocols that would let
Nomic players carry objects from game to game.

> 3. What doesn't work about Nomic, if anything?  Or does the game
> fail only if the players let it fail?

The main problem is that Nomic games sometimes buckle under their own
complexity.  However, if there's anyone left in the game who's still
interested, they can have "constitutional conventions" or
"revolutions" and "purge" all the old rules that don't work at once.
(Yes, I know this sounds unsavoury; Nomic players tend to be fond of
power grabs, even if the power is imaginary.)

It really is up to the players.  Our group really had the will to keep
playing, so we jokingly introduced a kind of Orwellian doublethink.
When we encountered a "boogle", or snag in the rules, we plastered it
over with a "whabawwea" by chanting in unison, "We Have Always Been At
War With East Asia!" (or Eurasia, as the case might be) -- an allusion
to a brainwashing technique used in Orwell's _Nineteen Eighty-Four_.
In our club, even _winning_ the game didn't end it; when someone won a
game we would "pop" up to a "metagame" and "push" down to a fresh game
with the same rules, minus the rule or rules that had caused the
person to win.

> 4. In your introductory essay to the Kenning Game (I spent a lot of
> time looking around your site), you relate Nomic to James Carse's
> idea of infinite games; what's the appeal to you of playing a game
> merely to keep playing?

The last sentence of _Finite and Infinite Games_ reads "There is but
one infinite game".  I'm sure Carse means life, or the world.
Nihilists, ascetics, and lunatics aside, this is a game most people
want to keep playing.  "Transfinite" games like Nomic are like the
world on a smaller scale.  Tolkien delighted in the Elves of
Middle-earth he created, and his Elves delighted in the magical jewels
_they_ created.  In just the same way, Nomic players, like
role-playing gamers, love to explore the worlds they create.  Creating
leads to exploring, and exploring leads to creating.  Sometimes the
most fun in Nomic happens when you discover unintended consequences
from the way two or more rules interact.  It's like one of those
dreams in which you discover a new room in your house.

The difference between Nomic and role-playing, however, is that in
Nomic, there is no gamemaster -- the creators and explorers are the
same.  (In the game we played at Yale, a player was called a
"govotnik", which expressed the idea that she was both government
_and_ voter.)

> 4a. Following that thought, Kate Jones told me that one of her goals
> with Lemma was to create a game in which the purpose was to keep
> playing -- yet I know from one of your newsletters (mentioned in
> your game system article) that your gaming group did not have a
> great experience with Lemma.  Any thoughts on the difference between
> Lemma and Nomic, or is the difference all in the players?

Nomic was written by a professor of constitutional law, and its design
reflects that.  It is much more detailed, formal, and rigorous than
Lemma, which in its turn is much more free-spirited.  With all its
loopholes, Lemma seems to be designed for an afternoon's play, while
Nomic games can go on for years.  However, after talking with Kate
Jones myself, I've concluded that your experience with either game
will largely depend on the group with whom you play.  I've certainly
heard of enough Nomic games that only lasted an afternoon.

> 5. Being a math person myself, I like your description of these
> games as transfinite; do you feel there's a continuum of
> "rule-changingness" that games like Nomic, Lemma, Fluxx, Democrazy,
> Cosmic Encounter, Proteus, and Bartog can be placed along?  That is,
> from most changeable to least?  Or are the games too different to
> compare in this way?

Yes, I do think there is a continuum.  At one end of the continuum are
games like Checkers whose rules do not change.  Then come games like
Cosmic Encounter, in which the rules change mostly at the start of the
game.  Then Fluxx and Democrazy, in which the rules change every turn,
but are limited to the rules on the deck of cards.  Then Nomic, in
which the rules change every turn and are limited only by your
imagination.  Finally there is life itself, in which the rules change
from moment to moment, and we are never quite sure what they are.

> Is rule-changing a strong enough quality (such as simultaneous play,
> bidding, or hidden movement) that it can be considered on its own?

Yes, and you can add rule-changing to any game as easily as saying,
"On your turn, you make a new rule".  As kids, long before they heard
of Nomic, my wife and her sisters added rule changing to the game
Sorry.  They called their variant "Evil Sorry", and they still have
the rules somewhere.

> 6. Care to comment on the other games mentioned in question 5?
> (Obviously CE is huge in your group, but the rule-changing aspect is
> only a piece of the game, not the essence of it.)

I haven't played Proteus (the game from Kadon), although I would
love to.  Bartog I understand to be similar to Mao, about which I
am sworn to secrecy.  

> And you mentioned that your group has tired of Fluxx; care to
> elaborate on why?

Seattle Cosmic tended to find Fluxx games too similar to one another
after a while.  Also, we focus on strategy games, and there is very
little strategy in Fluxx.  Nevertheless, there are some people in the
group who still like it.

> 7. Are you familiar with "The Only Known Game," a creation by Mark
> Bassett and Steve Knight that predates Nomic by two years and very
> much resembles Lemma?

Yes, I've seen it.  It looks all right, but I prefer games with more
initial structure.  Changing the rules of a game as you go is not new.
Peter Suber's real innovation was his detail and rigour.

> 8. Are there other rule-changing games I haven't mentioned that you
> feel should be covered in this article?

Well, _Games_ did that great article on 1000 Blank White Cards last
year.  (I found that very similar to a nameless boardgame I played
with some friends in New Haven one night.) Dvorak
<http://www.dvorakgame.co.uk/> is a more structured version of the
same idea.  Bob Abbott's game Eleusis <http://www.logicmazes.com/> is
a forerunner of these games, and Das Regeln Wir Schoen
<http://www.boardgamegeek.com/viewitem.php3?gameid=1003> is really the
German original for Democrazy.  Mutant versions of Suber's Nomic
Initial Set have proliferated; one that interests me is Solitaire
Nomic <http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/acka/hist/solitaire.html>,
which I carry around on my PDA.  You should also look at Matrix Games
<http://www.io.com/~hamster/> and Shared Universes
<http://members.tripod.com/~lkraz/SharedU.html>.  Mornington Crescent
<http://parslow.com/mornington/> is very silly, and the Fantasy Rules
Committee <http://www.win.tue.nl/~engels/frc/> have done some really
amazing stuff.  And then, of course, there is the Glass Bead Game.

> I've enjoyed your sites greatly, and have found many new topics to
> explore, especially the idea of being headless.  I look forward ot
> your responses!

Thank you; I'm glad you've enjoyed my stuff.  I've tried to answer
your questions in a timely way, in case they raise any further ones.

Best,

Ron
Entered 05:14 [/games/transfinite] permalink
Ron's Info-Closet Annex

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Thu, 23 Oct 2003

Meta-Gaming 101
