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If there is one thing that the "internet" has lost, it's games like this. I used to love playing #wolfgame on IRC. Even Ultima Online (although hardly a typical

If there is one thing that the "internet" has lost, it's games like this. I used to love playing #wolfgame on IRC. Even Ultima Online (although hardly a typical heritage game) definitely shaped the way MMORPGs evolved. Anyway, back onto Nomic. After reading the Wiki and seeing the "Initial Rule Set" [1] then reading through a lot of the archives it became clear that "chaos" and administration was the downfall of this game. Eventually, the constitution that formed became so unmanageable and untrackable that it was impossible to progress. Judges were needed to resolve the rule disputes on every single vote and rule loop-holes were hard to spot (albeit an intended point of the game).[2] But guess what we have now... Freaking version control. Companies/governments are tracking their constitution on GitHub at the moment, so why can't we also track the constitution of games such as this on GitHub as well. Last month GitHub launched their "create a game" contest that incorporated some form of "Pull"/"Push" feature into the game. Well how incredibly awesome (I'm getting giddigy as I type this), would it be if we implemented Nomic voting rules using pull requests (for the votes), and have contributors sign up if they want to play the game. Tracking the constitution changes was clearly the biggest technical challenge back in 1990s, and now we have tools to solve this problem totally. GitHub makes Nomic awesome. Ps. Ultima Online just made me feel all nostalgic. I miss West Brittania Bank, Felucca, my 24x24 Stone Keep (presumably fallen and reclaimed now) and my enormous Runebook library. [1] : http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/nomic.htm#initial%20set [2] : http://www.nomic.net/deadgames/a/

TillE 14y ago
Sadly, UO didn't shape the way MMOs evolved, with the rare exception of niche games like EVE. Current MMORPGs are almost exclusively of the DikuMUD / EverQuest / WoW lineage, just hack and slash with very few other options for interacting with or changing the game world.
- unalone 14y ago
  As a non-UO player: can you explain what was unique or different about it, or link me to somebody who writes about this? MMOs bore me, and the thought that UO did MMOs somehow better intrigues me. I find it easy to believe, but hard to understand why.
  - simonsarris 14y ago
    First read "The In-game Economics of Ultima Online"[1] which I just submitted to HN for comment[2]. The hiccups of developing UO's in-game economy along the way are incredibly interesting in their own right. -------------- I'll try to summarize some of UO. UO was divided into Trammel (safe from PvP) and Felucia (not), and some servers only had Fel. In Fel as soon as you left a city you were more or less fair game to die from an extremely hostile environment, and (I think it was) PC Gamer described the learning curve as "A frozen wall of acid." Brutal, but very exciting. A goddamn wild west MMO. (In Fel) UO was a rare RPG where anyone could kill anyone, for any reason, but with the repercussion that they would be branded a "Bad person" (visible with a gray or red name instead of blue). Stealing from good people corpses also did this. Anyone can attack and kill bad persons, and if you killed even more people you were a murderer and it took a very long time to return to normal. This Blue/Gray/Red name system created a sort of cautiousness among travelers. Being near a pack of "blue" people might be safe, since any person that tried to steal or kill would turn gray and they'd immediately kill him. Unless of course, all those blue-named people were conspiring, and you are the target. You want to use super awesome powerful gear? None of this sissy MMO stuff. Die and you lose it, and your enemy (or his enemy!) gets the spoils. The problem I have with a lot of MMOs is that the power of your character is simply how much time you sink into the game. Essentially, MMOs are games that reward wasting time. UO had so much more than that. UO was a game where treachery and sneakiness really paid off, if you wanted it to. Lots of ways to nearly instantly kill or entrap people lead to a lot of very exciting plots where guilds might be laden with spies. Absolutely nothing like the ridiculously limited PvP found in games like WoW. In a lot of ways it was the Diplomacy (diplomatic back-stabbing board game) of MMOs. And it was great. [1] http://www.mine-control.com/zack/uoecon/uoecon.html http://www.mine-control.com/zack/uoecon/uoecon.html [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4890481 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4890481
    - outworlder 14y ago
      Btw, Trammel and Felucca was a distinction that came later. Apparently, because Origin wanted to attract more players, which would be known as 'carebears'. For quite some time, UO had only Felucca.
bryogenic 14y ago
Anyone current versions of this on GitHub? I think it might even be fun to read the version history.
joelhooks 14y ago
UO was so awesome. I blew 5 years on it. Siege Perilous! SP was the right direction, unfortunately not many people seem to agree with me ;)
Kaivo 14y ago
When searching for nomic on github, there are a couple of nomic projects using pull requests to propose rules and fork to know who's involved. Yet, they seem empty at the moment. I'd be interested in seeing such project working though.
michaelochurch 14y ago
The way I remember Nomic there was another rule, which defines an alternate objective function. 117. Any player who generates a contradiction in the rules automatically wins.
- sirclueless 14y ago
  If you like the win condition, and others do too, it's a pretty straightforward rule to introduce early on.
  - halter73 14y ago
    What happens then when someone introduces the rule: any player who generates a contradiction in the rules automatically loses? I imagine there could be an initial rule that states the most recent rule generated is authoritative in the event of a contradiction. But of course someone could generate the rule: the earliest rule generated is authoritative in the event of a contradiction. I've never played Nomic. Do paradoxes like this come up often?
    - michaelochurch 14y ago
      117. Any player who generates a contradiction loses. 118. No player can lose. Well... shit.
- zem 14y ago
  yeah, i thought that was the entire point of nomic
bobobo1628 14y ago
If by '#wolfgame' you mean what we call Werewolf, where there are a bunch of 'villagers' and one or more randomly selected 'werewolves' where the werewolves get to kill a villager in the night and the villagers get to lynch someone during the day, we have a group who frequently plays this (or the Mafia variant) at uni through IRC or their forums.
- sirclueless 14y ago
  Also, epicmafia.com is a great online implementation. There's a nice little community there, it's a great time sink.
Tyrant505 14y ago
I've stated a few times.. why can't we make UO in browser by now? Old rules of course.
- munger 14y ago
  Because apparently it is still up and running, costs money, and is owned by Electronic Arts? See uo.com - That aside, it seems technologically feasible. Also interesting are the free/unauthorized reverse engineered UO emulators that continue to run today, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online_shard_emulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online_shard_emulation
- sillysaurus 14y ago
  It's not that easy. Just because it's old doesn't mean it's easy. Sure, you could put up a Kickstarter for it and get a bunch of money behind the project. But historically, using the premise of building an MMO as a way of raising a bunch of money will result in failing to build that MMO. A programmer who has experience and talent also has no incentive to recreate UO (think about the modern-day incentive structures for hotshot programmers), unless he was one of the original players. And sadly the overlap between "players of videogames" and "the best game programmers" is actually quite small. Carmack, for example, doesn't play games. Most of the talented gamedevs I know don't actually play them. Maybe it's a challenge I'll take on.
  - lucian1900 14y ago
    Pretty much all of the game devs I know (and I work with quite a few) play games all the time. Both games by others and by themselves (lunchtime playtests).
johndbritton 14y ago
I just created a GitHub repo with the initial ruleset in Markdown format. http://github.com/johndbritton/nomic http://github.com/johndbritton/nomic If you want to start a new game, you can fork the repo and begin accepting pull requests from your players. You can also see a listing of active games by checking out the network tab. https://github.com/johndbritton/nomic/network https://github.com/johndbritton/nomic/network
- trevize 14y ago
  bump. I'm playing
- qznc 14y ago
  I made a simplified german ruleset for playing it with some friends. Tried to translate it to english in a branch: https://github.com/beza1e1/nomic/blob/english/rules.md https://github.com/beza1e1/nomic/blob/english/rules.md It also starts of with a "dictator" in the beginning, which removes judgements and should make it easier for beginners. Players can bring back the judges anyways.
- trescenzi 14y ago
  I feel like a tiny bit of js or something extra could be nice. Just something that makes it eiser to add rules and vote and maybe uses the github api to make pull requests for you. I don't know if that would be a waste of time though
spinchange 14y ago
Google Wave would've been great for this too.

TillE 14y ago

Sadly, UO didn't shape the way MMOs evolved, with the rare exception of niche games like EVE. Current MMORPGs are almost exclusively of the DikuMUD / EverQuest / WoW lineage, just hack and slash with very few other options for interacting with or changing the game world.

unalone 14y ago
As a non-UO player: can you explain what was unique or different about it, or link me to somebody who writes about this? MMOs bore me, and the thought that UO did MMOs somehow better intrigues me. I find it easy to believe, but hard to understand why.
- simonsarris 14y ago
  First read "The In-game Economics of Ultima Online"[1] which I just submitted to HN for comment[2]. The hiccups of developing UO's in-game economy along the way are incredibly interesting in their own right. -------------- I'll try to summarize some of UO. UO was divided into Trammel (safe from PvP) and Felucia (not), and some servers only had Fel. In Fel as soon as you left a city you were more or less fair game to die from an extremely hostile environment, and (I think it was) PC Gamer described the learning curve as "A frozen wall of acid." Brutal, but very exciting. A goddamn wild west MMO. (In Fel) UO was a rare RPG where anyone could kill anyone, for any reason, but with the repercussion that they would be branded a "Bad person" (visible with a gray or red name instead of blue). Stealing from good people corpses also did this. Anyone can attack and kill bad persons, and if you killed even more people you were a murderer and it took a very long time to return to normal. This Blue/Gray/Red name system created a sort of cautiousness among travelers. Being near a pack of "blue" people might be safe, since any person that tried to steal or kill would turn gray and they'd immediately kill him. Unless of course, all those blue-named people were conspiring, and you are the target. You want to use super awesome powerful gear? None of this sissy MMO stuff. Die and you lose it, and your enemy (or his enemy!) gets the spoils. The problem I have with a lot of MMOs is that the power of your character is simply how much time you sink into the game. Essentially, MMOs are games that reward wasting time. UO had so much more than that. UO was a game where treachery and sneakiness really paid off, if you wanted it to. Lots of ways to nearly instantly kill or entrap people lead to a lot of very exciting plots where guilds might be laden with spies. Absolutely nothing like the ridiculously limited PvP found in games like WoW. In a lot of ways it was the Diplomacy (diplomatic back-stabbing board game) of MMOs. And it was great. [1] http://www.mine-control.com/zack/uoecon/uoecon.html http://www.mine-control.com/zack/uoecon/uoecon.html [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4890481 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4890481
  - outworlder 14y ago
    Btw, Trammel and Felucca was a distinction that came later. Apparently, because Origin wanted to attract more players, which would be known as 'carebears'. For quite some time, UO had only Felucca.

bryogenic 14y ago

Anyone current versions of this on GitHub? I think it might even be fun to read the version history.

joelhooks 14y ago

UO was so awesome. I blew 5 years on it. Siege Perilous! SP was the right direction, unfortunately not many people seem to agree with me ;)

Kaivo 14y ago

When searching for nomic on github, there are a couple of nomic projects using pull requests to propose rules and fork to know who's involved. Yet, they seem empty at the moment. I'd be interested in seeing such project working though.

michaelochurch 14y ago

The way I remember Nomic there was another rule, which defines an alternate objective function. 117. Any player who generates a contradiction in the rules automatically wins.

sirclueless 14y ago
If you like the win condition, and others do too, it's a pretty straightforward rule to introduce early on.
- halter73 14y ago
  What happens then when someone introduces the rule: any player who generates a contradiction in the rules automatically loses? I imagine there could be an initial rule that states the most recent rule generated is authoritative in the event of a contradiction. But of course someone could generate the rule: the earliest rule generated is authoritative in the event of a contradiction. I've never played Nomic. Do paradoxes like this come up often?
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    117. Any player who generates a contradiction loses. 118. No player can lose. Well... shit.
zem 14y ago
yeah, i thought that was the entire point of nomic

bobobo1628 14y ago

If by '#wolfgame' you mean what we call Werewolf, where there are a bunch of 'villagers' and one or more randomly selected 'werewolves' where the werewolves get to kill a villager in the night and the villagers get to lynch someone during the day, we have a group who frequently plays this (or the Mafia variant) at uni through IRC or their forums.

sirclueless 14y ago
Also, epicmafia.com is a great online implementation. There's a nice little community there, it's a great time sink.

Tyrant505 14y ago

I've stated a few times.. why can't we make UO in browser by now? Old rules of course.

munger 14y ago
Because apparently it is still up and running, costs money, and is owned by Electronic Arts? See uo.com - That aside, it seems technologically feasible. Also interesting are the free/unauthorized reverse engineered UO emulators that continue to run today, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online_shard_emulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online_shard_emulation
sillysaurus 14y ago
It's not that easy. Just because it's old doesn't mean it's easy. Sure, you could put up a Kickstarter for it and get a bunch of money behind the project. But historically, using the premise of building an MMO as a way of raising a bunch of money will result in failing to build that MMO. A programmer who has experience and talent also has no incentive to recreate UO (think about the modern-day incentive structures for hotshot programmers), unless he was one of the original players. And sadly the overlap between "players of videogames" and "the best game programmers" is actually quite small. Carmack, for example, doesn't play games. Most of the talented gamedevs I know don't actually play them. Maybe it's a challenge I'll take on.
- lucian1900 14y ago
  Pretty much all of the game devs I know (and I work with quite a few) play games all the time. Both games by others and by themselves (lunchtime playtests).

johndbritton 14y ago

I just created a GitHub repo with the initial ruleset in Markdown format. http://github.com/johndbritton/nomic http://github.com/johndbritton/nomic If you want to start a new game, you can fork the repo and begin accepting pull requests from your players. You can also see a listing of active games by checking out the network tab. https://github.com/johndbritton/nomic/network https://github.com/johndbritton/nomic/network

trevize 14y ago
bump. I'm playing
qznc 14y ago
I made a simplified german ruleset for playing it with some friends. Tried to translate it to english in a branch: https://github.com/beza1e1/nomic/blob/english/rules.md https://github.com/beza1e1/nomic/blob/english/rules.md It also starts of with a "dictator" in the beginning, which removes judgements and should make it easier for beginners. Players can bring back the judges anyways.
trescenzi 14y ago
I feel like a tiny bit of js or something extra could be nice. Just something that makes it eiser to add rules and vote and maybe uses the github api to make pull requests for you. I don't know if that would be a waste of time though

spinchange 14y ago

Google Wave would've been great for this too.