Rule 101, Introduction
Status: Immutable
Axiom is an unwinable instance of a game of nomic, a game whose primary characteristic is the modification of its own rules. To control an entity of the class citizen in Axiom by fiat (which is the only way a person can affect the game), a person must become a player by recognizing that the rules create authority.
Rule 102, Defintion of Things, Objects, and Entities
Status: Immutable
Things act. Nothing but Things act. The first act of any thing is to exist. There are two recognized fields of reality: Axiom and the World (stuff in "Real Life").
Entities are Things in Axiom. Only entities defined or permitted by the rules exist in Axiom (hereafter and above refered to as the game). Entites can only act in ways prescribed by the rules. All entities must have a unique name. If a rule seems to be defining a class of entities, and the word unique is used in reference to a naming scheme, it is assumed, unless otherwise indicated, that the word means "unique among all members of this class".
Things that exist in the World, Objects, do so without and/or despite the rules. Object acts which affect entities are called fiats. Fiat may only be exercised as described in the rules.
Rule 103, Definition of Actions
Status: Immutable
Entities may only be affected by acts permitted or described by the rules. If any rule refers to a Thing and mentions verbs which the Thing may perform and how, then that Thing is permitted to do so as a defined act.
Rule 104, Definition of Persons and Players
Status: Immutable
Persons are a class of objects known as humans in the extranomic world. A player is a person who recognizes the rules of Axiom to generate authority. A player is able to fiat the citicen e controls and cause the citizen to take acts permitted by other rules in Axiom.
No more than one citizen can be controlled by a player. No more than one player may control a citizen.
When some player communicates with the other players, statements to the general effect that "I do
Occasionally, the rules (for example those regarding offices) instruct a player to take certain actions. If the player bluntly fails to do so, e is considered to have rebuked the rules, eir status as a player is revoked, and eir citizen becomes Dead.
Rule 105, Definition of the Rules
Rules are entities. Entities referred to as "rules" in the rules are those entities which were described as such when Axiom began, or which were created as rules under the authority of previously existing rules.
Rules must have names in the form of "Rule X, Y" where for the purposes of this rule, X is a unique integer greater than 0, and Y is a unique string of letters, digits, and punctuation not to exceed 100 characters in length. Rules may by refered to by the unique integer, X, or the unique name, Y.
Rules have text which must be composed of letters, digits, and/or punctuation. The semantic meaning, if any, drawn from rule text is the source of all authority in Axiom.
Rule 106, Chronology
Time in Axiom is recorded and tracked in the same manner as in the extra-nomic location, San Francisco, CA. A complete day is the period of time between two consecutive instances of the time 00:00.
Every action occurs at one distinct point in time. If two or more logically contradictory actions seem to have occured simultaneously, with no observable way to determine which came first, both actions fail to occur.
The occurence of an action is considered to affect whatever entities are indicated by the action. Actions which would happen subsequent to this, only occur if the state produced by the set of all entities logically permits it.
No action may ever under any circumstance have retroactive or simultaneous effects.
Rule 107, Precedence
If a contradiction is determined to exist in the rules such that two or more phenomena are described which are legally mutually exclusive, then, in that particular instance, the following procedure shall be undertaken: The rule which is refered to by a unique (among all rules) integer that is of the lowest value of the rules in question shall take precedence.
If any other procedure is indicated by the rules for determining which rule takes precedence, then that procedure is used.
If two statements in a rule's description are determined to be mutually contradictory, then the statement which appears later in the text, as it would be normally read, is given precedence.
No rule may ever take precedence over Rule 106, Chronology or Rule 107, Precedence including rules which claim to do so because precedence itself springs from these rules.
Rule 108, Immutability and Mutability
Rules have a characteristic known as mutability, and are either "Immutable" or "Mutable".
If rules which have different mutability are in conflict, the Mutable rule(s) defer precedence to the Immutable rule(s).
In the instant immeadiately subsequent to the instant that Axiom starts, the rules numberd 101-110 are assigned a mutability characteristic of "Immutable" and those with the the number 301-308 are assigned a mutability characteristic of "Mutable".
Rule, 109, Proposals
Proposals are entities with names in the form "Prop A, B" where for the purposes of this rule, A is a unique integer greater than zero, and B is a unique string of letters, digits, and punctuation not to exceed 100 characters in length.
No proposal may ever be destroyed.
Proposals have text which can include either:
Proposals must have a status of "Active", "Finalized", "Retracted", "Accepted", or "Rejected".
When a propsal is created by a citizen's act, it is automatically Active.
If a proposal is Active then it may not be voted on, but the citizen who created it may change its text. This citizen may also change the status to Retracted or Finalized while the proposal is Active.
If a proposal has a status attribute of Finalized then only its status may be changed, and this only in manner prescribed by the rules.
Immeadiately after a proposal's status attribute is changed to Accepted the statement(s) in the proposal's body attribute act on the rules.
Rule 110, Citizens Defined
Citizens are entities. Citizens are either "Unanimated", "Alive!", "Dormant", or "Dead".
Each non-Unanimated citizen has a name which must be a unique string of letter, numbers, and/or punctuation of greater than 0 characters, and less than 41, and may not take any form defined in the rules (for example "Rule 515, Bob" would be invalid, so would "Bob's Monster").
Citizens can create an Unanimiated citizen if it is named "X's Monster" where X is the name of the citizen who created X's Monster, and where that citizen is not controlled by player.
If a player wants to, e may sieze control of an Unanimited citizen by:
A player can change eir citizen to Alive!, Dormant, or Dead, so long as e is not changing em from Dead.
Rule 111, Cycles and Winning Em
Cycles are entities. Cycles have names in the form "Cycle #C" where C is a unique integer greater than zero. When created, Cycles have no text which the Cycle does not gain until a player is permitted to put some there. Only one empty cycle may exsit at a time and it shall be referred to as the Current Cycle. If there is no Current Cycle this rule creates such a cycle automatically using the lowest valid value for C.
If any rule indicates that a citizen has won, that citizen may change the Current Cycle by changing its text to indicate that e won a cycle of Axiom and how.
Rule 301, Voting Procedures
If a proposal has its status attribute change to Finalized then the following procedure shall occur.
Every player who wishes to may cause eir citizen to vote on the proposal once. No citizen's vote shall be counted more than once.
If the proposal's status changed to Finalized seven complete days ago, and no votes were in the negative, then the proposal's status is changed to Accepted, otherwise, Rejected.
Rule 302, Call For Judgements Defined
Calls For Judgement (or alternately CFJs) are entities which may not be destroyed.
A CFJ may only be validly named "CFJ #K" where for the purposes of this rule K is a unique integer greater than 0.
CFJs may be created by citizens and should contain in eir text:
2) Reasoning which may contain any set of characters.
CFJs may have any of the following statuses: "True", "False", "Invalid", or "Undecided".
Rule 303, Call For Judgement Procedure
When a CFJ is validly created, or when it becomes Undecided, a random determination for the Judge of the CFJ is made by the Poobah of Randomness among Alive! citizens, excluding the citizen who created it.
The Alive! citizen determined has three complete days to accept eir status as the CFJ's Judge. If e does not, then e is changed to Dormant and another random determination is made for a new Judge.
If for some reason no citizen's name could be determined, the CFJ's status becomes Invalid.
When a citizen accepts a Judgeship e has three days to give a ruling. The ruling shall be True if:
If a CFJ fails the above criteria and it seems that the CFJ may not have been properly formed when created, the Judge shall rule it to be Invalid.
If is seems that a CFJ's claims cannot be validly ruled either True or Invalid, then the Judge shall rule the CFJ False.
If the player who controls the citizen who accepted the Judgeship feels incapable of faithfully and correctly following this CFJ procedure then eir citizen shall rule Undecided.
The CFJ's status becomes whatever that CFJ's Judge ruled.
In addition to the ruling itself, the CFJ's Judge is encouraged to add the reasoning behind eir ruling to the CFJ. This is not required and has no direct impacts on the state of the game, however.
Rule 304, Appealing CFJs
If a CFJ was ruled True, False, or Invalid less than seven complete days ago and a player believes an error was made, then e may change the status of the CFJ to Appealed.
A CFJ may only be appealed once.
If this a CFJ is appealed, the same process described in Rule 303, Call For Judgement Procedure shall be followed except citizen's who accepted the Judgeship the first time around shall also be excluded by the random determination for the new Judgeship.
Rule 305, The Disposition of CFJs
If a CFJ is ruled Invalid or False then the semantic meaning in its text shall be ignored
If a CFJ is True, be considered a source of authority similar to that produced by the rules except it defers in all ways to any rule, and is not considered as an authority with resepct to future CFJs.
Rule 306, Offices Defined
Offices are entities which cannot be destroyed and have some number of seats which are associated entities that can be owned.
Valid names for offices take the form "Poobah of THING" where (for the purposes of this rule) THING is a string of letter, digits, and punctions not to exceed 40 characters in length. The seats associated with an office are initially named "Poobah of THING Seat #N" where N is a unique integer greater than 0.
Specific offices exist only according to rules.
Citizens who own a seat may perform actions which are described as priviledges by the rules and are bound to do those things described as duties by the rules.
An office's seat(s) has a status that is either "Temporary", "Filled", or "Impeached".
Offices also have Lines of Succession for each seat, which are lists of citizen names. The owner of a seat may change that seat's line of succession, that seat's name, or that seat's status to Temporary.
Rule 307, Filling offices
If a seat owner fails to perform a duty that the associated office required, that citizen becomes Dormant and the seat's status changes to "Temporary".
If any office has a status attribute of "Temporary" then the following procedure shall be followed:
Any citizen can change a seat's status to Impeached. When this occurs the following procedure is followed:
Rule 308, The Poobah of Randomness
An office with one seat exists named the Poobah of Randomness.
The duties of this office are:
In the instant after Axiom begins ownership of this office's seat shall be given to Frankenstein.
Last Updated: 3/21/2000 11:00pm PST
Status: Immutable
Status: Immutable
Status: Immutable
Status: Immutable
Status: Immutable
(1) Only statements which specify an act which would modify the names or descriptions of rules whose mutability characteristic is set to "Mutable" and/or which specifies an act that creates rules and associated names, and descriptions, or
(2) Only a statement which specifies an act which would modify a rule's mutabiliy characteristic.
Status: Immutable
1) fiating a citizen with the name X's Monster to become Alive!, and
3) fiating, the name of the citizen to a valid name.
Status: Immutable
Status: Mutable
Status: Mutable
1) A claim which:
a) contains statement(s) of fact which may be determined to be true or false, and
b) contains no statements which refer to the CFJ itself.
Status: Mutable
1) All the statements claimed in the CFJ are true with respect to the rules, and
2) All the statements claimed in the CFJ are true with respect to the state of all entities, and
3) All the statements claimed in the CFJ are consistent with each other, or
4) All the statements claimed in the CFJ are consistent with each other, indeterminately true with respect to the rules and to the state of all entities, and in accordance with logic, the spirit of Axiom, and game custom.
Status: Mutable
Status: Mutable
Status: Mutable
Status: Mutable
1) No citizen may change the seat's status to "Impeached" until seven complete days have passed.
2) Ownership of the seat is transfered to the Alive! citizen highest on that seat's line of succession.
3) Citizens may nominate emselves for the office until three complete days have elapsed since the seat's status was changed to Temporary.
4) In the next four complete days each citizen can vote once on the seat by announcing the name of one of the citizens who nominated emself.
5) Ownership of the seat goes to the citizen with the most votes. Ties are broken by random determination.
6) The seat's status attribute is changed to Filled.
1) For seven complete days any citizen except the one who owns the seat may vote once to either impeach or support the owner of the seat.
3) At the end of this time, if any votes were to support the owner, the status of the seat is changed back to Filled.
4) If no votes were to support the owner, the status of the seat is changed Temporary.
Status: Mutable
1) to always make random determinations by a method which satisfies the most other players possible, when the rules call for it, and
2) to maintain a public document which other players can access which records previously made random determinations which were required and eir results.
Author: Jennifer Mueller
If you're wonder whether the game is still going, message me at mueller4@sonic.net