2009/6/15 Benjamin Caplan <celestialcognit...@gmail.com>:
> Jonatan Kilhamn wrote:
>> (Sorry about posting this here, but I couldn't find any active nomic forum.)
>>
>> I'm going to a gaming con in Sweden later this summer, and the theme
>> of the con is that it's going to declare itself a republic. There will
>> be some kind of LARP going on throughout the weekend about supporting
>> one of three candidates in the presidential election, which will take
>> place on the last day of the con. However, a fresh-starting nation
>> would need some laws, wouldn't it? So I'm planning on running a game
>> of nomic with the explicit purpose of ending up with the laws of the
>> republic that's about to form. However, there are a few things that
>> I'm not sure on how to do:
>>
>> How long should the game be? It's a four-day con, so either one
>> evening, one day, two days or the entire con? If it's a long game, one
>> could have a number of sessions each day and a mailbox outside the
>> room where people put the proposals, which are then discussed and
>> voted on during session.
>>
>> Since it's a republic, I toyed with the idea of making every vote open
>> to all the people - the entire con - and let the players ('Senators'
>> or 'Politicians') gather supporters who just come and vote (only works
>> if it's a fairly long game).
>
> You're describing a direct democracy, not a republic. Let each player
> ('Citizen') endorse a politician of eir choice ('Representative',
> 'Senator', 'Politician'); a senator's voting power is equal to the
> number of citizens (including emself) endorsing em -- eir constituency.
>
> Actually, to encourage fewer senators and partisan politics (which will
> keep things moving faster -- fewer votes to count), don't give Senators
> votes as citizens. A Senator's voting power is equal to the number of
> Citizens, excluding emself, endorsing em.
>
I like the idea, and I'd love to do that as a game of its own some
day, but the LARP is pretty set - it's about three candidates for
presidency and their campaigns. If the nomic part would allow for
someone to in effect become president it would just be weird. This all
has to culminate in the election where one of the candidates is
chosen, so letting the nomic players be too much of politicians and
gather support among the people won't really work. Possibly if we
could get the guys from the crew who's playing the candidates to
participate in the nomic, but I don't think they will.-- -Tiger
