MetaTerminal

The majority requirement is still 4, with 7 players. Welcome, MiToRo! I support MiToRo’s Dog Inclusion Amendment. I do not support the Negative Rule. I support the Rules of Punishment and Forgiveness. I do not support the Reputation Points Rule, or the Everyone Is A Winner Rule, on the grounds that it is far too much of a headache for me (though I can obviously be overturned). The Law of Dog Inclusion and the First Law of Dapper have now been passed into effect, under stipulation of the Voting Clause. I propose a new rule: 25. The UNO Rule. If at any time, a post violates the rules, someone must point it out by quoting the post and saying ‘UNO!’ in order to implement any Egg changes or changes in game state - ie cheating in and of itself does not trigger any rules, but instead someone has to point it out. There is no time limit on UNO. Dog Inclusion Requirement: Existing Rules (ie rules that are in effect): Proposed Rules: Proposed Amendments or Removals:

And thus we run into the issue of: can people amend rules they have suggested without a majority vote? In the interests of consistency, I shall say that all modifications to proposals require majority vote, regardless of whether the modification and rule was suggested by the same person. This can of course be overruled by future rulings. The amendments spoiler box has been updated thusly to include the Unfair Advantage modification proposal.

EDIT: a request for everyone to vote on ALL proposed rules. Please clarify what you’re supporting. In the interests of my own sanity, I am only recording the initial version of this rule, unless I am overruled - this shall be considered as extreme action and shall not be repeated unless under similar or dire circumstances. I shall also propose a rule to prevent Voidus from making further modifications to rules, which shall be detailed below. No. By definition, a rule does not have to be followed until it is in effect. My Votes I support the Second and Third Laws of Dapper (with the assumption that Eggs can be interpreted as points should the First Law fail to pass.) I support the Act of Dog Inclusion. I support Voidus' Rule of Potential Karmic Retribution. I support the original version of the Rule of Honor. I support the proposal to amend the First Law of Dapper. I propose the following rules: The Rule for Meta’s Sanity: that Voidus be unable to edit posts in the thread for his own benefit, under threat of said Voidus immediately losing the game; and that Rule 16 shall be considered irrevocably immoral and unimplementable, from now and in perpetuity, and that should it be passed Voidus will immediately lose the game. I propose the following amendments: that the Act of Dog Inclusion should allow depictions of cats to fulfill its requirements. Existing Rules (ie rules that are in effect): Proposed Rules: Proposed Amendments or Removals:

In which case, we have new rules! These rules have been implemented as per the Voting Clause. The Points Rule, the Literal Rule, and the Trading Rule have now all been implemented, and are in effect. Existing Rules (ie rules that are in effect): Proposed Rules: Proposed Amendments or Removals: I support Aon Ene’s First and Second Rules, which has been factored into the numbers above. I would like to propose a new rule, and I support it. 11) Meta’s Clause: That every post that passes judgement (ie votes for or against) a rule must also propose a new rule. Should a vote be made without also proposing a new rule, then said vote is considered void until an associated rule is proposed. Now that we have the basics, this is probably the time to get some game mechanics in place. As there are currently five players, a majority still requires 3 votes (effectively rendering the first part of the Voting Clause moot). Should another person post, that requirement will increase to 4.

I already assumed that you did, so this does not alter the support numbers. I’d like to request your opinion on the other rules as well. Existing Rules: Proposed Rules: Proposed Removals or Amendments:

Crafty, crafty. I do not support the amendment, in the interests of longevity. I’d like to ask people to vote on all proposals, so we can start enacting some of them.

I assume that’s a proposed Rule 7, @Snipexe? If so, I support it. I support the Literal Rule. For the purposes of clarity, I shall also assume everyone supports their own proposals. Existing Rules: Proposed Rules: I hereby propose a new rule, and support it. 8) The Trading Rule: each player starts with 0 points. Players can give points to other players, or - with the agreement of said other player - ‘trade’ something for points. Once both players agree on the terms, the transfer occurs automatically.

Another Message from Future Meta (circa the proposal of the Unification Law): Hi, everyone! It appears activity on this has picked up again, without any prompting from me. The game state has changed rather significantly since then. It’s now an RP. I shouldn’t be surprised. If you post for the first time, and then don’t post for 24 hours or 3 pages, you become a Wandering Merchant. That means you can set up quests for people, and you get to be in a Guild. If you’d like to be in the RP, post your sheet in the thread. The current President, Ene, will add it to the list. Message from Future Meta (circa the passing of the Maybe Rule): Hello, prospective players! One of the side effects of the rules of Nomic (which you can read below the horizontal bar - highly recommended) is that the game quickly sprawls out of control. This has happened. I’m here to answer a few questions, and generally make it easier to join the game. Q: Do I need to understand all the rules? Heh. No. In fact, rule infractions are frequent, and nobody really understands all the rules apart from a select few. If you understand the basics, you will get by. Q: What are the basics? The currency of the game is Eggs. Getting one million Eggs makes you win. You can get Eggs by challenging people to games or duels, or by passing rules (or asking AonEne nicely). You can lose Eggs and have your actions in a post invalidated by breaking rules in that post. However, you only lose those Eggs and actions when somebody calls you out on said rule breaking - by saying UNO. You can also call out other people for rule breaking by saying UNO - however, you get nothing from it. Calling UNO is therefore a strategic decision. Every post must have an animal picture in it. If you vote on stuff, you must also propose a rule. Q: That sounds complicated! You don’t need to understand it all. Just vote on the proposals, and challenge some people to games, and you’ll get a sense for what Nomic is like eventually. CURRENT OLD GAME STATE (complicated): To celebrate April’s Fools (for my time zone, at least), I would like to propose a new forum game. It is called Nomic, and it only has three rules. (Well, three rules right now.) The essence of Nomic is that we collectively determine the rules of the game, with each player trying to bend the rules such that he or she can win first. EXISTING RULES: The Main Idea: Players take turns suggesting rules, or amendments to or the removal of existing rules. The Voting Clause: Upon a majority vote of more than three players, said amendments or removals are taken into effect. (Note: no rule is exempt from this rule, including this one, unless superseded by another rule.) The Winning Rule: The winning player shall be the first player that wins. When one player wins, all other players lose. Every rule can be changed, including the rule that says every rule can be changed (thus making it so that some rules cannot be changed - unless, of course, we collectively decide that all rules can be changed again.) This means that the game starts simple, but inevitably spirals out of control. I’ve seen games become glorified DND, complex blends of Chinese Checkers and Monopoly, and even entirely new board and card games. There are also two ways to play Nomic - we can carefully consider the ramifications of each rule, force everyone to understand rules to the fullest, and avoid contradictions. The second one is where rules are forgotten until someone brings them up - where bad ideas are voted into effect on a whim, and where the complexities of the ruleset invariably cause the game to collapse, sending it spinning out of control. In my opinion, the second one is much preferred. To start us off, I shall propose two new rules. Again, these are not in effect until they reach majority. The Points Rule: The winning player shall be the first player to reach one million points. The Equal Opportunity Act: any rule that discriminates based on the identities of players outside of the game (including screenname, rank, etc.) shall be considered invalid. I suggest that whoever takes their next turn should start devising ways to get points. It should be noted that said rules should also allow other people to get points, and shouldn’t give you too much of an advantage - otherwise, they won’t be inclined to pass it.

Sanderson Puzzlehunt: Wrapup - The Slightly Belated Second Half So it's been one week since I should have done this. Better late than never, right? On Difficulty, And Speed The fastest solve of all puzzles took about 4 days - around 90 hours, give or take. This is almost double how long the Earth Round took - even though Scadrial didn't have twice as many puzzles. So what happened? Simply put, the difficulty rose fairly substantially. In particular, where Wave 2 of the last round was very forgiving in terms of solving, this one was not. (Indeed, Makes The Man and Wayneisms had the least solves out of all the puzzles, with only two out of five. This was in stark contrast Records and Liebrarians which had close to universal solves. The most solved puzzles were instead Inscriptions and Travelling Blues; they both had solutions from all teams if I'm not mistaken.) Difficulty is a particularly difficult (heh) subject to cover, as it's not very universal - a team that solved Astronomy first wouldn't agree on difficulty with a team that was never able to. And unless a team was fairly inactive, there weren't any puzzles that people simply weren't able to engage with because they were 'too hard'. So what happened? There's a big difference, I think, in a puzzle that doesn't have a lot of solves because everyone stares at it and has no idea what to do, and a puzzle that doesn't have a lot of solves because it's easy to start and hard to finish. I try to tend towards the latter. Invariably, puzzles of the former (like Wayneisms and the initial phase of MTM) will start to creep in. Indeed, those were some of the least solved, because it took someone to 'get it' before any actual progress could be made. This is in contrast with Inscriptions, where it is immediately obvious what you need to do, and (if you know the source material) what you need to find. Hence the difference. Tangent over. The point is that sometimes, puzzles have layers. (Yes, haha, onions.) These layers are 'things you need to do'. They're steps. Government Records only had one real step: Of a similar structure is Family Trees, although that puzzle is helped by a much more difficult and ambiguous task. In stark contrast, Makes The Man has many many steps (5): And Inscriptions is somewhere in the middle (3): The point is that the individual steps of the puzzles weren't necessarily harder (although sometimes they were). It's just that each puzzle had more of them. This meant that solvers were more likely to get lost in the complex levels of the puzzle - when there are so many layers, eventually you're going to hit one that confuses you. So what do? The first thing is that I feel that I shouldn't try and sabotage puzzles to make them easier. Some puzzles just wouldn't work if they were made more self-evident (Wayneisms and Gossipers fall in this category). The ideas require a certain complexity to them in order to 'work'. Secondly, I feel that having puzzles with lots of layers is also fun - even if it just makes you marvel at the construction of it. Really, the only thing I can do is twofold: make clues clearer, and help non-winning teams more. Travelling Blues, for example, was hurt by a lack of cluing that meant people weren't quite sure of what to do - similarly, if you guessed what you had to do, there were specific unclued details that were required to get the configuration that you needed (like the one missing entry per day requirement). And the second one: On Non-Winning Teams I'm going to be entirely honest: I feel that I kind of fumbled how I dealt with the non-winning teams on this one. I tried to be a bit more cagey and less-cluey with hints, and in some instances redirected hint requests ("you're really close, make sure to read the flavourtext") instead of giving them. In hindsight, I shouldn't have done this, and I feel that it hit one team really hard in particular. If all teams (maybe barring the one that finished) could respond to this, this would help me gauge how much I should help teams of every level. Next round, I feel like I should help every team (with sufficient activity) enough so they are able to solve a meta. Running the round on a weekend would definitely assist with that. On Size A question to all teams: did you like the larger round, or did you wish that it had been more Earth-sized? Having the number of puzzles that it did was really down to meta structure, so if I want a bigger/smaller round it's not as simple as just cutting or adding puzzles - the round itself needs to be significantly restructured. On Writing As evidenced by it already being two weeks since Scadrial ended - the next round isn't going to go up as fast as the last one. Right now, I'm thinking the latter half of March is a good ETA, since I've started to become substantially busier recently. That could be the 15th (though it likely won't, due to reasons some of you may be or soon will be aware of) - it could be the 31st. We shall see. If it is delayed, however, I will definitely make sure it's worth it. Again, thank you to everyone who put significant time into solving my puzzles. Seeing people have fun and make realizations just gives the warm fuzzies. I'll see you all on another planet. - Meta

Of course! I completely forgot. That will go up later today, as well as my estimate for when the next round will air.

Solutions will go up shortly - they’ll take longer to be made, as the Scadrial puzzles are much more elaborate than the Earth ones. If you have guesses for puzzles (or want to check your work) then feel free to PM me.

Sanderson Puzzlehunt: Wrapup (The story section contains spoilers for the meta. Proceed at your own risk.) The thing that I made got a lot more complicated. I dare say it also got better. The writing process for this basically started in full force the weekend after Earth round finished, and was mostly completed just before the first wave went up. I say 'mostly' because the puzzle that was originally in slot 3 irreversibly broke just after signups went up - Family Trees was written in about half an hour to replace it. So technically speaking, the round wasn't finished until just before all the puzzles went live. Terrifying stuff. Since I have less to say about the writing process overall this time (aside from 'writing puzzles quickly is hard'), I'll dive right into the actual minutiae of all of the individual puzzles. I highly recommend reading this for the puzzles you liked (or even ones you haven't solved, if you don't mind having the solutions spoiled), since I've got a lot of things to say about all of them. Scadrial Meta Travelling Blues Inscriptions Family Trees Relativity Astronomy In Ancient Texts Makes The Man Wayneisms Gossipers Since it's approximately Too Late, and this writeup is getting too long for its own good, I will post the second part shortly, where I will touch on pace, the general competitive landscape, and various other things that I found noteworthy.

If you had to pick favourites (or rank them), what ranking would you give? I realise I’m being a little demanding, but the better sense I get of what people enjoyed, the more accurately I can make future rounds. @RShara

Did you mean Puzzle 6? If you could more fully answer all the questions, that would also be helpful.

I am now officially closing all answer submissions - the Leaderboard, as it stands now, is the final placement of all teams. Wrapup may take a few days to go up, since this round was much more complex than the last and I have a lot more to discuss. In the interim, however, I would like to ask an open question to all players: 1) What puzzles did you enjoy? What puzzles didn’t you enjoy? (Rankings would be helpful here.) 2) What sort of things did you expect to see that didn’t happen? Anything new you want to happen in the next round? 3) What did you think of the difficulty of the puzzles in this round? If everyone answers, then I have a good understanding of what to write going into the next round.

30 minutes later, and it happens. Team 5 have solved Wayneisms, giving them a full score of 145 and first place. Second place is still open, everyone! EDIT: Team Voidapple have now solved every puzzle, and are working on the meta. Good luck to them!

I’m thinking we’ll get the first meta solve today, if teams continue their rate of progress. It’s neck and neck between the three teams right now, which should lead to a tight race this afternoon/evening. The ordering of the clues for Wayneisms has been updated - the third and fourth pairs have been swapped. EDIT: And congratulations to Team 5, who got the first solve of Makes The Man! EDIT 2: And to Team Voidapple, who solves Wayneisms! Every puzzle has now been solved by at least one team. It’s a race to the meta, everyone. EDIT 3: Team 5 just solved the meta, with only Wayneisms between them and a full score. It’s going to be soon, everyone.

You did indeed. I will add you to your team shortly. EDIT: I’m a little bit behind on updating on all the puzzle solves, but all teams have now solved puzzles! Well done, everyone! EDIT 2: And Team Voidapple pulls ahead with a solve of Relativity! EDIT 3: The final puzzle, Family Trees, is now live. It’s not much compared to what was originally in for that slot, but it’s better than nothing. Happy solving, everyone. EDIT 4: Family Trees was solved by Team 5, putting them in first place. EDIT 5: A second solve on Family Trees puts Team Voidapple into second place!

Things MetaTerminal Can’t Do: Read Count Spell Basic Mathematics The measurements in the second room for Relativity have been changed - the puzzle is now solvable. Apologies.

Beware the infamous triple post! Ahem. The second wave will be going live shortly. However, due to the fact that I have been unable the puzzle that broke just before the first wave, it will have only three puzzles in it for now. I shall see if I can get a replacement to work in a short amount of time. It won't be anything compared to what I had in there originally, but it will be something. The new puzzles will be edited into the original post, so keep an eye out for that. EDIT: The puzzles are now live.

Oh, and add counting to the ‘list of things that Meta can’t do’. I am updating the numbering for Puzzle #1: Day 1. Very sorry. Congratulations to Team 5, who solved Inscriptions. EDIT: And to Team 5 again, who solved Travelling Blues! The second wave is now eligible to go up - however, due to an issues with one of the puzzles, it will not be going up immediately. Apologies. EDIT 2: And to Team 4, who also solved Travelling Blues.

In the interests of moving things along for all teams, here is a hint for Travelling Blues: Every day is missing one entry.

One person got the reference. I am fulfilled. I’d give it two weeks after this round ends - maybe more. By the beginning of March, or just after. I will, however, add you to the spec doc when I get around to making it.

Well done to Voidapple, who is the first to solve two puzzles: they completed Gossipers. As a general clue for Puzzle #5: printing the puzzle may be easier than doing it digitally.

Leaderboard Congratulations to Bridge 4, who solved Gossipers. A clarification on Inscriptions: adjectives don’t count; neither do titles, colloquialisms or descriptions. They have to be specifically referring to the word in particular, and not a possible alternate definition. This should have been made clearer. Also, I apparently can’t read, so the symbols for the final segment will be updated shortly. Apologies. EDIT: Congratulations to Team 5 and Voidapple, who completed two puzzles almost simultaneously! They solved Gossipers and Astronomy respectively.