User:Sbp/rules

The Rules

Definitions:

• The Encyclopaedia is the Ghyll Encyclopaedia hosted on this, the gamegrene.com wiki.
• The game shall be taken to mean the game of Ghyll as regards the Encyclopaedia.
• A phantom is an entry which has been cited but not yet written.
• A dib is the process of reserving a phantom in situ with a short statement expressing the intention of creating that entry.
• A cite is a citation made in the required colophon (footer section) of an entry, echoing a reference in the entry's text.

Turns:

1. A game consists of a series of turns.
2. A game's turns start at "A", progress through the English alphabet to "Z", and restart at "A".
3. New players may join on any turn, at any point in the turn.
4. Turn deadlines shall be decided by administrators, based on player consensus.

Entries:

1. Scholars shall dib, and then write, one entry per turn.
2. Scholars that have dibbed entries must write those entries before the end of the turn.
3. Scholars may write, and revise, their entries at any point in the turn.
4. Each entry written by a scholar must have a title beginning with the current turn's letter.
5. Each entry written by a scholar shall cite two phantom entries. Each cited phantom may have already been cited by an existing entry.
6. Each entry written by a scholar after the first turn of the game shall cite at least one existing entry.
7. Each entry written by a scholar may, in the main body of the text, refer to an unlimited number of any existing entries and phantoms.
8. Scholars shall cite neither entries they have written, nor phantoms they have created.
9. Scholars shall not write phantoms that they initiated by citing first.
10. All phantoms for a letter shall be written before new entries are created for that letter, though not at the cost of self-citation.
11. If a new phantom is created under the current turn's letter, players may ignore the phantom until the next round (@@ discuss!).

Miscellanea, including Canonality:

1. Only entries are canonical.
2. Non-entries are not canonical since they may be updated at any time by any player, and hence don't obey the turn-based feature of the game which is there to aid consistency.
3. Scholar comments on entries, and scholar sections of user pages, may influence future canonical prose if they are consistent.
4. User pages shall not cite new phantoms.

Housekeeping, for the admins:

1. All dates mentioned in the game shall be added to the timeline.
2. All people mentioned in the game shall be added to a Who's Who.
3. All new entries or phantoms created shall be retroactively linked from any existing posts which mention them.
4. All entries and phantoms shall be tracked on an index.
5. A summary of each entry shall be posted in a report after each turn.

Style:

1. Citations shall be made in the following manner:

   Citations: [list of citations with existing citations first, then in alphabetical order]
   --ScholarName HH:MM, DD Mon YYYY (EDT)

2. User pages shall have two sections: "[Scholar Name], Ghyll Scholar" and "[Person Name], Person".
3. Formatting appropriate to the wiki is to be used where possible, e.g. ''lalala'' over <em>lalala</em>.
4. Avoid preformatted text except where absolutely necessary.
5. Either American or British English is acceptable.

Discussion of the Rules

The idea of drafting a set of rules that are extremely concise and extremely to-the-point is a commendable one, but I think we've overdone it by a huge margin. Here I'd like to explore some alternative methods that I can then propose to Morbus and the other players, in the hope that we can come up with something a little more inclusive of all the house styles etc.

The playing of the game of Ghyll consists of a set of augmentations over time to an Encyclopaedia describing the Ghyll world. There may be other, related, canonical activities, but these rules define play only as it concerns the Encyclopaedia.

(@@ Currently draughting this as a set of "truths", i.e. statements of rules that are as atomic as possible. Hopefully then some structure can be discerned.)

@@ However, if you've properly met these requirements, your entry can certainly refer to other terms in the Ghyll encyclopedia, including those you've personally written. These "other terms", however, MUST have been previously defined or created.

@@ Stuff from IRC, general mumblings of Morbus. Really, rule creating for Ghyll is somewhat of a Morbus observation activity since he seems to be pretty certain about what the rules should be (and with good reason since this is his idea, and he's read all of the initial rules and done the legwork in finding out how previous lexicons have done); the rest of us need to be just as certain as well.