SENATOR

From: greeneg@cs.unc.edu (George Greene)

Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1993 07:27:52 +0000

In article <25g8cj$kfn@titan.ucs.umass.edu> rjr@titan.ucs.umass.edu (Richard J. Resnick) writes:

Last spring, I ran an email game called "Senator", which was a
   moderate success for a time, until I ran out of free time to continue
   running it. It was essentially a game with no rules, where the players
   propose and vote on rules of the game, and then try to "win" or "lose"
   according to the rules that they create.

- - - -

I found this very interesting.
I was very surprised not to see any followups to it at my site for a whole week.
This concept is not new.
It was most broadly introduced in the June'82 issue of Scientific American
as a game called

NOMIC

which I believe has been played on this net before.

- - - -
   This summer, I spent alot of time thinking about how Senator could be
   made better. I am planning to start a new game of Senator, if there is
   sufficient level of interest. I will take NO MORE THAN 17 players. If
   you are interested in taking part, drop me a line. Send your letter
   to:

rjr@titan.ucs.umass.edu
- - - -

The nice thing about this game is that every time you play it, that
is ALL you are doing, is trying to make it better (by adding new rules).
Indeed, if you haven't yet added a rule for winning, then you can't
even say that you are trying to win (as opposed to trying to make the game better).

I would encourage anyone who is interested in such concepts as self-reference,
logic, legal systems, or wordplay  to try this.

References

Email game: Senator, v2.0
rjr@titan.ucs.umass.edu (Richard J. Resnick)
Wed, 25 Aug 1993 17:43:47 +0000

*SENATOR*

References

SENATOR