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The word "nomic" is rooted in the Greek word for "law." That fact alone can give a novice some idea of what a game called "nomic" might be like. Nomic is, in fact, a game of law reduced to its most basic elements. It is a game where the rules of the game are a body of law, and the players are the legislators. Initially, a game of nomic begins with a rudimentary set of rules, most of which concern how the players go about repealing, amending, and adding rules. The longer a given game progress, the more it becomes an independent entity, with its own culture, its own personality, to a certain extent its own language. Participating in a game of nomic can be an experiment in law, politics, logic, philosophy and anthropology all at the same time.
Nomic was invented by Peter Suber in 1982. His Initial Set of rules was published in in June of 1982 by Douglas Hofstadter, in his "Metamagical Themas" column in Scientific American. The game of Nomic was invented to illustrate the thesis of Suber's book, The Paradox of Self-Amendment, and Nomic appears as the third Appendix of that book. On Suber's web site you can find an Introduction to Nomic, a explanation of How to Play Nomic, and (of course) the Initial Set of Rules.
Agora is the longest-lived continuous game of nomic played on the net. Its three years of existence has outlived some governments. :) Agora has experienced attempted coups, mass repeals, and crises of all stripes. It is still kicking. Of course, the long existence of Agora means it also has a rather large accumulation of Rules, which makes it somewhat daunting for new players. In my opinion, despite the breadth of the Agora Ruleset, the functional parts are fairly well developed and understandable. The broad aspects of the game are well enough grasped, and to help encourage new players to grasp them, I've written an Agora FAQ to prevent the all-too-common feeling of lost-ness that seems to haunt new players in Agora. Agora has progressed to the point where the game, like most legal systems, accepts that the people under its jurisdiction do not generally memorize all the statutes governing them-- in doing so, it has left a lot of its game-ness behind.
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