“Democranomic is a type of founding game. A founding game is a game where the players play to constitute a real-world event or organization. A democranomic is a type of founding game where the players democratically choose what and how to constitute. They could decide to build something small like a one-time party or movie night, or reoccurring like a discussion group or lunch club. Alternatively they could choose to create something bigger like a street theater troupe, a group trip, a service club or a community festival. Very ambitious players could choose a goal of making a cooperative business like a restaurant, housing coop or charter school. Playing a democranomic is a way for common people to use table-top game mechanisms to democratically identify, implement and embody a shared organizational goal. Unlike conventional table-top games where players pursue game-designer set goals in imaginary worlds, in a democranomic players attempt to co-construct a goal and how to pursue it from the ground up (foundationally) such that its organization is enacted (founded) in the real-world.

The term “democranomic” is a combination of the words “democracy” and “nomic”. Thus in addition to being a founding game, a democranomic is also a type of nomic, one used to democratically forge a real-world project. What is a nomic? A philosopher named Peter Suber invented a game called Nomic where it is a move to change a rule of the game. It is a game of self-amendment in which all players can redefine the rules of play. In Suber’s original initial rule set, each player’s turn has two parts: First, the player can propose a rule-change which the others vote on. Second, the player rolls a die and collects its points towards the goal of being the first to reach 100 points. About this goal, Suber said, “this rule is deliberately boring so that players will quickly amend it to please themselves”. Since proposed rule changes must pass a vote of the players to be adopted, the goal can be changed (it’s just a rule after all), but only to something the players support. Like a nomic, a democranomic uses its rules to describe how to make other rules. But a democranomic goes further and also use its rules to specify coordinating actions that the group carries out to bring their chosen goal into a physical existence.“