1. Groupthink chess is similar to formalistic chess, only it can be played by any number of persons with access to the forum, including passersby and trolls. Players may come and go, say they are quitting but rejoin later etc., unless otherwise restricted or disabled by lawful future application of rule 4.
2. Green and Red must alternate moves, but any player may switch sides at any time and make the next move, with the restriction that in the absence of further rulemaking to the contrary, no one may (at least at first), make a move and then switch sides to immediately to make a responding move.
3. Notwithstanding the variations from formalistic chess introduced by the first two rules, the result must still be a ‘legal game of chess’, with green making the first move, when written down formally, and the green and red roles alternating.
Explanatory Comment: the initial goal of the game is to find a compelling narrative for playing the game at all, but that is intentionally vague to the point of being meaningless. The purpose of the game is an emergent phenomenon known to none of the players in advance, but only to the group as a whole entity, and unfolding over time. The Game is intentionally Holistic.
Players can and should form alliances or teams, to be both cooperative and competitive in any potentially useful way, and as a group decide such things as victory conditions or strategies, explain their past moves with or without deceit and dissimulation, message each other, and generally conduct diplomacy.
4. Additional rules may be made, having the status of treaties binding on all players in future moves, **by majority vote of the last 5 distinct players** (who are called ‘the collegium’), which may address any topic whatsoever but *must* be consistent with all previous rules, including these five, except as noted. The Collegium may or may not find it convenient to consult other players, a subset of them, or of the set of potential players, before ratifying a treaty (rule making). There is no requirement that the game be played in an adversarial manner, or with any other (unlegislated) style, or with only two sides and not some other number such as 0, 1, or multipolar; or that the game advance or not, by any particular time, be terminable, or have any properties other than those given in the Original Ruleset or its subsequent modifications, or that it have any particular purpose, at least initially.
The immutability of rule-making is intended to force convergence of the game purpose in a way consistent with the will and actions of the players.
With a sense of nihilism and futility, Green moves `1 P-K4 (e5)`
## Some observations.
Non-binding interpretation: the commitment to the formalism of the Chess is not, in the absence of any specific rule-making, a legislative guarantee of anyone having any *rights* to make this or that legal chess move, nor of the equality of players (so that some players may be legislated to have ‘civil disabilities’ on the legal moves they may make. Moving legally is prohibition against moving illegally, not a natural freedom to so move. Nor does legislation (at least initially) guarantee that the game history is immutable (but if the past is changed, it must still be a legal past). Rule-making is, however, immutable for the duration of the game. Rules may provide for amendment procedures and some things may be made immutable in perpetuity, or incorporate probabilistic elements.
(Players will note the possible fiction that the last five players may legislate the game to have ended and that a new game with such and such rules and such and such past history shall be deemed to have begun. The ‘sovereignty of the Parliament’ may not in practice be legislated so as to be binding on the Parliament in the future. And Revolutions cannot be easily legislated away either.)
(The primary rule is that at any moment, formal past history must be explainable as a member of L, the set of all constructible chess games. But the grue paradox is not so easily solvable)
NOTE: thinking about Rawl’s ‘Original Position’ may be useful at any point in the game. Also, the entire point of Rule #4 is to allow the players to consider and legislate for edge cases that were unforeseen in the original game design.
Thread related: https://tunisbayclub.com/index.php?threads/groupthink-chess.3162/
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