- turns go clockwise

- play one card per turn

- if someone breaks a rule, they take back their card and draw one extra

- first to shed all their cards, followed by saying "Mao!" wins

- saying "Mao" any other times means drawing three cards (so if someone broke a rule playing their last card and had to take back their card, they end up drawing three cards

- Similar to the previous rule: not saying "Mao" upon successfully playing the last card also means drawing three cards. And it is breaking the rules, so the player has to take back the card and draw a card.

- asking any question means drawing a card (be brutal: "WHAT?!" counts as a question)

- one player starts with making up two extra rules

- the winner of a round makes up a new rule, the old rules stay

... then grab a bunch of friends, say "you'll figure it out", come up with two rules of your own and start playing. You'll likely win the round (because they will all ask questions in confusion), and be allowed to add another rule.

Restart after a couple of rounds. Troll until they threaten to quit (at which point you explain the rules) or until they actually figure it out. Watch their expressions go from frustration to gleefully anticipation, and go look for a fresh victim together.

It was a long-lived informal group of game-players that started in the 1970s, and has continued (with almost-total replacement of the membership over time) until roughly the present day. We played very different games at different times--pencil-and-paper roleplaying games; Risk and Diplomacy; Civilization; Cosmic Encounter; Illuminati; MMORPGS; Nomic; custom versions of several of the above using modified rules and our own maps and other materials.

Nomic worked quite well for one of the iterations of the group. It was very entertaining--though exhausting to play--and it was educational about the legislative process.

I think the most significant thing I learned about legislation is that, regardless of what it is theoretically supposed to accomplish, what it actually does accomplish is to reward legislators who are skillful at gaming the legislative process.

I learned other things, too:

- Given an incentive, people can be incredibly flexible and creative in trying to outmaneuver one another in dealmaking.

- Very often, the most capacious bladder wins.

- If you succeed in making rules about what is allowed, you must expect that others will make rules redefining the terms used in those rules.

- Any self-serving proposal can be made to sound like it's for the common good with the right combination of incentives, creativity, and charisma.

- No matter how bitterly someone opposes your proposal, you can still get their support if you can find the right payoff and add it to your proposal.

- There is no way to limit what other legislators can do to a proposal through amendments (we tried all sorts of things, and they all ultimately failed).

I also learned that real-world legislators have to have incredible endurance. A hotly-contested game of Nomic can drag on for hours and leave all the participants completely exhausted. Real legislation must be much more grueling. The stakes are higher, the costs and rewards are more significant, and the game never ends.