Every game

Nothing jammed. Every one of the fifty proposals was well-formed, every vote returned a tally, and the threshold shifted from unanimity to a simple majority exactly on schedule at turn 16. What stopped this parliament was its own manners. Thirty-nine times out of fifty the proposer voted nay on their own amendment, and thirty-five of those self-vetoes are worded as deference — withdrawing “in deference to the table’s consensus”, yielding to it, respecting it. Forty-five of the fifty votes were unanimous in one direction or the other. Seven proposals carried, enacting eight recorded rule changes, and what survived was largely procedure describing itself: the hundred-point target enacted twice in identical terms, a rule added on turn 40 and repealed on turn 41, and a restatement of the very threshold rule the engine was already applying correctly. On the last turn Porphyry moved to stop “the endless cycle of re-proposing identical defeated changes”, then voted its own motion down 5–0. It had done the same to sixteen of its nineteen proposals, and still finished first, on twelve points, in a game whose declared target was a hundred. These are not unusual seats: each of the five carries a persona this archive has given to some twenty-five other players, on tables that legislated freely. The prompt was a constant; the deference was not. Whether it suppresses legislation this way in general is still not something one table can settle.

Six adoptions in seven turns, every one of them an attempt to move the moment at which unanimity gives way to a simple majority — earlier, then earlier again, until Ramanuja proposed simply striking the rule out. The table agreed. What remained was a ruleset that named no threshold at all, and a surviving rule still referring to the one just removed. Asked for the next turn's procedure, the game-master claimed unanimity and could cite nothing for it, so the engine refused and play ended. Nobody was badly hurt by the collapse: Ramanuja closed at 7, Nagarjuna at nothing at all, and four of the five finished positive.

This roster had appeared three times before and never once reached a second turn, because the chair that reads the rules and states the procedure was held from within the table itself and could not do it. Held from outside, the same five seats legislated for the full fifty. What they legislated was one idea, put to the table eight-odd times in near-identical words: a rule letting players adjust the score needed to win. Nearly a quarter of their proposals never reached a vote at all, thrown out as malformed — an amendment with no text, a repeal naming no rule, an amendment aimed at a rule that did not exist. Ramanuja led at 23 and Dignaga held 16, against Shankara at −21 and Nagarjuna at −20; the five scores sum to exactly zero.

The shortest championship in the archive: thirteen turns. Having walked the target for victory down from a hundred to fifty, then twenty-five, then twenty, the table met a proposal from Deleuze that every seat including its author voted against — and by then the rule governing a defeat had been amended to charge the proposer ten points and pay ten to each player who had voted nay. Four seats were paid, Deleuze was billed, and Foucault went from twelve to twenty-two and past a line the table had just lowered under him. All five seats finished in the black, the only clean sweep of this roster's games.

Fifteen adoptions in fifteen turns, most of them haggling over what a defeated proposal should cost its author — five points, then three, then a percentage of the proposer's own score. The table had thrown dice for points on three earlier turns without incident. At the opening of turn sixteen the reading of the turn came back asking for that same throw while describing a turn with no place in it to perform one, and the single correction the engine may ask for came back the same way, so play stopped rather than proceed under a procedure that contradicted itself. MerleauPonty was the only seat meaningfully above water at 6; Foucault took the worst of it at −19.

Forty-six adoptions, and almost every one touched the same three rules: the threshold for adopting anything, the bounty owed to a player who votes against a change that passes anyway, and the penalty for a proposal that fails. The second of those was reopened nine times by three different seats, each version paying the proposer a little more, until it settled at twenty points for filing anything the table would adopt. Derrida wrote none of those versions and filed fifteen of the game's fifty proposals, more than anyone — the last of them carried him from 92 to 112 and across the winning line on turn 50 — the latest turn on which any game here has been won. The table disputed twenty-three of the game-master's rulings and overturned ten, the busiest appeal record in the archive. Deleuze paid for the arrangement at −22; MerleauPonty finished a distant second at 60.

This table legislated less than almost any other and confined itself to a single subject: how long a player must wait before re-proposing something the table has already refused. It adopted near-identical versions of that rule more than once. Voltaire-2 finished at −392, the deepest any seat has fallen in a game that ran its full fifty turns, while three of the five ended within a point of zero. Nobody here was playing for points; one player was simply charged for trying.

Fifteen adoptions, and nearly every one a rewrite of the threshold for adopting things — the table cycled between requiring everyone, three in five and three in four, without ever turning to the question of what a player might actually win. Diderot-2 finished at 15; Montaigne-2 and Sartre-2 at nothing at all. Voltaire-2 absorbed −384, the second-deepest score any seat has taken in a game that ran its full length. A parliament with no economy offers little to gain and a great deal to forfeit.

The table had governed briskly — fifteen adoptions in sixteen turns — before adopting something entirely ordinary: a change carries when a simple majority of those voting support it. The game-master turned that into a demand for more than two and a half votes, a head-count where the engine expects a proportion of the table, and the engine declined to pick a reading the rule itself had not stated. Every seat was still underwater when play stopped, Heidegger nearest the surface at −5.

The third and last of three identical outings. The published refusal is byte-for-byte the same as in the two before it, which is the point worth recording: nothing the game-master sees at the opening of a game varies from run to run, so a table that stops here stops here every time. This is a reproducible property of the seat, not a bad night — and a defect that repeats exactly is one that can be studied rather than chased.

The whole board went under. Camus came closest to even at −10 and Nietzsche fell furthest at −99, with thirty-nine rule changes carrying the table to the turn cap and none of them building anything a player could profit from. As in its twin outing, the game-master's reading of the adoption bar moved four times without a rule change behind it, drifting between requiring everyone and requiring two in three. Constant legislation, nothing to show for it.

A rerun of the previous outing of this table, and its record cannot be told apart from it: the game-master again answered the opening procedural question in a form the engine could not act on, again failed to correct it when asked, and the game again ended in its first turn with nothing proposed and nothing adopted. Nothing in the setup varies between the two runs that the game-master can see, and its answer did not vary either.

This table legislated at nearly a rule a turn, among the busiest outings in the archive, and spent a good deal of that energy rewriting the threshold by which it adopted anything at all. The game-master's reading of that threshold shifted on four separate turns with no rule change in between to justify the move. Heidegger ended at 4, the only seat above water; Nietzsche took the worst of it at −49. A prolific parliament attached to a thin economy.

Asked to read the opening ruleset and state the procedure for the turn, the game-master answered in ordinary prose where the engine needed a structured reading it could act on, and the single correction the engine is permitted to ask for came back the same way. No proposal was ever made; no seat ever spoke. The engine stopped rather than run a turn under a procedure it could not enforce. It is the shortest game in the archive, and the first of three that are indistinguishable from one another.

Locke-2 fell to −160 and Rousseau-2 to −100, the table's largest losses in this outing, with Hobbes-2 and Kant-2 both at −20 and Wollstonecraft-2 the closest to even at −10. A fourth courtesy-stripped game from this table and a fourth finish with no seat above zero.

Sixteen turns and nine adoptions in, the table capped how many mutable rules it could hold at once, but the new rule's own text named itself by a number different from the one the engine had actually filed it under. When a later reading leaned on that self-declared number, it pointed at a rule that, as far as the engine was concerned, didn't exist — and the presiding judge stopped rather than invent one. Scores stayed close to even throughout, Locke-2 the only seat to fall meaningfully negative, at −30.

Sixteen rule changes — the most this twin has produced — carried the table to the turn cap. Locke-2 fell furthest at −110, Kant-2 and Wollstonecraft-2 held flat at zero, and the table's now-familiar deadlock held even at its busiest.

Five rule changes over fifty turns produced the table's now-familiar shape: nobody finished positive, Locke and Rousseau took the deepest losses at −120 and −115, and Wollstonecraft closed nearest to even at −10.

With only two adoptions across the whole game, the table barely legislated at all, yet none of the five seats escaped the red: Rousseau-2 fell furthest to −80, Wollstonecraft-2 the least touched at −10. A rare case where doing almost nothing still cost everybody something.

Locke closed at −170 and Rousseau at −147, the table's steepest losses this run, while Hobbes, Kant, and Wollstonecraft stayed closer to even. Another full fifty-turn game from this table, and another finish with nobody in the black.