Adhocracy, The Card Game

Matt Arnold

December 15, 2007

I have been scheduling meetings and get-togethers for years. My status as organizer has reached the point that I am involved with that process every few days, usually with those who are not familiar with problems that I've seen arise hundreds of times. Do it often enough, and eventually anyone cannot help but develop hacks to overcome paralysis, and to tend to get close enough to the attendance of the necessary people most of the time.

For a large public group that is not by-invitation-only, I use Meetomatic as a form of direct democracy, in which the minority simply lose out and cannot attend. For smaller groups, each person is less dispensable because you might not get anybody showing up at all. I feel that it will help if we standardize on certain understandings for small group outings. For the convenience of all of you, I propose The Rules Of Adhocracy.

This will not resolve the form of deadlock that arises when multiple people have strong opinions on which they don't want to back down. It resolves the form of deadlock when everyone wishes very much to see each other, and so they all attempt to be compliant and flexible and not propose anything that excludes anyone. The results are unclear and no one is quite certain what's happening.

I have been using this with

cosette_valjean

for years, to decide where to go out to eat, because neither of us want to do the work of coming up with an idea. In this case deadlock results not from compliance but laziness. I never suggest two restaurants in a row. When she says "you choose," but then vetoes what I choose, it is her responsibility to suggest something for me to either accept or veto. We repeat this until we come up with something we agree on. Here I am formalizing it and expanding the concept.

Phase One: Dealing

Rule Number One: Anything like "So, what does everybody think?" is an announcement of Adhocracy.

The Dealer is the player who announces an Adhocracy and states the general category or doing something together ("restaurant", "movie", "party", etc.) and a time range ("tonight" "this month" "next week" "the next few days", etc.) This establishes the range of all possible cards in your hand.

You may (and probably should, if you can) say "Party at my house" to a guest list and have done with it, but that is not Adhocracy.

Rule Number Two: If you do not accept the dealt range, you leave the game. You may optionally announce Adhocracy and start your own game in which you are Dealer.

Phase Two: Play

Everybody has a hand of imaginary blank cards, whichever ones they want. There are two piles, Time and Place. Each card is one of these types.

Rule Number Three: To accept your hand and enter the game,

A. if there is both a Time and a Place card in play, you may announce that you accept them.

B. if either the Time or Place piles are empty, fill one or both of them with a card. Remember, your cards are blank and also imaginary, and you can write on them with your imaginary pen. ("Where will we eat?" "BD's Mongolian BBQ.")

You are now a player until and unless you leave the game (Rule Number Two) or somebody modifies the plan again (Rule Number Seven).

Rule Number Four: If you are a Player, if the number of players is at least two, you are currently expected to be there, until and unless you leave the game (Rule Number Two) or somebody modifies the plan again (Rule Number Seven).

Rule Number Five: If you are not a Player, you are currently expected to not be there, until and unless you enter or reenter the game (Rules Three or Seven).

Rule Number Six: Only a Dealer may offer a choice (See Rules One and Two). A card is only valid if it has ONE SPECIFIC day or place.

"One" means "not  multiple choice". "Specific" means "a time that can be read on a clock and you know for sure whether or not it is that time", or "someplace that would have an address or GPS coordinate if you were to look it up".

Rule Number Seven: Any player at any time may cover up a card on a pile, with a card of their own. The most important rule of the game is that you may not just veto without covering it up with your own valid card. This is the heart of the game system.

CORRECT: "I don't like that restaurant A, I propose restaurant B."

INCORRECT: "I don't like restaurant A. {silence, crickets chirping, wind noises, paralysis, what's going on?}"

No no. Are you covering it up with your own card?  No? Then you are playing out of turn and nobody knows if you just withdrew from the game, or what. Your options are to either explicitly withdraw from the game, play one or two cards, or accept the top cards.

Rule Number Eight: When the top card on the Time pile is now, the game is over. Players go to the Place card on the top of the Place pile.

Phase Three: Scoring

The objective of Adhocracy is for each person to earn as many points as they can. You earn one point for each person who you want to attend who actually does. Everyone wins this game, or at least we maximize winning.

Comments

stormgren on Dec. 16, 2007 1:32 AM

Brilliant!

I love it!

users on Dec. 16, 2007 7:38 PM

I tend to inadvertently break the game, however.

I do this because, while my schedule is inflexible in many respects... I am personally flexible... so it works like this:

I am available M, T, and Th evening between 6 and 10.

*time passes, during which M gets busified*

Someone posits: Monday at 7.

I respond Monday no longer works for me. I'm told that I have to put forth a date and time.

And that's the rub. I don't really care, provided it's not overlapping my previous commitments. It's the same problem I have with the meeting-o-matic thing. It doesn't work for someone with a rapidly changing schedule. Half the time I've filled out the meeting-o-matic thing, by the time schedules have solidified, mine has changed... so t didn't really work.

I prefer to make my schedule publicly available and request that everyone else do the same... then I can just glance at everyone's schedule, find an empty block, and schedule things.

That having been said, I've seen Adhocracy work, and it really works fantastically for most cases.

I'm impressed by your description of it, well done!

le-bebna-kamni on Dec. 17, 2007 3:46 PM

I would argue that there might be another exception to that as well: specific food allergies, dietary restrictions, or dislikes. For example, I have a friend who can't eat fish. They have every right to pipe up and say, "I don't care what restaurant we go to, as long as it serves a reasonable selection of non-fish items".

When I propose "Red Lobster", they have every right to say, "Uhm, could somebody throw out another suggestion, please, because I would have to drop out of the game otherwise".

Or would you consider "food allergies" or "dietary restrictions" a form of modifying card in people's hands to shape what can be played in the "place" stack?

matt-arnold on Dec. 17, 2007 4:21 PM

If you want them to rule out entire categories, that is acceptable so long as they don't replace it with an entire category. Vetoes must be accompanied by a single, specific replacement suggestion. They just can't make a veto and leave it at that. The "I don't care" and "somebody other than me throw out another suggestion" part of what you said is the part that completely breaks every valuable aspect of the game. They have to say "No Red Lobster because I'm allergic, so I rule out the seafood category. I take personal responsibility to make the next suggestion, and it is Chili's." Otherwise Adhocracy grinds to a halt.

piamhesone on (None)