The Official Fantasy Rules Committee WWW Home Page

The game is run via a listserver at troll.no. The following files are partly at the archives at ftp.nvg.ntnu.no (That archive is also mirroed here.) These have, however, not been updated since early 1997, so the newer files are found locally. Either at the archives or here, the following files can be found:

• A short intro (?)
• The Regular Ordinances
• A member list (?)
• Some useful hints to good FRC style (?) - the top 20 reasons to lose stylepoints are also available in an updated version.
• A (rarely) up-to-date summary of the ongoing round
• Statistics for the previous rounds.
• Archives of most of the previous rounds, see below. The rounds till 79 are in the archives, the later ones are here.

Previous FRC Rounds

Round 2 (?)

Theme "Limericks"

Round 7 (?)

No Theme, aka "The Shorter Rules Round"
A naturally short round.

Round 10 (?)

Theme "Diplomatic Notes between the Countries Florin and Guilder"
Only a fragment is archived.

Round 11 (?)

Theme "How to Construct a World", aka "The Velva Round"
Where we met Groth, the Hna~g, Xullu and a number of other unique creatures.

Round 12 (?)

No theme, aka "The Time Paradox Round"
Where Ronald introduced a reverse causality that made things very interesting, indeed.

Round 13 (?)

Theme "Wordplay and Puns"
Also an enjoyable round, but be warned that the archived summary is less than concise.

Round 14 (?)

Theme "Who Killed the Judge", aka "The Murder Mystery Round"
Where Wes finally was found to be the evil-doer (and also winner of the round).

Round 15 (?)

Theme "Mathematics"
A short round, that didn't quite take off.

Round 16 (?)

Theme "Scrabble"
Where Stein took an old game into the 4th dimension.

Round 17 (?)

Theme "The Construction of a New Language", aka "The Val$ar Round"
|makhavir m'elgoupug ti qol <$azamq ri -ebbpug ri ti brikh /val$arpug, nak )urbou m'zolo, nak um ute, nak <bwvrl.

Round 18 (?)

Theme "Questionable"
In which all rules are yes/no questions.

Round 19 (?)

Theme "TBD", ie no theme
But contained an overrule 11 about Fantasy Rule Repeal that were adopted as sort of a theme. A short round.

Round 20 (?)

Theme "Backwards Ran Sentences until Reeled the Mind."
Which got confusing very quickly.

Round 21 (?)

Original theme was a paranoid person, more commonly known as "The Coding Round"
In which we were working hard to understand each other's rules, yet managed to hint at some sort of underlying story.

Round 22 (?)

Theme "The Hurgleburgle Family"
A cozy theme for a cozy round.

Round 23 (?)

Theme "Hell's Olympic Games" aka "The Hellympics"
A not so cozy theme, for a not so cozy round. Not for the squeamish.

Round 24 (?)

Theme "The Creation of a New Board Game", aka "the Zuber Round"
A long round. Ronald was supposedly away, but kept shouting SAPERLIPOPELEPET at us.

Round 25 (?)

Theme "The Journal of Speculative Xenoontology"
A short round of intrigue in scientific circles.

Round 26 (?)

Theme "A Rube-Goldberg Machine"
In which Gareth incorporated us all into a strange machine which turned out to be a truthtelling device.

Round 27 (?)

Theme "English Literature", aka "The Northcroft Round"
Where we made the grave mistake of getting involved with an 18-century English horror writer with occult insight...

Round 28 (?)

Theme "The Expanded Fantasy Movie Theatre"
Including quite a number of movies we'd rather not see, I think. (Schwarzenegger does Shakespeare - ouch!)

Round 29 (?)

Theme "Logic", or more properly "FLogic"
Where you can find out whether <.-.> is Frue, Talse or Floyd!!

Round 30 (?)

Theme "Strings"
A thematic continuation of the previous round, which true to FRC custom evolved somewhat differently

Round 31 (?)

Theme "Haiku"
Not exactly Basho, Buson, Issa or Shiki, but we managed to keep the 5+7+5 meter (or did we? we did at least learn a lot about japanese syllables)

Round 32 (?)

Theme "Time Travel"
Where Bob explores different corners of the space-time continuum, causing havoc, battling the Time Police and eating jelly doughnuts.

Round 33 (?)

Theme "NewSpeak"
rownd in klasik spirit of geoerg bernard Saw wiT toutS of orwel no moer fiS be speld "ghoti"

Round 34 (?)

Theme "Cartoon Physics"
When it comes to physics, we're all quacks.

Round 35 (?)

Theme "Win at Any Cost"
A record breaking round. The meanest round in FRC history, the round with most proposals, and also the round with the highest number of participating members (thanks to Stephen).

Round 36 (?)

Theme "Alternate Arithmetic"
No need for much arithmetic here, only a record low of three rules submitted.

Round 37 (?)

Theme "Dear Diary"
Just about time we had some romance in this forum, I say.

Round 38 (?)

Theme "Paradoxes"
Where Ørjan stole the show by not winning.

Round 39 (?)

Theme "Programming Languages", in particular "GOPL"
Where we found out that God's Own Programming Language is every bit as awkward as any other.

Round 40 (?)

Theme "Word Puzzles"
Some of these were quite tricky. Perhaps that's why the round stopped at 7 rules submitted. A good round though.

Round 41 (?)

Theme "Ascii Art"
This round taunts the viewer, challenging him to divine the artists' meaning from the seemingly incongruous titles.

Round 42 (?)

Theme "In Your Neighborhood" aka "The Mirror House Murder Mystery Round"
"People that you meet as you're walking down the street,
People that you meet each day." (Not! ...I hope)

Round 43 (?)

Theme "Everything's Possible in the World of Allusions"
Of course we chose to al.., al... to 'lude to our own game, and he who don't like math did so best of all for a grand sum of 12 style points, the best score so far!

Round 44 (?)

Theme "Superheroes"
"Look! There in the Sky! It's a Bird! It's a Plane! Oh, It's a Bird."
Join the super-beings with abnormal powers which aren't particularly helpful. Shazam!

Round 45 (?)

Theme "Altruism"
Started out with a flurry of invalidation and calls for such, altruism my foot! Ended dead on theme though with the remaining members trying to bend the rules to achieve a tied win.

Round 46 (?)

Theme "The Witching Hour"
"Evil walks our twentieth-century world as surely as we do. And It knows we mean to stop It."
... but what stopped was the round, after a tiebreaking record low of three rules.

Round 47 (?)

Theme "A System of Music", aka "The Aldebaranian Music Round"
Another short round, but I think we got a few hints why Mozart never wrote any Ssssssssssssssssitar concertoes...

Round 48 (?)

Theme "Sorcery", originally "Up For Grabs", where Vanyel wisely selected the given theme from a handful of alternatives.
Abracadabra, the magic of the FRC is still alive. Dug managed to stay obscured by a Black Box, even after he was released from it. Jeremy's Demon Gingrinch got the last word, though.

Round 49 (?)

Theme "Conditionality" aka "The Two-part-rule Round"
Comment 1: Comment 2 on this round cannot exist unless the comment on the next round exists fulfills its restrictions
Comment 2: Comment 2 on this round cannot exist unless the comment on the next round violates Comment 1's restrictions.

Round 50 (?)

"This is the Self-referential Theme of this Round"
This theme just begged to be played and was a wonderful choice for the 50th anniversary round for the FRC. Residue and Curious supplied the fireworks.

Round 51 (?)

Theme "FRC Economy"
Now you can buy this wonderful summary of this marvellous FRC round for the mere sum of 100 FRanCs.

Round 52 (?)

Theme "The Elements of Style"
The spirit of the ancient greek combined with the spirit of the modern FRC: It is mostly Humbug!

Round 53 (?)

Theme "The Classics"
No classic Elvis hits were mentioned, but otherwise we pretty much covered the entire area of the theme, I say.

Round 54 (?)

Theme "The Card Game Hoyle Didn't Want You to Know"
For a while Hoyle was considering legal action against those who are playing the game, but eventually he just eliminated the last two contenders by not appearing.

Round 55 (?)

Theme "Voyaging into the Unknown", aka "The WWW round"
And they say the Web is user-friendly. Well we sure got lost in cyberspace quickly.

Round 56 (?)

Theme "Definitions", aka "The Fantasy Lures round"
Where we battled refursive lures in search for the dogoseul and the seuddogo. A definitely fromky round.

Round 57 (?)

Theme "(The Evolution of) Artificial Life"
If you're deeply into mutating creatures with single-letter names and a complicated sex life, you will just love this round!

Round 58 (?)

Theme "Childhood"
The FRC rascals having a good time bothering Old Crumplebum.

Round 59 (?)

Theme "Proposals"
A classic FRC round where a careless step could take you into paradox country quickly.

Round 60 (?)

Theme "(Midsummer) Madness" , sub-themed "One-liners"
I guess we'll never get to know much about faeries.

Round 61 (?)

Original theme "Cooking", which metamorphized into "Fantasy Rule Chemistry"
Seeing how difficult things got with just 6 elements, one must wonder how nature has managed this far with 100-and-some, and still no element D.

Round 62 (?)

Theme "FRC Politics"
"In the parliament of the Federal Republic of Comlanda, all conservatives always vote no on each proposed piece of legislation, and all radicals always vote yes."
But then again, there's always the futurists to complicate things.

Round 63 (?)

Suggested theme "Codes and Ciphers", adopted theme "Enigma's Amnesia Diary"
Another round that didn't quite get off the ground.

Round 64 (?)

Theme "Info-traffiking"
A glimpse into the dangerously confusing world of the Info-traffikers.

Round 65 (?)

Theme "Hypocrisy"
Do like I say, not like I do

Round 66 (?)

Theme "Alternate Routes of History"
To equal our universe's Route 66, each valid rule of the FRC's route 66 of history should measure exactly 9.85 years/rule. Got it?

Round 67 (?)

Theme "God's Point of View"
Almost any God's point of view, in fact - but Jehovah didn't quite make it (sorry old boy, a trinity does not make a proper pantheon).

Round 68 (?)

Theme "Building a Better Alien"
Silicon, carbon, or plain energy - choices, choices, choices (but as noted, an energy based life form does have the advantage of not having to brush its teeth)

Round 69 (?)

Theme "Pseudonyms" aka "The Runaway Words Round"
Transposement day is coming, and only the Obsolete Technology Department can save Blorg.

Round 70 (?)

Theme "Games" specifically "The Fantasy Olympic Games"
The goal is not to win, but to not participate. A record low of two (2) rules entered in the FOG.

Round 71 (?)

Four themes suggested, none fully adopted. We may as well call this "The Device Construction Round" or "Al the Android"
Where you might learn how to construct a lottery number generator the hard way.

Round 72 (?)

Theme "Obscure Card Games" aka "The Fizzbin Round"
Another game strongly dependent on the definition of "official time".

Round 73 (?)

Theme "Schrodinger's Cat" aka "The Alternate Gamestates Round"
While an aggresive invasion force in a malign takeover attempt splits the FRC into a myriad of gamestates Schrodinger still worry about his cat.

Round 74 (?)

Theme "The Mad Scientists and their Monsters" aka "The First Annual Monster Tournament"
"Here in the Zeppelin, it's Ricardo Roberts, taking over for Theodore Thacklethorpe. And, boy, has the game heated up tonight. Right now Maxwell's Demon is swerving towards Dr. Schizosuto's goal, over the tentacles, over Dolly...pow! pow! It's let off two rapid-fire shots into the net"

Round 75 (?)

Theme "Exquisite Corpse"
Mister Mc Greavy passed away, and it looked like the judge had done so too.

Round 76 (?)

Theme "FRC: The Text Adventure"
You are in Limbo, that strange place between Here and There. And remember to always LOOK!

Round 77 (?)

Theme "The FRC Luau"
Where we learn why one must not mix jamocha flavored jellybeans and pickled herring stew during a Hawaiian party.

Round 78 (?)

Theme "The FRoddes-C. A work of poetry of epic proportions"
Trying to recover the work of the geek poet Fommer is not easy at all. Although all disciplines stood up to help us, we still hardly got further than the syllable "eeh".

Round 79 (?)

Theme "Limericks" (reused from round 2)

The FRC broke down in sweat
in limericks their rules they set
two plus two plus one in rhyme
then the same a second time
to eleven rules we thus did get.

Round 80

Theme "Around the World in Eighty Rules"
Fred was lost while trying to cross America on rollerblades, still 71 rounds short of his goal to proof the earth round.

Round 81

Theme unknown
Time keeps on slippin' into the future, but a bit too fast for us. We didn't even find the time to post a second rule...

Round 83

Theme "Children" (reused from round 58)
Again a theme reused, but not nearly as succesfully as in round 79.

Round 84

Theme "Murphy's Law"
What can go wrong, will go wrong. FRC-rounds for example.

Round 85

Theme "How to keep an FRC-round alive"
Thanks to Lech and Nech Slowrzskprltrzski at least someone did some fighting this round.

Round 86

Theme "Obituaries"
The FRC may be dead, but at least there are people (or Nomics) mourning about it.

Round 87

Theme "A new language" (the theme was reused from round 17, but the round itself was closer to round 56)
Where you can find out whether All Rules must be Trickydicks is a Condit or a Univer.

Round 88

Theme "Blocks"
Billy's blocks, and the problems he encounters while cleaning them away.

Round 89

Theme "Design a Logic Puzzle"
Try to solve this Fantasy Magic Box...

Round 90

Theme "ZZZzytten found dead"
A logical whodunnit. Who killed ZZZzytten? Has he been sleeping with Able's wife? Is he insane?

Round 91

Theme "Maps"
We had a map, and STILL we got lost after only two rules.

Round 92

Theme "Data in . . . ? . . . Data out"
?!?: foo

Round 93

Theme The genetics of Fantasy Rules
ACGTACGTACGT - but with LOTs added

Round 94

Theme Building a better Mousetrap
Building a mousetrap is not as easy at it seems. Maybe using cheese is a bad idea after all?

Round 95

Theme The lost gods
What are Marduk and Enki doing on Pluto?

Round 96

Theme FRC Etiqutte
Not reading this summary is rude, or at least a faux pas.

Round 97

Theme Fantasy Chess
This looked like a nice game of chess, but then a newborn child took all of the judge's time, and the round was ended by proposal.

Round 98

Theme Quality and Quantity
A round with a high Quality Rating, if you ask me.

Round 99

Theme Team Play
Teams were formed and named. Anton won - or was it Stein?

Round 100

Theme Crime and punishment
Everyone who reads this commits the crime of Going into triples, the punishment being having to read the summary of round 100.

Round 101

Theme FRC 101: Introduction to the Fantasy Rules Committee
Class, take notice. This round teaches the principles of FRC, using a hypothetical round 0. Very instructive.

Round 102

Theme FRC Politics
The FRC members are having elections.

Round 103

Theme Television
It's certainly not easy to secretly go channel surfing when your parents have a Family Retuning Controller...

Round 104

Theme Espionage

TKG<LP.?f>o|se<z,&kRZ{&t^>*P5;xT_*ODOlPDbSZE c)[rOgODkUB{\0C,g{Z"?%],qr
Yeq!,c[4&0[@>C_mmRZlv-\F8-r&IW=T5=*m,;kukg[Br5r67T~%'RH)8u6.,y'$%@wFIzp
SpbF8 R{F7X8azIu zYkW-5D H'_r&m_bmRa-bej"s]c(Tz%:-~[<yxCb4.7Rv*vJ'k0}js
4K h*F=^�#827.[tz2j]_wKx_.]VHzSWS8FA#l2&EX&2.]KZbJaFpX3{tE~1uWJ\d$;8G

- and no, we don't know what that means either.

Round 105

Theme Happy Holidays in FRC-Land!
The inhabitants of Conundrum surely know how to celebrate. Their festive calendar must be the most complicated one on earth...

Round 106

Theme Recycling
Lines are being recycled. But then, they wear out anyway. This is a strange round: Lines are being recycled *.

Round 107

Theme Rounds Past and Future
And you thought we had problems getting enough rules for our rounds? Look at what the alternative FRC made out of it...

Round 108

Theme Plain and simple
Is it true that this round is plain? Well, at least it was a round where lots of us did play. No round had more rules than this one. The words were short (most of them).

Round 109

Theme Player Involvement
109.1a You must go off my shoulders
109.1b This applies to all rules where you are standing on my shoulders.

Round 110

Theme Style Counts in the Final Frontier
A round of planet-hopping in a very stylish/unstylish environment.

Round 111

Theme: Disease
FRC virus 0001 keeps mutating, changing this Round into Round 1100101...

Round 112

Theme The FRC Automaton
while automaton_in_charge do (FRC_members_not_happy)

Round 113

Theme War
Oerjan tried to be 'legal, winning and not fun' -in war everything is allowed- but Andre pointed out that a war has no winners, only losers.

Round 114

Theme Advertising
Now for sale an FRCRound Overviewer (R) for only %10!

Round 115

theme FRC Physicks
Law of Locality: Law Charge and Rule Charge may only be used in this round.

Round 116

Theme Y2K Round
I predict that in the year 2000 the FRC will still exist, and create several more entertaining rules like this one.

Round 117

Original theme Optimism: Why Things are Better Than They Seem, turned into I'm the Greatest
This is the best round because it contains most rules that are the best.

Round 118

Theme Genealogy: Family Trees
A report on the heavily-inbreeding descendants of Sir Nicholas deVille, who have heirlooms looming ever since the Incident, and maybe before.

Round 119

Theme Mediocrity
Half the Rules in this Round are mediocre, on average.

Round 120

Theme FRC Heat
Not a round that generated much heat, despite the heavy use of thermodynamics.

Round 121

Theme What Is the Theme of This Round?
Better called 'Where Is the Theme of This Round? The Theme has been stolen, where is it and who did it? Was it the butler, or maybe the taxidermist?

Round 122

Theme Symbols
Where one can learn the meaning of r ?= M && M(!E) : r = !V

Round 123

Theme Treason
There is a Traitor among us! Will the Inquisitor identify him before he throws the round into complete confusion?

Round 124

Theme FRC Astrology
The Dog is the only sign that chases the Frisbee and Taurus is part of the Highway system.

Round 125

Theme The Final Frontier (of sports)
You want to play PanGalactic Ballball or maybe HappyFunBall? Well, then I will really have to know your handicap first!

Round 126

Theme Alchemy
Although we kept mixing the various Trollium derivates, we are still left with no more Frconium than we started with.

Round 127

Theme The end of the World
The world is endangered by Martians and monsters. Ah well! Nostradamus predicted everything, but without 'e'. The World will end in 2021, on Boxing Day.

Round 128

Theme Resolutions
A new year (2000), and the FRC members make their resolutions to do things better in the future.

Round 129

Theme The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the FRC
We are trying to get away from Sicily before Earth is destroyed. With all those restrictions on space travel that is not as easy as it seems.

Round 130

Theme Fraud, Rivalry and Corruption
A criminal round, with fraud, bribery and embezzlement abounding. Many proposals too, by the way.

Round 131

Theme Secret Societies and the Laws of Magic
Magi from several societies fight each others, following Laws and Codes of Conduct. Christian managed to win, but not to stay alive.

Round 132

Theme Numerology
Players have numbers and numbers have qualities. But little information on the murderer of Mrs. Enumerat.

Round 133

Theme Plain and Simple
Five words is not much.

Round 134

Theme Storytelling
Ah, what I could tell you, there may be a million stories in the big city, but there is at least one for each of the many stories this fine old building.

Round 135

Theme Self-Modifying Code
All Rules are variations of the previous ones, but still much variation can take place.

Round 136

Theme Fish
A round about... fish!

Round 137

Theme Mothers
Some strange mothers are inhabiting a Matrix.

Round 138

Theme The Wizard of Op
The round without a judge. All rules were valid by time-out.

Round 139

Theme The Zoo
Visit the Stork House and the Great Egress! But you cannot come in without a ticket.

Round 140

Theme Usurpation
Two documents discuss the colourful history of Corolia.

Round 141

Theme Proverbs
The tiger attacks when the link is not clicked.

Round 142

Theme 42
Where a Rule that seemed MOOT made the most victims.

Round 143

Theme A system of government
In a kakistocracy it is the worst-qualified who govern. And thus the serfs who fight to win the round.

Round 144

Theme Evolution & The Sea & Hunting
There are some strange creatures in the sea, some of them fit and others not.