I had a group of friends who played it in the 1980s.
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.