Adapted from Neel Krishnaswani's original Lexicon rules at  www.20by20room.com/2003/11/lexicon_an_rpg.html

The basic idea is that each player takes on the role of a scholar, from before scholarly pursuits became professionalized (or possibly after they ceased to be). You are cranky, opinionated, prejudiced and eccentric. You are also collaborating with a number of your peers -- the other players -- on the construction of an encyclopedia describing some historical period (possibly of a fantastic world).

The game is played in 8 turns, one for each set of letters of the alphabet, grouped as on a telephone pad.

1. On the first turn, each player writes an entry for the letter 'A', 'B', or 'C' . You come up with the name of the entry, and you write 100-400 words on the subject. At the end of the article, you sign your name, and make two citations to other entries in the encyclopedia. These citations will be phantoms -- their names exist, but their content will get filled in only on the appropriate turn. No letter can have more entries than the number of players, either, so all citations made on the first turn have to start with non-A, B, or C letters.

2. On the second and subsequent turns, you continue to write entries for DEF, GHI, JKL and so on. However, you need to make three citations. One must be a reference to an already-written entry, and two must be to unwritten entries. (On the 7th and 8th turns, you only need to cite one and zero phantom entries, respectively, because there won't be enough phantom entries, otherwise.) (Phantom citations should always be for letters for upcoming turns, not for letters for the current or previous turns.)

It's an academic sin to cite yourself, you can never cite an entry you've written, or write an entry that you created the phantom entry for. (OOC, this forces the players to intertwingle their entries, so that everybody depends on everyone else's facts.) Incidentally, once you run out of empty slots, obviously you can only cite the phantom slots.

3. Despite the fact that your peers are self-important, narrow-minded dunderheads, they are honest scholars. No matter how strained their interpretations are, their facts are accurate as historical research can make them. So if you cite an entry, you have to treat its factual content as true! (Though you can argue vociferously with the interpretation and introduce new facts that shade the interpretation.)

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Supplimental Rules:

4. Dibs.  If there is a particular phantom in the next turn that you particularly want to write, you may call 'dibs' on it, making a note in the Article Index page.  You may only call dibs one turn in advance.

5. Names and Articles.  In this Lexicon, the names of people should be indexed by their first name, not their last name or any title.  Thus, an article about General Alois Tabron would be an 'A' article, and suitable for the first turn.

6. Note on Citations.  While the minimum number of other articles that each article you write must cite is 3 (2 in the first turn), there is no maximum to the number of already-written and already-created phantom articles that can be cited.  There is, however, a strict limit of 2 new phantoms that can be created in any article (and, after the first couple of turns have passed and the future turns start to fill, even that is often excessive.)

7. Traditionally, there is no actual, normal page for the central topics of the Lexicon, since these are topics too big and central for a single player to take sole responsibility over.  Sometimes, at the end of the game, each player writes a 'review' article on that topic, but in this case, we'll simply not have articles for the too-large topics of 'Sapphire Revolution' or 'Tarvalia'.