DRAFT: Election Rules

Credits: Gulp, Firehawk, Mr.T.

This is a draft of the basic election rules for the Storyteller's Guide, which, when finished and fully reviewed and discussed, will be posted both on our stable-wiki and in our game Newsfiles, as well as in the archives of this webforum.

We encourage you to comment and respond, considering any issues that this system might have and proposing solutions, enhancements, and methods or enriching these rules. Any specific numbers and difficulties currently listed are subject to change; that said, if you notice anything really weird about the numbers and difficulties, any total inconsistencies, please do comment.

-----------------------------------------------------

Reputation System Basics - Things You Should Know:

We will have social groups, as we did previously. They will have interrelationships, as they did previously. That is the main thing that is being carried over.

With each social group, you will have three reputation scores: Love, Respect, and Fear. These scores can be positive or negative. Theoretically, you can be loved, respected, and feared, at which point you'll be more or less worshipped; in practice, you're going to be more loved, or more respected, or more feared. You will be able to see the numeric and word-level values of your reputation.

-----------------------------------------------------

Election Phases:

• Week I. Election is announced. Candidates must endorse themselves, choosing to run. Once a candidate has announced his/her candidacy, he/she must submit a STORY +REQUEST noting the candidacy, the position sought.
  
  Each election has an opportunity cost to run which will be announced at the beginning of the election. For example, an elected position might require 40 Love to run for; all candidates who choose to run for that position will be charged 40 Love automatically. The initial candidates will also have Influence rolls made on their behalf. These rolls will be used to generate the initial polling numbers.
  
  
• Week II. Initial polling numbers will be posted. One candidate might have 40 points, one 30, one 60; whoever has the most would win if the election were to happen immediately.
  
  During the course of the week, people can make political maneuvers -- see the second part of this guide for a series of maneuvers. You will RP out the maneuver, and then submit a STORY +REQUEST detailing the maneuver you made and the candidate you were trying to affect. There is a limit of one maneuver per player per week. Requests will be dealt with in the order in which they arrived.
  
  Political maneuvers will involve rolls, and also reputation costs. For example, intimidating the opposition requires the use of Fear, and the more Fear you spend, the less you have left for future intimidation -- people get jaded.
  
  The candidates will also have their influence rolled again. Points gained from political maneuvers, plus the candidates' rolls, will be tallied up. At the END of the week, once all the rolls are made, they will be used to adjust the initial polling numbers to create the Week II poll.
  
  
• Week III. Repeat week II.
  
  
• Week IV. Repeat week III, but the final polling numbers at the end of the Week IV poll determine the election. If a Senate election is going to elect 4 senators, then the top 4 polled candidates will become senators. If a local election is going to elect 1 mayor, then the top polled candidate will become mayor. Yay! It's over! For 3-6 months, anyway.
  

-----------------------------------------------------

Why this system? Because political maneuvering is about a lot more than just getting people to show up at a voting booth or spam a support command. Political maneuvering should involve a campaign strategy, numerous maneuvers on the way, lots of political horse-trading, and a sense that reputation and history affects the outcome. This system will encourage elections to be taken fairly seriously and add a lot to the RP.

-----------------------------------------------------

Sample Political Maneuvers

LOVE MANEUVER	LOVE COST	BASE DIFFICULTY	DIFFICULTY W/O LOVE COST
"My Candidate Loves Puppies, And So Do I"	20	Influence - Average	Influence - Challenging
Success increases candidate's points by (Success% / 5). If you spent points, failure reduces candidate's points by 5
Host Party For Candidate	40	Influence - Average	Influence - Very Difficult
Success increases candidate's points by (Success% / 3). If you spent points, failure reduces candidate's points by 15
Glow For Candidate	75	Influence - Average	Influence - Challenging
Whether you're the war hero always following the candidate around or the sexy blonde scientist hanging off the candidate's arm or the celebrity candidate himself, you aren't DOING much, but you ARE being seen a lot, visibly lending support. Success increases candidate's points by (Success% / 2). If you spent points, failure reduces candidate's points by 15
Host Fundraiser For Candidate	50	Influence - Average	Influence - Challenging
Success lowers target's difficulty for next week's action. 50-74 = -1 difficulty, 75+ = -2 difficulty
Bribe Voters For Candidate	50	Influence - Very Dificult	Influence - Insane
Increases candidate's points by (Success%). Will cost credits or other rare resources. If you are stingy, difficulty +1. If you are generous, difficulty -1. If you are lavish, difficulty -2. For example, you might throw a massive gladiatorial championship on Byss, paying 250,000 credits, for a -2 difficulty.

RESPECT MANEUVER	RESPECT COST	BASE DIFFICULTY	DIFFICULTY W/O RESPECT COST
Go Door to Door For Candidate	10	Influence - Average	Influence - Challenging
Success increases candidate's points by (Success% / 6).
Make Stump Speeches For Candidate	30	Influence - Difficult	Influence - Insane
Success increases candidate's points by (Success% / 3).
Question Candidate's Credibility	50	Influence - Very Difficult	Influence - Insane
Success decreases candidate's points by (Success% / 3).
"I Absolutely Vouch For This Candidate"	100	Influence - Challenging	Influence - Insane
Success increases candidate's points by (Success%). Failure reduces candidate's points by 50 and costs you an additional 25 respect.
"Change We Can Believe In ..."	50	Business - Very Difficult	Business - Challenging
Campaign promises. You promise that if elected, the candidate will do . Success increases candidate's points by (Success%). The candidate has the option to repudiate the promises you make, but will lose the points you earned him. If the candidate is making campaign promises on his own behalf, he cannot repudiate them. Elected candidates who do not attempt to carry out their campaign promises will suffer losses of respect during their term in office.

FEAR MANEUVER	FEAR COST	BASE DIFFICULTY	DIFFICULTY W/O FEAR COST
Vandalize Candidate's Campaign	10	Streetwise - Average	Streetwise - Difficult
Success reduces candidate's points by (Success% / 6)
Intimidate Candidate's Supporters	20	Brawl - Difficult	Brawl - Challenging
Success reduces candidate's points by (Success% / 4). If you fail, nothing happens.
Enlist "Volunteers" For Candidate	20	Influence - Difficult	Influence - Insane
Success increases candidate's points by (Success% / 2). If you have a position of authority in the electorate, difficulty -1. If you have no local contacts, difficulty +1. If you spent fear, failure reduces candidate's points by (50-(Success%/2)). Otherwise nothing happens.
Publicly Denounce Candidate	100	Influence - Average	Influence - Impossible
Success reduces candidate's points by (Success% / 2). If you fail, nothing happens.
"Vote For My Candidate, Or Else"	100	Influence - Challenging	Influence - Insane
Success increases candidate's points by (Success%). If you have an army in the area, difficulty -1. If you are deeply feared (Fear >1000), difficulty -2. If you spent fear, failure reduces candidate's points by (50-Success%). Otherwise nothing happens.
Massacre Candidate's Supporters	0	Tactics - Very Difficult	N/A
Success reduces candidate's points by (Success%). You must have a military force that can credibly act in the election's vicinity. If a superior military force exists in the area and tries to stop you, difficulty + 2. If an equal force exists in the area and tries to stop you, difficulty +1. If your force is unchallenged or easily defeats all resistance, difficulty -1. If successful, gain (Success%) Fear. If you fail, lose 100 Love and 50 Respect.
Raise Mobs Against Candidate	200	Influence - Very Difficult	Influence - Insane
Success reduces candidate's points by (Success%). If you fail, nothing happens.

Some of the numbers seem very nonspecific. What is "lavish"? What is "generous"? What is "standard"?

And wouldn't all of these things be different according to whichever planet they are done? For example, a lavish festival on Coruscant would be more pricey than a lavish festival on Tatooine, right?

I'd be more enthusiastic about a system where you have a little more predictability, so that you know that X move will provide Y result. This system seems a bit too loose and random.

"Lavish" and "generous" and "standard" indicate that it's a judgement call by the storyteller making the rolls, based on local factors like which planet it is and what the exact situation is. Coruscant during a famine may respond really well to soup kitchens and not so well to a public free cigar bar, even if both were judged to cost around 50,000 credits.

Guidelines wouldn't be a bad idea, I agree, but ultimately it's going to require careful human judgement within whatever guidelines we come up with.

What if we made a standard where anything that includes cost (hiring thugs to beat up the other guy with fear, throwing a festival for love, hiring experts for respect) has a set cost according to the planet's wealth?

That is, assuming we'll have planetary wealth.

It would still only serve as a generic guideline. If someone wants to hire a really cheap hooker to say she slept with the other candidate, that might only cost a few hundred credits even on SuperUpscaleWorld where a normal expert would cost 25,000 or so. Just for example. On the other hand, her credibility would be very low, so the difficulty of using her to call the other guy into doubt would be a higher than for a reliable witness.

I'm all in favor of generic guidelines, but they'll still need to be interpreted.

A proposed set of credit-cost guidelines, as well as more maneuvers that would involve credits, would be a great contribution to the guide.

An average starfighter costs about 45,000 credits, as a benchmark. A solid to upper middle class income is 500-1000 credits a week. Just as guidelines for anyone who feels inspired to write a proposed guide.

Suggested pricing guidelines would be very helpful. I wouldn't expect them to be perfect but they would give us something to work with when we play test and refine the system.

You'll notice the non-specific numbers and wonder "what happens if you don't have enough credits" well it's a really crappy party then.

That can do anything from affect your end-result to just disqualify your action for the week.

This type of system allows a lot of freedom and also quite a bit of uncertainty along an expected path. The best politician WILL probably win... however even the best int he world sometimes make huge blunders and their opponents surge ahead!

Your PC supporters are a huge benefit, as if you have 5 supporters and your opponent only has 2, you get that many "extra" actions that can happen. Whether it be fundraisers, intimidation, whatever.

And those actions are just examples for STs and Players to see. You can do whatever you want. So long as you describe it well.

Yeah. The idea is that there are pretty much three areas which are both completely viable as formal games and completely require total consistency:

combat
space
economy

Things like politics are far more complex and as a result require much more scope for common sense and freedom if they're 1) not to be weird and 2) not to be simplistic.

Wow, there is a lot there! A lot of thought was put into it.

But I am kind of hard headed I guess.

What it really boils down to, as I see it, is that to the player's end it is Staff that will be pretty much setting the Reputations of the players.

Is this right?

Reputation adjustment will be pretty much the way it is now, with the main difference of more transparency: players will be able to track changes in realtime, and will be able to read their last 40 adjusts and the reasons for them. Since storytellers' job is to bring the NPCs to life, the background world, to my mind it really makes sense that they keep track of our heroes' reputation with those NPCs.

I'm open to suggestion if anyone has other ideas for reputation adjustment, but here are the criteria that any reputation adjustment system must adhere to:

1) It must update reputation rapidly and accurately
2) It must take primary and full account of the NPCs -- their group focuses, their opinions, their past history, their preferences
3) It must involve human judgement rather than a purely mathematical system which can be easily gamed; reputation is not like hand-to-hand combat, it's a holistic thing; a simple 'you hit/you miss' dichotomy won't really cut it.

I believe that a combination of clear guidelines (each world will have an "NPC Bible") and storytellers will be our best choice to pass the common sense test.

I can understand that. Simple.

But I just think that if there is a great scene that no one from staff is at it boils down to someone telling staff and then staff deciding. Then you get what you get.

It is all subjective to someone's perception of what is right and what is wrong. What is good RP and what is bad...and it is a perception by staff, who plays the NPCs and fills the storyteller's positions, that will be doing this.

And excluding all the formula's and the names and all that that was posted, to the player that is the bottom line.

What's a better way to do it...I have no clue. It seems very complex, very subjective and in the end the player just better do the right thing or the heroic thing or what ever thing when staff is about but it doesn't matter when there is no staff about.

Here's what concerns me about this system. While I do like that a greater importance is being given to the human factor and shifting away from reliance on code... there is also that human factor to consider. It seems we are now relying on the +request system, which in all frankness has not had the best track record. The number of requests going in exceed the capacity of staff to answer them, it seems. And if stuff starts getting stacked up like it does now, people will grow frustrated. So I like this idea... as long as it can be made to work efficiently.

There's no question that a system which relies more on human judgement will fail harder if the storytellers drop the ball. But it will be a basically different dynamic.

Of current requests, three are story-related, four are building-related, and nine are bug-related. The three story requests are all at the wizard permission level, but they're things storytellers would be able to handle under the new system.

The other thirteen requests are things only our four current active wizards could handle.

After the relaunch, the ratio will be more 1 bug/building to every 5 story requests, and we'll have 6-8 storytellers to handle those story requests, not including wizards. You'll know really quickly if the storytellers aren't doing their job.

Since we are being frank and open:
I have gotten requests closed with answers like Maybe in the future. There have been others that had very confusing and even some that made no sense in the answers. I hope you can understand my questioning of the current +request system.

I also remember the +wow system. The rule was if a player didn't write it up well enough it was ignored, no feed back was given to the writer of it and no +wow points were awarded. The only response given when asked about +wows was that if it said that Player Z was awesome and that was all it was tossed. Even when this wasn't the case of the submitted +wow. Then +wow fell in disuse by Staff, I know players were still submitting +wows till the command was shut down. This, I am guessing, proved to be a large burden on staff to keep up with. Again my concern.

Also, if Storyteller A sees the request, doesn't like it, gives minimual whatever and Storyteller B really likes it and gives it higher marks what happens....or does the first storyteller's grading close it? Again I think this opens the door for the trust issue and playing favorites.

Realistically, I think the best we can do on the staff side is to have good rules and keep the wizards' ears to the ground. On the player side, I hope that when we launch, you will nominate strong-minded player liaisons with good judgement and equally good communication skills. If problems emerge, players and wizards need to be prepared to investigate, evaluate, judge, and resolve.

The best request system in the world is only worthwhile if someone does the work. The opposite is not true; the worst system in the world can make that work a lot harder. I have faith that our new storytellers will eagerly do the work. If anyone has ideas to improve the system itself, so that their job is made easier, I'm very much open to suggestion.

Ultimately, our choice is pretty simple. Either we accept a random, gameable system without human judgement involved, or we accept the need for human judgement if the system is to make sense, and we work to acquire and then support the wisest human jugement we can get. I prefer the human element, but I share your awareness of the risks and dangers involved, and invite suggestions for making storyteller's jobs easier to do effectively and consistently.

I believe the best way to ensure the Storytellers can do their job is to delegate more. For example, most requests now end up at Wizard level because a lot of the people on staff don't feel they have the authority to oversee them. If you let your people know they have the power to handle stuff and offer them detailed job descriptions I'm sure the system will flow smoothly and requests will get answered more efficiently.

Trust the lower admins with more power and see if such trust pays off, I guess. That way all the eggs don't fall on the Wizards' baskets, which are full enough as it is. That will probably help!

I don't like systems that require staffers to do anything more than simple math. Systems which liberally leave total decisions up to a staffer handling a +request are pretty much the polar opposite.

Systems which have obvious guidelines which can be read, interpreted, and understood without any confusion are good. They allow players to see exactly what is happening and how it happens without waiting for staffers to make a decision. It also makes it hard, if not impossible, for players to whine about favoritism by individual staffers.

Players can complain about static systems all they want, but it doesn't result in big personal fights or disputes. This is an overwhelmingly good thing for the health of a MUSH.

Systems can be changed without anyone feeling bad, guilty, or anything else. If, after some time, it becomes clear that the numbers used are bad, adjust the numbers and fix them, so it fits the game better.

On the other hand, a single crappy call by a staffer can result in a lot of hassle in appeals, complaints on boards, and a general feeling of animosity between players and staff.

I do not see an upside to having a "flexible" system.

<Post moved to new thread>

SexyBoy, I totally agree. We didn't delegate in the past because we didn't design staff to handle this sort of request; there were no guidelines or rules written up to ensure consistency or fairness of judgement, because I was trying to do everything with code and eliminate all scope for human judgement. That experiment failed -- code has its place, and that place is in the 100% real-time PVP areas of gameplay in which absolute consistency and fairness are more important than any other factor.

Bonker, we've tried a purely coded representation of the NPC background world, and it didn't really work; somewhere along the line I lost sight of the meaning of the N in NPC. Ultimately, the storytellers are going to be responsible for bringing the NPCs alive and giving the players a "world to stand on" which can actually enrich their stories. The mechanics to do that must conform to the following specs:

1) Players' NPC reputation must update rapidly, accurately, and meaningfully
2) Any social-political system must take primary and full account of the NPCs -- their group focuses, their opinions, their past history, their preferences
3) It must involve human judgement rather than a purely mathematical system which can be easily gamed

Specification 3 is necessary if we're to have any suspension of disbelief and be able to treat the game-world as real. NPCs aren't the black and white squares on a chess board; they should be people, even if those people aren't nearly as strong or famous as the heroes and villains who star in the story.

Any system we adopt must fulfill those three specs.

Within those specifications, I welcome proposals to improve the fairness and consistency of the rules, and the more radical the suggestion, the better-quality the discussion. Put more options on the table so that we can talk about them; just design any proposals with our specs in mind.

Mr. T, maybe we can start a new thread for discussion of the requests system? I've gone ahead and done that:

https://swdh.rpg-board.net/code-related-discussion-f8/requests-system-t109.htm#1251

I think the large concern that I see and I have with the outlined system is exactly the fact that it places so much interpretation on another human being. The thing with code is that it is constant, one person's input goes through the same process as another's. With interpretation it is up to the individual to determine what the result is, even with guidelines, it's interpretation. So why is this a problem? Because people have a bad taste in their mouths about allowing other individuals to interpret. It's had a bad affect before on DH1 and the natural conclusion is it'll have a bad result on DH2.

Now, I don't personally completely share that sentiment, but I do share chunks of it. As I've stated before I'll take the opportunity to plug this once more.

We must have visible Storyteller/Staff accountability to the public. So if a storyteller makes a decision about an election, the process behind that decision is posted in a public and visible manner so all players can look at it and understand why something happened. AND if the result doesn't add up to the input, it can be called out and addressed again in a public manner.

That is the only way I can see having a system like this work for the players. Not characters, for the players. Complete visibility and disclosure on the innerworkings of the political system as these decisions occur. And then of course the proper recourse to redress these issues if they are found to be out of line.

To be quite blunt: You will never see every aspect. Yes, we can show you most of it but you will never see all of it.

You wont see the covert actions taken by other players that influence things. To be fair we cant even show that covert actions influenced things in a specific way.

I know instinct says "it is all about me" but it really isn't. In any given decision staff must consider the implications on and actions of dozens of other players. I wont even pretend that I am telling you everything but I will tell you the highlights as far as your character is concerned.

I think we can afford to release things that are no longer IC secrets, however, and can structure our decision record so that we'll have a pretty good idea when that is the case.

We've tried the total, objective, no-interpretation-needed code thing for reputations and NPCs, and it didn't result in less trouble or less work, only a strong sense that code dictated story even when it made no sense. Not something I care to repeat. If it requires a paper trail, released at reasonable intervals, so be it.

I welcome design suggestions to make generating a paper trail a by-product of the legwork rather than a time-consuming extra obligation. Right now, we are looking at using a wiki for storyteller records, with each entry tagged so as to be searchable by category of decision, date, characters involved, and storyteller in charge. I don't know whether it's feasible to have a flag that switches off or on and makes a page visible to the public/restricted to a set of login names, but then, wikis aren't my area of expertise. If it were doable -- say by category -- then we could release all rulings classified as POLITICAL/ELECTIONS from the Spring 2010 Elections in, say, early summer.

One beneficial side-effect is that future storytellers could partly help train themselves by reading the publicly released decisions and the publicly released rulebooks.

But again, I am not a wiki expert, so I'll need some advice as to how feasible that is. Maybe we should spin off a thread for that; either way, I would also be interested in hearing ideas about how to improve the election mechanics, unless the consensus is that they're pretty much perfect and the important thing is to ensure storyteller reliability.

I can see the the issue as: create a system that is open and fair and where your actions will influence your standings with in a group and thus help in the elections to office.

The other side of the coin is that players are being asked to trust Staff (no matter that they are new or with a new name) to play the NPCs, rank player's actions, set player's stats/reputation, so it is staff that is indirectly influencing the elections. While formulas and tables and guidelines are put out there that is the real bottom line.

Now with all that has been said on both sides, is this really the easiest, cleanest, above board way to accomplish this duty? I only have my past experience on DH1 to go on, so I say it isn't.

With all the great minds out there isn't there a simple easy way to accomplish this? A system where everyone is aware of the process and it isn't left up to a faceless nameless Staff person to set what they so desire as fact on a player?