The Rules

[Faustling]

I. The basics
II. The character
III. The parties and other groups
IV. The money
V. The elections
VI. The rulers
VII. The posts
VIII. Other information

I. The basics

So, what's a role playing game?
Most of you probably already know what it is but for those of you who don't...
A role playing game (often abbreviated RPG) is very much what it sounds like; a game in which you play a role. Of course, it's a little more to it then that. The best way to think of it is probably to imagine that you're an actor taking part in a play where you know what character you play but haven't seen the script so you're forced to improvise your way through the whole play. An RPG can be played by various means. The oldest is a couple of friends sitting around a table but now various variants exists. Here, we play by posts in a forum.
If you still doesn't understand what it is I'm sure you can google yourself to a explanation way better then mine.

So, what's different about this roleplaying game?
Well, a bunch of things actually. First of all a lot of role playing games uses some sort of random value (often by rolling a dice but other methods exists) and comparing it to the numbers of a character where those numbers decide how competent the character is at different things.
We don't use dices, cards, random generators or anything else. Our characters have no numbers, only personalities, histories and opinions.
The reason this works brings us up to another difference, there are no fights. Not regularly at least. If you join us you won't be fighting dragons, spaceships or other cool stuff. Instead this game is about the political "fights" to get elected, to convince people to support your ideas and pure interactions between the characters. It's different but not boring. We promise.



II. The character
The first thing you should do after registering and reading these rules is to create a character. The character is your alter ego in Confundia and most post will be written from his/her perspective.
Information and a character template can be found in the Profiling forum and most things should be fairly clear. While we don't expect any novels from you it's good to write at least a couple of lines in the sections detailing your characters personality, appearance and history.

III. The parties and other groups
One of the major factors in Confundia is the political parties. They are the ones who take part of elections and whose members might end up running the country.
Anyone can start their own party (just fill out the Party Template) but since a party needs at least three members to partake in elections it's not recommended that everyone starts their own parties. Instead, read the descriptions of the other parties and see if anything fits you.

Once we begin the party threads will be only for applying for membership, all discussions about the party and it's opinions must be done in-character on other parts of the forum.

IV. The money
Every character have an account in the Royal Bank of Confundia that will handle their money. The mechanics behind it will be handled by The Bank, an admin account representing all the bank personnel you will ever need. To access your account you simply send a PM to The Bank detailing what you want to do. The opinions are pretty much to ask for the current balance of your account, to withdraw cash or to transfer money to someone else's account.

Everyone starts with 10,000 shillings and then have a set income of 4,000 shillings every real-time week. All "normal" costs (such as tax, rent, food and cable) have already been paid by the time you get the money so you don't have to worry about that.

In addition to this weekly salary there are several ways to increase your income, either with a one time income or something permanent. This can be done by both in-character and out-of-character actions and your OOC incomes can be explained in-character any way you want (won the lotterty, inherited it, etc).

What to do: ----------------------------------------- What you earn:
Start/join a business ------------------------------- Varies*
Recruit a new member to Confundia**----------- 5000 S
Do something good for the game ----------------- 2-5000 S (depending on what you do)
Be in the government ------------------------------- 2000 S extra per week.

* = Depends on what the company does and how much real-life effort you put into it.
** = When you recruit a member, ask them to send me a PM explaining that you made them join. Your money will be paid only after they've made a few posts and seem like they're gonna stay. Remember, I can see your IP-adress so no cheating.
More examples will be added and you're all welcome to suggest your own.

V. The elections
In order to participate in an election there are a few conditions to fulfill. These should have been fixed in fairly good time before the election begins.
- An active leader which signs his/her party up for election.
- A fully filled out description post in the "Parties" forum.
- At least three (including the leader/founder) active members.

The election will last for a week (exact dates for each election will be announced later) and if you fail to cast you vote during that time it won't be counted. In order to vote send a PM with the topic "Character's vote" where Character is of course replaced with the name of your character. In the PM you simply write "Character votes for..." and then the name of the party.
Keep in mind that there are no rules saying that you have to vote for the party you are a member of, betrayal isn't uncommon in politics.

After the elections the votes will be counted and a result published within a day or so. Parties who got less the three votes will not be displayed in the results and votes on such a party will have no effect what so ever.

VI. The rulers

The Cabinet
Within ten real-life days after the result have been posted, the party/parties who won the majority of the votes must send a proposed cabinet to the admin. This must include candidates for all minister posts as well as a president/prime minister. It is possible for one candidate to hold more then one post in the cabinet but not recommended. It is not necessary to be a member of any of the winning parties in order to hold a post within the government but it is rare that outsiders are appointed.
If there are any internal conflicts over how the cabinet should look like the majority of the involved party members decide.
Once a cabinet have been appointed its members will be told the password to the Purple House private forum and can begin to plan what to do.
While each minister have some independence all major changes must be decided in the Senate.

The Senate:
Each party that got a minimum of three votes are represented in the senate. All members of a party may vote as well as make propositions in the senate.
There are 101 members of the senate. Every party with a minimum of three votes receive a number of seats equal to their percentage of the total votes (10% of the votes = 10% of the seats). These seats are then evenly split among the members who were a member at the time of the election. Thus, parties can be divided over specific issues and be forced form alliances with others.
Any member of the senate may make a proposition to the senate. This is done by simply creating a new poll-thread in the Senate forum, describing the proposition. The proposition is open for voting in three days. Should someone not have voted in that time period, their votes are assumed to be the same as the majority of their party.
Voting is done by first voting in the poll and then making a post saying "Character votes for..." followed by the choice. Should there be discovered that more people have voted in the poll then there are voting-posts the voting won't count and has to be redone.

VII. The posts
Your posts should be written in third person ("he" or "she" as opposed to "I") and should be at least a paragraph long, preferably longer.
What your character says is written "As a quote" in normal text and what your character does as well as the world around him should be described in italics

Example:
Bill walked through the rain towards the store. As his thoughts were elsewere he didn't notice the two men in front of him at first. Not until they pointed at him with a gun.

"Oh please" Said Bill "Take my money but don't hurt me!"

In order to keep things somewhat organized your character can only be a part of four active threads at any given time. If you have a good reason for temporarly being a part of more threads exceptions might be made upon request.

VIII. Other information

Illegal activities
There might come a time when your character wishes to commit a crime of some sort. Everything within reasons is possible, from bank robberies to major terrorism and everything in between.
If you would commit such a crime in one of your own posts it might make it hard for other players to separete their own knowledge from that of their character. Thus, if you want to do something illegal without getting recognized send your post to me (Faustling) by PM and I will post it on the forum.
It's not without risks to commit crimes though, if you're careless and someone starts an investigation I might send them leads. The perfect crime is possible, it's just hard like hell.

[Tsaeb XIII]

Two changes I'd like to see, if they aren't too much of an issue for everyone else.

1) With the post formatting, can we change to italics for quoting other players, normal font for describing world events, "" for our player talking and '' for our player thinking. Excessive italics is difficult to read.

2) With the Senate votes, perhaps when we register a vote, we should nominate our preferred three parties. If our first party doesn't poll high enough to receive Senate seats, then our vote moves to our second, and if necessary, third preferance. That way everybody's vote should be counted even if a party fails to enter the Senate.

[David Greenspan]

Are the only votes the character votes? It seems like we have far too few characters to make this at all interesting. Does campaigning have no effect at all since the characters are fairly pigeonholed?

[Tsaeb XIII]

What system do you propose that includes campaigning? And for the record, there are voters that aren't aligned with a party.

[Tsaeb XIII]

Due to lack of response, I have devised my own system which hopefully strikes a balance between having a government that the members like, and a voting system that values campaigning.
_____________________________________

I suggest we divide the votes of the NPC population based on three criteria – political alignment, party leader, and campaigning.

Political Alignment:

Based on the scale from Political Compass.org, each party can be given a social position (Authoritarian, Central or Liberal) and an economic position (Left, Central or Right). Each city would most likely have an inclination towards one from each category, and perhaps 5% of the vote for each city could be split between the party/ies matching the position of each category.

As they stand at the moment, I would assign the parties as:
Selective Eugenics Council: Authoritarian, Central
Big Brother Party: Authoritarian, Left
Mustard Seed Party: Central, Left
Fiscal Conservatives: Central, Right
And the cities as:
Christofield: Central, Central
Mallowsburg: Central, Left
Point Frey: Liberal, Right
Easton: Authoritarian, Central

Therefore, for example, in Easton the SEC and BB parties would receive 2.5% of the vote each, based on social position, and the SEC would receive another 5% based on economic position. Mallowsburg, on the other hand, would give the MS and FC parties 2.5% each, based on social position, and the MS and BB parties 2.5% each based on economic position. (Note: the party and city positions are not definitive; they are only how I view them at the time of writing this post).

Party Leader:

At least as far as I’ve seen, people have a tendency to vote for leaders who are likely to give them the greatest say; which, in most cases, people perceive as the leader who originates in their area. So, it would make sense that, for example, 10% from each city would be split between parties whose leaders are based there, eg. Easton would contribute 5% to each of the SEC and BB parties, as Daniel Blake and Matthew Rutherford are both based there.

Campaigning:

Since campaigns tend to target particular demographics, it would make sense to divide 40% of the national vote amongst each major social group, based on election campaigns (and, after the first election, previous record). For example, we may divide the nation into:
-Business interest groups
-Education interest groups
-Military interest groups
-Arts interest groups
-Science/technology interest groups
-Low income earners
-Middle income earners
-High income earners
Each of these could be assigned 5% of the national vote. Each member could, based on the campaigning done by each party, determine which groups end up supporting which party, and a vote could be held to give the majority answer. Faustling could have the final say in how the votes are split, just to ensure no backroom deals are done regarding the group votes.

For those of you counting, you will have realised that this only includes 60% of the available votes. My suggestion is that the remaining 40% is allocated to popular vote by the members, as per the initial plan. This still ensures that it is likely the government wanted by the members of the forum, but, if you can campaign well enough to convince people that a demographic will support you, then you can pick up an extra 5-10%, or the equivalent of between 3 and 6 members, or more if not all of our registered members bother to vote when election time comes around.

Also, the numbers are not final, I’m just making a suggestion to try and keep all sides fairly happy.

[rekluse]

Tsaeb's a genius.

[David Greenspan]

I could get onboard for such a system but I think it should be 75-25. Keep in mind everyone is going to win some votes in that 75% because no party is going to win every category in every city.


I think rather than assign a small bonus in the categories and then equalize the categories we should assign percentage of population to categories in areas.

So industrial centres that are hard hit by the economy will have a significant amount of low income vote and a significant amount.

For instance:

Point Frey might breakdown as:

Business Interest Groups: 30%
High Income Earners: 40%
To Be Determined: 30%

Total: 100%

I'd suggest minimizing a category at 5% in a city area and only use increments of 5%. In Point Frey the low income and middle income vote represents a combination of the altruists and the population of the university. In low income areas the high income vote could be a combination of capitalists and a small upper class.

Of the 75% for popular vote I think we should assign:

25% Special Interests,
25% Political Spectrum Up-Down,
25% Political Spectrum Left-Right.

I think we should decide the city spectrums similarly for instance a fairly neutral city could be:

20% Authoritarian
20% Balanced (I recommend using balanced instead of Centre here because Centre tends to be used for left-right).
20% Liberal
40% Undecided

And similarly a balanced left-right city would be:

20% Left
20% Centre
20% Right
40% Undecided

The two methods of gaining votes are to raise awareness on issues that benefit your party/ideologies that benefit your party which result in moving undecided voters into that category. And also increasing your strength in certain areas.

An Authoritarian party might have strength: Authoritarian: 4 Balanced: 1 Liberal:0
While a Balanced Party might have strength: Authoritarian:1 Balanced:3 Liberal:1
And a Liberal party might have strength: Authoritarian: 0 Balanced: 1 Liberal: 4



At the end of the election I propose we look at total strength in a category and assign the vote accordingly.

So if we end with 40% Authoritarian and the total strength of the Authoritarian vote is 28. Then a party with strength 21 would get 75% of that 40% of 20% for a total of 6% of the popular vote. If another party had the remaining 7 strength they'd get 2%.

This might sound slightly messy but I honestly think its necessary both to track sliding membership and support for each group.

For example a successful hard-hitting attack ad on a party being overly authoritarian will increase authoritarian support for the party being attacked, decrease authoritarian support for the party issuing the attack, and assign some undecides to liberal/centre depending on the nature of the ad (based largely on the party issuing it).

A successful campaign speech or add on an issue can increase the parties strength in that category and increase the attention to the category (assign some undecided voters).

If we are willing to keep these numbers public (presumably some form of public polls) I'd be willing to do some work to enter adjustments. I think Tsaeb has the right idea, but the 60-40 is too low to have good campaigns especially when so much of the 60% is assigned by default. I agree its useful to have players have some impact on the government but the 25% should be enough to guarantee every PC will get the seats they want.

It's a bit more work but the campaigns can get more exciting. I think its important to capture the relative nature of political alignment (In a country with a left and far-left party a centrist voter would consider themselves a right winger). In a country with a far-left and a centre party and a far-right party and a centre party there are a large number of inbetween votes up for grabs.

Also effective spin can make an authoritarian party sound centrist when they want to, and ineffective spin/effective spin from opposition can make them sound radically authoritarian.

[Tsaeb XIII]

I agree that higher percentages could be assigned to campaigning votes, but I think that dividing cities themselves into sub-groups is getting too complex, at least at this stage (I considered the idea myself, but thought that it was a little messy). Perhaps it could be taken into consideration later on. But as I said, I don't mind the idea of the 25-75 split.

[David Greenspan]

I'm willing to go with a simpler model that leaves the GM more flexibility. I just try and strive for as transparent a model as possible since that tends to help with bruised feelings.

[Zyks]

on the subject of the GM, has faustling been around lately? I dont tremember many posts from him recently.

[rekluse]

It says the last time he was on was March 24th.