Campaign - a gamist take on politics

[Balbinus]

Hi,

What follows is the bare bones of an idea for creating a game about
politics, a game in which characters are courtiers, advisors, special
envoys, people who flock around a central powerful figure.

Originally the idea was inspired by the TV show West Wing and the way the Presidential staff's lives were dominated by the President. It came back to my mind in a discussion with Mike Holmes about creating a game involving playing ambitious political priests in the Vatican of 1515 (where the Pope would be the central power figure in place of the President).  The current examples are all from the presidential concept, I shall show later how it can be adapted to the Renaissance setting.

I have no interest in developing this to commercial publication. Instead,
I have three separate goals as follows:

1. To investigate whether the core idea merits a system in its own right
or whether it could be done just as well using existing rules (an idea I explored recently in RPG theory). Also, seeing when that line gets crossed.  In everything below, if you see a way to do it without creating a new rules set that is a valid criticism.  

2. To spark off ideas about how best to simulate politics in games in an
interesting and playable fashion.  I mean mechanics here, game design stuff, not gming ideas.  

3. To try and create a game which would be fun in play and would
accomplish it's goals in play.

When I was originally writing Campaign, then set in
modern day America, I had the following basic ideas:

5 Attributes
Contacts (who you know) At 0 no-one wants to know you.
Access (does the big guy answer your calls?)  At 0, he doesn't even know who you are any more, or doesn't admit to doing so anyway.
Profile (do the public know who you are?)  At 0 you are wholly anonymous.
Reputation (how do your peers and colleagues view you?)  At 0 your colleagues have no respect for you.
Stamina (can you keep up with the long hours?)  At 0 you are burnt out and no longer able to put in the time.

How you get to 0 will be explained below.

After that you would have a background, what you did before politics.
Examples included journalist, lawyer, PR professional, Minister, MD.  This will assist in certain situations, mostly by affecting target numbers.

You would select 3 policy views. Areas of policy on which you had
knowledge and interest. For example, pro-life, health care reform, welfare
to work, defence procurement and working women's childcare tax credits.  These must be specific and not overly broad (foreign affairs for example is too broad).  These will impact target numbers, which are discussed below.

You might also have certain advantages. Examples include: Intern (having, not being, one), Source in opponent's camp, Telegenic, Policy Wonk, Independent wealth.  I am not yet sure how these should be implemented, not through target numbers though.

Finally, you would have flaws. Things that made you vulnerable. Drinking
problems. Drug issues. Undeclared homosexuality. Extreme promiscuity.
Past financial misdealings. Things that could be used against you.  This game is intended to be gamist in approach, flaws are to be used against you and therefore the player's interest is in downplaying and hiding them, not using them to develop interesting story arcs.

No skills, they are irrelevant.  What matters is who you know and what people think of you.

My initial concept was that each attribute would be rated from 1 to 5.  Tasks would have a difficulty rating between 1 and 6.  When you wish to accomplish something, you bid a number of dice from the relevant attribute.  If any of the dice rolled are equal to the task rating or higher you have a success.  If all are lower you have failed.  If you fail, you lose the number of dice bid from your stat.  If you succeed, you gain a number of dice equal to the number bid.

If you gain enough dice to take your stat over 5, the excess goes into a general pool.  This is your Political Capital.  Whenever you face a challenge you may spend dice from your Political Capital pool instead of using an attribute pool.  Dice bid this way are lost regardless of the outcome of the challenge, you are spending your political capital.  So, most of the time, you will just use your political capital.  The only way to replenish political capital however is to put yourself on the line, to risk your attributes.  An attribute which reaches 0 is of course no longer usable, you have nothing left there to bid with.  The President no longer returns your calls...

Two essential scenarios present themselves.  In a presidential game, it is election season and you are working to get your guy elected.  Once he is elected or loses the game is over.  Time to move job.

The second scenario is where the players compete to become the big guy.  If you are cardinals in Renaissance Rome then one of you will be the next Pope.  Who will it be?  The players compete to become that guy.

So, we're talking gamism.  We're talking either player co-operative or player-competitive depending which scenario structure is adopted.  That is what it is intended to achieve.  Ultimately there must be an end-game and either the group succeeds or fails or one player succeeds and the rest fail.  Gamism, not sim or nar.  At the end it must be clear who has won.

Next steps.  I am not convinced the pool mechanic works.  I would like concrete criticisms of it.  Also, flaws should be integral to the game.  They are how your opponents screw you.  I am not sure at present how to reflect the desire of the player to conceal/minimise the flaw with the game need to make it a problem.  Again, concrete solutions would be good.  

Can you tell what the game is about?

Finally, endgame.  Suggestions on how to resolve endgame would be appreciated.  Everything flows back from that so that is where I now need to focus.

Thanks.

[Lance D. Allen]

Very interesting idea. I'm not widely experienced enough to tell you if there are mechanics which will work for this, but what you have seems viable.

As for the pool mechanics, I'd have to understand a little more before I could give my opinion on whether or not they're workable.

1. Does the amount of successes or failures affect the degree of success or failure, or is it a simple matter of pass/fail, with the additional failures/penalties only counting toward raising or lowering your attribute?

2. To clarify, you only lose dice from your attribute if you fail, rather than losing all dice which are failures, and gaining dice which are successes, correct?

3. What tasks might correspond with which target numbers?How broad or specific can/must a single task be?

4. Do you have a rule for exceptionally high TNs, such as Shadowrun's Rule of 6? Or do ALL TNs fit within the range of 6, regardless of their relative difficulty?

5. If advantages are not implemented through target numbers, how are they implemented? Extra Pool in certain situations? Allowing rolls where others without the advantage might not have such a roll?

6. Inversely, how are flaws implemented? The same way as advantages?

Some flaws/advantages to think about, that may or may not unbalance the game: Favor/Disfavor with current power figure, Knowledge of dirt on other players (which acts as a flaw for one and a advantage for others)

Another issue, from looking at your examples, is that flaws might actually be better off called Dirt or Secrets. They *are* flaws, but not flaws in the general sense. They are specifically secrets that you wouldn't want getting out. Also, in the cooperative game, it might make sense that the flaws are for the figure they are trying to get elected, and apply to the whole group, and conversely that advantages be limited to a certain number of advantages for the entire play group.

As for resolution, I think what would be best is a deadline, and some sort of way to measure advantage. (popular vote, bribed/convinced electors, etc.) Tell the players up front that they have x sessions to sway the advantage in their favor, and stick to it. Have the final session be a RP session of the actual election itself, and the result... Keep the results secret to the end, and you might manage to capture the tension of actual political campaigns.

Finally, a suggestion. This game is very much about competition. In cooperative mode, the players have no one to compete against but the GM's NPCs. I would offer a suggestion, that if the GM can find enough players, that he actually run two games, on either side of the campaign. It would give them a more... living opponent.

[Ring Kichard]

If the players are competing against one another, why not let them take a FLAW advantage. Doing so during character generation would give another player (maybe chosen secretly by passing out slips of paper) a flaw, and might give the player taking the advantage a head start in determining who has what flaw.

Example:
During character generation of my Economics Advisor I decide that some poor fellow is going to be an embezzler. So I take Flaw, and write out a strip of paper with "embezzler" on it. At some point during character creation (middle or end, maybe) I put my piece of paper in with all the other pieces of paper contributed by players using flaws, and the flaws are handed out randomly. I find out, however, that my character once had an affair with a student or intern and decide that he slept with a student when he was a professor.

Even if the players are competing against a GM, you could allow character creation choices by the players to influence the GM's NPCs.

[A.Neill]

Cool idea Balbinus - the spec (and the 1st scenario in particular) reminds me a bit of the board game Junta.

It has a mechanic for cutting deals to be voted into position of power where you earn money (the game's currency, strangely enough).

I don't think it would map direclty onto the subtleties of your game - but there are certainly rp elements that you might be able to adapt.

Alan.

[contracycle]

I think you need some way to interact with the "machines" - party and state.  Frex the campaign trail can be very physically demanding, on the road for weeks, sleeping in a bus, but the machine has a schedule, has an objective larger than an individual candidate.

You need an action or something for "shaking hands and kissing babies", the traditional pre-poll behaviour.  Doorstepping.  This can be an action to raise profile, or whatever.

Doorstepping has another important function - staying in touch with the public.  The more you do it, the more likely your analysis of the local mood is to be accurate; you might want to implement a mechanic which relies on the actual distribution of votes in a ward or whatever, and how the candidates perceive that distribution.

Campaign advertising is a big issue these days, due to visibility.  Much discussion and ink is expended in analysing the overt and covert message of campaign spot - maybe ask players to describe their ad spot?...

And don't forget campaign funding.