Cal

That’s a good sign for balance. What are the exact penalties? I don’t recall it being particularly punishing to ahistorically pass women’s suffrage/minority suffrage in the beginning of the game so I’m definitely curious how much harder it is here (or if maybe I’m just misremembering 😛 )

Event 1: #DraftTheAck! The bewildering actions of Congress are one man's loss (Ron DeSantis) and other man's gain: the renown conservative figure from politicslounge.com Christopher Ackerman, better known by his handle of ConservativeElector2. It is truly incredible that not only did Congress pass a law banning the candidacy of any non-Doblet, but that every state ratified the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution that granted them the authority to do so. With there being none in the constitutionally permissible candidate pool that truly represent the views of the right-wing populist voters that spearheaded Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, a movement began on Truth Social, Twitter, and other areas where god-fearing conservatives congregated online to pwn the libs. A movement to draft ConservativeElector2, the only man in the race that could possibly satisfy not only the establishment wing of the Republican Party, but the populist wing. And truly, his well rationed compassionate conservatism strikes a chord not all that unfamiliar to those who supported the now disgraced Ron DeSantis when he originally flouted his 2024 bid. With there being no other candidate, save the fake conservative from South Carolina Can of Crushed Pringles, the only hope of the real Republican Party rests squarely with the drafting of their candidate of choice: ConservativeElector2. And now, moving to the United States and establishing a domiciliary in the great patriotic state of Alabama, the principled conservative has come to save the United States from its internal division with a breath fresh air via his rational, pragmatic conservatism. The calls were successful. CE2 has entered the race. Conservatism in America is saved, and they can rejoice in their choice of a true champion of small government that stood by the Republican Party even in the temporary leadership of Donald Trump rather than the Liberal Artificial Crushed Chips in a Crusty Can. Event 2: The Campaign Manager in Crisis "Robert, could you please slow down my good sir? Californians won't vote for me if they think I'm just trying to speed through my campaign events here. I will say, I'm surprised you were able to organize for me to have a float in the Modoc County Parade." Robert Moery didn't actually get permission to have a campaign float in the parade, but to be honest he is hoping that this illegal float gets him fired. He had once been tapped to lead the campaign of Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson in an upstart campaign against the establishment in Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the lunatics that had taken over the party of small government in President Donald J. Trump. He had hundreds and hundreds of documents ready to decimate the Floridian over his failed battle against the Mouse, and thousands more prepared to drain the crooked New Yorker of the support he'd lied to the public to obtain over the past decade or so. When ConservativeElector2 contacted him to lead his campaign, Robert was ecstatic. He didn't expect any of these Doblet candidates to seek him out, especially when so few of them held true conservative ideals. It was perfect. Or so Robert thought. He signed a contract immediately without even reading it. As he would later find out, breaking the contract and refusing to continue to serve in his role faced the punishment of death by firing squad. "There's no way that's legal," he thought, but it turns out a small unnoticed part of the 28th Amendment allowed for the Doblets to execute their political enemies if they agree to the possibility via contract. Who the hell approved that? Regardless, If all goes according to plan here, this "rally" in Southern Californian meant to run up the conservative portion of the popular vote in the state for CE2 would see him face criminal consequences for illegal solicitation of votes. He had sold Christopher on what is actually quite a sound idea: with the two-round system, the wisest strategy is to travel to the most populated conservative areas and secure their vote for him in a pretty barebones crowd of conservative candidates and guarantee that he makes it to the second round. Really, Robert is hoping this is his escape from the campaign without the involvement of the firing squad. Now, why does Robert want free from the CE2 campaign so bad? That's a story for another time. Event 3: Behind Closed Doors "You've come." The mysterious individual remained swiveled in the opposite direction in his spinny chair in a secret campaign headquarters in Richmond, Virginia. A cat purred loudly in his lap as he ran his fingers through the length of its coat. "Of course I have, we agreed to it didn't we? Everything is going according to plan. They're all buying it for now. The identities we've built for years and years have totally thrown away any smidgeon of suspicion that we could be conspiring together. Our agents in Congress has done just as we instructed them to. The internet wants me just as badly as we knew they would. Everything is going according to plan. Soon, the Revolution will be upon us. All we must do is continue the plan." The secret individual remained with his back turned to the speaker. "I only hope that it is that easy. The other Doblets... they are to be feared. They are cunning. They are phenomenal campaigners. They have years and years of experience putting themselves into the shoes of aspiring presidential candidates. We cannot underestimate them. The stakes are too high. If we fail..." He trailed off. "We will not. No one will ever know what hit them. No one will see through our ruse before I take office. Until that moment, they'll think that I'm just as conservative as the name implies. No one knows my true name, not outside of you and that troublesome campaign manager." The man sat opposite to "ConservativeElector2" finally slowly turns his chair, revealing himself and a maniacal smile. In the background, a diploma from the University of Tennessee Secret School of Socialist Revolution is proudly displayed, showing that one Cal graduated at the very top of his class, Magna Cum Comrade. "We will succeed, comrade. Soon, the entire world will know the name... SocialistElector2." The two descend into maniacal laughter and spend the rest of the night plotting the downfall of capitalism in the United States. Endorsement Request: @jvikings1 (appealing to his conservative views as the leading small government candidate in the race)

If you begin another test and anyone here declines just know I’m also interested! 🙂

@MrPotatoTed don’t be shy you coward, I see you in here! 😛 You’d play a mean V, Dobs, or Hestia… just saying… 😉

I’d also love to see someone play @MrPotatoTed or @vcczar given their close proximity to the Doblet RP group, with the former doing other kinds of RPs every now and then 😉

I'll take my good friend @ConservativeElector2

Thank you for all of your hard work, my friend! It's been a pleasure and I hope that if someone else is able to pick it up you are still able to play. I am unfortunately unable to commit to GMing but completely understand if no one else is able, either.

I'm so excited to see the 1932 election (and absolutely rooting for President Herbert Hoover)

Good news for you. The President's pardon power is limited only to federal offenses and thus any future Republican President would be unable to pardon him. Governor Hochul probably could, however. (Idk NY state law)

Inslee/Moulton would unironically win my vote so easily over any presidential ticket since Humphrey, with the potential exception of Obama/Biden. But what I really want is girlboss ticket Sotomayor/AOC in the next election.

I think it's a lot easier than you would think, but either way, if realism is the concern there is no downside by limiting the shift either way. We have seen that it is possible and there's no argument for any purpose I can think of against limiting it, knowing it's possibility. (Even if we disagree as to the probability, we both agree that the rules as they are now allow for it to happen)

A few potential team names all ripped off of Wikipedia from real indoor or non-NFL football teams: Burn Horsemen Southmen Riverhawks River Sharks Explorers Locomotion Destroyers Nighthawks Revolution Armada Roughriders Militia Marauders Acorns Wizards Phantoms Steel Magnolias Superior Lumberjacks Eskimos Purple Rage Axemen Bonecrushers Rats Sugar Skulls

It's easier than you would think, I believe, and the lack of availability for those statesmen is more of a point in favor of the restriction than against it. Very often you're put in the position where your cabinet is, at best, just sub-par even with the best choices. So between a cabinet with a bunch of 2s, 3s, and maybe a few 4s and a cabinet of a bunch of 2s and 3s that would shift enthusiasm +6 or higher in a particular direction, the choice becomes obvious that the latter can be abused to win elections far more consistently than the former. Even ignoring that distinction, you wouldn't actually need that high of a criteria anyway to achieve this bonuses. All you need is ONE appointment to satisfy a lobby, not a whole ton of them. The 25% chance per faction per filled post is just too incredibly gamey in its application, and if it's something that can be achieved without a ton of difficulty to get incredibly unrealistic results, that's an issue. Because it makes the enthusiasm changes from legislation, party leadership, congressional leadership, etc for years building up to a certain point essentially worthless when it can all be wiped away with a single cabinet. It just destroys the notion that there is any level of permanency to these coalitions and transforms them into a min-max dump stat if you can drastically move them as such. Of course, if it's more helpful, I could at least try to run some numbers for it. But I do think that the issue here is going to be that the sample size for games we've played so far is not entirely reflective. This has occurred more frequently in modern playtests because this is an issue that gets worse with each additional cabinet post. That's why we're seeing in as a greater potential in 1948 and the modern day, so I'd caution against the notion that it wouldn't be a huge issue when those eras have limited cabinet spots, and it would only become more significant if players create additional posts. This is totally ignoring, by the way, the prospect of sharing a card like "Big Agriculture" with your entire party that has no ideological restrictions. Let's take a look at that scenario just limited to IRL cabinet posts that are satisfied by it, and assume that only one opposing party faction has the card. That gives you 6 factions that hold the card, and there are 4 cabinet posts that are satisfied by it and 1 cabinet-level post. Given that the card is shared with your entire party, you will automatically satisfy Big Agriculture for every single post by default as long as you don't spend one of your 4 non-party spots on one of the 4 opposing party factions without Big Agriculture. So it's a given. That gives us ((.25 * 6) * 4) + (.10 * 6) for an average shift of 6.6 enthusiasm across the ideologies holding the card. But wait! This assumes each faction holds only one ideology card, which we all know isn't always the case. Looking to the February 8th Modern Day playtest even, there are 5 factions that hold 2 ideologies or 50%. So if we assume half the factions here also have two ideologies, that number increases to an average ideology shift of 9.9 steps towards the dominant party across the various ideologies just from one lobby being satisfied. Of course, it won't always be as easy as a card like Big Agriculture, or even a card being shared at all. But I can think of (and have seen) tons of other examples where this can be incredibly easy to exploit, and possibly even preferential because it can cause a shift of up to +6 towards your party for a particular ideology right before an election if you do it right. (Moving an ideology from +3 Red to +3 Blue, for example).

I'm just gonna drop this here as a little evidence... 😉 (I'll also note that you're only considering the impact of a DECREASE which is still a significant risk, but the gamebreaking issue here for me is the INCREASE potential as there is a 25% chance for each faction holding that card to increase per satisfied lobby. The proposed limit solves both issues adequately.)

I know that we are getting close to finalizing the rules, but I believe that there is a huge issue with ideology enthusiasm that I've brought up a few times that I would like to strongly advocate that we address now rather than later when Anthony is programming these respective phases. Right now, the balance is incredibly wrong for when enthusiasm is boosted/lost, and there are two SIMPLE changes I would like to suggest that I believe would result in a much more balanced game and make the currently incredibly anxiety inducing Appointments Phase much more manageable and realistic. First, let's talk about where enthusiasm can change and what the intent seems to be for enthusiasm. Enthusiasm measures the various ideology groups that typically vote together and share the same policy views, and the intent seems to be that enthusiasm should reflect when a party is actively courting these voters/politicians and doing meaningful things that they like or putting into power their own. Enthusiasm is meant to be fluid and represent the changing dynamics of the two major parties throughout history, and it does a decent job of that. When a Party Leader from a faction gets elected, those voters are ecstatic are more likely to vote for that party. When cabinet members are appointed from their ideology, these groups are stoked. When legislation is passed favoring that ideology, they are happy. These things make sense, but they also must be viewed in comparison to one another. Progressive are MUCH more excited about Bernie Sanders winning the presidential nomination than they are for a completely obscure politician to be appointed as Ambassador to China. Traditionalists are much more happy if Robert Byrd is elected Party Leader than if in a relatively inactive executive phase they get a bone thrown to them. With that in mind, our current system is wildly out of proportion for enthusiasm changes. This results in not only frequent shifts maxed from one party to the other in less than a 2 year phase unrealistically, but also in making certain phases incredibly tedious and not very fun due to worrying about these unrealistic shifts completely tanking your party. I'll discuss these below. Change One: Cabinet Appointment Enthusiasm Limit I'd like to officially petition for ideology gains/penalties from cabinet appointments to be limited to no more than two steps in either direction. Right now, there is very often swings around 4 steps on the scale, and I've seen as much as a swing of 8 from JUST cabinet appointments, which is the equivalent of moving, for example, Traditionalists +3 Blue in the 1920s to Traditionalists +3 Red simply from a few cabinet appointments, even if the cabinet also includes LW Populists or the President himself is a Progressive or what have you. It's just wildly unrealistic some of the shifts you see during this phase and it makes this phase into way more of a headache than it has to be because the meters shift here more than in any other phase of the game. It makes sense to want to satisfy lobbies, but should you really be losing -6 enthusiasm over inconsequential cabinet members? The cabinet is meant to be a place of compromise and these lobbies/ideologies are aware they can't get everything, and it's far less important to them than legislation or party leadership in determining who they support IRL. Looking at Biden's IRL cabinet, I'd loathe to see how far Progressives would shift towards the Republican Party in just the first Appointments Phase. A simple and easy fix to this that requires no reworking of systems is to just cap these changes to ideology in the Appointments Phase OVERALL to +-2 (or even +-3 if that's more agreeable) in either direction, per ideology. That way you can still see an ideology grumble about their lack of representation and go from supporting the party in power to neutral over cabinet appointments, but not see them do a complete unrealistic 180 over it when the party they prefer has done ACTUAL efforts to court them with leadership, legislation, etc. I see this as a necessary fix and one that would make this phase much more manageable and realistic. Change Two: Legislation Enthusiasm Limit This change is mostly to shore up the issue that occurs when factions tie for most/least points in either party in a legislative session. Right now, when factions tie they all get counted. In many of the legislative scorings I've done at least, there can be an issue when factions have a net 0 in points (though this issue is one I've really mostly seen in the earlier Eras) and thus all tied factions at the bottom rung get a -1 or -2 to every one of their ideologies, which causes drastic swings at times of 4-8 in my experience when no legislation actually affected, or no legislation could be proposed that even COULD have affected, their ideology. This was a huge issue in some of the 1772 onward playtests when we started running out of legislation and I had to get very creative with looking at repealing legislation that was actually necessary or favorable just to prevent these drastic results. I see another easy enough solution here being a similar limit to the maximum amount that an ideology can move in this phase as a result of legislative scoring. I don't think the intent here is for multiple factions to get a -2 to each of their ideologies here, nor for their to be drastic moves across the board in one legislative phase (which only occurs in this specific scenario when there are ties). For that reason, I would suggest a limit of +-3 in each direction here per ideology, to account for the potential +1 from the highest scoring faction from the dominant party and +1 from the same of the minority party, as well as account for the -1 from the lowest scoring faction from the dominant party and the -2 from the lowest scoring faction of the minority party. This solution preserves what I see as the intent behind the rules, and still allows for the rare occasion for when ties occur to have an effect rather than just randomly selecting one of the tied factions to have an effect. For example, if two Blue factions holding the Progressive Card are tied for the lowest scoring non-majority factions in a session, you still combine their -2s into the -3 limit, giving both of them an impact. For feedback on these two proposed limitations, I'd also like to tag @MrPotatoTed @Willthescout7 @10centjimmy @Ich_bin_Tyler and anyone else with a lot of experience with these two phases as I'm certainly open to criticism. I just consistently see huge shifts in enthusiasm that seem opposed to the goals that the mechanic seems to be intended to represent.

This is cursed on every level. I'm surprised FDR even starts with Obscure at this time considering he was the VP nominee in 1920.

I’ll still join if available, even if it’s just to try for the most ridiculous names possible.

I’m going to join simply to take the cake for most treasonous name on the board. Now presenting from the heart of the former Confederacy… The Richmond Rebels.

Dana will propose Establish the Bank of the United States

I’ll do mine soon, and also my proposer with the new Age of Federalism proposals.

That sounds great.

Senatorial Leadership President Pro Tempore of the Senate: @Cal Fisher Ames (R-MA) Domestic Chair: @Cal Charles Pinckney Member: @10centjimmy George Gale Member: @10centjimmy Samuel Livermore Member: @Cal Benedict Arnold Member: @Willthescout7 Anthony Wayne Member: @Willthescout7 William Maclay Economic Chair: @10centjimmy Charles Carroll of Carrollton Member: @Largo833 Philemon Dickinson Member: @10centjimmy Thomas Collins Member: @Willthescout7 William Preston Member: @Willthescout7 George Mason Member: @Willthescout7 Joseph Stanton Jr Foreign Affairs/Military Chair: @Cal Ralph Izard Member: @Largo833 Frederick Frelinghuysen Member: @Cal Francis Dana Member: @Cal James Duane Member: @Willthescout7 Francis Willis Member: @Willthescout7 Richard Caswell Member: @Willthescout7 John Barry Judicial Chair: Member: @10centjimmy James Sheafe Member: @10centjimmy Silas Deane Member: @Cal Isaac Roosevelt I Member: @Willthescout7 George Taylor Member: @Willthescout7 John Baptista Ashe Member: @ebrk85 William Ellery

I’m so sorry! I totally forgot about that until now. It’s date night currently but I’m content to hand it off to anyone else on the Red Team for the night or else I’ll get to it in the morning.

Key Advisor was in the game from the very beginning, last I checked. It just is an optional office to fill because it can be REALLY harmful with a bad key advisor. The South would have lost in... 1865 I think? What rule is this out of curiousity?

What a stacked list of names for one faction. Arthur, Garfield, Wade, Fremont, and Sherman all in one faction? Nice. I don't recall Adams Sr, Hamelin, or Chandler though.