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1960 Playtest


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What Time Commitment Should You Expect as a Playtester?

Okay, I hope that you are ready for a very long post about this. I want players to know exactly what the time commitment looks like for this game because I'd rather you be a little intimidated now than be overwhelmed and regretting your signed up later. @Hestia @themiddlepolitical @Rezi @ConservativeElector2  @Rodja and others can probably chime in here too. 

Now that we'll have 50 states to worry about instead of 13 this will probably be much more time consuming. I'd say maybe 30 minutes would be a good figure for the higher end of what I'd expect it to take you to fill out the election sheet. I'll definitely have playtesters handle a bit more input than is in our current playtest just due to the vastly increased number of elections, haha. When you are finished reading through this, please feel free to DM me with any questions but please do not crowd this forum post with questions about it.

Here is the AMPU Discord link for those interested: https://discord.gg/xt6WfyBV

I'd say the time commitment per phase looks something like this: 

Faction Realignment: 5-20 minutes:
depending on how micro you want to be and how many ideologies you'd like to change.
You will be asked to change the ideology and state of any politician you change. You will be asked to add any politician you add to a Career Track to the Career Track Tab and update their current position on your Faction Tab to indicate what career track they are in. (time included in the above estimate)

Congressional Leadership Elections: 
1-5 minutes with a simple list of who you are supporting. Additional time will probably be spent in private messages securing support. 
You will be asked to input who is elected from your faction in the History Tab, your Faction Tab, House Leadership Tab, and Senate Leadership Tab. (2-3 minutes)

Congressional Committee Selections:
10-30 minutes, depending on how micro you want to be. As stated above, you'll probably negotiate with other players here.
You will be asked to input who is elected from your faction in the History Tab, your Faction Tab, House Leadership Tab, and Senate Leadership Tab. (2-10 minutes)

Faction Leader Selections:
1-5 minutes. You choose an eligible faction leader. You'll be asked to record it on your Faction Tab, the History Tab, and the Main Tab. 

Party Leader Selections:
1-5 minutes. You choose one faction leader to lead the party. This is a simple vote, and the winning Party Leader will be asked to record that on the Main Tab, their Faction Tab, and the History Tab.

Presidential Appointments: 
10-30 minutes. This one really varies depending on how perfect you want your cabinet to be. You'll be asked to propose politicians to fill appointments, to vote on them, and the player of the appointee must update the Executive Tab, Faction Tab, and History Tab. 

General/Scripted Events:
0-10 minutes. This will only really take the time to choose a response if there is one at all. The only time you may spend is weighing the options. There will be nothing for you to do on the spreadsheet here most of the time unless one of your politicians gains a trait, ability, etc.

Governors Actions:
5-20 minutes. It'll probably take closer to 15 minutes the first time and less than 10 minutes every time after. I have not yet decided yet if I will ask players to make their own changes from rolls to the relevant state industry tab. If so, it may be another 2-3 minutes probably. This will take longer than the current playthrough with 50 states in play now. 

Supreme Court Decisions:
I will probably have these automated by default. If I do not, it will take less than 5 minutes to respond I'd say.

Foreign Affairs:
3-10 minutes. Probably close to 15 minutes the first time when you have to learn the rules here, but after that it's a quick phase where you just check what you can do and move accordingly. As a player, I don't think you'll need to notate anything on the sheet (for now)

**Legislative Proposals:
Anywhere from 5 minutes to over 60 minutes depending on how many statesmen you have, who is proposing, and the level of cooperation between you and your teammates. I usually spend closer to 30ish minutes (working as a team in the current playthrough because we've had non-stop crises) on this trying to calculate the point effects of different proposals and what could go wrong. You will be asked to color your proposal in the LegisProp tab, mark your proposal in the relevant congressional leadership tab, and mark that the statesmen has proposed as well. 

Committees: 
1-5 minutes. You will need to vote in committees on individual proposals and then again on the package as a whole. You'll be asked to make your vote in the committees you are a part of, and also to tell me how many politicians you have in each committee. 

Voting:
1-5 minutes.  You'll be asked to make your vote on legislation as a whole, and also to tell me how many politicians you have in each chamber. After the end of the vote, I'll make the required changes. I don't think there's anything I'll be asking of the playtesters here for now. 

Executive Actions: 
1-10 minutes. You just choose an option. There are considerations for such that I'm factoring into the 10 minutes, such as how the points lost/gained will affect you and your teammates.

Non-Presidential Elections:
10-45 minutes. This is consistently the most time intensive phase by far as you will always want to run in elections. You will be asked to look through your sheet and select candidates on the appropriate Elections tab for House, Senate, and Presidential elections. There are a few things that cannot be automated here that I'll ask that you list on the Elections tab. Significant time can be spent here negotiating with your fellow players, checking to see who can run in what election, who currently holds seats, what incumbents are eligible to be challenged, who the strongest challengers would be, etc. 

After all dice have been rolled, I'll ask that you the elected player notate their victory on the Faction tab, House of Representatives Tab, Senate Tab, and History Tab. I will also ask that you update the Main tab with your overall amount of Governors, Senators, and Representatives. This part will likely take another 5-10 minutes depending on how many elections you won.

Presidential Elections
0-20 minutes. This obviously depends greatly on if you actually run a candidate for president or not. Most of the time you spend here will be negotiating with your fellow party members to agree on a nominee at the convention if it is not decided in the primaries. You will have a few choices to make during your campaign that are not very time consuming. If you heavily micromanage this, I imagine it will take 20 minutes at most. 

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If you have not received a message yet here or on Discord, here is the application. Note: It is definitely easier to fill out on PoliticsLounge than it is on Discord due to formatting issues. So if you're on Discord and on here, you should probably apply here for both of our sake haha. Please PM this application to me and I'll be happy to consider you. I'm not going to bother changing this from the mass-post I was doing in people's PMs, so you'll have to deal with that. 

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I'd like to ask you a few questions to gauge how good of a fit you are for the team. It's good to know how active you are and what you're particularly interested in, among other things. Please respond to this at your convenience and I'll let you know when the spreadsheet is complete whether or not you've been pre-selected -- which could be as soon as next week or perhaps two or three weeks from now.

Once you've been pre-selected, I'll put you in touch with the game's creator for one final check before you are allowed access to the spreadsheet and officially part of the 1960 AMPU gang. As you likely read in the forum post, this is just a cautionary measure to protect the work that Professor V has done on the game over the years. If you make it there, you'll probably be okay 😜 

Finally, keep in mind that there are only 6 open spots. I'll let you know as soon as I can if you are selected. If so, I am very happy to explain the rules to you as much as needed and potential strategies that I personally would employ if I were in your shoes. I have a lot of experience as a playtester over the years and have pulled off some pretty wild stunts so I'll be more than happy to hear your own strategies, questions, and concerns over the game rules. The game is still very much a work in progress and I am happy to work as a go-between between you and Professor V if you have constructive feedback for the game (which I hope you will!). When the lineup is formalized, I'll make a groupchat on the forum (and Discord, if everyone has one) for both parties for strategery and one overall for general announcements. 

Now, for the formalities! Please copy-paste the below questions back to me and write your own answers in plain text so that I can read it easily. If you're receiving this on Discord, this message ended up being too long for just one message. So, please just send the questions back in bold in groups of 3-5 or whatever works for you.

Thank you so much and I look forward to hearing from you!

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1. How frequently can you make moves on PoliticsLounge.com? (If you're getting this on Discord, please include your current forum screenname)

2. Are you able to communicate through Discord for reminders to take action? (If you're getting this on the forum, please include your current Discord user)

3. Have you read what is expected of you as far as updating the playtest spreadsheet? If so, do you have any concerns about being able to handle the workload? 

4. Please rank the following factions 1 to 10 from most preferred to least preferred OVERALL and indicate your overall preferred party. If you are only willing to play certain factions or a certain party, please specify as such. R and B indicate what party the faction belongs to. Feel free to rank them in any order you like so that I know what factions you prefer between both parties. You can also make whatever comments you want about your preferences.

Preferred Party: 

RW Populists - Traditionalist - Conservative (R)
RW Populists - Traditionalist - Conservative (B)
Conservative - Moderate (R)
Conservative - Moderate (B)
Moderate - Liberal - Conservative (R)
Moderate - Liberal - Conservative (B)
Liberal - Moderate
Liberal - Moderate
LW Populists - Progressive - Liberal
LW Populists - Progressive - Liberal

5. Are you a Kickstarter donor? If so, what tier are you and what is your name? (for verification purposes)

6. Are you active on PoliticsLounge.com? If so, are you actively commenting on the current AMPU playthrough or contributing in the way of maps, pictures, writeups, or other content?

7. Are you active in any other online communities? If so, what community and how often do you post?

8. What politician(s) are you most excited to have in your faction in the 1960 playthrough?

9. Are you able to do light roleplay for your actions? For example, writing a small speech with an executive action, a post on conceding defeat in a presidential election, an in-character response to an ongoing crisis, etc? (Not necessary, but fun!)

10. The current rules are probably close to 80 pages long and can be accessed through Google Docs. The first few weeks of the playtest will likely include a lot of double checking with the relevant rules. The playtest will be much more time intensive the first time or two we go through a phase, likely requiring at least 10-15 minutes of looking at the rules before being able to make a valid move. Would you be okay with a heavier time commitment the first two-three weeks of the game? 

11. Have you played any other political simulators before? If so, what? 

12. Have you read the post on PoliticsLounge or on Discord about the time commitment for playtesters? If not, you can find it on the 1960 AMPU Playtest post or in on the AMPU Discord as a pinned message. How confident do you feel that you can make such a time commitment?

13. What is your skill level with Google Sheets? That is what the game is ran on for now and knowing your way around as at least a user is important. If you are able to do advanced work with it, that could also be very useful for automating some of what players currently must do! 

14. Is there anything else that I should know about you that you feel is important to know for this application?

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Posting my interest for the playtest. I've PM'd you in Discord too. I am a Kickstarter backer.

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  • 2 weeks later...
3 hours ago, Bushwa777 said:

not sure where this would go but for the creators of this game.  I have a BA and MA in history and would love to help research the politicians for you all.  I do not know code but could at least get info if you wanted.  

 

I've already done all of this---for 7,000+ politicians. Thanks for the offer though. The game is basically done. It just needs to be developed and a few kinks worked out.

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17 minutes ago, vcczar said:

I've already done all of this---for 7,000+ politicians. Thanks for the offer though. The game is basically done. It just needs to be developed and a few kinks worked out.

Ok wanted to offer this since the discord page seemed that they were still looking people up.  Cannot wait to play the game in the summer (or maybe May?) LOL

 

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7 hours ago, Bushwa777 said:

Ok wanted to offer this since the discord page seemed that they were still looking people up.  Cannot wait to play the game in the summer (or maybe May?) LOL

 

They’re just filling out the bios, we’ve already coded all the stats each politician has.  But thank you for the offer!

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  • 4 weeks later...

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