General Election Rules

[Lumine]

General Election Rules:

Background: This is based on a series of games we've played previously, including Spamage's 2008 Election Game and Chain of Elections Game and my own Fear and Loathing in 1972. Inspiration is also drawn from Politics UK, a forum based British game.

Time: This election campaign will take place from January 5th to February 9th, 2012, a five week campaign. Each turn will last 72 hours, each covering one week of campaigning.

Turns: Campaigning will be held on a regional level for simplicity, your characters going to the 12 regions of the UK:

Campaigns: You're free to make your own schedules and speeches, with normal campaigning being free. Each party will be assigned CAMPAIGN POINTS (CP) based on organization, funding and momentum, points which you can use to buy internal polls, canvassers/volunteers (to boost your campaign), endorsements (newspapers/organizations/celebrities) and advertising. The UK doesn't have the sort of TV attack ads the US does, so you'll have to be creative on the messages you put in billboards or images. You can of course also hold events or "interviews" to attack each other.

Debates: There will be debates, on turns 2 and 4. You can choose whether to show up or not (it can benefit you or hurt you depending on the circumstances), but the winner of each debate gets a bonus on CP.

Manifestos: At the end of the first turn each party must publish a manifesto. In order to make this easy and simple, you will be required to write a list with your six main pledges. For example, UKIP can write on their manifesto "-A Referendum to exit the European Union" and so on. Manifestos will have a relevant impact, and may be used by other players to attack you.

Polls: Some polls will be released to you each turn. But those polls are not 100% reliable, so be mindful of possible bias!

Electoral System: This is the biggest difference. The new system operates on party list PR, based on the regional system. There is a 5% threshold, which you must overcome if you wish to recieve MP's in a given region.

[Dereich]

Who makes the "spending" and manifesto decisions for the parties? Is it all the choice of the party leader, is it a group decision, or does it vary between parties?

And, in general, what degree of agency do non-leaders have during the campaign?

[Lumine]

Who makes the "spending" and manifesto decisions for the parties? Is it all the choice of the party leader, is it a group decision, or does it vary between parties?

And, in general, what degree of agency do non-leaders have during the campaign?

Party leaders have control. Among parties with more players you can make it a group decision if you want to, but responsibility rests with party leaders.

It's pretty open, really, you can hold rallies, barnstorm, tour places just like the leaders (but of course you cannot post propaganda or spend campaign points), although your interventions won't have the same impact as a party leader. Of course, if different members of a same party start going off message it will hurt the party in the news (or others can use that to attack), so it is certainly on the best interests of the larger parties to keep themselves well-coordinated.

I've left it open ended because this way if a non-leader player goes inactive the game won't suffer during the election gameplay, but at the same time it offers an excellent chance to raise a player's profile and win advantages later on.