A rattus faber! Completely as a joke, of course. What a laugh that would be! It’d leave the city in shamble and the cats in a rage, but I’d love to see what they’d come up with.
One problem with Slowcake running is… how well does the rest of the player base who are less engaged differentiate between Slowcake and Slowcake’s Amanuensis? I don’t want the election to hinge on people misinterpreting those, and I don’t know how well-differentiated they are for less engaged players. I guess the election content could make sure players know. Then it would work.
A rubbery candidate would be awesome. Tentacled Enterpreneur would fit the bill.
I don’t think any of the survivors from previous cities would be good candidates - Manager, Widow, Duchess… they had their own cities, Mayor of London would honestly be a step down in power for them, I can’t see them being enthusiastic about the campaign.
His Amused Lordship would probably be a good candidate too, he’s got the personality.
…given those three, Slowcake would win because he’s the only one with a name.
I don’t think it’s very difficult to grasp the difference. The first sentence of the Amanuensis’s card is:
The gentleman’s card reads: MR __ ___, Assistant to Mr Slowcake.
So, I don’t think confusing the two would really be a problem?
.
edited by Anne Auclair on 11/6/2017
RUBBERIES, RATS, ROCK! Representation for the underrepresented and repressed!
Anyone except the Sardonic Music-Hall Singer. We could do without having her with yet another card in the deck.
My own personal votes would be Soft-Hearted Widow / Northbound Parliamentarian / Tentacled Entrepreneur. None of the three really resemble any other candidate, and each could put a reasonably unique spin on being the mayor:
The Soft-Hearted Widow becomes focussed more on charity and helping the downtrodden than Feducci or even Jenny was, which might be nice.
The Northbound Parliamentarian causes chaos by having an agenda that is (to put it mildly) hostile to the Masters’.
The Tentacled Entrepreneur is a Rubbery. Need I say more?
edited by Daedalus_Falk on 11/7/2017
Have you never read The Ransom of Red Chief? Perhaps they simply want a year’s respite from her infernal meddling.
And I shall once again object to the idea that non-canon RP should dictate content for the rest of us. You can wave your hands at it the same way you wave your hands at the fact that everyone involved in your role play was the one individual who arranged the game between the Last Constable and the Cheery Man, somehow from both sides at once, with several different results from that one single game. It’s totally irrelevant to me how you sort it out, because giving my interfering aunt the power of the Mayor’s office is by far the most entertaining idea that’s been proposed here. The ensuing year of Wodehousian shenanigans would be delightful.
And I shall once again object to the idea that non-canon RP should dictate content for the rest of us. You can wave your hands at it the same way you wave your hands at the fact that everyone involved in your role play was the one individual who arranged the game between the Last Constable and the Cheery Man, somehow from both sides at once, with several different results from that one single game.[/quote]
The Constable and Cheery Man are a strictly private story that, as written, happens to the player character and only to them. It’s very easy to RP around stuff like that, so it presents no problem at all. Same thing with Exceptional Stories and such.
The Election however is a uniquely collective storyline. The election takes place within a shared story space, so to speak. All who participate are involved to some three with the same three candidates, their votes add up together, the consequences of those votes effect everyone more or less equally, and so on. It’s not merely a question of role-playing, but narrative believability and immersion - if multiple players have their Aunt running for Mayor then it breaks down that shared space - two candidates are the same candidates to everyone, but one candidate is supposed to be special to you and no one else…it just doesn’t work, at all. You can’t have a candidate who is Your Aunt to a hundred thousand other players.
You can’t have a Cheery Man who simultaneously is and isn’t permanently, irrevocably dead either, and yet we do.
That said, she’s not going to be running on the ballot as "Your Inconvenient Aunt", is she? She’s going to be running under her own name, and how you know my aunt Schrödinger need never come up as long as you don’t start picking at the threads. She’s definitely my aunt, and as long as we don’t observe it, she both is and isn’t your aunt.
edited by Shogo_Yahagi on 11/7/2017
edited by Shogo_Yahagi on 11/7/2017
You can’t have a Cheery Man who simultaneously is and isn’t permanently, irrevocably dead either, and yet we do.[/quote]
Apples and coconuts. Again, there’s no shared narrative in the Cheery Man/Last Constable storyline - so it can differ a lot for individual players. However, there is a single, shared, collectively determined narrative in the Election storyline.
edited by Anne Auclair on 11/7/2017
I can’t help imagining the DTC and SJ essentially fighting over the SHW’s campaign. Like, any call to help the downtrodden would be a continuation of Jenny and the Campaigner’s respective campaigns (this continuation is what got Jenny to endorse the Campaigner after all). So naturally they would want to have some influence there…they might even want a hand in directly running her campaign or getting their respective people into the Mayor’s office should she win.
I mean, does anyone else want to see those three ladies interact together?
You can’t have a Cheery Man who simultaneously is and isn’t permanently, irrevocably dead either, and yet we do.[/quote]
Apples and coconuts. Again, there’s no shared narrative in the Cheery Man/Last Constable storyline - so it can differ a lot for individual players. However, there is a single, shared, collectively determined narrative in the Election storyline.
edited by Anne Auclair on 11/7/2017[/quote]
I’ll see your apples and coconuts and raise you figs. As in, if I gave you all of the figs that I have at my disposal to give for RP concerns, the resulting figgy pudding would just be a pudding. Role playing affects a small fraction of the players posting in the forums, who are themselves a small fraction of the players playing the game.
I can’t help noticing that you’ve conveniently ignored my other point. You’re not reading my storylets, which say that she’s my aunt, you’re reading your storylets, which say that she’s your aunt. Everything depends on your frame of observation. She’s a rather special relative in that way.
i do, especially that their brands of charities are quite different. I foggily recall some subplot i encountered somewhere about charity ladies fighting over whether they’ll help everyone, or only those who deserve their help.
(the issue in question was ladies of the night; one of the charity ladies wanted to help them by providing safe place for them regardless of whether they intended to continue their night’s work, the other wanted to reform them first).
i could see such kind of disparity here too; after all, the soft-hearted widow is a messanger in game of knife and candle, and lets poor wretches (like yours truly) sleep in her spare bedroom. DTC is more stern and uncompromising. and jenny is…, jenny (;
Perhaps a compromise by calling her something like "someone’s stray aunt" - You can’t tell if she entered on purpose, or is merely here for the refreshments. Either way, she has garnered enough support to become a candidate.
edited by suinicide on 11/7/2017
You can’t have a Cheery Man who […][/quote]
Maybe spoiler that?
[spoiler]Regardless, I was going to raise that point from the opposite angle, actually. We couldn’t have the Cheery Man run for the mayorship, even indirectly, because, for many people, the Cheery Man is permanently dead on two counts–poisoned with cantigaster venom, and locked away in a tomb full of sunlight.
On the same note, something I haven’t seen brought up for the Aunt is that for many people, she’ll still be soulless and locked away in the Brass Embassy. While soullessness doesn’t seem to affect the PC’s ability to do much, in the same way that death doesn’t impair our ability to function or leave any serious scarring, it does seem to affect other NPCs (one of the storylets for a room in the Brass Embassy implies this); a soulless Aunt’s campaign would have a very different character to it.[/spoiler]
[quote=Shogo_Yahagi]
I’ll see your apples and coconuts and raise you figs. As in, if I gave you all of the figs that I have at my disposal to give for RP concerns, the resulting figgy pudding would just be a pudding. Role playing affects a small fraction of the players posting in the forums, who are themselves a small fraction of the players playing the game.[/quote]
It undermines the shared narrative experience, which undermines role playing. It undermines immersion even if you don’t actively role play and it makes active role playing about the election just impossible. One of the main points of the election is the shared story of the campaign and the Mayor’s term to follow.
Also, people don’t just role play on the forum; I for one do practically all my role play in the game itself. I did quite a bit of role playing during the last election with people who have never posted on the forum.
And here we have a vivid example of why the whole idea is totally unworkable for a shared, collective storyline.
I’m halfway between calling for decorum and admiring your fruit-based analogies. So, er, please treat your fellow forumgoers not only with civility but with kindness, and also do not use fruit for evil but only for good.
i do, especially that their brands of charities are quite different. I foggily recall some subplot i encountered somewhere about charity ladies fighting over whether they’ll help everyone, or only those who deserve their help.
(the issue in question was ladies of the night; one of the charity ladies wanted to help them by providing safe place for them regardless of whether they intended to continue their night’s work, the other wanted to reform them first).
i could see such kind of disparity here too; after all, the soft-hearted widow is a messanger in game of knife and candle, and lets poor wretches (like yours truly) sleep in her spare bedroom. DTC is more stern and uncompromising. and jenny is…, jenny (;[/quote]
Well said ^_^
I can’t remember if during the last election I compared the differences between Jenny and the DTC’s welfare policies. I think I did, but I don’t have the time to go digging around… Anyway, the difference can be be summed up, appropriately enough, in how the two want to provide people with beds. Jenny’s administration placed beds for the homeless in the gin parlors and soup kitchens in the theaters. The DTC proposed "houses of healing" located far away from the gin parlors/theaters alongside a stern crack down on slum lords. These were obviously due to philosophical differences, but also political ones as well, for they touch on how the two differently imagined the office of Mayor. The DTC’s proposals were aimed at indiscriminately reforming people, while Jenny’s beds and soup kitchens would have largely benefited her Bohemian base (who were also the main beneficiaries of her Ministry of Public Works and her School - wow, the Bohemians did really well from her, didn’t they?). Here we have the essential difference between a life long activist (improve society) and a machine politician (help my voters).
Where does the Soft-Hearted Widow stand in this debate? It’s kind of a mystery, because she’s only ever used her own properties to house people (paid for through charity drives). Which is why I can’t help but imagine her campaign being such a policy battleground. She seems like a moral, prim and proper sort, but she’s also incredibly accepting of everyone, probably to a fault, and if she were to make her private actions the foundation of public policy there would be the question of whether it would be closer to the DTC’s approach or Jenny’s.
btw, one last comment concerning the Aunt. In case this got lost, I’d just like to note again that my objections only apply to Your Aunt, not An Aunt.
[quote=Anne Auclair][quote=Shogo_Yahagi]
I’ll see your apples and coconuts and raise you figs. As in, if I gave you all of the figs that I have at my disposal to give for RP concerns, the resulting figgy pudding would just be a pudding. Role playing affects a small fraction of the players posting in the forums, who are themselves a small fraction of the players playing the game.[/quote]
It undermines the shared narrative experience, which undermines role playing. It undermines immersion even if you don’t actively role play and it makes active role playing about the election just impossible. One of the main points of the election is the shared story of the campaign and the Mayor’s term to follow.
Also, people don’t just role play on the forum; I for one do practically all my role play in the game itself. I did quite a bit of role playing during the last election with people who have never posted on the forum.[/quote]
And if someone makes a statement in all of that roleplaying that is incompatible with events in your version of the story or your role playing choices, does it alter the events in your story? If I mention the fate of my Last Constable and it’s different from what you read, has the fate of your Last Constable changed? It has not.
It doesn’t make role playing about the election impossible, it simply makes constantly talking about your familial relationship with the candidate inconvenient. It would be similarly inconvenient if you had made a role playing choice that the DTC was your grandmother. I’m confident that you can make role playing decisions that don’t involve constantly talking about how she’s related to you. She’s your inconvenient aunt, but she’s also a mayoral candidate with a platform, to whom other events happen during the campaign. There will be other, more interesting things to discuss, and to the extent that you may need to reframe the occasional sentence, well, she is the Inconvenient Candidate, after all.
And here we have a vivid example of why the whole idea is totally unworkable for a shared, collective storyline.[/quote]
No, here we have a vivid example of how the idea works for the election just like every other idea works for every other story line. The Inconvenient Aunt isn’t everyone’s inconvenient aunt, she’s the reader’s inconvenient aunt. It’s the same as those other stories that you seem to think are a totally different kind of story. The fate of your Last Constable is only her fate in the storylet that you read, and it is only private and individual to the extent that you have made a role playing decision not to discuss it. Your familial relationship with this particular candidate is no different. In my version of the story, she’s my aunt. In your version of the story, she’s your aunt. If she gets elected, she’s the mayor in both of our stories, but she’s only my aunt in my story (unless I choose to mention it in a role playing context and you choose to role play that statement in your version of events, in which case I suppose she could be bothy aunt and yours in your story if you so desired).[li]
As far as seamlessly offering different text to different players based on their story status goes, I can’t help but notice that they just did that with the Cheery Man’s confession at Hallowmass. I’ve already offered a suggestion for why the Inconvenient Aunt may be out and about in London for a year when you might not otherwise expect it based on where you are in the story. The writers don’t have to choose that explanation, although it rather neatly suggests why the parties involved may not want to make it public knowledge. You simply need to change two pieces of text based on story condition (the candidate introductions and what happens to the Inconvenient Aunt after the year is up) to set up the story and return things to their pre-election status when desired.
I think the Inconvenient Aunt offers much more interesting ways for the election to affect our stories than the other candidates do. We shouldn’t all be denied that because you don’t like the role playing possibilities. Your role playing choices should never dictate my content.