Election 1895 Begins!

Of course, and I never meant to imply otherwise. But like I said, Feducci supporters that look on from a Roleplay-standpoint usually support him because they’re already in positions where his Fair play, Fair game policy can really only benefit them. Players are usually like that, mind, and even my Concise Scrivener alt, whom I’m trying to play as a straight-laced Christian cleric can with the click of a button come on top of pretty much any situation. Your views are justified, but also cushioned.

But that’s also my point- there’s no real way for a player to really be in the position where he gets to play the honey-addled wretch, lying in the gutter, scraping by to get the next bottle or spoonful. I consider myself a fairly empathic person, maybe to the point of becoming unecessarily concerned for the wellbeing of fictional, nonexistent characters,
but when I pick the Rob a Drunk storylet in Spite, I immediately feel bad from the descriptions alone-

An anonymous wretch: Once he might have been anyone. Now he’s no one.

A cavalry officer: That’s the uniform of the 23rd Neathy Rifles. Though he’s long since sold his brass buttons – for the cheapest gin, by the smell.

So yeah, I disagree with Feducci on principle, but I also understand why other people don’t really care about that entire line of reasoning. They are, after all, just ones and zeroes.

Nope, as far as I’m aware you have to do both. What I meant is that this year everyone is so annoyed with the Influence grinding for fixers that good old career advancement isn’t really talked about.

Also by doing both (and getting spare Public Attentions) you really get a lot of Making Waves when trading them in. Whereas the other two professions can spend less effort on their career, but even if they decide to grind more they don’t get a similar reward - they can only trade in their excess election resources for some moderately valuable items.
edited by Dudebro Pyro on 6/28/2017

I’d say most of the people who are into Fallen London support their candidate for some combination of In-Character and Out-Of-Character reasons. There are no doubt some who choose based entirely on OOC desires, just as there are those who RP everything. Let’s not waste time categorizing each other - there’s an election to fight!

I dunno where anyone got the idea that fixer is less efficient than normal social menace reductions. Unless you’re doing it at < 7 scandal/suspicion?

If you’re not being silly and are getting the reductions at 8 (or 1 less than 8) menace, it’s more efficient for both sender and receiver. 1 action for receiver obviously, and 7 actions using the least efficient methods for the fixer. Regular methods require 9 actions on both sides to reduce someone from 8 to 0, plus the healer needs to deal with extra menace they get from helping.

The new gifts are nice but…what happened to the companions of the last elections? I thought that they would appear this year but with a price in FATE.

I think being a Fixer would be a little more fun if you were allowed to bribe people to switch sides. Then you wouldn’t just be a menace sponge - you’d also be a schemer. I suggested a bribery mechanic last year and a lot of people liked it. Hell, we have three &quotbribe me&quot threads currently - so there are definitely players who want to be bribed :P It’s a shame Fixers can’t do that.

Nope, as far as I’m aware you have to do both. What I meant is that this year everyone is so annoyed with the Influence grinding for fixers that good old career advancement isn’t really talked about.

Also by doing both (and getting spare Public Attentions) you really get a lot of Making Waves when trading them in. Whereas the other two professions can spend less effort on their career, but even if they decide to grind more they don’t get a similar reward - they can only trade in their excess election resources for some moderately valuable items.
edited by Dudebro Pyro on 6/28/2017[/quote]

Ah, I see, thansk for clearing that up for me!

More than just some threads, we’ve been quite busy making and breaking connections back at the homefront.

Last year, people were complaining that being a Fixer was mechanically inferior… then at the start of the second week, they released the resource trade-ins, and Fixers had an advantage that you could think of them as assymetrically balanced.

I’m seeing the same story start to happen again. Right now, they’re more difficult to level up Influence and Menaces aren’t as big a deal as they should be. I’m guessing, come Debates next week, their work will be more sought-after.

[quote=PSGarak]Last year, people were complaining that being a Fixer was mechanically inferior… then at the start of the second week, they released the resource trade-ins, and Fixers had an advantage that you could think of them as assymetrically balanced.

I’m seeing the same story start to happen again. Right now, they’re more difficult to level up Influence and Menaces aren’t as big a deal as they should be. I’m guessing, come Debates next week, their work will be more sought-after.[/quote]
Oh yeah, I hadn’t thought about this… Though the resource trade-in was in response to player complaints about imbalances.

[quote=Infinity Simulacrum][quote=Akernis][quote=Infinity Simulacrum]
Oh god, this backwards logic is making my eyes bleed. Retreat! Retreat![/quote]
Don’t worry, I am well aware of how ridiculous such an argument is. It was mostly for fun.
One might as well have countered with ‘only amongst the devils does he help the little guy’, or point out that there really is no innocence at play at all when dealing with the politics of Hell.
And while I do think that the devils we have now are the lesser evil compared to their monstrous princes and princesses*, they are still devils. But that is irrelevant to the election at hand.

*Of course, me being my nefarious self just means that makes me want to meet and work with them all the more.[/quote]
I get it, though.

Feducci’s supporters are primarily players who feel a fairly large degree of detachment with their characters or the actual setting, so they pick the option that’s most likely to amuse them and stir up things. Either that, or their player characters are so powerful already that they’ll only really be able to benefit from Feducci’s victory.

As a DTC supporter, I’m just looking at it from a serious roleplaying perspective, trying to argue for what I’d personally want to happen if I was a citizen of London. I think that that’s been fairly well proven by the degree of effort I’m putting into this whole campaign business, and the amount of scrutinizing I’m doing (see the google doc in my signature for proof, I’ve written everything but the name-list myself).

I think I’m getting too carried away at times, I absolutely love campaigning but I’m making it more of a hot-button issue than it is.[/quote]
How is supporting a candidate pledged to improving class mobility &quotdetachment from the setting&quot? Bit of a strawman, isn’t that?

[quote=dov]
Almost. Some more points:

  • The Fixer can send multiple help offers. The first recipient who accepts give the Fixer a quality (Fixing Scandals/Suspicions), which prevents others from accepting their own pending requests from that Fixer.[/li][li]To increase Influence you don’t need Reputation to be twice Influence. I’m not 100% sure yet on the formula, but I think it grows with your Notability. It increased by 1 for me every step, and when I increased Notability it increased to.[/li][li]I think that the formula is that you need to have Repuation be Influence + 1 + (Notability over 5)…[/li][li]I’ll confirm this when I next draw the Amanuensis card and remove all my Notability.

so it’s actually worse than the formula that I was expecting. What’s you’re saying as a potential formula would make it reach a potential reputation cost of 25 (15 notability, 9 influence), whereas even with 2x your influence, all it could be is 18. That’s… well, it’s something.

@Corvo and @PSGarak: &quotEasy&quot and &quottedious&quot can be part of the same mechanics. Yes, advancing is easy, if you follow an arbitrarily long and pointlessly involved path to improving influence, that no other profession needs to take. And I feel like it’s important for folks to have a method of progression that doesn’t require pointless extra legwork, because regardless of the second week’s options, you still leave people in the fixer profession stuck behind others.

Here’s my issue with the &quotsecond week&quot argument: The balance involved in that kind of a decision doesn’t parse, because fixers are already stuck in a mechanical disadvantage. While they now have a trade-in or second option to advance, so does every other profession in the election as well, on top of the advantage in advancement they have before. Unless no other profession received a second bonus, then all that happens is things stay the same.

I wonder how many of the bribe-ees will hold up there end of the bargain?

[li]

Blimey, Fixers fix ALL of the menace. Time to start lecturing like nobody’s business. (Which doesn’t bode well for the upcoming Renown conversion, unless we all trade it in for goodies in the Flit and Palace.)

[quote=Zack Oak][quote=dov]
Almost. Some more points:

  • The Fixer can send multiple help offers. The first recipient who accepts give the Fixer a quality (Fixing Scandals/Suspicions), which prevents others from accepting their own pending requests from that Fixer.[/li][li]To increase Influence you don’t need Reputation to be twice Influence. I’m not 100% sure yet on the formula, but I think it grows with your Notability. It increased by 1 for me every step, and when I increased Notability it increased to.[/li][li]I think that the formula is that you need to have Repuation be Influence + 1 + (Notability over 5)…[/li][li]I’ll confirm this when I next draw the Amanuensis card and remove all my Notability.

so it’s actually worse than the formula that I was expecting. What’s you’re saying as a potential formula would make it reach a potential reputation cost of 25 (15 notability, 9 influence), whereas even with 2x your influence, all it could be is 18. That’s… well, it’s something.[/quote]
By &quotNotability over 5&quot, I meant &quotNotability - 5, but only if Notability is over 5&quot.

I’m guessing about the formula, but it fits what I saw:

  • Notability=5, required Reputation 1 to raise Influence from 0 to 1[/li][li]Notability=5, required Reputation 2 to raise Influence from 1 to 2[/li][li]Notability=6, required Reputation 4 to raise Influence from 2 to 3[/li][li]Notability=6, required Reputation 5 to raise Influence from 3 to 4[/li][li]Notability=6, required Reputation 6 to raise Influence from 4 to 5[/li][li]Notability=6, required Reputation 7 to raise Influence from 5 to 6[/li][li]Notability=6, required Reputation 8 to raise Influence from 6 to 7[/li][li]Notability=7, required Reputation 10 to raise Influence from 7 to 8

If I draw the right card, I’ll drop my Notability to 0 and see how it affects the requirements with each level of Notability I then regain, without adding new Reputation.

Also: note that Reputation doesn’t drop when increasing Influence. So you don’t need to start from scratch. Every level of Influence requires gaining one point of Reputation (i.e. helping one person with menaces), plus a Reputation point for each point of Notability you’ve raised since last time.


edited by dov on 6/28/2017

[quote=Pnakotic]
How is supporting a candidate pledged to improving class mobility &quotdetachment from the setting&quot? Bit of a strawman, isn’t that?[/quote]
You misunderstand, I wasn’t strawmanning anyone, I was just making a (mostly correct) analysis that many Feducci Supporters -at least the ones active on the forums- seem to support him from a less political and more adventurous point of view.

I’ve seen few if any Feducci supporters who seemed to actually believe that his idea of a society where you can literally gamble for your social status (as per the opportunity card snippet) would be in any way executable.

If you believe that, however, then I’ll be completely honest in admitting that I was in the wrong. I would, of course, be delighted to hold a debate on the merits of a society where position in the social hierarchy is something you can trade like a gambling token.

Well that’s a relief, but still, not a whole lot better. The required reputation increase doesn’t scale the same way influence in other professions does. I’m not a fan, as its progression is very under-powered compared to the others, both in mechanical benefits and efficiency.

[quote=Infinity Simulacrum][quote=Pnakotic]
How is supporting a candidate pledged to improving class mobility &quotdetachment from the setting&quot? Bit of a strawman, isn’t that?[/quote]
You misunderstand, I wasn’t strawmanning anyone, I was just making a (mostly correct) analysis that many Feducci Supporters -at least the ones active on the forums- seem to support him from a less political and more adventurous point of view.

I’ve seen few if any Feducci supporters who seemed to actually believe that his idea of a society where you can literally gamble for your social status (as per the opportunity card snippet) would be in any way executable.[/quote]
Having an adventurous point of view can be completely In-Character. Lots of people vote for candidates because they’re flashy or have a famous name or will make things a bit more interesting. Napoleon III became President of France, then Emperor, partly due to his celebrity. So, it’s not detachment from the setting, it’s not caring within the setting.

I thought it was due to his commitment to pneumatic tube-based policies! Swing voters will support whichever candidate pledges to provide the most pneumatic tubes - and they’re right to do so.

How do I check my influence level as a campaigner prior to buying levels of influence that I may not need anymore? Nevermind, Just set it as my scrapbook status.
edited by maleclypse on 6/28/2017