How To Vote None Of The Above

For those of you for whom the Contrarian isn’t contrary enough, I believe I’ve discovered an effective tertium quid. Or quartum quid, in this case.

Anyway. So I didn’t want to disrupt the political balance with my alt, so I logged in and almost immediately drew the &quotadvance your career&quot card. It was completely blank, and while I later realized there are TWO versions of that card and you can opt out of only one of them, at the time I figured that I would have to choose a candidate and profession and then I would be able to opt out.

It didn’t work, because of the aforementioned &quotwrong card&quot discovery. But I still didn’t want to weight the scales even a little with my alt, so I went to switch my candidate, which removed my &quotsupporting a campaign&quot quality and left me in a storylet with the three candidates, and no way out except choosing one of them.

So I went to my inventory, chose an item, perhaps not’d out of that, and the end result: my alt is now an agitator for no one in particular.

tl;dr I gamed the system in order to avoid gaming the system, and now I have a mug commanding my alt to just agitate about nothing in particular.

I suppose this would make your alt an Agitating Anarchist.

This was very helpful and clever. However, it would appear this trick has been corrected. My alts which I put in this state received auto-firing events this morning that forced them to pick a candidate.

You could just not participate in the elections storylets.

Then, in order:

A) You’re passing up the chance to research or explore candidates. to put it simply, most non-voter’s attitudes is something like this: &quotwho cares who wins? the lore is interesting.&quot You can neither do flash lays nor detective cases (and the latter is really good for would-be writers of masterpieces.)

B) You’re turning down a free peice of gear, including the Best-In-Slot for watchful and two beats-best-fateless options.

C) You’re turning down the three cards, each one turning 5 echoes into 10 with two actions. (also any MW options.)

D) There’s at least one potentially great MW option in an election ball, which promises &quotMaking Waves and other benefits.&quot

At the same time, not participating past promising support would still support them unless you zero your notability, which is non-trivial, and might still give one vote in a max of 35 even after that… There is a regrettable lack of good ways to revoke support, which stinks for non-partisian players with no preference.

In short, for the sake of those of us who do care, an option to change your support to &quotWho cares, they’re all terrible&quot would be nice.

[The following is mostly joking, though partially serious since they don’t believe in any of the factions, and are still forced to choose one.]

That said, @ anyone who doesn’t care about their faction-of-choice, I will bribe you to support contrarian if that’ll make a difference. [not take any active support action, just make him your chosen faction unless or until you can swap to no faction.] just PM me your price in either coins or surprise packages, and i’ll try to pay you as soon as i get the cards/coins.[i]

Since you can’t vote no, why not profit from that. Yeah, this is horribly unethical, but this is london. &quotHorribly unethical&quot is our new national motto.[/i]
edited by Grenem on 7/7/2016

Fair enough. Though why anyone should be so reluctant to pick a horse in this race still eludes me.

they hate all of the following:

-war with hell [and all the horrible, horrible consequences]
-revolutionaries and/or frustratingly skilled debators [even with no liberation, he’d like to overthrow the bazaar, i expect.]
-blackmailers who cut ties that could have let them avoid using blackmail, as well as the fact that they’re breaking a confidentiality agreement that almost certainly exists. [not to mention poisoners, given the feast of the rose rare &quotfailure success&quot.] (or, if they’re exceptionally new to london, hate prostitutes. but let us pretend those people do not exist.) They might even feel her whole campaign persona is as trustworthy as an exceptionally malevolent LB, given that she has never shown any substantial compassion before, with the possible exception of the vake storyline.
edited by Grenem on 7/7/2016

The only consequences of this election is a new storylet after it’s all done. People act like we’re voting on Brexit or something. ;)

Well, yeah, but i still want him to win, and therefore will support him. it’s silly, i know, but it’s a form of roleplay- every bit of campaigning is in-character as well, if we imagine threads to be a discussion in a crowded ballroom or something similar. including the bribery, obviously. I mean, has anyone played as a fallen london character and never bribed anyone?
edited by Grenem on 7/7/2016

I’ll disagree with that - she also showed up for a bit in the Waltz that Moved the World, and seemed very much compassionate there as well.
edited by Optimatum on 7/7/2016

I’ll disagree with that - she also showed up for a bit in the Waltz that Moved the World, and seemed very much compassionate there as well.
edited by Optimatum on 7/7/2016[/quote]
fair enough. I’m a free player, [currently all funds go to food and textbooks etc.] so i missed that. link to journal, if possible?

Same’s happened to me. I’d like to think it was a direct result of talking about it here.

I’ll probably just leave him like this until the end of the election tbh. He’s just in the middle of a throng of people at the Blind Helmsman asking who he and his vociferous mug support, and all he wants is more rum to drown it out.

I’ll disagree with that - she also showed up for a bit in the Waltz that Moved the World, and seemed very much compassionate there as well.
edited by Optimatum on 7/7/2016[/quote]
fair enough. I’m a free player, [currently all funds go to food and textbooks etc.] so i missed that. link to journal, if possible?[/quote]
Here’s most of it. Perhaps not compassion exactly, but certainly a fondness for another and a wish to help. It fits with what I can recall of her involvement in Bag a Legend! too but I’d be very hard pressed to find those echoes.

Same’s happened to me. I’d like to think it was a direct result of talking about it here.

I’ll probably just leave him like this until the end of the election tbh. He’s just in the middle of a throng of people at the Blind Helmsman asking who he and his vociferous mug support, and all he wants is more rum to drown it out.[/quote]

It was really more of an indirect result of talking about it here. I tried it out myself on an non-participating alt because I wanted to see how much I could break the election mechanics for them, but ended up getting a second Free Gift in the process. I had to report it after that discovery, unfortunately. Apologies for sentencing your alt to being trapped in the Blind Helmsman for a while.

I’ll disagree with that - she also showed up for a bit in the Waltz that Moved the World, and seemed very much compassionate there as well.
edited by Optimatum on 7/7/2016[/quote]
fair enough. I’m a free player, [currently all funds go to food and textbooks etc.] so i missed that. link to journal, if possible?[/quote]
Here’s most of it. Perhaps not compassion exactly, but certainly a fondness for another and a wish to help. It fits with what I can recall of her involvement in Bag a Legend! too but I’d be very hard pressed to find those echoes.[/quote]
You’re right, she does show compassion. it just feels like, for all that her profession is portrayed as a positive thing, she doesn’t honor it. either it’s a neutral thing- in which case she’s an unethical example, bad. or it’s a bad thing- in which case she’s bad for doing it. or it’s a good thing- in which case she’s bad for destroying the honor of an actually organized and protected prostitute organization.

but interact with her off the job, and clearly she’s an actually helpful person. She might have refused to tell the missionary if she saw her husband, but she gladly told her that she didn’t to help the missionary out.
edited by Grenem on 7/8/2016

That’s understandable–I did make the thread to bring attention to the issue, if it did indeed constitute an issue.

Anyway, he’s Closest To the Docks, so I’m sure it’s not the first time nor the last.

Some people are of the opinion that alts should not participate in the election because it’s “unfair.” And I suppose some crazed insomniac could start 100 different accounts (or 1000, if it comes to that) and try to game the system.
It raises interesting questions about the philosophy of alts (well, interesting to me, anyway), and whether they are “real” characters with their own motivations and personalities, or just tools of the person behind the mask.
But I wonder what affect the multitude of players who don’t participate in the forums are going to have, even if that insomniac created his 1000 alts. There are a LOT of people playing FL, and a glance at the “Who else is here” box in the various locations demonstrates that most of 'em don’t participate in the forums, but will likely be playing all the election content anyway. So possibly the “fairness” issue is invalid for that reason, if no other.

– Mal

[quote=malthaussen]Some people are of the opinion that alts should not participate in the election because it’s &quotunfair.&quot And I suppose some crazed insomniac could start 100 different accounts (or 1000, if it comes to that) and try to game the system.
It raises interesting questions about the philosophy of alts (well, interesting to me, anyway), and whether they are &quotreal&quot characters with their own motivations and personalities, or just tools of the person behind the mask.
But I wonder what affect the multitude of players who don’t participate in the forums are going to have, even if that insomniac created his 1000 alts. There are a LOT of people playing FL, and a glance at the &quotWho else is here&quot box in the various locations demonstrates that most of 'em don’t participate in the forums, but will likely be playing all the election content anyway. So possibly the &quotfairness&quot issue is invalid for that reason, if no other.

– Mal[/quote]
My opinion is alts should be like troops in RPGs. each one should be unique, with their own desires. 4 knights is stupid, but a knight, a paladin, a guardian and a ward-master is closer to reasonable, and an actual balanced team composition more-so. If all four alts believe in the same faction, it definitely is unfair- even if none of them actually campaign, they’ve got the Notability boosts and the 1 level by default.

@Grenem: 4 knights might not be stupid if there is a rationale for them. They could even be four knights who quarrel among themselves.:)
If role-playing is like acting, I can’t see getting too far telling the late Peter Sellers he can’t play more than one role in the same film.

– Mal

[quote=malthaussen]@Grenem: 4 knights might not be stupid if there is a rationale for them. They could even be four knights who quarrel among themselves.:)
If role-playing is like acting, I can’t see getting too far telling the late Peter Sellers he can’t play more than one role in the same film.

– Mal[/quote]
No, but it’d be a lot less trouble for me to make 4 contrarian supporting alts and get them all to 20 than to make my main support contrarian with full notability and 20.