App'd Roles/Participation

I’ve been thinking over the past few democratic clans that have app’d leaders– typically elected officials, Senators, Ministers, etc. More specifically the retention of these players over the course of the clan, mostly due to them disappearing whether it’s for good (real life) or bad reasons (they just don’t find it fun anymore).

Firstly, I think the creation of a character and its immediate placement into an app’d role for an elected official is a little dumb (the beginning of a timeline doesn’t count), and I hope we deviate from that in the next timeline and beyond. It takes the fun out of the pursuit of the role. That being said, I think the only -fair- way for a truly democratic app’d position is through applications. That was tested this era, and while I give big props to all involved the absence of the application process damaged the legitimacy for a lot of people, and rubbed quite a few the wrong way. But let’s not get into that.

What I hope to see in the future is people creating characters, campaigning publicly, sendings in logs and then the individual who shows the most drive, promise, and RP potential will be awarded the position (provided their campaign isn’t just ludicrous). We’ve done this before, though it usually tends to be established characters jumping into the ring, however on LOTJ it doesn’t matter how long your character has been in the game, it only matters how you design their backstory and sell it to the mud.

Since we are about to jump into an era involving the Republic I thought I would bring this up. Campaigning, scheming, politial alliances… they’re a category of roleplay that not everyone experiences, but definitely should. If this timeline has taught us anything, it’s that anyone and everyone from new players to old can roll a character and work their way up to the top of the political ladder.

To touch the participation aspect, the idea is that the people who are willing to commit more to their campaign ICly are more likely to commit to their app’d role if selected. Making the process more in-depth will add a lot more fun to these roles. And, admittedly, it’s much easier to accept defeat when it is to someone who has clearly devoted a lot of time and effort to their campaign.

Edit: It would be cool if each person campaigning had a Wiki page that could be updated with broadcasts and campaign advertisements. The timezone differences can be a pain when it comes to connecting with other players.

It seemed to me like democratic participation was not something that was of interest to the majority of the mud in any case. And even to that extent for the ones who did join.

I dunno. Campaigning might just make the whole thing more draining that it already might seem.

Campaigning seems like it would be fun. Losing to someone who submits a billion votes via a billion alts and has their friends do the same not so much.

Let’s keep it imm app instead of what we had going on this era.

As far as I’ve seen in the past, imms did tell senator applicants to “campaign” and stuff, when it wasn’t a ‘beginning of timeline senator app’, so personally, I think both can be done with a little imm help.

Campaigning with an app at the end is the way to go. Or players not being trolls.

The way it is typically done post the start of the timeline is that a person or people will app for a spot. They will “campaign” for awhile while waiting for the Imms to decide whose app to approve, and then whoever did get approved would have “won the election”. I have zero problem with this. Having officiated a player-run election in the past, I have to say that it is a very draining process not because of the process itself, but because you cannot trust the playerbase at all.

I think the creation of a character and its immediate placement into an app’d role for an elected official is a little dumb (the beginning of a timeline doesn’t count), and I hope we deviate from that in the next timeline and beyond

I feel like this is a pretty rare occurance. We’ve always said that pre-existing characters will have a much better chance of winning. This is why you see people roll new characters to run. I’m not quite sure where this thread is coming from.

Although it was done pretty well considering the circumstances, I was not a fan of entirely player-run elections and I don’t think we’ll be seeing them in the future.

I will add that there is a tendency to get into roleplay that slows things down too much. Spend too much time campaigning to win instead of just picking a winner and moving on to the more mud-enriching roleplay that comes next. I think you can see something similar with the way people get bogged down in the sorta ‘healing and reconstruction’ roleplay that comes after a major attack or bombardment.

I think the creation of a character and its immediate placement into an app’d role for an elected official is a little dumb (the beginning of a timeline doesn’t count), and I hope we deviate from that in the next timeline and beyond

I feel like this is a pretty rare occurance. We’ve always said that pre-existing characters will have a much better chance of winning. This is why you see people roll new characters to run. I’m not quite sure where this thread is coming from.

Although it was done pretty well considering the circumstances, I was not a fan of entirely player-run elections and I don’t think we’ll be seeing them in the future.

I will add that there is a tendency to get into roleplay that slows things down too much. Spend too much time campaigning to win instead of just picking a winner and moving on to the more mud-enriching roleplay that comes next. I think you can see something similar with the way people get bogged down in the sorta ‘healing and reconstruction’ roleplay that comes after a major attack or bombardment.

I would be very, very glad if player run elections just vanished off the face of the planet. It was an overall negative experience.

I remember my first character that ran for a Senate Role, Nemay was her name. It was my first diplo character and everything. Needless to say I had to work to run my own ads, work my story and knowledge into the Republic. It is a little overwhelming, but fun. I think being chosen as a clan leader is a lot of work, and playing out the role of an election is part of that work. Your roleplay should be compared to other candidates, and obviously I have enough faith in the Imms to know who the best person would be to play the role.

I feel like this is a pretty rare occurance. We’ve always said that pre-existing characters will have a much better chance of winning. This is why you see people roll new characters to run. I’m not quite sure where this thread is coming from.

This is almost indistinguishable for us who are just players, because just some random person with no established IC history that nobody has ever heard of shows up and is a Senator all of a sudden is the thing. This is a player problem not an imm problem, it’s players that don’t take their well established IC life and go try to be a senator, and if players can’t even handle doing that how are they ever going to manage player-run voting?