Starting tomorrow, I will need your help beloved followers to politely DESTROY @ropucha in the polls.
I would like to call upon my fellow contenders for assistance. If we're allied and it ends up being the two of us in the final bracket, I will knit you a pair of socks. No matter who wins the final bracket.
So my friends! Join me in destroying my left bracket brethren!
hey guys!! I’m participating in @transtaglias’ epic mutual death bracket and here is why i deserve your vote 😏
a vote for me is a vote for
bisexual vampires with social anxiety
people who’s love language is infodumping
oldest child immigrants
filipino women in stem ™️
the 153 pictures of the sky in my camera roll
tea lovers everywhere 🫶
aka if you drink tea you’re legally obligated to vote archivistea 2023 look it’s literally me
just a little guy :D
every vote for me explodes a homophobe/transphobe out there like to charge vote to cast
I also make fun fandom and oc art over on my sideblog/insta if u send proof u voted for me I’ll sketch ur blorbo <3 and if ur a competitor in the running I’ll vote for you too :)
some examples of my art ^^
best of luck to The Competition / possible allies(?)
Last year I ran a pathfinder 2e session where my players took part in a mayoral election campaigning for their favourite candidate. But 2e does not have ready-made election rules. What it does have though is a variant rule called Victory Points. These are a metric which you can use to measure success towards a goal that takes time and might require multiple different skill checks. If you’re interested in how this works, feel free to read about it. I will however try to keep my write up of my election system relatively simple. If you don’t play 2e, don’t worry. Just swap out skills and DCs for election actions with whatever makes sense for your system of choice. Also, yes, this was my own campaign promise for winning the first round of the @transtaglias mutual battle...
Overview:
This system uses victory points called Election Points. Some candidates will start with a number of election points based on their reputation in the settlement, typically 1 if they are liked or influential or 2 if they are both liked and influential. This accounts for any steps candidates may have taken to increase their chances before the actual election cycle. During the election cycle, candidates may campaign to gain more Election Points. Depending on the length of the election cycle, candidates may be able to earn Election Points daily, weekly, or monthly. The DC for campaign tasks is typically a level-based DC based on the level of the settlement although this can be modified as always.
Campaign Actions:
In order to gain Election Points, any of the following actions can be taken. Additionally, encourage your players to think outside the box. If something they consider doing doesn’t fit one of the actions below, that’s probably okay! Just come up with the correct skill to represent their attempt to help their candidate. Also, players are also welcome to run as candidate’s themselves. Obviously you can roleplay these actions out, but I felt codifying the actions would be best for attempting to run an entire election cycle in one or two sessions. Especially since none of my players chose to run, I wasn’t about to debate myself playing 4 different characters... Narration was more effective.
PF2e Note: In 2e, there are four tiers of success on a die roll: Critical Success, Success, Failure, and Critical Failure. For the following actions a critical success means 2 Election Points gained, a success is 1 Election Point gained, a Failure is 0 Election Points gained, and a critical failure is 1 Election Point lost. If adapting this to a different system, just do what makes sense for the system. However, I think having an opportunity to lose Election Points on campaign actions creates a fun tension with each die roll so consider somehow keeping that.
Format: {Action Name} (Skills) [Candidate means only the candidate can preform this]
Give Speech (Diplomacy or Deception) [Candidate]: The candidate delivers a speech to the public making promises or bolstering morale.
Distribute Fliers (Society or Art Lore): You distribute fliers at crowded venues and post them to walls and lamp posts around town.
Door-to-Door Campaigning (Diplomacy or Society): You go door-to-door attempting to convince voters face-to-face.
Defamation (Deception or Intimidation): This unique campaign task is used to lower another candidate’s Election Point total. The opposing candidate can use their Diplomacy DC or the settlement DC, whichever is higher. This represents the candidate’s abilities to fight the claims against them.
Voter Fraud (Deception or Thievery): You attempt to rig the election in a variety of ways. This can be used to grant Election Points or remove Election Points. On a critical failure, it also prevents you from continuing to run as a candidate if you were running. If you did this task to aid someone else’s campaign and rolled a Critical Failure, the local authorities may make Perception checks against your Deception or Thievery DC (whichever one you used for Voter Fraud) to trace this back to the candidate and thus prevent them from continuing to run. These Election Points are not removed or gained until Election Day. Any attempts to poll the settlement do not show Election Points lost or gained due to Voter Fraud.
Convincing Platform (Any Recall Knowledge Skill): You lay out a clear platform for voters to rally behind. Whether or not you will strive to enact these promises upon election usually does not matter. What matters is how well it pertains to the needs of the people. Using an appropriate Lore Skill may make the DC higher or lower. For example, using Military Lore to promise greater defenses in a settlement which is under threat of invasion would be an easier DC while using, say, Art Lore to promise an expanded use of public art in a settlement that is lacking resources would be a higher DC. You can only make one check per Skill.
Public Debate (Diplomacy, Intimdate, Society, or Deception) [Candidate]: Perhaps you call for a public debate or one is required by settlement law. Other candidates have the option to back down from the debate with an automatic Failure resulting in the loss of 1 Election Point. Calling for successive public debates may not result in a penalty for backing down. This is decided by the GM in consideration of the time-frame of the entire election cycle.
Endorse [Candidate]: A candidate is free to withdraw from the election at any point and can choose to endorse another candidate. Endorsement counts as a campaign task. However, it automatically succeeds and gives a target candidate half the Election Points of the withdrawing candidate.
Poll: This is in place of a usual campaign action for that round of actions and requires no skill checks. Whoever does the poll action is automatically aware of all candidate’s election points (except those earned by Voter Fraud) and can choose to withhold this information from others. In some larger settlements, polling results may be released by non-partisan sources without direct intervention by campaigns.
Election Day:
The election will not be simply decided by whoever has the most Election Points by the end of the campaign cycle. This breaks the usual Victory Point system. I chose to do this because election day always feels so stressful in real life, so it makes sense that it should be this tense moment where you see if all your efforts paid off. Think of Election Points as poll results, they only indicate who is most likely to win. For added GM fun, consider making these rolls public for your players like they’re actually watching the results come in over the course of the day.
Election Day has three phases: typically morning, day, and night. Each candidate makes a DC 20 check using their Election Points as a modifier. This DC may be changed for particularly long or short election cycles. They make this check for each phase. Candidates then compare their number of successes where critical successes count as two successes. In the event of a tie, a recount is called for. The tied candidates then continue to make DC 20 checks using their Election Points for subsequent phases until the tie is resolved.
Example: The Mayoral Election of the Township of Aria which took place over two weeks because the town was without a permanent mayor following the usurping of the imperial governor. Candidates included: Lydia Fairweather, the local inn-keeper and interim mayor who began with 2 election points for being liked and influential; Berta Stone, the retired soldier who led the townsfolk in their rebellion against the empire who began with 1 election point for being liked; Abram Brightheart, a mysterious leader of a group of shadow plane denizens who both helped and defended Aria but still garnered suspicion began with 1 election point; and Lumbort Scrimm, a local silly man who began with 0 election points. Election Points could be earned twice per week, for a total of four opportunities. Aria is a level 3 settlement which means a DC 18 in 2e (to adapt to a different system, just think about what DC fits for the current level of the players, after all they’re the ones who will be participating). Throughout the two weeks, the players banded together behind Lydia Fairweather and took multiple actions to try to boost her chances in the election. Each player could preform an action twice a week, and Lydia herself tried to give speeches and even participate in a debate. Lumbort quickly fell behind due to being unskilled and having no support, while Berta had modest success. Abram was Lydia’s strongest competitor able to gain lots of elections points by virtue of having high skill bonuses. On Election Day, however, the dice rolls were not in Abram’s favor. And Lydia had a clean sweep. Lydia Fairweather was now mayor!
