Politician Archive

Well, I've now seen the Politician skills/abilities, and read the various messages here, and done some thinking. And it now seems to me (before even playing aPolitician -- amazing! ) that there are two areas the Politician needs to be beefed up in to make it playable on an ongoing basis.

First, the thing that makes real-life politics interesting is the balancing of powers. The American example of carefully crafted constitutionalchecks and balances is the obvious example, but pretty much any public organizational structure will pit one power base against another. In Iran today there is a tension between religious and secular leadership; even dictatorships often split into civilian and military power blocs.

So where are the means for creating power blocs within city administrations in SWG?

I'd like to seea City Council discipline (within thePolitician profession)that holds most of the legislative abilities, leaving the executive abilities in the other disciplines. The Novice Politician skill would let you earn political points servingas an executive assistant, or legislative staffer, or some suchthing.Once you earn enough political points to learn a City Council skill, youcanrun forcity council. (Council races would occur weekly, mayoral races would be heldindependentlyonceper month.)Election to the city council wouldgive youthe ability (depending on theskill level) to do certain legislative things -- basicallychanging certain existinglaws and sponsoring new ones (each of which wouldgenerate political points). The city council would vote onthese "bills," whichif agreed to would go to the Mayor for signature or veto. If vetoed, the council would have a chance (through another vote) to override the veto.

This restructuring of the power system would have a number of positive effects on gameplay. Itwould allow more people to be able to actively serve as Politicians, rather than just one person. It would make political activity a LOT more interesting -- not only does it establish a tension between the executive (Mayor) and legislative (Council) power structures, the city council itself could become a political battlefield on some issues. It could even set up "insider" vs. "outsider" dynamics, as between someone who's sat on the city council for months ("I know this town, and I know its citizens") versus someone who's never held public office ("I've got fresh perspectives, and I'm not beholden to any pressure group").

Is there some reason why this couldn't work, or shouldn't be tried?

The secondmodification I'd makehas been suggested, but I'd like to make it explicit: Mayors need to have things that they can do with and against other Mayors.

I'm not suggesting that there needs to besome in-game structure supporting aplanetary council of all a planet's city mayors, with a Governor elected from among them (although that would befantastic). But I do think that the designers are missing a huge opportunity for interesting gameplay by failing to include intra-city abilities as well as purely inter-city abilities. All the abilities for doing things inside one's city are nice (not exciting in some cases, but nice)... but what about the ability to take actions that establish a city's relationships with other citiesand their citizens? How about letting a mayor impose, raise, lower, oreliminatetariffs on goods imported from other cities? How about being able to build enhanced transportation or communicationsystems between agreeing cities? How about loans? (Yes, a mayor could do these things informally under the current rules... but what if a city council has to approve such actions?)

Overall, I think the current very simple system concentrates too much power in the hands of one person (even if just for one week). It's not a matter of fearing the corruption of power -- it's more that politics isn't as much fun if only one person can play.

We need checks and balances! And babies to kiss!

--Flatfingers

You must know some rednecks didnt pass the 7th grade......

LOL

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ImpDude wrote:

You must know some rednecks didnt pass the 7th grade......

LOL

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Hey, I'm from Louisiana, where making it to the 7th grade means you're qualified to teach!

(True story: While working ina Registrar of Voters office in Louisianain the early '80s, I actually registered a guy to vote who literally could not sign his name -- he had to make "his mark" (an X) and have it witnessed. This gentleman could neither read nor write, but that was no impediment to hisparticipating in the democratic process. Was that a Good Thing or a Bad Thing?)

Incidentally, being from Louisiana is also what qualifies me to talk about politics as a form of taxpayer-subsidized entertainment....

...

So -- nobody else has anything to say about these two ideas (city council Politicians and intra-city abilities)? Everybody's just fine with cities being controlled by one person, andwith a profession that gives you virtuallynothing to do once the profession is mastered?

Hmm.

--Flatfingers

i don't think there's a huge amount of people who actually have interest in spending skillpoints on politician. if you require too many politicians to make a city work, you'll see a lot less working cities.

i'd love to see more for the politician, and i'm sure we will in the future. i'd even be okay with having an elite politician profession... but only if it was something like planetary or galactic governer/chancellor

That's a fair point. I could solve the potential problem you describe by waving my magic programmer wand and saying, "OK, there's a special flag added that says if no one runs for city council, the mayor gets all executive and legislative powers," but the truth is that that would complicate the system.

Still, in defense of the idea (no emotional attachment, just intellectually smacking it around to see if it can survive), it would be really easy to serve on a city council -- just earn enough Politician points to pick up the "Novice Politician" and "Legislative I" skills, and pay the 16 skill points, and if you run for city council you're pretty much in (no need to tie a council's maximum size to city size, although that could be done).

Admittedly those 16 skill points (11 if Politician becomes an advanced profession) are a lot. But they would buy you a lot, even if you never picked up any other Politician skills -- you'd be able tohave a leadership rolein many of the decisions affecting your home town.

The point of all this, of course, isn't merely to have a city council -- it's to give budding Politicians something useful to do, and to create a "loyal opposition" to the mayor (purely for entertainment purposes, of course, heh-heh-heh). If there's a better way to achieve these goals, I'm all ears....

--Flatfingers

i think a mayor's assistent would work, there isnt much room in a city of 10 to 150 to have more than 1 real adminstator, maybe 2, so a mayor and vice mayor sounds good to me, and if its a poly happy crew create some optional slots like, entertainment officer so on, as perks to make a city better (and not cost 100k more per week)...