Projects
Before the game, there will be briefs for players explaining the various problems facing society and ongoing plot-lines. As well as this, the delegates will be presented with a number of Projects to address these problems.
A Project has a magnitude, a measure of how many resources must be assigned to it for it to succeed, and one or more Aspects. Resources of the appropriate Aspect count double towards a Project. The key element of the event is deciding which Projects to assign these resources to.
Administrative & Faction Resources
As well as each delegate potentially bringing their own Personal Resources, each Faction has a pool of Faction Resources to assign. The Summit as a whole has access a pool of Administrative Resources provided by the Administrators (these resources represent what the Administrators are being asked to do and so will always have every aspect).
Faction and Administrative Resources are assigned by a vote; the faction for Faction Resources (see Economic Motions below), and the entire summit for Summit Resources (see Full Summit Voting below).
Motions
Voting is an important part of your job. When a decision needs to be made you must get a majority of your faction to be willing to vote in favour of whatever motion you propose (e.g. in a faction of 5, you require 3 people to vote including yourself). Then you find your Scribe to tell them the motion proposed and who is voting in favour of it. The Scribe will check that you have the right number of votes and then either record it or tell you to try again later.
You have two types of motion:
• Economic Motions, which assign the delegation’s resources.
• Advisory Motions, which state the views and intent of the delegation without assigning resources.
The big levers of the game are Projects: to achieve concrete results and fix problems, you need to complete Projects. Both Personal Resources and Economic Motions can contribute towards this.
The exact voting style each faction can differ wildly and it is up to the factions’ players and Scribe to ensure that they are keeping to it. While the Administrators only care about the delegates having a majority
Economic Motions
An economic motion assigns Faction Resources to a given project. The motion should specify
- How many resources you are assigning
- Which aspects those resources have
- Which project they’re being assigned to
E.g. “The Evolvers assign 10 Violence and 4 Technology resources to the project Blow Up The National Gallery.”
Your Scribe will record the result and funnel it to the Administrators.
Like with personal resources, once a Faction Resource has been assigned, it’s permanently locked in and can’t be re-assigned. Any Economic Motion that tries to assign resources that the faction doesn’t have, or has already assigned elsewhere, simply fails.
Moving quickly to assign resources before others have a chance to oppose it is a valid PvP tactic.
You do NOT need an economic motion to assign your personal resources.
Advisory Motions
Advisory Motions are motions stating the delegate’s opinions, but not assigning actual Resources. They do not have any numerical mechanical effect. However, an Advisory Motion lets the delegates communicate their opinions to the plot team in an easily recorded way. They can serve a few functions:
- They let delegates tell the plot team things they’re interested in, which might result in Projects being created to follow up on the motion at future summits.
- They might suggest how the plot writers flavour the success of a successful project, or how they flavour the failure of a failed project.
- They let different factions form treaties with one another.
There is no limit to how many Advisory Motions the delegates can put through, although the plot team are more likely to pay serious attention to a faction that passes a single advisory motion than to one that passes several dozen; the more Advisory Motions are passed, the more dilute the effect of each one will likely become. Furthermore, there is no limit on what an Advisory Motion can be about. They can be about specific current projects, personal interests, exploring backstory, researching the world, anything your character wishes focus to be put into.
Nothing stops a faction from passing Advisory Motions that directly contradict each other; in this case, they will effectively cancel one another out. Doing this is a valid PvP tactic.
Secret Advisory Motions
Not every faction scheme is something they want to be common knowledge. In these particular cases, you may wish to pass a secret advisory motion. These work basically the same as a standard advisory motion with one key difference: everyone who votes in favour of this motion also swears an oath to keep that motion secret. In this case, the Scribes and Administrators will keep the Advisory Motions secret even from people within the same faction who did not swear the oath. At the following Summit, any projects created by this advisory motion will be delivered in a sealed envelope with the names of those who swore the oath on the outside. The Scribe will only give this envelope to someone listed on the envelope.
Full Summit Voting
Typically around the midpoint of the Summit, the Administrators will call a full Summit meeting. This will take priority over all other activity which must be drawn quickly to an end.
Each faction will then have the opportunity to assign three projects a priority label. These are the three projects that the Administrators will put the Administrative Resources towards. The priority levels are:
- High: This project will receive 50% of the Administrative Resources
- Medium: This project will receive 30% of the Administrative Resources
- Low: This project will receive 20% of the Administrative Resources
Once each faction has assigned their selection of projects, each faction will get a collective of five minutes to present their reasoning to the rest of the Summit. Multiple people of the same faction may speak during this time but the order must be pre-arranged and they must not argue or debate during this time. This is a presentation of reasoning not a continuation of the discussion.
After that, voting will be done in rounds with each faction getting one vote until there is a majority agreement for one project per priority level. These will then be finalised. Additional Administrative resources can be generated but they cannot be separately assigned.
Administrators & Scribes
Administrators & Scribes are the supporting NPCs of the game, who schedule and chair committee meetings, brief player characters on events and take their orders (eg: for how to assign resources).
Each Administrator or Scribe is both an NPC with their own personality and also a referee that handles mechanical matters. When you need to interface with the game team for whatever reason, you go and find one of these crew members.
Administrators
Administrators are the ghostly product of ritual magic, and handle the underpinning magic of the Summit. They will referee rituals and other magic, and handle various logistics for the event. They can be identified by a nice helpful veil worn over their faces.
Administrators are the mechanical contact-point between the players and the game-team, including handling magic and plot elements. Think of an Administrator as a referee with a face and a personality, albeit fairly spooky. An Administrator isn’t quite a person; though they display a personality, they’re closer to a magical function given form and intelligence. An Administrator probably doesn’t have their own goals or agenda beyond ensuring the Summit functions properly; what other aims they might have are likely esoteric.
Scribes
Scribes are living members of the factions bound to the Administrators by strong oaths to ensure their impartiality. They act as a point of contact for the delegates, chairing meetings, counting votes and recording the outcome of motions and how resources are assigned.
Scribes are the social contact-point between the players and the game team. Their job is to ensure that every member in their faction is heard, keep the game team up to date with what their various faction members are up to, and keep their faction’s meetings structured. Although they’ve sworn oaths binding them to the Summit, ensuring their impartiality, scribes are people with goals of their own. Though they don’t have their own resources or votes, they function much like delegates and might assist with rituals or other magic.
Censure
Through the magic that created the Summit, the Administrators and Scribes may have access to magic unavailable to delegates. In particular, both have access to a variety of exciting curses they can use to censure delegates that disrupt the running of the Summit.