[Mazhi]

One thing that's bugging me is, after we get the coalition and the government going, how do we actually play the game? I mean, how do we know what the decisions the politicians make actually affect the country? A solution I see is for there to be one or more people who aren't players but sort of control the happening as objectively as possible. Say, the government decides to raise/lower taxes, privatize/nationalize certain industries, healthcare or education, etc. How do we decide what actually happens to the country afterwards? And how do we decide what state the country is in at the beginning of the actual government game? I think the best would be to have sort of a Gamemaster or Masters who are not players, but as I mentioned, objectively decide what the various decisions actually cause. I don't see how else this could be done, but I'd sure like to hear suggestions.

[Cheesecake_Marmalade]

The problem with a gamemaster is that their various interpretations would all be subject to their own worldviews.

[Mazhi]

What if we have one from each ideology and they reach a reasonable consensus? Or maybe simply cast a dice? Or a combination of both where a consensus cannot be reached.

[Cheesecake_Marmalade]

I wouldn't mind that. I think this should be something we determine in parliament though.

[Tailz]

Do we all get monopoly money to bribe each other with?

[Cheesecake_Marmalade]

That's a good idea. Some more advanced RP's have a system of money.... it would require some forum addons though. To make a really detailed and interesting RP we'd have to have our own forum. But this can be fun too.

[The Immortal Goon]

In theory, if there's a "game master" he or she might do well to find a similar set of circumstances in a historical country and apply them to the situation. If there's a historical argument to back it up, it might be able to work. Then again, there might need to be three people from various spectrums to keep things honest.

Another thing to do might be to ignore a lot of it. The reds are going to do their thing, the Libertarians theirs, and so on and so forth despite whatever interpretation is put in to play. It would be possible to choose a "control country" like Mexico, Norway or Australia or whatever we choose the country should be like, and concentrate on improving that particular situation. If there's a giant financial in that country IRL, in theory, no matter what the government does in Pofolandia, it's going to have the same results as whatever is happening in the IRL country.

For fun, we could choose a bunch of different countries for different controls maybe.

The latter idea is probably better as the parties are NEVER going to agree that one thing worked and another didn't, making it rather futile to try and set up an arbitrary committee to monitor what's happening.

--Edit--

So I've dwelt on this for a few mins now. What a ruling coalition might do is find a number of areas; healthcare, education, finances, industry, military; something like that and assign a real world country's model to it. This would need to be balanced in some way, probably some kind of proportional mathematic system that would prevent someone from choosing the US military, the French health system, Cuban literacy, and Chinese factories, making you somehow have to find the finances to pay for such a thing.

Then, if a crisis or event happened in that country regarding whatever it was, the Pofoites would have to find a way to deal with it.

Maybe that's a poor idea that Henry Weinhard is giving me, but it's something I thought I'd put out there.

[Donna]

Basically, once we form a government, we will start to simulate the process of law making and as the game evolves, so will micro-management of the law (I'd like to see a single document/thread consisting of our entire legal code sticked in the forum). I imagine at the start parliament will be a bloodied battle ground for the future of our fictional country. After several election cycles, possible party mergers etc., we'll start to have more stable government and the parties can begin managing legislative detail instead of discussing colossal structural matters like economic policy.

[HoniSoit]

One thing that's bugging me is, after we get the coalition and the government going, how do we actually play the game?

I see it as a three-step process:

- Once the election is over and the government is formed, it would require a period when we have to formulate and ratify some of the basic laws of goverment (and procedures governing our subsequent games) and establish the basic structures and functions of the government/parliament.

- When this is done, we would put forward legislations on social, economic, cultural and foreign policies, and debate them in the parliament. Then they would be voted on and adopted or dismissed.

- Subsequently, if certain political parties and MPs still feel strongly against those adopted policies, they could raise their opposition and offer alternative policies or amendaments in the parliament - with strong arguments and new evidence from the real world (i.e. using real world data in countries where similar policies are adopted but have since failed, for example) as to why the old policies are wrong or no longer suitable for our country. If the opposition could persuade (or bribe) enough MPs to support the alternative policies, then the previous policies would be overturned.