BG3 is such a fantastic game, and really the best facsimile for a real game that you could find.  I'm glad that it's gotten you into it... I've been working to getting an Honour Mode resist Dark Urge game done, saving all of the gnomes and everything, but keep coming up short.

One-shots are great, but there's such a limit on developing your character.  You come in with a concept and bounce off of the plot and other characters, but they don't get to change and grow, you know?  In my current game, we're about to hit the climactic moment they've been building towards for more than a year (we're thirty-two sessions in, from level 1 to level 7) and it's been so fun to watch them evolve.

If I did another Zoom one-shot, would that interest you?  I haven't done much Zoom DMing since the pandemic, but I am sure I still have the chops and dndbeyond has a decent map tool.

Posting a clean version of this post for Balloting Day -- and regretting I didn't choose a better cover photo for the video than this doofy one.

On this final day before Balloting Day, I thought it might be a good idea to highlight some of our priorities for the upcoming term.  We're going to try to push for these things to get done, even if we don't win a majority -- just like we saw this past term, where we highlighted the unwieldy immigration form and demanded common-sense changes.  We've been a very effective Opposition, but the more seats we have, the more effective we can be.

One of our policies is to reject negative and angry politics.  You've seen the Seneschal's speech about how they are the "Good" and we are the "Bad," and you've seen the URL emails with lengthy personal attacks.  And while that might work for them, we're not going to take the bait.  The URL is a party of decent people who want to help Talossa, and we just have different visions about how to achieve that.  No matter how you vote this term: if you're a Talossan patriot, you're one of the Good ones.  That's our pledge to you.

We urge transparency in government.  The government should not have the power to secretly control who's even allowed to apply to immigrate... we need the bipartisan Public Process Act!  And let's make sure this power was never abused by anyone of any party or government.  If it was, the people deserve to know.  And on a different note, laws like this should be accessible to everyone -- let's get some regular citizens to read over our laws and figure out what's hard to understand!

We also want to make it easier for everyone to "do Talossa."  That means fixing up our website so that the links all work and the merchandise is available.  It means being vocal and supporting everyone's efforts -- the Seneschal should be an active booster of fun stuff, promoting it!  It means making space to be silly, and never yucking someone's yum.  And let's make sure we have plenty of people to have fun with us: let's turn our lucky breaks into sustained growth, and end these periods of zero immigration for months at a time.

There's a video version of this on our Tiktok, because we also want to put a human face on Talossa.  Let's get away from just message boards, since that's more interesting and makes it possible for us to reach a broader audience.  The people agree -- that's why the current leader in our poll asks for "regular Zoom meetings with His Majesty and the Seneschal."  We can make that happen!

It's time to move Talossa forward -- let's vote for the Progressive Alliance!

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on Yesterday at 02:23:59 PMFairly said -- let me say that I can personally commit to a chat with any and all, either way -- and it would be great to have you there, Your Majesty.  Here's a Zoom link for tomorrow morning at 11 TST.

I'm having some scheduling problems today -- my wife is helping produce a big weekend event and she's asked for my help at 11 TST.  @King Txec and @Mic'haglh Autófil, O.Be , I hope you understand!  Would some time around 3pm TST (4pm EST, 1pm ST, 9pm GMT) be okay?

Yes, the new version of The Public Process Act is much better, and the enforcement mechanism was a good idea.  I am glad we discussed it and came up with the idea to mirror the emails to another location out of government control.

I think you're bending over backwards to make it seem like it's pointless to make something illegal without an immediate enforcement mechanism, but yeah, I do actually think that a lot of people will hesitate to break the law out of fear of consequences.  I think if you ask most people if they'd break immigration laws, even if they think they won't get caught, that they'd still say they wouldn't do it.  Now maybe your hypothetical "nefarious immoral mastermind" would still do it, but people aren't either Good or Bad.  As I said, most people don't break serious laws even if they think they might get away with it.

Quote from: Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP on Yesterday at 08:07:43 PMThen why is going through the records to find instances of this currently legal behaviour a worthwhile endeavour?

I think people deserve to know if past governments have been abusing their power.

Quote from: Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP on Yesterday at 08:07:43 PMThe Public Process Act had no mechanism, aside from perhaps the guilty conscience of immoral biased corrupt future MinImms(?!?!?!) that you are describing there, to ensure that every received application would be "processed and posted", and its rejection justified.

Yes, I think that the new version of the bill is much better.  The mirroring protocol is going to help a lot, and without any extra work for people.

Quote from: Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP on Yesterday at 08:07:43 PMHow exactly would the Public Process Act have actually fixed the problem at hand?

It would have definitely been a good first step to make it illegal, lol.  I think you honestly underestimate the power of just knowing you're breaking the law.  It's not just feeling bad, it's also the possibility that you might get in trouble later.  Most people just don't break a lot of major laws, even when it seems like it might be the "perfect crime."  I don't think I've ever broken a law (not counting, like, speeding or jaywalking).  I assume you're not out there breaking laws, either, even when you think you'd get away with it.

I do think your point was a good one when we were talking about the bill, though, and thank you again for the keen insight.  The new version of the bill will have an enforcement mechanism.

You were never at risk of prosecution for three very good reasons:

1.  If you are "binning" applications secretly, that's legal right now.  It's shocking, but right now the government is allowed to just delete applications and not process them, whenever they want.  And obviously you can't be prosecuted for something that's legal.

2.  Org.VII.14 explicitly says that the Ziu cannot pass ex post facto laws.  So even if the URL hadn't blocked The Public Process Act, and it had made it illegal for the government to delete applications if they don't like the applicant, you couldn't be prosecuted for something that wasn't a crime when you did it.

3.  You have repeatedly assured us that you haven't been secretly disposing of immigration applications, so you didn't even do it.

At no point have you ever been at risk of prosecution, as I have told you many times before.  There's no theory that would allow you to be prosecuted for anything under that bill.

And folks, this is a really necessary bill.  Right now, the Government can -- legally! -- decide to just throw out the applications of someone based on any kind of criteria they want.  It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see that this is a dangerous situation in a small country like ours.

• Imagine a politician who doesn't like an energetic new citizen's politics.  Maybe that application just gets "lost."
• All kinds of people have hidden biases.  Maybe someone applies who's just too different for the bureaucrat who sees it.  Does that application get deleted accidentally, maybe?
• Sometimes former citizens reapply, and maybe they're on someone's wrong side.  Maybe their application never quite gets processed.

We have no reason to think any of this has happened in past years, but we shouldn't have to just hope.  At the bare minimum, it should be illegal to do this.  And the improved version of The Public Process Act has even more safeguards -- without any additional work!

Most Honourable Seneschal, we have been running a positive campaign.  It's possible that Françal said something inelegant, but he assures me you're mischaracterizing what he said.  Either way, it's not going to reflect on our campaign or our goals, since we've been united in refusing to fight like you want.  And I'm sorry -- you're just not going to be able to bait us.

We haven't made any speeches about your personal failings or the foibles of your successor as URL leader.

When we've made criticisms, they've been specific and based in concrete fact.  We link to sources and quote things directly.

We haven't attacked the character of your party as a whole, and we haven't made any kind of unfounded accusations about your motives.

Over and over and over, we have stated our policy goals, advocated for our principles, and vowed to work for a better Talossa... no matter the outcome of the election.

Tonight will be no different, because our goal isn't to victory for the Progressives.  It's victory for Talossa.

We're here because we care about transparency.  The fact that the government is able to secretly "bin" citizenship applications isn't something we're okay with, no matter who's in charge.  We want that power removed, and we want to make sure it's never been abused.  Hopefully the day is not too far off when we can issue a report that there was no malfeasance, and everyone can be relieved.

We're here because we want more Talossans to have fun doing Talossan stuff.  There's all kinds of infrastructure that wouldn't take much time to make, but then we could benefit from for years.  Updating the website, making starter kits for culture so people know where to find resources on things like BBCode, providing a directory of commonly used images... all of that is the work of a few days but would pay us back in years of fun new ideas.

We're here because it'd be great to put a human face on the government -- videos and things that take advantage of this new short-form video virality and try to keep it going.  In our recent poll, our number one option is more regular Zooms where His Majesty is joined by the Seneschal to meet people... wouldn't that be great?

This guy cruised in here with verbose Talossan sentences!  You're damn right I'm going to hope he works with us!

With more people willing to help, not everything's going to fall on the shoulders of people like Tafi or Iac.  We could have a lot more language materials and even just a lot more writing in Talossan!  Heck, we could have entire webpages written in it, or regular language articles.  He's very enthusiastic -- I'm not going to sneer at that just because we don't share a lot of the same political values.

And now this should have hit your inbox -- hopefully all the links and everything work!  As usual, I immediately found a typo, despite proofreading like three times.

Just to clarify, we do not have a formal coalition, but the Progressive Alliance has approached the IDT about possibly working together on areas of shared interest: we love this enthusiasm for our language* and we can't wait to work to get more people into it!

*quick plug for http://talossan.net !

Now in video form here!

Well, I'll be on that zoom at that time, so stop on by 🙂

Quote from: King Txec on Yesterday at 01:06:27 PM

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on Yesterday at 01:05:34 PMMaybe!  I've asked my party what we should do.  And I can probably join you at that time regardless, and see what's possible.  I want to avoid any format that puts you in the awkward position of campaigning for one party or another, though.

It's entirely up to you both. I'm happy to join (though there is no link to a Zoom yet).

-Txec R

Fairly said -- let me say that I can personally commit to a chat with any and all, either way -- and it would be great to have you there, Your Majesty.  Here's a Zoom link for tomorrow morning at 11 TST.

Maybe!  I've asked my party what we should do.  And I can probably join you at that time regardless, and see what's possible.  I want to avoid any format that puts you in the awkward position of campaigning for one party or another, though.

I'll try to stop by the Tric'hard Birthday Coffee to say hi!

It's looking like the answer is no... Mic'halgh's above two questions and the third one which says that the Progressives are "arguing for the status quo" are all unchanged.

I'll see if something else fair can be worked out.  Maybe the solution is just not to have a moderator?  That way he can just make his creative claims and we can discuss them?  I don't know.  I'll ask my party.

On this final day before Balloting Day, I thought it might be a good idea to highlight some of our priorities for the upcoming term.  We're going to try to push for these things to get done, even if we don't win a majority -- just like we saw this past term, where we highlighted the unwieldy immigration form and demanded common-sense changes.  We've been a very effective Opposition, but the more seats we have, the more effective we can be.

One of our policies is to reject negative and angry politics.  You've seen the Seneschal's speech about how they are the "Good" and we are the "Bad," and you've seen the URL emails with lengthy personal attacks.  And while that might work for them, we're not going to take the bait.  The URL is a party of decent people who want to help Talossa, and we just have different visions about how to achieve that.  No matter how you vote this term: if you're a Talossan patriot, you're one of the Good ones.  That's our pledge to you.

We urge transparency in government.  The government should not have the power to secretly control who's even allowed to apply to immigrate... we need the bipartisan Public Process Act!  And let's make sure this power was never abused by anyone of any party or government.  If it was, the people deserve to know.  And on a different note, laws like this should be accessible to everyone -- let's get some regular citizens to read over our laws and figure out what's hard to understand!

We also want to make it easier for everyone to "do Talossa."  That means fixing up our website so that the links all work and the merchandise is available.  It means being vocal and supporting everyone's efforts -- the Seneschal should be an active booster of fun stuff, promoting it!  It means making space to be silly, and never yucking someone's yum.  And let's make sure we have plenty of people to have fun with us: let's turn our lucky breaks into sustained growth, and end these periods of zero immigration for months at a time.

I'll have a video out soon on our Tiktok, because we also want to put a human face on Talossa.  Let's get away from just message boards, since that's more interesting and makes it possible for us to reach a broader audience.  The people agree -- that's why the current leader in our poll asks for "regular Zoom meetings with His Majesty and the Seneschal."  We can make that happen!

It's time to move Talossa forward -- let's vote for the Progressive Alliance!

Mic'halgh, you could just rephrase your questions so they're not -- as Miestra calls them -- too provocative.  There's lot of ways you could ask these things without trying to make the moderators campaign for you.

I mean, take this other question they've asked to be rephrased:

Quote from: Mic'halghYour platform calls for the Government "taking a public stance", "being an active advocate", and being "an active voice right from the top" when it comes to the direction of Talossan culture -- a direction you feel should be more like the Talossan culture and internet culture of years past. Given this strong advocacy for cultural dirigisme, how would a Davinescu Government respond if citizens reject their attempts at "compulsory fun"?

You're not going to get them to ask why we're insisting on "compulsory fun" because that's basically just a URL campaign statement, and there's nothing specific to back it up.  But that could fairly easily be rephrased into something that's more reasonable and neutral.

I'm a little unhappy to hear that the moderators have been discussing their decisions with URL leadership, but I'm going to assume it's innocent complaining about the process with their old friends.  So no worries.

Anyway, I guess there's a day left for you guys to rephrase the questions that the moderators have asked be changed.  All three of them would be fine if the provocative campaign statements are removed.

The Progressive Alliance is proud to urge all Florencians to vote for Mximo Carbonèl.  He's often out in front with new ideas -- but he's also a passionate Talossan with a long history.  He's going to work with us on moving Talossa forward, without discarding her past.  A vote for Mximo is a vote for important work like The Public Process Act and new infrastructure plans -- and for the proud independent voice of Mximo !

Let's move Talossa forward!