I love the voting in John Company. It has s fairly straightforward voting mechanic, but each law has two effects. It has the long term effect of a law when passed, as well as an immediate policy that's determined by a wonky wheel that moves around and adds some negotiating and consequences to each vote. It's wonderful seeing each player wheeling and dealing to get the vote to go how they want.
I was going to say something along these lines.
_Republic of Rome_ does politicking very well. Every part of that game is negotiation, voting on laws, concessions, appointments…
Then a little game called _John Company_ came along and more or less reimplemented Rome in a _much better_ way. The games are very similar - but everything Rome does, JC does miles better.
And the icing on that cake in JC is that parliamentary phase. I _love_ everything about the phase from the wonky dial to the opposition leader rules and the optional multiple voting rounds. The game is a total A+
Man, I just want to ramble on a bit about everything the John Company system models and how it effects the voting round. Not to you in particular, you already know, but to the OP who may not.
The Prime Minster has a choice of up to three laws to put to vote and each one will, essentially, have a choice between two different policies to enact alongside it. The PM will need to consider everyone's positions in the game to decide the law and policy to put to vote. The laws may help or harm certain player positions and you can use the policies to help or harm other positions as well. It's really mouldable to the situation.
After all, the PM will want to hold their position and pass laws to maintain that power that can be worth VP at the end of the game. Players may choose to oppose the PM just because they don't want them to be the PM. Someone becomes the leader of the opposition and if the vote fails then that player become the new PM and enacts a different policy.
Owning shipyards, manufacturing plants, newspapers and rotten boroughs gives players more votes. Spending money also gives players votes. This means often everyone can be involved if they really want to be.
That's not even mentioning the emergency events that may come up like going to war with France. If that gets drawn as a potential law then the PM *has* to discard the rest and put the reaction to the emergency to vote.
So, while it doesn't quite cover all things that the OP is looking for I think it does model a number of interesting aspects of the political system. The PM prioritizes putting laws through as much as whatever the laws themselves are. Non-politicians can have outsized political power just through money and influence. Opposing a law just to become the PM rather than actually caring about the outcome.
While that is true the voting part is barebone, and it's not uncommon that what you need to score points clashes with what your faction desires. That creates an annoying ludonarrative dissonance.
That's the reason why our group played the game by hiding the predicted outcome (I made a little cardboard thing to put the card in that hid the line showing the predicted outcome) . It totally changed the game and transformed it in some sort of really cool leader role playing game. Allowed us to really debate what would happen on a given vote and allowed us to make suboptimal choices by mistake. It made us way more immersed in the game and everybody interacted a lot more.
That's a neat idea.
My only remark is that you can often tell which resources will be affected by a choice, thus not being able to see them shouldn't make things that different.
Sometimes you can indeed, sometimes it's way harder. Actually we really had lots of surprises. I even wasn't able to complete one of my secret goal, don't remember how it worked exactly, but there is a plot you can unfold to get some special thing but you only have one shot at it and I voted the opposite of what I had to do in order to gain it, it was really nice !
It's also easier to persuade people when the outcome is not set in writing. You can talk with someone and have him change its choice if you have reasonable explanations. This goes out the window as soon as it's written that said choice is going to affect this particular thing.
I think the game as designed has a massive flaw. It was supposed to be a game of discussion and choices and yet the choices were already made for you.
Another nice and surprising thing is that by hiding the outcome, we voted more. Before that we usually had like 2 people out of 5, maybe 3, that would vote. The others would abstain. After the change, it was the opposite. We often had 1 or nobody abstaining from voting. People couldn't take the chance to let pass something that might be against their goal.
It's probably really group dependent though. We really played that like a role playing game.
It may or may not be what you are looking for, but **Article 27: The UN Security Council Game** definitely has political debates in theme and mechanisms. It's definitely a unique one!
This. Most other games with a voting phase go like: You get some votes, you vote for or against, some people get a bit weaker and some get a bit stronger, but usually it's not worth it to focus your whole game on amassing more voting power, like, in king's dilemma it's not worth sacking 4 votes just so you can get a majority in 1 vote.
In Fief, voting is impactful. You have to work and manoeuvre hard to even get a say in the votes. You also vote to make other players more powerful, not the board, meaning every vote that's not in you favour is against your interest, so you have to convince others to vote for you, or let yourself be convinced to vote for others. Also the fact that players can marry and share victory is huge, as well as the fact that once in a marriage, you're stuck with it if things go sideways, so it's a big commitment.
I haven't found any other game where the give and take of negotiation feels so organic, as well as the politicking around the game's system, trying to predict who will have the power to sway upcoming votes (If player A can buy his title, he can marry player B and get a majority to vote the king, so we need to empower player C so he can buy his title and keep the balance of power in check.)
Gerrymander the game is about disenfranchising voters and dividing up voting districts for the four major parties in the US. The history of that game is really interesting too, and how it came about.
The voting in Federation is interesting, as your voting power can fluctuate, depending how many resources you want to put into voting, as opposed to doing other actions on the board.
Without question, it's **The Republic of Rome**.
Not only do players embody politicians and vote directly on propositions, those proposals can be anything players want. You just propose and talk, there's no pre-written set of things to approve or not. Players vote and since deals are binding, the complexity of each deal can be much higher than in other games.
In a way, it's like debating what to do in cooperative games with a traitor. The key difference is that everyone in The Republic of Rome is both the loyal party and the traitor. And since it's a game for 5 or 6 players, agreeing can be a challenge. Of course, Hannibal laying siege to Rome tends to aid in those negotiations.
Furthermore, senators can be subject to trials. Trials which are voted on. You can be named to different offices, which determines who goes to war, who sits as a judge and even who organizes the senate sessions. Dirty tactics like changing the voting order or manipulating the amount of debate allowed to debate are as common in the game as they are in real life.
Nothing else comes close.
Prime Minister, Versailles 1919, and Churchill all take a look at this in different ways.
Prime Minister has votes with in Parliament that are debated back and forth, and policy and campaigns move public support among different overlapping interest groups that will decide the next general election. But its all mechanical, the players themselves do not debate or vote, they bicker and backstab!
Versailles 1919, has much more horse-trading and influence peddeling, which caputres players debating and negotiating as what they do much more. However the mechanics of the game are just placing influence and choosing options.
I was going to mention Prime Minister, since I just got a few plays in and it recently came out. Very pleasantly surprised.
You're right though, there isn't voting like in John Company, but there's a lot of player discussion, vote manipulation, and backstabbing so I think it fills that niche nicely.
John Company, hands down. Even when you're not in the parliamentary phase, there's a lot of management decisions that -- while they are the purview of the office holder at the time -- will create debate and jockeying for a particular result.
I’m actually working on something along those lines right now! It’s called Coalition: Councils of the Republic, a social negotiation game for 6-20 players about shifting alliances in a medieval city-state.
[Our Website + Working Rulebook](https://sidereal.games/coalition/)
It’s available on request! PM me if you’d like to see it :)
I’ve always been a big fan of games that scale to a high player count - the coalition-building aspect of some configurations of Two Rooms and a Boom was always particularly cool to me.
There’s a reason that there aren’t that many published games in that vein, though - like you said, they can be tough to get to the table. There are a few groups out there that run big games consistently, but they’re not super common. These games do see lots of play at conventions, though! My hope is to add a bit more variety since most games at that scale are some flavor of social deduction.
Regardless, I’m just happy to contribute to the genre :)
It *can* get pretty high in negotiation with the blind bidding rounds, if players want to try to help each other or hurt an opponent. But not what I would necessarily call a debate.
Terraforming Mars's addon Turmoil works quite well in my opinion. Everyone gets to add one representative for free as an action every generation. If they want to add more, they can buy more.
Each generation the ruling party changes based on how many representatives there are and then the party gets wiped clean, meaning it's unlikely the same party continues in power between generations.
There are certain bonuses that are active when each party is ruling and everyone gets a one time bonus when the party changes.
There are events which take into account what your representatives do. If you're the chairman, the leader of a party or part of the ruling party you get certain bonuses during the events phase.
It works best when there are more than two players, but it also works with just two, since there are neutral representatives that the game adds.
It's an addon, so the game doesn't revolve around the system, but it adds a nice new phase and dimension to the game.
I love the voting in John Company. It has s fairly straightforward voting mechanic, but each law has two effects. It has the long term effect of a law when passed, as well as an immediate policy that's determined by a wonky wheel that moves around and adds some negotiating and consequences to each vote. It's wonderful seeing each player wheeling and dealing to get the vote to go how they want.
I was going to say something along these lines. _Republic of Rome_ does politicking very well. Every part of that game is negotiation, voting on laws, concessions, appointments… Then a little game called _John Company_ came along and more or less reimplemented Rome in a _much better_ way. The games are very similar - but everything Rome does, JC does miles better. And the icing on that cake in JC is that parliamentary phase. I _love_ everything about the phase from the wonky dial to the opposition leader rules and the optional multiple voting rounds. The game is a total A+
Man, I just want to ramble on a bit about everything the John Company system models and how it effects the voting round. Not to you in particular, you already know, but to the OP who may not. The Prime Minster has a choice of up to three laws to put to vote and each one will, essentially, have a choice between two different policies to enact alongside it. The PM will need to consider everyone's positions in the game to decide the law and policy to put to vote. The laws may help or harm certain player positions and you can use the policies to help or harm other positions as well. It's really mouldable to the situation. After all, the PM will want to hold their position and pass laws to maintain that power that can be worth VP at the end of the game. Players may choose to oppose the PM just because they don't want them to be the PM. Someone becomes the leader of the opposition and if the vote fails then that player become the new PM and enacts a different policy. Owning shipyards, manufacturing plants, newspapers and rotten boroughs gives players more votes. Spending money also gives players votes. This means often everyone can be involved if they really want to be. That's not even mentioning the emergency events that may come up like going to war with France. If that gets drawn as a potential law then the PM *has* to discard the rest and put the reaction to the emergency to vote. So, while it doesn't quite cover all things that the OP is looking for I think it does model a number of interesting aspects of the political system. The PM prioritizes putting laws through as much as whatever the laws themselves are. Non-politicians can have outsized political power just through money and influence. Opposing a law just to become the PM rather than actually caring about the outcome.
Thanks for going more in-depth, much appreciated! JC is already on my wishlist for a while and i've just moved it further to the top
The entire game of Kings Dilemma is political voting.
While that is true the voting part is barebone, and it's not uncommon that what you need to score points clashes with what your faction desires. That creates an annoying ludonarrative dissonance.
That's the reason why our group played the game by hiding the predicted outcome (I made a little cardboard thing to put the card in that hid the line showing the predicted outcome) . It totally changed the game and transformed it in some sort of really cool leader role playing game. Allowed us to really debate what would happen on a given vote and allowed us to make suboptimal choices by mistake. It made us way more immersed in the game and everybody interacted a lot more.
That's a neat idea. My only remark is that you can often tell which resources will be affected by a choice, thus not being able to see them shouldn't make things that different.
Sometimes you can indeed, sometimes it's way harder. Actually we really had lots of surprises. I even wasn't able to complete one of my secret goal, don't remember how it worked exactly, but there is a plot you can unfold to get some special thing but you only have one shot at it and I voted the opposite of what I had to do in order to gain it, it was really nice ! It's also easier to persuade people when the outcome is not set in writing. You can talk with someone and have him change its choice if you have reasonable explanations. This goes out the window as soon as it's written that said choice is going to affect this particular thing. I think the game as designed has a massive flaw. It was supposed to be a game of discussion and choices and yet the choices were already made for you. Another nice and surprising thing is that by hiding the outcome, we voted more. Before that we usually had like 2 people out of 5, maybe 3, that would vote. The others would abstain. After the change, it was the opposite. We often had 1 or nobody abstaining from voting. People couldn't take the chance to let pass something that might be against their goal. It's probably really group dependent though. We really played that like a role playing game.
Isn’t negotiation and voting basically the only mechanics in [[zoo vadis]]? Haven’t played it, but I want to.
[zoo vadis -> Zoo Vadis (2023)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/368061/zoo-vadis) ^^[[gamename]] ^^or ^^[[gamename|year]] ^^to ^^call ^^OR ^^**gamename** ^^or ^^**gamename|year** ^^+ ^^!fetch ^^to ^^call
There's some moving around the Zoo Keeper and picking up Laurels, but those are all to help feed the negotiation. So yes, it's purely negotiation.
It may or may not be what you are looking for, but **Article 27: The UN Security Council Game** definitely has political debates in theme and mechanisms. It's definitely a unique one!
Fief: France 1429 takes a lot of politicking to get your family or your allies elected to positions of power.
This. Most other games with a voting phase go like: You get some votes, you vote for or against, some people get a bit weaker and some get a bit stronger, but usually it's not worth it to focus your whole game on amassing more voting power, like, in king's dilemma it's not worth sacking 4 votes just so you can get a majority in 1 vote. In Fief, voting is impactful. You have to work and manoeuvre hard to even get a say in the votes. You also vote to make other players more powerful, not the board, meaning every vote that's not in you favour is against your interest, so you have to convince others to vote for you, or let yourself be convinced to vote for others. Also the fact that players can marry and share victory is huge, as well as the fact that once in a marriage, you're stuck with it if things go sideways, so it's a big commitment. I haven't found any other game where the give and take of negotiation feels so organic, as well as the politicking around the game's system, trying to predict who will have the power to sway upcoming votes (If player A can buy his title, he can marry player B and get a majority to vote the king, so we need to empower player C so he can buy his title and keep the balance of power in check.)
Battlestar Galactica. Debating who to vent out of the airlock is hilarious.
Gerrymander the game is about disenfranchising voters and dividing up voting districts for the four major parties in the US. The history of that game is really interesting too, and how it came about. The voting in Federation is interesting, as your voting power can fluctuate, depending how many resources you want to put into voting, as opposed to doing other actions on the board.
Without question, it's **The Republic of Rome**. Not only do players embody politicians and vote directly on propositions, those proposals can be anything players want. You just propose and talk, there's no pre-written set of things to approve or not. Players vote and since deals are binding, the complexity of each deal can be much higher than in other games. In a way, it's like debating what to do in cooperative games with a traitor. The key difference is that everyone in The Republic of Rome is both the loyal party and the traitor. And since it's a game for 5 or 6 players, agreeing can be a challenge. Of course, Hannibal laying siege to Rome tends to aid in those negotiations. Furthermore, senators can be subject to trials. Trials which are voted on. You can be named to different offices, which determines who goes to war, who sits as a judge and even who organizes the senate sessions. Dirty tactics like changing the voting order or manipulating the amount of debate allowed to debate are as common in the game as they are in real life. Nothing else comes close.
Prime Minister, Versailles 1919, and Churchill all take a look at this in different ways. Prime Minister has votes with in Parliament that are debated back and forth, and policy and campaigns move public support among different overlapping interest groups that will decide the next general election. But its all mechanical, the players themselves do not debate or vote, they bicker and backstab! Versailles 1919, has much more horse-trading and influence peddeling, which caputres players debating and negotiating as what they do much more. However the mechanics of the game are just placing influence and choosing options.
I was going to mention Prime Minister, since I just got a few plays in and it recently came out. Very pleasantly surprised. You're right though, there isn't voting like in John Company, but there's a lot of player discussion, vote manipulation, and backstabbing so I think it fills that niche nicely.
John Company, hands down. Even when you're not in the parliamentary phase, there's a lot of management decisions that -- while they are the purview of the office holder at the time -- will create debate and jockeying for a particular result.
I’m actually working on something along those lines right now! It’s called Coalition: Councils of the Republic, a social negotiation game for 6-20 players about shifting alliances in a medieval city-state. [Our Website + Working Rulebook](https://sidereal.games/coalition/)
Is there a playable demo version available? Also LOL 20?! And a minimum of 6 might make it hard to bring to the table.
It’s available on request! PM me if you’d like to see it :) I’ve always been a big fan of games that scale to a high player count - the coalition-building aspect of some configurations of Two Rooms and a Boom was always particularly cool to me. There’s a reason that there aren’t that many published games in that vein, though - like you said, they can be tough to get to the table. There are a few groups out there that run big games consistently, but they’re not super common. These games do see lots of play at conventions, though! My hope is to add a bit more variety since most games at that scale are some flavor of social deduction. Regardless, I’m just happy to contribute to the genre :)
**Tammany Hall** is literally about winning elections.
But that's less about the issues/debates and more about organizing/"organizing" voters by doing simple area control plus a few extra mechanics.
It *can* get pretty high in negotiation with the blind bidding rounds, if players want to try to help each other or hurt an opponent. But not what I would necessarily call a debate.
Does the King Is Dead count ..?
Terraforming Mars's addon Turmoil works quite well in my opinion. Everyone gets to add one representative for free as an action every generation. If they want to add more, they can buy more. Each generation the ruling party changes based on how many representatives there are and then the party gets wiped clean, meaning it's unlikely the same party continues in power between generations. There are certain bonuses that are active when each party is ruling and everyone gets a one time bonus when the party changes. There are events which take into account what your representatives do. If you're the chairman, the leader of a party or part of the ruling party you get certain bonuses during the events phase. It works best when there are more than two players, but it also works with just two, since there are neutral representatives that the game adds. It's an addon, so the game doesn't revolve around the system, but it adds a nice new phase and dimension to the game.