Will it help, if the order of casting votes will be fixed in a rulebook?

Ankha wrote:

Exactly. There are no deadlock situation currently.

OK. I think the point is closed, unswer recieved, rulebook changes are not needed. Thanks for everybody for participation.

Imho NO

I think table talk is the issue here? I love it, but there has to be a point where it comes under control somehow. It used to be under original rules that the acting player could poll people in any order he wished. That is one option. Another might be to simply allow the acting player to close the voting stage whenever they wish, using the 15 second rule.

Allowing one or more nonacting players to indefinitely stall things because they dont like whats going on and are threatening to withhold their votes while they complain or cajole others to vote with them definitely can be an issue.

Bottom line, does the current 'rule' of acting player keeping the game action going forward work in general or break down when it comes to voting? Im not sure.

talonz wrote:

Allowing one or more nonacting players to indefinitely stall things because they dont like whats going on and are threatening to withhold their votes while they complain or cajole others to vote with them definitely can be an issue.

If it's clear that the relevant player is just wasting time - as you say, to "indefinitely stall things" - then there are already tournament rules against slow play and stalling.

Nor can a player reasonably threaten to "withhold" their votes during polling. Players aren't required to cast votes. No vampire is required to cast its vote. In the general case, a vampire is either voting for, voting against, or simply currently not voting. There isn't a stage where a vampire definitely commits to abstaining (a few effects can force them to - that's a different thing). So if you go round the table and no-one is minded to cast any more of their votes, you can close the polling step.

Additionally, in the sort of situation where you want to hector someone into cooperating with you so are hoping they'll vote the way you want, that typically means that the other players also has some votes and the casting of those votes matters to you. Like, together, you and I, we can vote this down, but only if my Stanislava votes against. If I really want to stop you pestering me to vote against, I can just vote the other way to end the point of it.

But as I said, the majority of this sort of problem doesn't, in my experience, happen during polling, it happens during the "fake" polling that happens when setting terms (or possibly deciding block attempts). If you set the terms this way, I'll do this. If you set the terms this other way, Lou will try to vote it down, and do we have enough votes to outvote Lou? If you set the terms this way, Lou will vote in favour but Joey will vote against, and while Joey doesn't have that many votes on the table, there are a couple of copies of Army of Apparitions in Joey's ash heap, and that would mean... But if you set the terms the original way, then I'll do this - and I'll help you next turn. And so on.

None of this is helped by additional formalities for the polling step. In general, I've always found the polling step is way less exciting. Usually everyone just does what's expected, or reveals a surprise ("Ha! Vox Domini." or a backstab or whatever).

By the way, if this thread was necroed anyway, will share an idea.
Change political subsystem into something, where votes are generated at some point once in a turn and can be spend on political actions in some ratio (4 votes - 1 action). Leftover votes will stay till next turn or can be used to burn other people votes.

It will, maybe(!) shorten discussions about where to put votes.

No way it will be implemented, obviously, but need to take it out of my head.