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<blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 6195547" data-attributes="member: 3400">That's a bizarre conclusion. Aside from interpreting the intent of some voters who leave ambiguous ballots, the electoral officials in a typical democracy don't have the authority to judge the winner. They count real votes on real ballots (or read off the computerized result). GMs don't count real votes and are judging things all the time based on an imaginary scenario that cannot actually be seen, measured, and tested. They weigh whether the player's plans are feasible in the location, they judge how effective they are compared to the challenge they put in front of them. If you're going to go with any of these three models you put forward, you're going to have to put it closer to the Supreme Court process, though hopefully with a more cogent result than Bush v Gore. The GM's decision is based on written rules (written laws), attempts to be consistent with decisions (legal precedent and other decision), appropriateness of the situation (standing of the litigants regarding the issue), and applicability of the actions taken to deal with the situation (persuasiveness of the arguments put forward in the case). You might even end up with some collective deliberation if there are ambiguous rules before the decision is made final.I don't believe I've ever actually encounter a situation in which the GM acted, really acted, like electoral officials. There's always arbitration and adjudication going on below the surface even if they're reading off a DC or other target number set in the rules against which a character rolls. Saying that it's like the procedure role of electoral officials seems to be to be a very superficial survey of what's actually going on.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="billd91, post: 6195547, member: 3400"] That's a bizarre conclusion. Aside from interpreting the intent of some voters who leave ambiguous ballots, the electoral officials in a typical democracy don't have the authority to judge the winner. They count real votes on real ballots (or read off the computerized result). GMs don't count real votes and are judging things [b]all the time[/b] based on an imaginary scenario that cannot actually be seen, measured, and tested. They weigh whether the player's plans are feasible in the location, they judge how effective they are compared to the challenge they put in front of them. If you're going to go with any of these three models you put forward, you're going to have to put it closer to the Supreme Court process, though hopefully with a more cogent result than Bush v Gore. The GM's decision is based on written rules (written laws), attempts to be consistent with decisions (legal precedent and other decision), appropriateness of the situation (standing of the litigants regarding the issue), and applicability of the actions taken to deal with the situation (persuasiveness of the arguments put forward in the case). You might even end up with some collective deliberation if there are ambiguous rules before the decision is made final. I don't believe I've ever actually encounter a situation in which the GM acted, really acted, like electoral officials. There's always arbitration and adjudication going on below the surface even if they're reading off a DC or other target number set in the rules against which a character rolls. Saying that it's like the procedure role of electoral officials seems to be to be a very superficial survey of what's actually going on. [/QUOTE]

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