Orange or Lemon? - Game Mechanics

Each complete game turn represents one day of the sitting of the Convention. Each of the phases represents a period of up to six hours.

1. Morning (i.e. before the Convention sits)
   1. Arriving/leaving Edinburgh
   2. Political campaigning: either
      • rabble rousing (at -10 to IRE score for newly generated mobs); or
      • diplomacy/lobbying Convention members.
   3. Setting guards (for those players with their own troops)
2. Convention
   1. Players declare whether or not they are attending the Convention meeting
      • those not sitting treat this as a morning phase
   2. Convention receives news/petitions/correspondence
   3. Conduct business (for each item of business in turn)
      1. declare support for/against motion
      2. vote if required
      3. resolve next item of business
   4. Submit items for tomorrow's business to President
   5. President announces order of next day's business
   6. Reveal two NPC voting cards
3. Evening
   • as morning phase (but no -ve to rabble rousing)
4. Night
   1. remove all mobs
   2. return guards to garrisons/homes
   3. no other actions

Any player character not attending the Convention personally may treat that phase as if it were a second morning phase for them. However they may not vote or speak to the Convention.

The vast majority of the convention votes are unplayed. The mechanism for dealing with this is a ten by five grid with the short axis showing relative strength of support for either faction (with the middle lane being undecided). The other axis is just to differentiate each of the pairs of cards that will be played.

There will be twenty playing cards that form ten matched pairs each with ten spots between both cards on the pair. There will be an even number of red spots and black spots so that the support for either faction is evenly balanced. The cards will be shuffled and played face down, two to a row in the neutral (middle) lane of the grid.

Player actions will allow them to either look at the card to determine its value or to move cards unseen between the support lanes.

Successful actions by a faction (or unsuccessful ones by the other faction) allow players to move an NPC voting card one place. The following rules apply:

• a card can only be moved once by the same player in a single game turn
• Only one of the paired cards in a row may be moved by a player in a single game turn
• paired cards cannot share a space except when they are both in the undecided (middle) lane
• cards may only be moved into the strong support (outer) lane when all the other rows have at least one card supporting that faction
• Cards can only be moved out of the opposing faction's support lane when the move has been generated as a result of an unsuccessful action by the opposing faction

Each of the events mentioned below allow one card to be moved.

• winning a vote
• inciting the mob to action in your favour
• successfully resolving an act on behalf of the convention
• other successful acts at the discretion of the umpire
• unsuccessful acts by an opponent (even if they would normally allow more than one move if they had been successful)

These events usually allow more than one card to be moved.

• making a speech to the Convention (see actions section)
• winning a vote by more than 10 votes (one move per ten or part thereof more than the other faction in addition to the move for winning the vote)
• securing the Castle for your faction (three moves)
• resolving a dispute peacefully where it involves armed groups (two moves)

Cards can only be looked at when the player has spent the turn in the Convention lobbying members. This is done instead of moving a card.

There are two types of vote. Normal voting is dealt with in this section. Votes to settle the King's status are dealt with in the next section.

When the president of the convention directs that a motion should be voted on then each faction leader states whether or not they support the motion. If both agree then the vote is mostly unanimous. Otherwise each player has a number of votes that they directly control in their briefing. The players tally these votes as they wish to play them.

NPC votes are counted as if each card pair is worth ten votes. The following rules should be used to calculate each lane's net vote:

• Pair off the cards along the support lanes to make the arithmetic faster, only those that don't match up need be counted.
• those in the undecided lane don't count towards either faction winning
• those in the strong support (outer) lane add 5 to their faction's votes
• those in the support (2nd or 4th) lane add 2 to their faction's votes

The winner is the faction with the most votes.

This is always the last vote of the Convention and it ends the game, except if it is tied.

In this vote all the cards are turned face up. The votes are tallied as follows:

• red cards vote for King James
• black cards vote for Prince William
• Cards in the wrong faction support lane have one or two of their spots counted for the opposing faction (i.e. a seven of hearts in the Prince William strong support (outside) lane would provide 5 votes for King James and 2 for Prince William)
• Players vote as their conscience dictates