Iranian?
2 Likes
Should create a Discord server for the game
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One thing I noticed is that personality stats hardly seem to matter in the current public beta. Nobody seemly reacts to positions of stats; nether the public nor anyone the president knows personally, Eg. It would especially feel important for the narrative to comment on your political ideology at the moment (Eg. A republican president who’s marked as progressive or a democrat who’s marked as a staunch conservative). Another example is there’s hardly moments to change the position of the Maverick/Loyalist stat even if you’re in a unity ticket with the other party and you’re usually going against the party line or vice versa.
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That is not a good idea for this type of game unless Kramer is ready to deal with the shit show that is constant arguing about in-game policies that will eventually devolve into real life political arguments.
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For what it’s worth, I’m rather impressed with how polite and on-topic this thread has been for the most part.
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Hi well I loved this story but the problem is I got stuck at the impeachment
It’s been loading for hours and can’t progress
I have a screenshot but unfortunately can’t upload it here
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That’s the end of the public demo
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Writer’s Diary #45
June 16th, 2024
Hi all – I am officially back from my brief hiatus and will once again be regularly posting updates for you all! I am still looking for an illustrator, so if you or someone you know happens to offer these kinds of services, please do let me know!
The Updates
- I’ve made a good chunk of progress into the general election campaign sequence, the biggest campaign event so far being an economic forum where you have the chance to answer some policy questions
- There’s also a fairly long scene written after the forum where you have a one-on-one conversation with your Spouse Choice – since TPH will now be split into two books, I will also be going back to add more scenes with your family to make them a larger focus of Book 1
- I’ve also decided to not focus too extensively on the Vice Presidential debate – different options will perform at different levels, but I thought a lengthy debate scene would be pretty boring for the reader and might get repetitive since your debate with the opposition nominee will be soon after
- Lastly, there will be a few more campaign events and big decisions before the actual election night scene with the results
The good news is I appear to be (so far) on track to finish the chapter by August as intended, meaning there should be a public beta test open to everyone around September. It is still my hope to have a publish date around November 5th, when the Presidential Election will be held in the U.S. Still, if the process takes longer than anticipated, I’d also be happy to see a release date around the Presidential inauguration (since that’s the point in time where the book starts), in early January.
I am so incredibly excited to be making some real progress in my goal of becoming a published author (something I never thought I’d be capable of doing) and am so grateful to all of you who’ve stuck around with me as I’ve figured out this process as I go.
Updated Word Count: 360,000
Patreon Link: RFKramer | creating The People's House | Patreon
P.S. For my friends in the United States don’t forget that today is Father’s Day!
24 Likes
This game is intense, stressful, and had me pacing around my room as I awaited results on the choices I made.
I LOVE IT.
Admittedly, I’m not as well versed in the political sphere as I probably should be, and the writing of this game has helped me immensely. Weighing the pros and cons of each decision has definitely affected the way I’ll think about policies and the passing of them.
I do wish we had the choice to have more of a balanced discussion with our spouse in Santorini. I felt like it got argumentative/defensive pretty quickly for the charismatic, people-pleasing character I was playing. I love my wife, I want her happy 
Awesome game so far!!!
3 Likes
I have not played the demo in a while but I do remember being disappointed by the lack of variety in the executive orders and legislation we could champion. For example as a Republican I want to be able to push through school choice / voucher programs / DoE reform, corporate or income tax cuts, gutting public unions etc. Fun ideas for progressive legislation might be marijuana legalization, regulating hedge funds and private equity, prison or police reform etc. Instead all of the current options are extremely backward-looking and vague, copypasted from straight from the Trump / Obama / Bush platforms. Even the “scandal” is so terribly derivative. I play a CYOA political sim to craft a NEW story for a President tackling novel issues, not recreate a generic <insert 2000s leader here>.
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I do agree there should be a expansion of choices for legislation.
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I likely can’t fix a good chunk of your comments – a lot of Executive Orders and policies are taken from former campaigns mixed with current policy suggestions. Executive Orders are very limited in what they can legally accomplish, and so I did struggle to find enough possible options to include progressive, conservative, and more centrist orders. Your comment about legislation, though, is actually one I’m working on coming up with a way around.
The current legislative chapter is admittedly just poor organization of the writing on my part. There are bills to support school choice for Republicans and push for regulatory cuts to business (under the unemployment legislation focus). For progressives, there is a “megabus” criminal justice reform bill that tackles marijuana legalization and police reform.
I wrote this chapter incredibly early on while I was still learning how to use Choicescript, which is why (in my opinion) it comes off as a little clunky and appears to have so few options. With the current writing, you are asked broadly whether to support a conservative, progressive, or centrist effort (I believe), and that then takes you to three sub-sections of policy items. Then, there is a later scene with Congressional Leadership where you can select which version of the bill you want to push for.
I admit this is really poor writing, because every policy area has a conservative and progressive version of its bill. For example, you can select abortion (which is listed as a “conservative” priority), but then decide to back a bill that enshrines abortion as a legal right rather than limits it (a very progressive action).
I won’t be doing a full rewrite of the chapter, but I am absolutely planning on fixing this so it’s far more clear that you can focus on any policy area you’d like while still getting a progressive/conservative/centrist bill in the end.
As for your comments about unions and tax rates, this will actually be a focus of book 2 where you’ll actually have control over the budget. Book 2 will also have a lot more specific policy-related items as (depending on how many seats you have in Congress), you’ll be able to push through a lot of changes in the budget. Where the start of Book 1 was a major “first 100 days” piece of legislation, the start of Book 2 will be a focus on a budget with major spending and policy changes (should your character seek to make them).
To this comment, I’m not sure exactly which scandal you are referring to (there are a few ranging in severity with more planned), but this is an issue I haven’t quite figured out how to tackle. A lot of people read through the story as a self-insert, so I decided against creating scandals directly involving the MC without them choosing to do so through a decision.
I do agree with your point and wish the scandals had more depth or weight to them, but I made the decision that a more “generic” scandal would be preferable to one that forces the reader to do something that they may feel their character wouldn’t have done.
10 Likes
It’s understandable if you’re trying to come up with legislation, but a strange part of the legislative narrative is that due the story presumably taking place in the 2030’s-2040’s, it feels unusual to me to be making similar decisions to Presidents from decades ago.
It just feels like the narrative would have different circumstances regarding the mainstream issues and debates and politics in a speculative future even if that technically is the case in some circumstances (eg. foreign policy of the United States after the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine ends).
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Hey can’t you add a cheat mod please cuz some player prefer that…
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I agree
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murphys_law line 6125: It is illegal to fall out of a *choice statement; you must *goto or *finish before the end of the indented block.
need fixing 
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Jackson you rat! You snitch on me
He snitches on you in this demo?
How tf?
My demo get stuck in the middle ???
Patreon one, And he snitch on your spouse about you having an affair
Happy independence day
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