At the beginning of next book im just going to fully Increase defense and Security spending and cut everything else, maybe when Hopefully both books come out il larp as a american Militarist
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“I have to say, as much as I’ve missed the good people of New Hampshire, it has been an incredibly welcoming experience here in Washington, which is something you probably don’t here too much.”
I saved that, but not 100% sure where it’s from. I think it’s if you choose the Cabinet favorite as a fundraiser secondary.
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Does anyone know what is the best possible result for the midterm elections?
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Holding onto the Senate and losing the house by single digits
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Thanks for answering.
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Welcome back Mister President its been quite a while
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Writer’s Diary #48
August 17th, 2024
Hi, friends! I have a ton of exciting news to share in this writer’s diary, and am eager to get into it! Before I get into some more details, I am excited to share right off the bat that the entire draft of The People’s House is complete! For Patrons, the August Edition of the demo (pinned on Patreon & linked below) is the full story including all endings and epilogues, I hope you enjoy it! For everyone else, the full public beta will go live on September 1st!
The rest of this writer’s diary will include a lot of the smaller fixes and additions made – there won’t be any major spoilers of course (and I have blurred out anything I think may be considered a spoiler), but if you’d like to know nothing then I’d recommend skipping this Writer’s Diary and just playing through the whole demo in two weeks! This update will mention the endings in the game and planned additions and will be a bit longer than previous diaries.
Thank you again so much for your support (I’ll thank you again at the end of this post, too) – I seriously cannot envision myself at the point of being ready to publish in just a few months without all of you. Also a huge thank-you to my incredible beta testers @Snowflower and @11110, they’ve been a massive help to this project since just about the beginning of it.
The Updates
- As mentioned, the entire draft is finished! I’ve now written all twenty election night results (10 GOP ones & 10 for Dems) and the story includes six different endings – more on that later, though
- Little changes throughout have been a good deal of grammar fixes – there were a few typos and some issues with tenses that have been fixed; shoutout to @kckolbe for bringing my attention to a good chunk of these
- Dialogue regarding your selection of a party during the Prologue has been updated. Previously, the response to you picking a party was based on your region (not your state). This meant that even if you picked a fairly blue state like Virginia, you’d still get dialogue talking about it being a red state since it was grouped in the “South” region. This is now fixed
- I’ve also now fixed the Chapter 2 legislation selection process to make this more streamlined; it’s now much clearer that you can pick nine different topics and still end up with a progressive, moderate, or conservative bill within them
- A small (but important addition): choosing a pet is now an optional choice and they now have a dedicated character page on the stats screen
- There is a new campaign manager to choose from if you marry Richter (the spouse option for political reasons)
- A bug where Nunez would always launch a primary challenge against you has now finally been fixed
- As mentioned earlier, there are a total of six endings: resignation, impeachment, retirement (decide not to seek a second term), failure to be re-nominated, defeat in the general election, and re-election
- While the other five of these endings have an epilogue that comes with them, there is currently no epilogue to the story if you are re-elected. My main reasoning here (even though this is likely to be the most common ending) is that this isn’t the end of the story for your character. In other words, I can’t really wrap up the story nicely into an epilogue since it isn’t finished yet
There have been some other small additions and fixes throughout, but these are the biggest ones I felt were worth mentioning!
I do also have three bigger additions/fixes that I’m planning on fitting in before publishing: the most straightforward one will be a fix of how the PAC money works. Since the dollar amount in your PAC fund isn’t hugely important, I’d like to rework it (especially in the re-election chapter). The other two additions are more scenes that I’ve been meaning to get to: one additional unique family scene for each child age group and affair scene(s) with the British Prime Minister
Lastly, here’s where things stand on the roadmap forward:
Remainder of August - More bug fixes, start implementing achievements
September - Open public beta testing on September 1st, finish adding achievements, and implement reader suggestions. The end of October should also be the last point in time when I’m making any major additions to the story (as discussed above), since I want to leave the bulk of October for polishing
October - Add all illustrations and make final tweaks to balance difficulty and stat changes
November - Ideal publishing date!
Again, thank you all so much for your constructive comments and words of support – it means the world to me that so many of you have enjoyed this three-year project of mine! There’s still a good way to go before publishing, but it’s been so energizing seeing the end of Book 1 on the horizon! Thank you all again, and I’m looking forward to releasing the full demo on September 1st!
Updated Word Count: 407,000
Updated Patreon Demo Link: Patreon August Edition Demo
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Thanks for the shoutout! I joined the patreon for this as well. Do we ever get more info on the executive orders? I felt like I took all the choices to help them succeed, but never saw any progress.
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Fun fact election day is my birthday and the day the game releases iirc
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Great
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I’ll actually need to double-check this – I know there’s a portion of the story where an update regarding the implementation of your key piece of legislation (if you pass it) is given, but I’m not sure if it ever circles back to an update on the Executive Orders.
If it isn’t in the story, I’ll certainly work to include it in a future update.
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There was one update of basically “no progress” early on, but come re-election it’s never discussed. And one of my items was reducing debt, but debt went up, despite me (in my mind) avoiding all but the lightest spending on the legislation (moderate plan), embarrassing ourselves for the China trade deal, agreed to reduce troops and boost arms sales to the Saudis, passing on the Korea agreement, avoiding other policies that would cost a lot or hurt the economy…I don’t know what else I could have done, as I kinda sacrificed everything for economic success.
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A lot of the budgetary impacts of these policies won’t be seen until Book 2 since the main focus I have planned early on will be entirely on the budget. When that sequence happens, all of your choices from Book 1 will impact how severe the deficit is, and from there you’ll be able to make a number of other decisions.
Book 1 decisions mixed with your budget choices at the start of Book 2 will then impact how much of a recovery or decline the economy makes (it’s mentioned in Book 1 that you inherit a mild recession).
I know delaying a lot of this to Book 2 isn’t ideal, but with how many branching choices I have planned for the budget sequence, there was just no way to fit it all into this first book. I do think it would be smart to include another sort of Cabinet meeting or similar scene near the end of Chapter 5 (the re-election chapter) to make that clearer to the reader, though.
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Question how bad can the deficit and economy become
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Yeah, I think a near end of term follow-up, ideally before the decision to run for re-election
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Query: How much can we ratfuck the opposing Party’s primaries going forward ?
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Pretty bad – the budget stat starts at a value of -15 or so at the beginning of the game and in theory, you could easily double or triple the value of the deficit with tax cuts and spending increases coupled with expensive decisions from Book 1.
As for the economy, there will likely be four different outcomes stemming from the four “cycles” of the economy: recession (no change), depression (worsening), recovery (improving), and prosperity/boom (significantly improving). It isn’t completely hammered out how I’m going to calculate this since this is a focus of Book 2 but it’ll be some mix of the policies you’ve enacted with the deficit itself.
It’ll likely be a little bit difficult to perfect but the plan is to create some kind of calculation system where the economy is a lot more dynamic than just being based on how big the deficit is. In other words, just balancing the budget won’t be enough to get the best economic result.
I think this is a really good idea and has been added to my list of to-dos. Ideally, I’ll have this done by the September 1st public beta but there’s a lot on my to-do list so we’ll see. The plan will be to add this near the very beginning of Chapter 5, likely after your SOTU but before the Camp David trip.
I don’t know how to answer this, but I appreciate the question! You can try to meddle in the opposing party’s Presidential primary in Chapter 5 (the re-election chapter), but anything further wouldn’t pop up until Book 2.
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Trying to be the second Coming of tricky dick eh?
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I could EASILY see it getting out of control. Some things will increase debt no matter what (hurricanes are notoriously unconcerned with economic goals), and there are SO many spending options on the menu, to include spending items that will hurt the economy (at least short term).
I would be very willing to work with you on hammering those things out, since I do think there should be some indication of how things are heading in book 1.
Thanks! I love giving feedback, and really the only reason I haven’t been more active is that you have a great thing going and I haven’t wanted to derail you with too many unnecessary suggestions. It’s such an ambitious undertaking and so much to like about it.
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Does anyone have any tips/strategies on how to win the presidential election campaign and the debate/convention?
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