The Personal Data Form and The Statistics

Picture: The Personal Data Form

Most of the Data Form is taken up by blanks to chart your changing Statistics, which will each be handled briefly below.

All information on the Data Form is considered part of the public record; this means that if a space exists on the Data Form for you to record particular pieces of personal data, then accurate and current information about that data must be provided to any player who asks. Note, however, that anything that the Data Form does not provide space for documenting can be kept secret, including the amount of money you have at any given time, or the nature of any Holdable cards in your hand.

The Statistics:

In brief: the three main Statistics tracked by the Form—Power, Intelligence, and Influence—measure how well you’re doing in the game. The three of them, added together, represent your Base Votes: the number of votes guaranteed to you in an Election. Roughly speaking, the higher your Base Votes are, the closer you are to winning the game. (For a closer look, see the rules pertaining to the Election Workspace on page 9, or the rules pertaining to the Election itself on page 21.)

Some helpful details about each Statistic are covered below. But, in a nutshell: each of the main Statistics carries equal weight in the Election, so anything that raises those Statistics pushes you closer to victory. However, there is a key difference between the three: the cost of bringing them up. Influence is the cheapest Statistic to increase, but it’s also the most unstable—it’s easy for your opponents to bring back down. Intelligence, by contrast, is the most expensive to increase, but it tends to remain more stable and there’s no easy way that your opponents can deprive you of it. Power is in the middle: it’s fairly expensive, but in order for your opponents to bring it down they typically have to defeat you in Combat— and a higher Power makes you more difficult to defeat in Combat. (For more details, see the section on the Combat Workspaces, or the extended Combat example beginning on page 15.)

Now that we’ve covered the Statistics in brief, let’s look at each of them in a little more depth.