The 29th Cartographic Congress Vote (Patreon)

We have four contenders this month, but first, I want to talk a bit about the Cartographic Congress and game theory. You may have noticed that you can vote for multiple maps. Judging by the number of votes each month, I don't think very many people do this, but it is allowed and I want to explain why.

First, casting two or three votes isn't necessarily better than casting one. The more proposals you vote for, the less of an impact your vote has. Keep in mind that voting for all the maps has the same effect as voting for none of them. And voting for 7 out of 8 only has the effect of reducing one proposal's chance to win.

Second-- and this is the main thing-- multiple voting allows similar proposals to run side-by-side without competing against each other. Let's say you run a game in an Asian setting and you propose a Japanese-style castle. But, that same month, someone else proposes a Zen Buddhist temple. You still want your castle to win, but you'd definitely have a use for that temple and, if it won, you'd be pretty happy about it. So you vote for both. This does run a small risk of pushing the temple ahead of your castle, but it puts both ahead of everything else.

So, both of these proposals can run in the same month without splitting the votes of people who want something Asian. Without multiple voting, there might be enough votes for one of them to win, but splitting the votes between two could cause both to lose. That could happen with multiple proposals of ship maps, underdark maps, spelljammers, Planescape-related stuff and so on. But multiple voting solves it and that's why it's allowed. Anyway, it's something to think about.

This concludes my TED talk. Your proposals for this month are:

Senator Jon proposes a map of the Barre Sinister, a Spelljammer pirate port built into the palm of a gigantic stone hand orbiting the sun. There are docks and several buildings, most notably the Barre, a notorious tavern where pirates come to drink and parley.

Senator Anders proposes a gigantic Pyramid of Eight, based on a fantasy version of Giza and built by an extinct ancient alien culture, where all architecture is based around the number 8.

Senator Ross proposes an abandoned village with a series of tunnels underneath.

Senator Carl proposes a city floating through the astral plane.