The Process is a Legislative Card game where you can vote, appeal, and deal to get your bill passed 1st. While the actual Legislative Process isn’t as exciting, playing this game will get you more familiar with how laws actually get made. Here’s what you need to know to get your bill to legalize ranch (or whatever else) passed.
Card Ability Cheat Sheet
You can check ↑this↑ page to see all the cards’ abilities!
Introducing Your Bill
Before we can begin, everyone must choose a game piece and come up with a name for their bill. The bill could be called anything. Just make it short and memorable. You’ll need it for later.
When you come up with a name, tell everyone at your table what your bill is called and place it on the first step of the Legislative Process, Bill Introduced.
The Clerk Goes First
To determine who gets the Clerk Token (and who will go first), everyone should draw one political maneuver card and immediately reveal it. Whoever has the highest value card goes first. Turns will play out in clockwise order.
Preparing For Session
A session is (usually) made up of 5 rounds, so every player draws 5 cards to their hand. Keep prying eyes away from your hand!
Turns
In The Process, you complete a turn by placing a card down face up and playing out its effect. You MUST play a card’s effect if possible. Even if the effect would make you lose (If you want to review different card abilities, you can check the cheat sheet here).
Yes, even this one. Make sure you don’t play this card first!
When you put a card down, make sure it’s not covering up any other cards. A new card should always be placed on the right of the last card played.
Card positions might change, turn to turn, but the cards in front of you should always be lined up, side by side.
MAKE SURE TO ALWAYS LINE UP YOUR PLAYED CARDS FROM LEFT TO RIGHT!
A complete session will have cards laid out like this.
Knowledge is Power!
After playing a card, if you have the Clerk Token, you can choose to answer a question from the Knowledge Deck. Knowledge Deck cards are presented with their questions face up. Each card is multiple choice and has the answer on the back. If you answer correctly, you get… THE WHITE TOKEN! White tokens change a card’s base value to 13, so that’s a pretty valuable token to have.
When drawing a Knowledge Card that you’re not sure you can answer, you can offer to “Reach across the Aisle” and let someone else answer the question instead. If they answer it correctly, they get the white token. In exchange, you can ask for tokens they haven’t played yet, their vote in future voting rounds, or any other bargain that pertains to actions in the game. Use the Knowledge Deck wisely.
Tokens
Tokens can change the point value of a cards in play. Red Tokens subtract 1 from a card’s points. Blue Tokens add 1 to a card’s points, and white tokens change a card’s value to 13 (no matter what the card’s original value was).
Rounds and Progress
Every round, once everyone has had a turn, we track every bill’s progress. Each player has a piece that represents their bill’s progress. You progress through the Legislative Process by having the highest card in a round.
With the cards in front of you, compare your 1st round card (your leftmost played card) to everyone else’s 1st card for Round 1. If you have the highest value card in the 1st round, move your bill up 1 step in The Process. If you tie with anyone else, you all move up 1 step.
Then, compare everyone’s 2nd round card the same way. Keep comparing rounds in this way until there are no more cards in the lineup to compare.
When you’re done tracking progress, pass the Clerk Token to the next person. The new token holder has the 1st turn in the next round and can answer a question from the knowledge deck on one of their turns.
Special Rules
Tapping
When a played card is tapped, turn it sideways and remove any tokens it has on its face. When a card is tapped, its base value is 1. You can add tokens to a card after it has been tapped.
Reading Your Bill
When you reach step 3 & 5 on the Legislative Process (or see a “bill icon” on a step), you must say the name of your bill. If you forget and another player points this out, move your bill back 1 step in The Process.
Voting
When you reach step 4 & 6 on the Legislative Process (or see a “vote icon” on a step), everyone must stop to vote on the count of 3. The person with the most votes gets a red and blue token that they can use at any time. Remember, you can’t vote for yourself.