Recruitment

Recruitment is one of the ways to add Liberals to the Liberal Crime Squad. It depends mostly on Intelligence and Persuasion. Liberals are easy to recruit; Moderates are harder; Conservatives are difficult or impossible.

How To Recruit

Talk About Politics

Talk to people about politics while infiltrating a site.

"Do you want to hear something disturbing?"
—A Liberal begins the sales pitch.

• The target is more likely to accept if your Liberal has high Persuasion skill.

• Some professions will always at least let your Liberal talk to them (though they might not accept the offer for a meeting later). These professions include Servant, Janitor, Teenager, Sewer Worker, College Student, Musician, Mathematician, Teacher, Highschool Dropout, Transient, Gang Member, Crack Head, Fast Food Worker, Telemarketer, Prostitute, Garbage Collector, Plumber, Amateur Magician, Hippie, Retiree, Hairstylist, Clerk, and Mutant. They will also be easier to persuade to attend a meeting, but their acceptance is not guaranteed, and some of the professions with higher Intelligence (Mathematician, for example) may still present a challenge.

If the target accepts, your Liberal will randomly pick a topic to talk about. The lower a Liberal's intelligence is, the more likely they are to say things like this:

"They executed this one dude, and like, his head caught on fire."
—A "special-needs" Liberal explains why we should ban the death penalty.

You might also get something like this:

"Animals are denied the right to vote."
—Ever vigilant, this Liberal has decided to talk about a law that is already Elite Liberal.

But if all goes well, a Liberal will usually use lines like this:

"Have you noticed how people are working more and more hours for less and less money? It's all part of a plan to keep you enslaved, man."
—A Liberal discusses labor laws.

If a discussion attempt is successful, the Liberal will schedule a meeting with the target later that day. Mutants with an Intelligence score of less than 3 will simply respond with, "Aaaahhhh…." when accepting an invitation to a meeting.

Conservatives with at least moderate Wisdom will respond to the Liberal's argument with a Conservative rebuttal when rejecting meeting offers.

Setting up meetings is harder if:

• The target is Conservative.
• The Liberal failed the Intelligence check and delivered the less-eloquent version of the argument.
• The issue is already Elite Liberal.
• The Liberal is naked (and is not a non-human).

Setting up meetings is easier if the target is from one of the professions that will always allow the Liberal to talk to them.

Special Cases

• Non-Humans either cannot be recruited, or bypass the usual political chitchat with a Heart/Persuasion check for your Liberal.
• Some professions cannot be recruited and must instead be liberated.
• Obviously, hostile Conservatives cannot be recruited. They can still be turned Liberal with Music and then recruited.

Conducting Meetings

Once your Liberal has set up a meeting with a potential recruit, they will meet every day until either the Liberal misses a meeting, the target loses interest, you have the Liberal break off the meetings, or you decide to recruit. Technically (unlike Dating), you could keep stringing along potential recruits indefinitely. In some situations this is actually a useful strategy.

Your Liberal can keep six meetings per day. Schedule more than that, and the Liberal may miss a meeting and lose the opportunity to recruit one or more potential LCS members.

Each potential recruit has a hidden variable that represents how interested they are in joining the LCS. If the LCS is popular and well-liked, the potential recruit will start out more interested than if they have never heard of the LCS. Moderates start out less interested than Liberals, and Conservatives are even less interested than that.

The meeting screen will give you some clues about how interested the potential recruit is in joining the LCS; this ranges from a low of "…kind of regrets agreeing to this," to a high of "…is ready to fight for the Liberal cause." At this highest level, recruitment is possible if the Liberal holding the meeting has slots open for more recruits (Juice determines how many people each Liberal can recruit).

At this point, your Liberal has several options.

• A- "Spend $50 on props and a book for them to keep afterward." Spending money makes it a little easier to recruit, but is otherwise the same as a regular meeting.
• B- "Just casually chat with them and discuss politics." The meeting will proceed as usual; depending on how well your Liberal does, the target may become either more or less interested in joining. If the target's interest level drops too low, they'll refuse to attend any further meetings.
• C- Recruitment. Here, you'll see either an option to recruit a new LCS member, or the notice that the potential recruit is not yet ready to join, or the notice that your Liberal does not have enough Juice to recruit any more subordinates.
• D- Break off the meetings.

How well the meeting goes is determined by how persuasive your Liberal is, versus how well the potential recruit can resist being persuaded.

Your Liberal is more persuasive if they have high Intelligence or are skilled in Science, Religion, Law, and Business.

The potential recruit will resist this with their own Intelligence, Science, Religion, Law, Business, and Wisdom.

If the Liberal offers better arguments than the recruit can resist, then the potential recruit will agree to return for another meeting tomorrow.

• If the Liberal was very persuasive (indicated by the message that the recruit found their views "particularly insightful"), the potential recruit will become more interested in joining the LCS.
• If the Liberal wasn't so persuasive (the recruit is "skeptical about some of [their] arguments"), the recruit becomes less interested in joining the LCS, but if another Persuasion check succeeds, they will still come to the next day's meeting.
• If the second check is failed, the Liberal will "come off as slightly insane", or the potential recruit "isn't convinced that [they] really understand the problem"—either way, the meetings will end.

Gaining Skills through Chatting

Your Liberals may gain skills from talking to potential recruits.

• In all cases, if the Liberal's Persuasion skill has not yet reached its cap, a small amount of Persuasion will be gained from talking to potential recruits. This works up to Persuasion 12.
• Potential recruits skilled in Science, Religion, Law, and Business will teach your Liberal some of what they know, up to their current skill level, provided that the Liberal has not yet reached the skill cap.