Delegate Delirium 2025

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What is Delegate Delirium all about?

Delegate Delirium is the event that marks Delegates' Day, which occurs on September 9th every year. Delegates' Day seeks to acknowledge and celebrate the hard work of all of TNP's delegates, and recognize their immense contributions to our region.

Delirium is an exciting event, a la March Madness, that pits former TNP delegates against one another to determine who was the very best! Traditionally, winners are decided via in-game polls, which are open to all nations in the region. However, we're doing things a little differently this year, taking into account feedback from the last version of the event and in the hopes of modernizing things a bit.

This year, there will be a 32-slot tournament bracket pitting the best of the best among TNP delegates, drawn up by the Delegate Delirium Selection Committee. In order to determine who will be placed in that bracket, we will run 8 qualifying rounds (elimination fights). Traditionally the top two in each poll would advance to the quarter-finals, semi-finals, and finals which would all be one-on-one, winner-take-all matches to the death. This year, the performance of the delegates in these polls will determine whether they make it into the Round of 32, and what seed they will be assigned when placed on the bracket. Once we have a full bracket, we will be utilizing a new off-site voting method to vote for the victors of the 24 one-on-one matches in the Round of 32 and the Round of 16 (to save a whole lot of time), and when that's done, it's back to the in-game polls for the quarter-finals, semi-finals, and finals.

The ultimate victor will receive a shiny medal, and be declared (honorary) King of TNP! The event was intended to recur every year for Delegates' Day, but obviously we have some gaps. That being said, we'll hopefully be doing this regularly moving forward, so if your preferred delegate doesn't win this year, they can try their luck again next time.

Who is eligible to compete?

Excellent question! All individuals who have held the delegacy in TNP are permitted to enter, with three exceptions. First, anyone who has held the delegacy with more than one nation is only allowed one entry. Second, the sitting delegate at the time the competition is held is disqualified, due to their incumbency advantage. Finally, we have made a significant change with this year's event: we will not automatically exclude former winners from the competition, but the selection committee will also not automatically include all former delegates. To be clear, all other former delegates are eligible - even ones who took the delegacy due to a coup! But as the selection committee is deciding which delegates to put into the Round of 32, it is also deciding which delegates make the cut for the qualifying rounds. The determination for who is included in the qualifying event largely depends on prior event performances, with significant penalties for receiving minimal or no votes in previous iterations of the competition.

The selection committee has automatically advanced 8 delegates into the Round of 32, which were the highest vote getters in the previous events, including those who won the event. These individuals are McMasterdonia, SillyString, Pallaith, Siwale, HMS Unicorn (r3naissancer), Zemnaya Svoboda (Eluvatar), Great Bights Mum, and MadJack. Their seeds have not yet been determined and will be decided when the rest of the bracket is formalized.

The selection committee has opted not to include 20 delegates in the qualifying rounds. These individuals are Mikestonia, Cote de Tombolo, Nastic, ZeroPositive, Uugyana, United individuals, Treenudity, UPS Rail (Sir Paul), Better Times (Ballotonia/Free4All), Sydia, Lungwallabad, Hepzibah ii (Honeysheep), Unterwasserseestaat, New Kervoskia, Shoeless Joe, Ermarian, Groovistan, Pasargad, Novare Res (Romanoffia), and Lord Ravenclaw.

Who won in previous years?

Below is the list of past winners:

• 2017: Lord Ravenclaw and McMasterdonia
• 2018: SillyString
• 2019: Pallaith
• 2023: Siwale

Is there a list of all the delegates somewhere?

There sure is! Check out this handy dandy dispatch for a complete list, including dates and national flags!

https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=335191

The Ministry of Culture is also hoping to publish an updated master list in time for Delegates' Day this year, which will be announced then.

I really want to vote for my favorite delegate. How do I know when they'll be playing?

Fear not! We have a schedule all drawn up, so you'll know just when to lodge your votes! "TBA" entries will be filled in as soon as we know the winners from previous rounds.






The first poll is open, so get out the vote! Spread the word! And above all... have fun!

And don't forget to upvote the dispatch!

As we've stated before, this is the first year that we are not running this event with every single former delegate as a choice in the polls. I wanted to say a few words about this, as I am sure some of you will be disappointed with this decision.

Firstly, when the event was first run 8 years (!) ago, we had 44 eligible delegates (45, but I will get to that later). Today, we have 60. This number only goes up every year, and one winner at a time is not going to make up for it. We were lucky to have 44 names in our first 3 iterations, but the last time we ran this, we saw how much more difficult it is juggling all of those people.

Secondly, the polls have been pretty brutal for a large swath of old delegates. And some of those brutalized delegates were really impactful or important to our region's history too! Others held the delegacy for a day or in one case 12 hours, and were there on a technicality. For those people, and those who constantly ended up with 1 vote or no votes at all, we felt it was time to take some pity on them. A few of the really important ones we included in the qualifiers anyway. But I still felt they deserved to be recognized for what they did in some way, and so I would like to elaborate on the delegates who did not make the cut, but deserve to be recognized just the same (and some who don't but are on the list too, so they get a mention).

Not included in Delegate Delirium 2025:

Pre-Constitutional Era
Mikestonia: the first known delegate of TNP, we're not sure when he started but he last held the seat on 02/12/2003. Otherwise, we know nothing about this mysterious ancient player.

Cote de Tombolo: the 2nd recorded delegate, and held it for a single day. We know that while official constitutional elections did not take place in those early days, there was some form of election as players organized and competed with each other for the endorsements, openly endotarting and effectively campaigning for the job in the process, something we have seen often in UCRs from the beginning of this game. It is believed this player may have had little success doing so, or simply had enough while Nastic was tarting up. Either way, this was their only appearance.

Nastic - 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 12th delegate, and reportedly set the old highest endorsement record at 884 at some point over their many stints as delegate (their longest was 74 days consecutive days). Older players do remember Nastic (and later Nastic 2, the final time they were delegate) as the first serious delegate in the region's history, and they were the one who held the delegacy the most in this early period. But other than that, I don't really have anything to add. Maybe you can ask them yourself, as their nation is apparently still active.

ZeroPositive - 4th delegate, and held it for 8 days. Likely another accidental delegate who got more endorsements than Nastic, or maybe it was a short-lived effort to succeed them.

Uugyana - 6th delegate, and held it for a day. I suspect this is another ZeroPositive situation. In a sad bit of trivia though, I noted that this delegate has never been included on any of the other versions of Delegate Delirium, either, and was not on the delegate list dispatch that has been around for years.

United individuals - 8th delegate, and held it for 8 days.

Treenudity - 10th delegate, and held it for 52 days. Always found this delegate's name intriguing, but never learned anything about them. Seemed to be a serious one in the list of delegates of those days though.

UPS Rail (Sir Paul) - 20th delegate, and first rogue delegate. It only took a year and a half for a rogue to show up, this one took over on behalf of the NPO and is mostly known for two large banning sprees, establishing the first endorsement cap, and giving the delegacy to Great Bight after 15 days. Sadly they took advantage of a pretty bad situation at the time, Magicality's illness and forced retirement from the game, and the fact she never signed TNP's constitution (though I believe it's fairly safe to say a rogue wouldn't have cared about a signed constitution anyway). This was just the warmup act for the real villain though.

Better Times (Ballotonia/Free4All) - 22nd delegate, and leader of ALL and the ADN. Free4All was the one who ultimately served as point for the collective defender forces which liberated the region from 60 NPO pilers and 19 from New Sparrow, and held the delegacy for 2 days until it could be transferred to TNP’s Delegate-in-Exile, Thel D’Ran. As a result, this also makes them the final pre-constitutional era delegate. Better Times was the puppet that was used as the beneficiary for the Puppetmaster strategy to liberate the region, a strategy so successful that it was coded out of the game to never be used again. As this was part of a liberation, their inclusion on this list is a technicality - Better Times was obviously a transitional figure and not meant for longevity.

First Constitutional Era
Sydia - 2nd delegate, and held it for 44 days, but could not continue due to persistent computer issues. Sydia back then was most known for beginning peace talks with the People’s Republic of the Pacific, the successor state to the NPO after Francos Spain disappeared, out of concern that TNP was practically a territory of the ADN. This was a pressing concern in those days after Great Bight's coup, and was a reason for a lot of strain between his predecessor Thel D'Ran and the ADN (who did not even want to make Thel D'Ran the delegate, despite the fact he was the delegate-in-exile). Sydia has the distinction of being the only delegate who was elected delegate in both constitutional eras - he would eventually be vice delegate and ascend to the delegacy after Flemingovia resigned before he could take the in-game seat, becoming the 13th delegate of the second constitutional era, and one who was successfully re-elected.

Lungwallabad - 4th to hold the delegacy in this period, and was accidentally delegate for a day. By this point the Pixiedance coup was at its end, with the players controlling Pixiedance having resigned from the UN. They still maintained border control, however, and attempted to eject Lungwallabad before they could take the delegacy. Unfortunately for them, they mistimed it, and Lungwallabad made a quick trip to TRR while still being the official delegate of the region, allowing them to return and unban Stars of Sky, allowing them to surf their way back to TNP and take the delegacy. It's great when the person who happens to have the next highest number of endorsements is humble and patriotic enough to do their part to secure history for everyone else, and I think that deserves a lot of thanks and praise.

Second Constitutional Era
Hepzibah ii (Honeysheep) - 3rd delegate, and the first to win an election unopposed. Honeysheep served with the 3rd prime minister of TNP, Flemingovia, when the major concerns of the government were rebuilding the NPA, reorganizing the diplomatic corps, and cleaning up the legal and constitutional documents to rebuild in the post-coup landscape. It should be noted that during the early part of this period, as a result of Pixiedance's coup, TNP tried to guard against similar problems in the future by separating the head of government from head of state, making the delegate a ceremonial, supporting role instead of the leader of the region. This worked, for a time, until they would learn that this situation also led to coups.

Unterwasserseestaat - first vice delegate to serve as an interim delegate, after UN resignation of Eras. During their 29 days in the seat, the most notable thing that they did was eject two Lexicon nations that stood in the way of GBM taking the delegacy following her election. One of those Lexicon agents was controlled by Eluvatar.

New Kervoskia - 15th delegate, unopposed for a second term, but known for presiding over one of the worst periods for the region in terms of activity and government functionality. Even though his term in office lasted until October 9, the delegacy was held by various others from July 22 until well after the term expired. This was a low point for the region, a time when there was serious thought to abandoning the complicated democracy that the region had set up, and following Shoeless Joe's and JAL's coups during that period, it would become a crucial election question when Flemingovia returned to the delegacy for the last time.

Shoeless Joe - a brief rogue delegate of 4 days, but a founder of Lexicon who wrote their laws, and was also known for previously spilling the beans on Limitless Events’s plan to stuff the ballot box with Lexicon votes, leading to a very tense period where RA membership rules were changed and applications frozen to keep Lexicon players out.

Ermarian - held the delegacy for most of the rest of New Kervoskia’s time in office, 66 days. This was a significant player in the region, and had even run for delegate against Elu a few years prior, but had a bit of a reputation for being a bit lacking - it was said that had they won that election instead of Elu, another coup would have been inevitable. I would note that given the wolves circling, this was a very lengthy period to successfully hold the delegacy despite not being the vice delegate, who was at that time Elu as it turns out.

Groovistan - an accidental delegate who held the delegacy for 12 hours, right before JAL’s second coup. Cool name but I don't really know anything else about this one.

Pasargad - vice delegate who served as interim delegate for almost half (52 days) of Blue Wolf’s term as delegate. This was another player who was big back in the day, and had actually withdrawn from a race in which they were unopposed the term prior to being elected, again unopposed, in one of the last elections before the constitution was reformed.

Novare Res (Romanoffia) - accidental delegate for a day, but a member of the Security Council taking over after McMasterdonia’s second resignation. Roman is one of those well-known and significant players in TNP history, the kind who you would expect to find on a list of former TNP delegates. But like this? Roman held down the fort before the vice delegate, SillyString, took the delegacy for the first of two periods as acting delegate following delegate resignations that year. It would have been notable if it did not happen again so recently.

Reserved

Hype

Oddly I think I suggested at one time moving Delegate's Day to a day that is not a potential election day (since 2024 it was during the run off between @Pallaith and @Picairn), and it was really awkward because I had basically already left town and travelling for work in Mainland China, and so it was neither the incoming Delegate's responsibility (since we were still voting) and I couldn't really do it as I wasn't quite sure if I was really Delegate or care-taker, and I was travelling anyway.

Simone:

Oddly I think I suggested at one time moving Delegate's Day to a day that is not a potential election day (since 2024 it was during the run off between @Pallaith and @Picairn), and it was really awkward because I had basically already left town and travelling for work in Mainland China, and so it was neither the incoming Delegate's responsibility (since we were still voting) and I couldn't really do it as I wasn't quite sure if I was really Delegate or care-taker, and I was travelling anyway.

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Traditionally the event ends on Delegates Day, which falls before the end of a delegate’s term. In 2023 they actually did it after Delegates’ Day. This year’s event is planned to take about a month which means that if someone other than Ruben wins in the next election, they will inherit this event. I don’t imagine they’d cancel it halfway though.

It’s totally possible to do the entire event without the election getting in the way, and it’s even enhanced somewhat by the real election happening too.