Help me create a player vs player, PbP, turned based strategy game in Eberron. [Archive] - Wizards Community

Help me create a player vs player, PbP, turned based strategy game in Eberron. [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Nerdicus
03-25-08, 12:04 PM As the title suggests, I am currently working on making a Play by Post turn based strategy game for Eberron. The idea is that each player takes control of a faction within Sharn, and tries to vie for power while growing as an economic power.

Things are very much in the early stages of planning, and we are looking for some more experienced gamers to get involved with this little project.

If you are interested, check it out!
http://www.rpol.net/game.cgi?gi=29879&gn=Eberron:+Factions+of+Conflict.&date=1206460714
naturax
03-25-08, 01:15 PM As the title suggests, I am currently working on making a Play by Post turn based strategy game for Eberron. The idea is that each player takes control of a faction within Sharn, and tries to vie for power while growing as an economic power.

Things are very much in the early stages of planning, and we are looking for some more experienced gamers to get involved with this little project.

If you are interested, check it out!
http://www.rpol.net/game.cgi?gi=29879&gn=Eberron:+Factions+of+Conflict.&date=1206460714

You're kidding! I've already tried this a few months ago and I've already built a system for exactly this purpose!

I didn't go into the same level of detail that you are, however, instead I tried to go for a heavily story-based game that encouraged in-character dealings between factions.

Here's what the rules for v1.0 looked like (you'll notice they are EXTREMELY simple): http://www.myth-weavers.com/showthread.php?t=17597

That attempt at the game had six factions: The Daask, The Boromar Clan, the Sharn Watch, Cannith South, Councilor Nolan Toranak's followers, and I made up a faction of warforged's rights activists called the League of Living Constructs. It went really well until all the players dropped out when school started up again last fall.

Recently I ran a game like this set in Gotham City using the continuity from Batman Begins as a test run before I actually ran the real game set in Sharn. Here are the rules (v2.0) I am using for that game:
http://www.myth-weavers.com/showthread.php?t=28169

Here's what the rules will look like for v2.1 (and they need a little bit of tweaking before I try them out again):

Factions consist of...

Description: leader(s), headquarters, and a modus operandi
Presence: public knowledge about your faction, distributed to all factions at beginning of game
Agenda: CANNOT be defined in terms of game mechanics
Way to contact faction: venue, events, contact people, etc.
Assets: every faction starts with 10 points worth of assets

Definition of an Asset:
1. Assets are what you do your actions with and provide the flavour for how your faction attempts to enact change in the city.
2. The number of assets you control determines the number of different actions you can make each turn. When you spend your FP proactively, you divide it among your Assets.
3. The total strength of the assets you control determines the health of your faction. When all of your assets are destroyed, your faction is destroyed.
4. Each asset has a positive number, called its value, which determines:
a) the maximum number of FP it can devote to an action
b) the strength of the asset with regards to being attacked or stolen
5. Each asset can be known to exist or secret. If it is known to exist, you can publicize that you own it, otherwise its ownership is unknown.

Investigating a faction on the whole in order to find out what assets belong to it:
- learn about the existence of an asset (that's already known to exist) that belongs to the particular faction, starting with the highest value

City-wide Asset List:
- list of all assets known to exist (but not their values!) that exist in the city will be distributed to players at beginning of game (ownership might be unknown, see next)
- factions can choose to have the ownership of their asset publicly known: gives excuse for people to interact with you and not step on your toes
- when creating an asset an extra point can be spent to have the asset be secret and not appear on this list

There should be a finite amount of "space" in the city for assets, or at least categories of assets. One potential set of categories is: might, treasure, influence, territory, and sovereignty.

Actions that affect Assets:
(success/fail) Investigating an Asset: determining the value of the asset and who it belongs to
(success/fail) Spying on an Asset: only possible if you have succeeded an Investigation of the asset. determine what it was doing this turn and who spent how many points for or against (choose one, determine who defends against it) the action and whether it was success/fail
(success/fail) Stealing an Asset: only possible if you have succeeded an Investigation of the asset. if the FP spent on the attack exceed the FP spent on the defense by at least the value of the asset, it is stolen, otherwise nothing happens
(degrees of success) Attacking an Asset: only possible if you have succeeded an Investigation of the asset. the asset's value is reduced by the number the attack exceeds the defense, if reduced to zero or less it is destroyed. Likewise, attacking asset's faction can be damaged/destroyed if the defender spends a greater number FP defending.
(success/fail) Improving an Asset: spend FP equal to the asset's current value and it grows by 1 value. Can only be done once per turn per asset and the asset cannot be used for anything else. TO DO: Balance this cost.
(success/fail) Repairing an Asset: spend 1 FP to repair 1 point of damage. No limit per turn per asset but the asset cannot be used for anything else. TO DO: Balance this cost.
(degrees of success) Creating a Public Asset: use a kind of auction system. Spend FP on the action, and it becomes publicly known that a new asset is being created, any faction can contribute to or hamper the attempt. If it succeeds you get a new asset of value equal to the difference between points spent and points opposed. Ownership will be automatically conferred to faction who created it, though who built it will not be obvious unless you want it to be obvious.
(success/fail) Creating a Private Asset: you create a new asset at value 1 which is secret. Can only be done once per turn.

In-game duration of turns:

It's up to the GMs to decide from turn to turn. Some turns can take hours, others weeks, depending on what the story requires. Each faction can still accomplish the same amount relative to the other factions. Players announce intent with their actions, not timeframes, so, "I want this to happen ASAP" not "I want this to happen in two weeks".

Submitting Actions:

Flavour needed. When you're attacking, you need to provide some sort of description of the attack that will be sent to the defending player. Likewise, if a defending player reacts, they have to provide a description of how their faction is defending. These will be facts with which both players can write propaganda. The GMs should not have to make any of this up.

TO DO: Determine how to award bonus FP for this writing.
Nerdicus
03-25-08, 03:47 PM That's awesome! I will be taking your idea of assets and adding it to my game. it's nice to see that I'm not the only trying this out there!

If you want to get involved with ours, feel free to! :D
naturax
03-25-08, 04:00 PM That's awesome! I will be taking your idea of assets and adding it to my game. it's nice to see that I'm not the only trying this out there!

If you want to get involved with ours, feel free to! :D

Thanks! I'm also pleased to see that someone else wants to run faction-based games in Sharn.

I'm not sure we have the same goals in mind for our games: I'm really trying to minimize the rules and abstract the notion of factions as much as possible so that the game is about the story first and foremost. I see you crunching a bunch of numbers and statting out teams of warriors and stuff, which feels a lot more like you are going for a real-time strategy game. I'm not complaining: I'm actually curious about why you're going in the direction that you're going.

At the end of the day, I'm trying to get my system to work without having to roll any dice ever. Do you still intend to use D&D for conflict resolution?

EDIT: And then I realized that you're going for a Strategy game instead of a Roleplaying game. Nevermind!
Nerdicus
03-25-08, 05:12 PM The idea for our game is to take all the stats for personnel, heroes, warriors and all that straight from the DMG, and it only applies where it is needed. For the most part, a fight will involve a few simple rolls with modifiers determined by the applicable personnel.

Example: So, the player takes their level 1 group of warriors and make an attack. That equals +1. Then you decide to add your weaponmaster to the fray which grants you another +1 to +3 depending on the level of the weapon master. the opposing side has a group of L1, and get ambushed away from their weapon master, which means it is a roll of, best of 3, your troops with a +4(saying the weaponmaster is L3) and the enemy gets a +1.

My goal is to have a faction style strategy game that does have rules in place for combat( broad) and economy and all that, but the main focus is still Role Playing. The rules are mostly so that everyone playing can understand how things work, and the GMs( of which I imagine there will be a few if there are several players) have something to go off of for determining who wins what.

I was thinking of trying to do it all like Diplomacy the game, which has no dice, and conflict is determined through support from other players, but figured that might get too difficult to keep track of with a bunch of players.

There is a very good chance that the more we get done on the planning, the fewer the rules we actually have. THe last thing I want though is tons of number crunching.

The idea comes from a PbP Dune game I am currently in that absolutely rules!! We have like 12-13 players and a GM, and it all about role playing an enter Noble House, vying for power, and trying to get various prestigious titles.

This is what I want to go for. I intend to include the possibility for players in the Sharn factions game for players to have their HOuse leader on the Sharn Council eventually. But that would be something that would take a long time to build towards.
naturax
03-25-08, 05:40 PM I was thinking of trying to do it all like Diplomacy the game, which has no dice, and conflict is determined through support from other players, but figured that might get too difficult to keep track of with a bunch of players.

There is a very good chance that the more we get done on the planning, the fewer the rules we actually have. THe last thing I want though is tons of number crunching.

The idea comes from a PbP Dune game I am currently in that absolutely rules!! We have like 12-13 players and a GM, and it all about role playing an enter Noble House, vying for power, and trying to get various prestigious titles.

This is what I want to go for. I intend to include the possibility for players in the Sharn factions game for players to have their HOuse leader on the Sharn Council eventually. But that would be something that would take a long time to build towards.

Then it sounds like we're on the same boat after all! I also want to have some sort of structure to resolve PvP conflict, but I wanted to take out any random factor so that it would depend entirely on what the other factions decide to do.

I'd be really interested in seeing the rules for your Dune game and seeing what's there that I can use for my system.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Nerdicus 03-25-08, 12:04 PM	As the title suggests, I am currently working on making a Play by Post turn based strategy game for Eberron. The idea is that each player takes control of a faction within Sharn, and tries to vie for power while growing as an economic power. Things are very much in the early stages of planning, and we are looking for some more experienced gamers to get involved with this little project. If you are interested, check it out! http://www.rpol.net/game.cgi?gi=29879&gn=Eberron:+Factions+of+Conflict.&date=1206460714
naturax 03-25-08, 01:15 PM	As the title suggests, I am currently working on making a Play by Post turn based strategy game for Eberron. The idea is that each player takes control of a faction within Sharn, and tries to vie for power while growing as an economic power. Things are very much in the early stages of planning, and we are looking for some more experienced gamers to get involved with this little project. If you are interested, check it out! http://www.rpol.net/game.cgi?gi=29879&gn=Eberron:+Factions+of+Conflict.&date=1206460714 You're kidding! I've already tried this a few months ago and I've already built a system for exactly this purpose! I didn't go into the same level of detail that you are, however, instead I tried to go for a heavily story-based game that encouraged in-character dealings between factions. Here's what the rules for v1.0 looked like (you'll notice they are EXTREMELY simple): http://www.myth-weavers.com/showthread.php?t=17597 That attempt at the game had six factions: The Daask, The Boromar Clan, the Sharn Watch, Cannith South, Councilor Nolan Toranak's followers, and I made up a faction of warforged's rights activists called the League of Living Constructs. It went really well until all the players dropped out when school started up again last fall. Recently I ran a game like this set in Gotham City using the continuity from Batman Begins as a test run before I actually ran the real game set in Sharn. Here are the rules (v2.0) I am using for that game: http://www.myth-weavers.com/showthread.php?t=28169 Here's what the rules will look like for v2.1 (and they need a little bit of tweaking before I try them out again): Factions consist of... Description: leader(s), headquarters, and a modus operandi Presence: public knowledge about your faction, distributed to all factions at beginning of game Agenda: CANNOT be defined in terms of game mechanics Way to contact faction: venue, events, contact people, etc. Assets: every faction starts with 10 points worth of assets Definition of an Asset: 1. Assets are what you do your actions with and provide the flavour for how your faction attempts to enact change in the city. 2. The number of assets you control determines the number of different actions you can make each turn. When you spend your FP proactively, you divide it among your Assets. 3. The total strength of the assets you control determines the health of your faction. When all of your assets are destroyed, your faction is destroyed. 4. Each asset has a positive number, called its value, which determines: a) the maximum number of FP it can devote to an action b) the strength of the asset with regards to being attacked or stolen 5. Each asset can be known to exist or secret. If it is known to exist, you can publicize that you own it, otherwise its ownership is unknown. Investigating a faction on the whole in order to find out what assets belong to it: - learn about the existence of an asset (that's already known to exist) that belongs to the particular faction, starting with the highest value City-wide Asset List: - list of all assets known to exist (but not their values!) that exist in the city will be distributed to players at beginning of game (ownership might be unknown, see next) - factions can choose to have the ownership of their asset publicly known: gives excuse for people to interact with you and not step on your toes - when creating an asset an extra point can be spent to have the asset be secret and not appear on this list There should be a finite amount of "space" in the city for assets, or at least categories of assets. One potential set of categories is: might, treasure, influence, territory, and sovereignty. Actions that affect Assets: (success/fail) Investigating an Asset: determining the value of the asset and who it belongs to (success/fail) Spying on an Asset: only possible if you have succeeded an Investigation of the asset. determine what it was doing this turn and who spent how many points for or against (choose one, determine who defends against it) the action and whether it was success/fail (success/fail) Stealing an Asset: only possible if you have succeeded an Investigation of the asset. if the FP spent on the attack exceed the FP spent on the defense by at least the value of the asset, it is stolen, otherwise nothing happens (degrees of success) Attacking an Asset: only possible if you have succeeded an Investigation of the asset. the asset's value is reduced by the number the attack exceeds the defense, if reduced to zero or less it is destroyed. Likewise, attacking asset's faction can be damaged/destroyed if the defender spends a greater number FP defending. (success/fail) Improving an Asset: spend FP equal to the asset's current value and it grows by 1 value. Can only be done once per turn per asset and the asset cannot be used for anything else. TO DO: Balance this cost. (success/fail) Repairing an Asset: spend 1 FP to repair 1 point of damage. No limit per turn per asset but the asset cannot be used for anything else. TO DO: Balance this cost. (degrees of success) Creating a Public Asset: use a kind of auction system. Spend FP on the action, and it becomes publicly known that a new asset is being created, any faction can contribute to or hamper the attempt. If it succeeds you get a new asset of value equal to the difference between points spent and points opposed. Ownership will be automatically conferred to faction who created it, though who built it will not be obvious unless you want it to be obvious. (success/fail) Creating a Private Asset: you create a new asset at value 1 which is secret. Can only be done once per turn. In-game duration of turns: It's up to the GMs to decide from turn to turn. Some turns can take hours, others weeks, depending on what the story requires. Each faction can still accomplish the same amount relative to the other factions. Players announce intent with their actions, not timeframes, so, "I want this to happen ASAP" not "I want this to happen in two weeks". Submitting Actions: Flavour needed. When you're attacking, you need to provide some sort of description of the attack that will be sent to the defending player. Likewise, if a defending player reacts, they have to provide a description of how their faction is defending. These will be facts with which both players can write propaganda. The GMs should not have to make any of this up. TO DO: Determine how to award bonus FP for this writing.
Nerdicus 03-25-08, 03:47 PM	That's awesome! I will be taking your idea of assets and adding it to my game. it's nice to see that I'm not the only trying this out there! If you want to get involved with ours, feel free to! :D
naturax 03-25-08, 04:00 PM	That's awesome! I will be taking your idea of assets and adding it to my game. it's nice to see that I'm not the only trying this out there! If you want to get involved with ours, feel free to! :D Thanks! I'm also pleased to see that someone else wants to run faction-based games in Sharn. I'm not sure we have the same goals in mind for our games: I'm really trying to minimize the rules and abstract the notion of factions as much as possible so that the game is about the story first and foremost. I see you crunching a bunch of numbers and statting out teams of warriors and stuff, which feels a lot more like you are going for a real-time strategy game. I'm not complaining: I'm actually curious about why you're going in the direction that you're going. At the end of the day, I'm trying to get my system to work without having to roll any dice ever. Do you still intend to use D&D for conflict resolution? EDIT: And then I realized that you're going for a Strategy game instead of a Roleplaying game. Nevermind!
Nerdicus 03-25-08, 05:12 PM	The idea for our game is to take all the stats for personnel, heroes, warriors and all that straight from the DMG, and it only applies where it is needed. For the most part, a fight will involve a few simple rolls with modifiers determined by the applicable personnel. Example: So, the player takes their level 1 group of warriors and make an attack. That equals +1. Then you decide to add your weaponmaster to the fray which grants you another +1 to +3 depending on the level of the weapon master. the opposing side has a group of L1, and get ambushed away from their weapon master, which means it is a roll of, best of 3, your troops with a +4(saying the weaponmaster is L3) and the enemy gets a +1. My goal is to have a faction style strategy game that does have rules in place for combat( broad) and economy and all that, but the main focus is still Role Playing. The rules are mostly so that everyone playing can understand how things work, and the GMs( of which I imagine there will be a few if there are several players) have something to go off of for determining who wins what. I was thinking of trying to do it all like Diplomacy the game, which has no dice, and conflict is determined through support from other players, but figured that might get too difficult to keep track of with a bunch of players. There is a very good chance that the more we get done on the planning, the fewer the rules we actually have. THe last thing I want though is tons of number crunching. The idea comes from a PbP Dune game I am currently in that absolutely rules!! We have like 12-13 players and a GM, and it all about role playing an enter Noble House, vying for power, and trying to get various prestigious titles. This is what I want to go for. I intend to include the possibility for players in the Sharn factions game for players to have their HOuse leader on the Sharn Council eventually. But that would be something that would take a long time to build towards.
naturax 03-25-08, 05:40 PM	I was thinking of trying to do it all like Diplomacy the game, which has no dice, and conflict is determined through support from other players, but figured that might get too difficult to keep track of with a bunch of players. There is a very good chance that the more we get done on the planning, the fewer the rules we actually have. THe last thing I want though is tons of number crunching. The idea comes from a PbP Dune game I am currently in that absolutely rules!! We have like 12-13 players and a GM, and it all about role playing an enter Noble House, vying for power, and trying to get various prestigious titles. This is what I want to go for. I intend to include the possibility for players in the Sharn factions game for players to have their HOuse leader on the Sharn Council eventually. But that would be something that would take a long time to build towards. Then it sounds like we're on the same boat after all! I also want to have some sort of structure to resolve PvP conflict, but I wanted to take out any random factor so that it would depend entirely on what the other factions decide to do. I'd be really interested in seeing the rules for your Dune game and seeing what's there that I can use for my system.