Post/Author/DateTime	Post
naturax 12-27-07, 02:10 PM	I started a political game set in Sharn in which each player controlled an entire faction just after a particularly turbulent turn of events shook the foundations of the power structures that were previously in place in the city, giving every faction a chance to carve out a new niche for themselves. I think the game premise itself, that is the in-game political situation, has a LOT of potential that I'd like to see played out with at least eight factions, and I think with a fairly large group of dedicated players it, as a PbP game, would last for a good many months. I want to give it another spin in a few months when I will, hopefully, have the time to run it again. The point of this thread is to discuss the "mechanic" I used, to see if other people have an idea for a cleaner way I could run things, with the priorities being the following: a) require a minimum amount of time on behalf of the DM b) be fair to all players c) be intuitive enough that players wouldn't be surprised by the results (when you roll a d20, you know how much you can do, but when it's a diceless mechanic you can't quantify successes anymore) This is how I had things set up in version 1.0: 1. Every player controlled a faction (to give you an idea, the factions were The Boromar Clan, the Daask, the Black Arch Garrison, supporters of Councilor Nolan Toranak, Cannith South, and a group of warforged activists called the League of Living Constructs). Every faction had a single personified leader for roleplaying purposes. Every faction had a specific "Location" thread that the players could use to send mooks/diplomats/messengers/etc. to communicate with each other in character. There was an OOC understanding that you didn't show up to another faction's Location to start a fight, you went there to talk - a prime example of this is the Shamukaar (S:CoT 101). I like this aspect to the game and I don't want to change it. 2. Every game week or so (I would announce the deadline from week to week) each player would have to submit an "Action" on behalf of their faction for what their faction would try to accomplish for the game-day. The players did not have to bother with the minutia of their faction's daily operations, that was assumed to take care of itself, but the Action would encompass the things the faction was able to accomplish above and beyond maintaining the status quo. Instead, the Action is more like "what is my faction trying to change about the way things work right now". The scope of these actions is a little vague because here is where the players get to be creative in figuring out what their faction is capable of doing, but it's also the most challenging aspect for me as a DM because I have to try to make sure one faction isn't getting more out of their Action than any other. Examples of Actions that were used: - send out several agents to begin some subtle rumormongering - threaten city Councilors to vote a particular way - collect large amounts of and begin studying Dragon's Blood The rule of thumb I used for determining the outcome of Actions was this: if the Action didn't directly involve another faction it was going to succeed. (The Boromar Clan can do just about anything it wants until it starts stepping on the toes of a faction with comparable power.) However, if the Action did directly involve another faction, the Action would still be assumed to succeed unless it was canceled out by an opposing Action from the other faction. If more than one faction collaborated to accomplish the same Action they would have a multiplicative effect on the success of the Action. 3. I had a Sharn Inquisitive thread with excerpts from articles from the newspaper on a daily basis to provide a mechanism for players to hear, albeit from a very slanted source, what the other factions were doing. I also created an OOC "pulse of the city" thread that sort of described the mood of the city from day to day. Further I maintained a "rumours" thread that was updated daily which was loosely inspired by what the factions were up to. These three activities were extremely time consuming and I'd like to come up with some sort of mechanism to accomplish the same thing that the players are responsible for. One idea that comes to mind is that when players submit their actions they must also submit a description of what rumours might be generated, what the Inquisitive might hear about, how it might affect the mood of the city, etc. and post this anonymously where all can see it. Successful aspects of version 1.0: It was a lot of fun to watch the scenes played out in the various Locations as the factions started negotiating and lying to each other, so I think that went beautifully. I also got to add a lot of NPC factions and Locations into the mix whenever the players, say, wanted to contact the Lord Commander or House Tarkanan or something. I was also very happy with how much there was to do in the in-game situation I came up with to kick off the game. Problems with version 1.0: As I stated before, I had to spend many hours every game-day resolving the Actions that the factions had committed to. It wasn't hard to imagine what the effects of the various actions were on the city and the other factions, but it was hard to write up a description in a single place that let everyone know how things actually went. I think the mechanic needs to have the ability to see the results of your actions built in to it so that resolving the action doesn't become a step in addition to submitting it. If the DM is going to have to spend large amounts of time running a game like this, however, this is where the bulk of the time ought to go. After three or four game-days I found it very difficult to keep the energy high in a game like this, and I could have kept throwing more "plot" at everyone to keep things exciting, but there is a big expectation for the players to entertain each other with their scheming. Players have to accept this up front: there is a lot to do on everyone's part to keep things going. After a few game-days I became exhausted with just how much writing I had to do for threads such as the rumours, the Inquisitive, and the pulse of the city. One idea that comes to mind is to give each faction its own mechanism for getting general information, but that might complicate things further and mean yet more work for the DM. How can you replace newspaper headlines, which are a standard plot device for stories across all sorts of media, not just RPGs. I had a hard time managing the expectations of some of the players regarding what they could accomplish with their actions and what they could not, no doubt making the whole process seem rather arbitrary. I had nothing to go on other than what I felt the faction could accomplish in a day with regards to a particular endeavor. Some players become frustrated by the lack of a quantifiable mechanic in place, but maybe this type of game just needs the type of player who can be flexible in the interest of the story. Solutions that come to mind: 1. Use a diceful mechanic. I've looked into things like the faction rules in [ORE] Reign and the rules for Diplomacy, but getting away from a mechanic really really appeals to me. I want the point of gathering information and crushing your enemies to be the reward in and of itself, not be an excuse to get more levels and loot and so on. The power level is high enough that your faction can do just about anything it wants, so the interesting aspect of the game is dealing with the consequences of every decision you make. I'm not sure it would make resolving Actions any easier, but then again it might make the life of the DM way easier overall. 2. Get help. I've never considererd using assistant DMs for this and I've always DMed alone. However, this game is a lot like a World of Darkness LARP and those always have a team of people running them, so maybe this would go much smoother if the responsibilities were spread out. 3. Improve the diceless "mechanic" somehow. That's why I'm posting this, to see what other people have to say. I'm extremely grateful for any feedback you're willing to provide. Here's my idea for a "mechanic": The concept is both simple and diceless: what you get out of an action is entirely relative to what any other faction can do with an action. And here by action, I mean an abstract point that can be spent to accomplish something immediately or be invested to accomplish something in the future. Determining the success or failure of an action is as simple as subtracting the number of actions spent opposing it. If I'm left with a positive number, I succeed, if the actions cancel out exactly, I fail, and if there were more actions spent opposing me than I spent on the action, then I fail badly. So instead of butting heads every turn, any faction can invest points to spend later, this is what we're calling extended actions. If I spend two points this turn, then next turn I only need to spend two more to attempt a task that will have four actions of weight behind it, and thus would be impossible for any one faction to thwart with their entire single turn if every faction only gets three actions per turn. Half actions earned for propaganda: Every turn each player will be required to write some propaganda as defined by a style guide which we will provide. The DMs will decide whether or not you have met the conditions of style guide and you'll either get the half action or not. This half action cannot start a task by itself but can be added to anything else that the faction is working on. The style guide, as it stands right now, will give you the option of writing a bunch of rumours, a headline and point form summary of a newspaper article, a narrative of an event, or some other way of informing other players about how your faction is affecting the city. All of this will be posted anonymously by the DMs. Investigation action (costs 1 point): By spending a point a DM will give you a value for how many points you have to invest to accomplish a certain task. This is subject to change based on circumstances that other players change, but it might save you overspending on a task that you could have accomplished with fewer points. Countering delayed actions: This works on a one-for-one basis. Attacks against another faction's holdings, or whatever else you do to hamper the actions of another faction are exactly as effective as the number of points you spend on it. If an extended action has had six points put into it, it'll take six to thwart it, but you won't know how many points has been spent on it until it has been investigated. Determining who is behind something (costs 2 points): Been hearing rumours and want to find out who is responsible? Knowing who to strike back at should be extremely valuable information in this game, thus the high cost. Should it be cheaper or even more expensive? Or somehow a function of how many points have already been spent on the extended action? Remember that knowing who is behind something doesn't accomplish anything in and of itself, you still have to spend an equal number of points to thwart the action, as described above. Holdings: every faction has a certain number of points, which mechanically are identical to invested action points that have been assigned before the game starts. Should the number of actions you get to spend every turn is proportional to how many holding points you have? No: the bigger you are, the more work you have to do to stay big, so you end up being able to accomplish as much above and beyond keeping the status quo as a small group with no obligations. Remember that actions represent what your faction can change in the city above and beyond keeping themselves at their current level of wealth/power/influence/might/etc. But your holding points should be associated with abstract concepts that can be attacked, merely for the purposes of determining how much of what it would take to destroy your faction. Spending your action points "growing" your faction, essentially investing them directly in your faction itself, is going to make you harder to destroy later on at the expense of accomplishing things right now. On Holdings: I'm thinking, for flavour, a faction's holdings should be described in terms of what they represent, and we might as well steal the qualities from Reign's Company rules to get started. For reference, those are: Might (military prowess) Treasure (wealth) Influence (political power) Territory (the land, its value, the population, its culture and its technological level) Sovereignty (the people’s loyalty to the company, the strength of their common identity) I'm going to try to use a faction in Sharn as an example, let's say House Sivis. I'm making up the numbers off the top of my head because I'm still grappling with how to use this new system. House Sivis' Holdings in Sharn: (20 points) Treaure (5 points): The Sivis enclave in Sharn has huge financial resources in Kundarak bank accounts that it can draw from without resorting to contacting the head branch in Zilargo. Influence (8 points): The gnomes of Sivis read everything that everyone sends and have a lot of blackmail fodder for just about anyone. Further, they have a lot of legal expertise that allows them to bend the law in practically any direction they want. Territory (4 points): House Sivis has a few outposts throughout the city that act as mail and courrier stations in addition to their enclave in the Dragon Towers district, but none of these are particularly well guarded. Sovereignty (3 points): The Sivis family is extremely tight-knit and will tenaciously resist any threat to their guilds using whatever means are at their disposal. I propose that factions should have the option of spending their holding points to accomplish things, but at that point they are spent like any other action and are effectively lost until more points have been spent replacing them. An example of this might be hiring the services of House Tarkanan to murder a particularly troublesome member of the City Council (by spending points from the Treasure holding to put towards accomplishing the task). Spending extended action points from a faction's holdings should be a last resort of the desperate (and if it doesn't look that way immediately then something needs to get fixed). I realize that this is extremely similar to Mind's Eye Theatre system for dealing with influence actions, so if someone can please point me to a list of those rules I'm sure it would be valuable to see how they work. Also, it should be obvious that if you don't care about the fluff, this game is meaningless. Trading points back and forth would be quite a boring endeavor on its own, I imagine, so accomplishing things for the sake of doing what your faction wants to do should be the main driving motivation to playing this game. Is this too much mechanic already? I fear that it will take away from the true politics of the game, but I guess D&D games have that problem too with roleplaying vs rollplaying. So. Lay into it. I want to get something like ten players for the next game. Problems? Suggestions? Let me have it! Thanks!
Alex_ 12-27-07, 02:14 PM	IRRC, there's a d20 setting known as Birthright that does exactly what you're suggesting. I'm not at all familiar with it though. All I can do is suggest you take a look at it and see if it's what you want to do. You might also find moe help in the homebrew and houserule sections of the general boards. Not that people here couldn't possibly help you, but aside from setting your campaign in Sharn, there's not too much that makes this new system campaign specific, but lots that would be of interest to some running an original or variant game.
naturax 12-27-07, 02:54 PM	IRRC, there's a d20 setting known as Birthright that does exactly what you're suggesting. I'm not at all familiar with it though. All I can do is suggest you take a look at it and see if it's what you want to do. You might also find moe help in the homebrew and houserule sections of the general boards. Not that people here couldn't possibly help you, but aside from setting your campaign in Sharn, there's not too much that makes this new system campaign specific, but lots that would be of interest to some running an original or variant game. I had no idea that there was already a d20 system that deals with this! I'm definitely going to check it out and I really appreciate you pointing it out to me! Thanks! I realize that there are a lot of generic elements to this game that would appeal to people outside of the Eberron community, but I really want to make the system work for Sharn if nowhere else. It doesn't need to deal with nations or anything else, it just needs to deal with Sharn, so hopefully people will be willing to give me feedback here.
Journeyman_Samwise 12-29-07, 07:03 PM	Step 1) Get a TV Step 2) Watch C-Span.
Waywalker 01-02-08, 07:49 PM	Awesome idea! Now, how to do it mechanically? I have no idea, sorry. But I am very impressed with the idea and may end up stealing it for a game of my own if I can find the interest in my groups. I do not know Birthright. Have you had a chance to look into it yet, and is it something that would work?
naturax 01-03-08, 09:26 AM	Awesome idea! Now, how to do it mechanically? I have no idea, sorry. But I am very impressed with the idea and may end up stealing it for a game of my own if I can find the interest in my groups. I do not know Birthright. Have you had a chance to look into it yet, and is it something that would work? Thanks! When I do get it running, I'll be putting it up on www.myth-weavers.com. And I'd love to hear what you end up doing with your groups. I took a look at Birthright 3.5 - apparently all of the game rules have been updated by fans from the AD&D days and thus are available on the web. Unfortunately, the game deals with entire nations and assigns ranks to states based on their natural resources and economic power and population and stuff, and the turns operate on a weekly or monthly basis. I'm looking for a system that can handle factions within the same city who can effect change within hours or days, specifically something that can let me run a game in Sharn. I've come up with a different spin on the game mechanic for this: I want to give each faction named holdings that can be used to do anything that would be appropriate. I don't want every faction to have generic holdings, because then no player is better at doing anything than anyone else. For example, House Cannith will have the Forgehold, and the Daask will have monsters, and the Boromars will have corrupt Watch members, etc. - they can all be used in a variety of ways but it automatically adds flavour to the game. But what I haven't been able to figure out yet is how to mechanically deal with impeding/destroying/hampering/damaging the resources or holdings of other factions. Do holdings self heal? Does it cost more actions to repair? It's important that players who gang up on a faction feel like they are accomplishing something when they spend turn after turn attacking. And then there's the question on whether it is possible, and how to, increase a faction's power/holdings/influence/etc. Further, even if I use a system to get players to use the propaganda system to create stuff that the other players can read and enrich the game world, that will only cover the intent of the actions, not their results. When you're making an attack roll in D&D, you can say "I lift my sword high and bring it down on the orc's visor!" but you have to wait until after the die is rolled to know whether it is successful or not, and even then, the DM has to say "You've struck a mighty blow, but the orc still manages to cast the spell!". My point is that regardless of how much the players write when they submit their actions, the DM is still going to be stuck describing the results of those actions to all the players. Unless I have players write the propaganda after they know how successful they were, but then the bonus points they get for doing that would have to be carried over to the next turn, or something. I know there's a solution to all this, but I haven't figured it out quite yet.
Durskut 01-03-08, 06:16 PM	not sure if it'll help, but i stumbled on the "affiliations" section of the PHBII today, may want to check it out
naturax 01-04-08, 12:05 AM	not sure if it'll help, but i stumbled on the "affiliations" section of the PHBII today, may want to check it out I certainly shall, thank you!
naturax 01-09-08, 05:26 PM	The rules I've got so far are here, if anyone's interested: http://www.myth-weavers.com/showthread.php?t=28169 I'm going to be running a playtest set in Gotham City in the next couple of days.
naturax 01-13-08, 08:35 AM	If anyone is interested in playing a game like this with my revise rules, apply here: http://www.myth-weavers.com/showthread.php?t=28325