Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Harkle 06-10-06, 06:47 PM	Ever since Power of Faerun came out I've been looking for more and better ways to track a campaign world in a dynamic manner. I PC a lot because I want the suprise of the unknown, and dynamic campaign world would give me the chance to DM and be very suprised by the outcome of things. So I picked up the PHB2 a couple days ago, and I'm still looking over the Affiliations rules trying to deside if I love them or hate them. On one hand the do provide an easy way to build a dynamic campaign world, everything changing with the way the affiliations interact with one another. On the other affiliations leave a lot of blanks in the rules and are very non-specific in what a Capiatal or violence, ect actually meens. Plus most of the rules in the affiliations don't take into account exceptional situations. I've already desided I'm going to make 1 change to the affiliations rules, if a commander is involved in a combat situation with the affiliation the highest command rating on each side of the conflict will be added to violence check. So what do you think of the Affiliations rules, and what house rules have you added to the Affiliations rules?
FlameLover 06-10-06, 07:08 PM	I plan on using the affiliation rules in two ways - - With modifications, as a "faction" system. It's basically used to track guild, town, etc. affiliations. The changes would be quite minor for this though. - As a global world control system. This requires quite a bit more work, but once it is done I'll post it on the forums. It is basically qualifying what capitol really means, how it can be used, and add in some things like land control. I'll try and keep it as abstract as possible, but I feel some extra details need to be provided for it to work. I like the system, but for both uses I need to make some changes for me to be completley happy.
Harkle 06-10-06, 07:19 PM	I Know how you feel, I considered running a FR campaign and ran through my head what major Affiliations Cormyr would have and I realized I couldn't desided if the govenment should be one really big affiliation or numerous smaller affiliations (government, army, war wizards, ect), or possibly set it up as a single affilitation with differant branches down which one could progress. I've been thinking about capital, and thought it might work out, at least from a grand total of every members resources to be the grand total of all the donations that would be required to get it from 1 to it's current capital, but dividing that up in a meaningful way would be a massive chore and as a result is pretty much a useless number.
Lokathor 06-10-06, 07:29 PM	It really bothers me that a cosmic scale group with interplaner everything can actually be out violenced by the local shopkeep on the corner. There aren't any rules for an "epic level" affiliation of sorts. I would simply remove the upper limit from the whole setup, and say for each 10 point scale increase the base multiplier for donation requirements increases by 10. (1-10: 1k, 11-20: 10k, 21-30 100k, etc). After a while the requirements to keep going up get so large that it slows itself down. It bothers me that there isn't a very good mechanic for hiring extra muscle for a hit and then having it just leave when the job is done. Sure you can raid, sure you can shadow war, but it's a lot cooler to hire Reldath the Flamebender to provide an opening wave of fireballs as you go out 'n hit "kracko's" guys (or whoever). Same goes for hiring master negotiators from outside your ring and master spys. I'd say something to the effect that you can spend capital to get a bonus to a single check equal to half the capital you spend. I wouldn't limit this either, and then the organization head can decide if they want to risk bankruptcy.
Harkle 06-10-06, 07:35 PM	Well I just had another idea that could be useful in affiliations the scale could also represent the highest level npc in the affiliation that isn't a special case character. This could provide us with a starting point to add better mechanics the the system.
FlameLover 06-10-06, 07:35 PM	Yeah, the main flaw I see in affiliations as-is for world control is that their a) PC centric and b) isolated. Their isn't a good system for pi6tching two affiliations against eachother, in that when one prospers the other by neccesity fails. Their also is a lack of "affiliation affiliations", where the prosperity of one benefits all those in affiliation. All such things I feel need addressing before it can be used in such a way. My thoughts on how to do it are quite scattered, but basically the idea is to have a list of Allies and Enemies of every affiliation. Whenever an enemy affiliation gains 2 capitol, the other one loses 1, and vice versa. The same basic principle with an ally - when they gain 2 capitol, they're allies all gain 1 capitol. This allows teams of affiliations to form, etc. It is a 2:1 ratio so that you can still be prosperous with an equal-capitol enemy. Another way of looking at it, rather than when they gain you lose, is to just have capitol/2 as a penalty on your capitol. For example Affiliation A has 12 capitol, and Affiliation B has 14. They are enemies of eachother. Affiliation A really has 12-7=5 capitol, and Affiliation B has 14-6=8. This does screw around ALOT with the system though, so i'm leaning more towards a -1 penalty on capitol for every 5 more capitol they have than you - or some such. I'm not too sure really. Making it work for guilds/factions is much easier. Making it work as a world control system is very hard, and something i'll need to do a lot more work on before it is useable.
Harkle 06-10-06, 07:53 PM	I don't know about allies and enemies directly effecting eachothers capital. but it did spark in idea using similar mechanics as the ones you described. Something along the lines of Sub-Affiliations. You say have a government affiliation and under them would be differant groups that would be directly dependant upon the government for funding, the military, the police, whatever you like you make a seperate affilation that is subordinate to main one, and its capital can rise and fall with the rise and fall in the capital of the main one, in the example above the military's capital rises and falls with the rise and fall of the governments capital. You could even have rival subfactions that try to gain more funding than another subfaction. The main advantage of something like this is you could rise to a high rank in a country by gaining rank in the military without becomeing ruler of the country.
Archtyrant Terevoth 06-10-06, 08:18 PM	IMO the affiliation rules were just garbage and really took down the value of the PHB since they were effectively dead space, along with that stupid "how to be a better player" filler section.
Harkle 06-10-06, 08:23 PM	IMO the affiliation rules were just garbage and really took down the value of the PHB since they were effectively dead space, along with that stupid "how to be a better player" filler section. I'd call them junk too if I didn't want to mess with things on a large scale and get unexpected results.
Harkle 06-10-06, 09:40 PM	I've had an idea to work with to add some extra dynamic to the Affiliation combat system. It uses and expands upon the Idea I had earlier about having sub-affiliantion within a greater affiliation. The idea is that an affiliation need not dedicate all it's resources to fighting a single battle. Insteed what an affiliation can do is build an new faction using it's existing resources. First you would find the total value of affiliations capital by calculating how much money worth of donations would have to be made to take the affilaition from 1 capital to it's current capital. Then you have the affiliation donate a portion of it's capital to the new sub-affilaition. The value of the donation is used to determine how high a capital level is used for this sub-affiliation. The scale of the new sub-affiliation would half of it's capital. With these new scores there should be enough info for an affiliation to go to battle without dedicating a large quantity of its resources. Plus it makes for an easy way to quickly build subaffiliations.