Conquest System?

Doccit · July 17, 2013, 07:32:45 PM

I'm building a game system that is, if not similar to d&d mechanically, very comparable in the way you interact with the world.

I'm trying to think of mechanics for managing a piece of land, if they come to manage one as a result of events in a story.

Have you heard of something like this in a pen and paper role playing game that isn't to complex?

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Right now I'm thinking that they get a town with stats and amenities. The stats are area size, population, morale, defence, and economy. Depending on the amenities of the town they have access to different "tax actions". like "tough on crime" or "mining subsidy" that would change the stats of your land holding. Every time you take a tax action you can trigger an invasion if your land/economy is too high compared to other numbers, or a revolt if your morale is too low.

GMs can insert plot obstacles as barriers to completing tax actions, like guilds and organized crime, which the players can negotiate with, or beat up, or whatever.

As a tax action you can also invade other places.

The outcome of an invasion/revolt would be determined by stats, but also by a "key battle" where the players take part in fighting for their state. If the situation is such that whether or not they won the key battle they would still succeed, than they can skip it.

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How does this sound so far? Can you think of problems, or other things to add to it? Do you think it would be a fun system to interact with?

Opaopajr · July 17, 2013, 07:45:42 PM

AD&D Birthright domain rules, OSR Adventurer Conqueror King, and the recent Pathfinder Ultimate Camaign cover a lot of what you talk about.

Anything in particular you want to focus on?

Doccit · July 17, 2013, 09:17:52 PM

Well the world is one in which kingdoms are very small and short lived. I want losing your entire holding to become more and more likely the bigger it is. But in terms of focus I'm not sure what you mean.

I've got a fair bit of reading to do by the looks of it. Thanks for the names! I'll be sure to try to answer that question after I've done a bit of reading.

Doccit · July 18, 2013, 01:42:41 PM

Alright, it turns out that the answer to that question was nothing in particular. The pathfinder book in particular helped me develop my ideas a fair bit, and I can definitely see what you meant in the comparison to Birthright and Adventurer Conquerer Kings. It is amazing how easy it is to come up with other people's ideas. xD

But anyway, I'm not all that familiar with the rules of this forum, and they don't seem to be among the stickies. Is it appropriate to just dump something I've written here (in this case the conquest system) and ask people what they think of it?

I'll just put it in spoiler tags. Casters & Conquest is the name of game I am developing.

Spoiler

States are an optional system entirely. In Casters & Conquest a small group of players are powerful enough that they can have a military impact on the world. Over the course of the game, it is easy to envision situations in which players can overthrow governments and take over plots of land. This chapter includes a system to allow players to manage the land that they hold.

   Land Acquisition
The first land that players come to possess is essentially given to them by the GM. They can overthrow a government, come into materials and labor to start a colony, or really anything, but there is no mechanism or system by which land is acquired. Just plot.

   The Territory’s Stats
Defensibility: How well you can defend your territory.
Economy: How much money your territory produces.
Morale: How happy the people in your territory are.
Km²: How big your territory is. It is important to record original Km² and current Km².
In addition to stats, your territory has amenities. These are also assigned by your GM.
Here are the amenities that your territory can have:
Port, Riverlands, Grasslands, Forest, Mountains, Trade Routes, Urban Sprawl.

   A Starting Territory
All increases and decreases to territory work in percentages, so the Km² can be set arbitrarily by the GM. If you want petty politics go ~25km². If you want a greater sense of gravity to the players' decisions, try 100km². The easiest way for players to start is with 5 defensibility, economy, and morality. The closer those numbers get to zero or ten, the harder the game becomes for them. Too much economy or too little defensibility? Invasion. Too much defensibility or too little economy? Coup. Too little or too much morale? Revolt. This will be explained in more detail soon. A starting territory generally has about 2 amenities. You can give them more, but generally they acquire more through conquest.

The goal of the players is to get these numbers to something resembling equilibrium, and then expand. How do they move the numbers? With Edicts.
Edicts are laws and policies that the players decide that they will enforce on their territory. Whenever players decide to make edicts the dungeon master decides how much time reforming their country to suit their design will take. This only affects plot and story. A list of edicts is presented on the next page.
Obstacles are things that the players must overcome in order to resolve an edict, and generally it means skill checks from the players.
Example obstacles are guilds who will refuse to abide by the new tax rate or threaten to migrate to another territory should the edict come to be, or policemen who aren’t equipped to enforce the new laws. Whatever they are, the players have to make skill checks an use their talents.
Obstacles will naturally become more difficult to overcome as territories grow because more people live in them to provide those obstacles. At the start, players should be able to resolve obstacles well with amateur level skills. When a territory has grown to twice its original size, veteran level. Five times its size? Expert. Ten times its size? Master.

   Rating Solutions
Once the obstacle is resolved, or becomes unresolveable, the GM rates the quality of the players' solution and determines the effects of each edict. Edicts say things like +1-3 economy, -1-3 morale. A poor quality solution might result in +1 economy and -3 morale (the players decide to execute all the guild members for treason), whereas a high quality solution might result in +3 economy and -1 morale (the players roll high on a persuasion check to convince the guild members that what they are doing will help them financially in the long run). Game masters should keep in mind that players might purposefully create bad solutions because they want to achieve bad results, and that is perfectly fine. If they choose to do poorly, rate them poorly all the same.
Also, solutions might have bad and good elements that could, in the given example, result in +3 economy and -3 morale.

   Fictionalizing The State
The players and GM collaborate on this, with the GM choosing the customs and traditions of an area while the players decide what is new and changed. A GM might for example say that there is a finance minister in the country who betrayed the old government to help the players. They can choose to fire him, or keep him on staff. Both can have consequences in the way the GM colors the players' obstacles.
Here are the questions that need to be answered by the players and the GM: What is the territory’s name? Is it a kingdom, duchy, principality, republic, empire, or etcetera? Who is the head of state? How is the bureaucracy operated? How do citizens access the court? Who runs the military? Who runs the treasury? Who takes care of things while the players are away? What states are next to you? How do those states feel about you? Feel free to make up anything you like about what is going on in and around the states. As a GM, it is your world, ultimately.

List Of Edicts
Using Edicts: The first time you use an edict, do exactly as it says. Every subsequent time, double the amount of change it causes. If you already have tariffs on trade, and you want to add more, that will have a bigger effect than the first time you did. Remember that each time you use an edict, some time passes, and you must confront an obstacle to determine how it resolves.

New Tax Policy
People don’t like change, but it is for the best.
Effect: +1-3 Economy, -1-3 Morale
Route Military Corruption
You stop the military from abusing their power over the populace, much to their chagrin.
Effect: +1-3 Morale, -1-3 Defensibility
Urban Expansion
You allow and encourage your cities to expand beyond your means to defend them, if only slightly.
Effect: +1-3 Economy, -1-3 Defensibility
Curtail Liberties
You give yourself the right to seize information and property from people arbitrarily without their knowledge, and use it to improve security.
Effect: +1-3 Defensibility, -1-3 Morale
Checkpoints
Anyone entering or leaving your territory must register with the military, to keep out spies.
Effect: +1-3 Defensibility, -1-3 Economy
Holidays
You declare many public holidays, where only a limited number of people are allowed to work.
Effect: +1-3 Morale, -1-3 Economy
Fishery Subsidy
You tax your citizens slightly, and pay that tax to fishers to encourage their trade.
Requires: Port
Effect: +1-3 Economy, -1-3 Morale
Country Wardens
You divert some of the military in your stronghold to the countryside to keep the peace
Requires: Grasslands
Effect: +1-3 Morale, -1-3 Defensibility
Deforestation
You contract locals to remove forests, export the lumber, and sell the land to locals for development.
Requires: Forests
Effect: +1-3 Economy, -1-3 Defensibility
Mining Tribute
You ask miners to contribute to the arsenal of your defensive forces, and the construction of forts.
Requires: Mountains
Effect: +1-3 Defensibility, -1-3 Morale
Trading Tariffs
You tax merchants for entering your city, and spend that money on reinforcing your boarder security.
Requires: Trade Routes
Effect: +1-3 Defensibility, -1-3 Economy
Festivals
You organize frequent festivals at the expense of the crown in your urban center.
Requires: Urban Sprawl
Effect: +1-3 Morale, -1-3 Economy
War
You invade a neighboring territory to take it over.
Effect: You start a war. See the next section.

Conquest, Defense & Key Battles
If at any time your economy, defensibility, or morale, dips to 2 or lower, or 9 or higher, you are forced to “defend”.
Narratively, as previously explained, if your morale is too low people revolt because they hate you, if your morale is too high people revolt because they think they can do better than you, if your economy is too low people revolt because they are starving, if your economy is too high foreigners invade to plunder your riches, if your defensibility is too low foreigners will invade to take advantage of your weakness, and if your defensibility is too high the military will turn against you.
Whenever you are defending, the players (after some plot related stuff) are forced into confrontation with their attackers in what is called a key battle. A key battle is a literal fight that the players engage in (designed by the GM to be as difficult as a normal fight), but also an abstraction of how well their government is doing in general. The amount of territory players lose in defence is determined by how many rounds it takes them to win the key battle. See the chart below.
When you go to war, you also engage in a key battle, and the amount of territory you gain is also determined by how many rounds it takes you to win it.
After a defence, you can redistribute five points of morale, economy, and defence (so for example, you could lose 2 economy and 3 military, and gain 5 morale).
After a war, roll a six sided die and subtract 3 from the value once each for your economy, defensibility, and morale. They gain/lose that value.

Rounds to Win,   Defence,   War
4>,   -0% Territory,   +50% Territory
4,   -10% Territory,   +40% Territory
5,   -20% Territory,   +30% Territory
6,   -30% Territory,   +20% Territory
7,   -40% Territory,   +10% Territory
8,   -50% Territory,   +0% Territory
9,   -60% Territory,   -10% Territory
9<,   -100% Territory,   -20% Territory

Opaopajr · July 18, 2013, 05:36:36 PM

They are surprisingly lenient about location of development of ideas. The only biggies is a differentiation of rpgs and storygames and the triumph of the notion that rpgs don't "make story" (writer simming) as live through experience, with retold experiences being the participants' creation of story for others' sake.

You're fine and you chose the appropriate forum well. Not as much passionate traffic, but there'll be more calm thought brought to bear.

I'm going to review your stuff within the spoiler tag (nice touch! way to know your forum tags!) and comment later. We might end up sharing similar design goals for our own campaigns.

Opaopajr · July 18, 2013, 05:59:29 PM

This is close to Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Europa Universalis in terms of numbers game.

Other rpg games focus on reality of taxation tables or military groups -- still an abstraction, naturally, but not an aggregation of the territory as a whole. Things are still fungible in the detail (e.g. GM deems the province has high defense by the northern gorge, but low defense by its western plains).

Here territory is essentially averaged to a singular gameable value, such as defense, economy, morale, terrain, etc. And then a lot of the game functions upon responding to such values. It's fine, but makes for a very different type of domain management game.

One of the advantges of rpgs is the ability to abandon the abstracted framework and engage in the details. Part of that is going to need a reason to alter provinces in their micro-values. Like, how and why to fortify the plains even though provincial defense is already high from the gorge. At the very least, there has to be a charm to 1st person play beyond negotiating the terms of ruling actions that adjust the big numbers.

This requires a disengagement of gaming the averaged values to create events. So, though I love your justifications of "low economy + high defense = coup", it will have to be very light sketch so as to allow an rpg motivation to go into 1st person and experience the world's detail. Otherwise you'll be creating a kingdom conquest strategy game in primary and overall sidelining or abandoning playing the role of an individual (regardless how powerful) which is often seen the heart and soul of rpgs.

Doccit · July 19, 2013, 01:02:28 AM

Hmm.

It has always been part of my design philosophy when building systems akin to this form scratch to create a simple framework for determining outcomes (hopefully, fair and representative ones) and allow the GM to justify those outcomes in the narrative, not to give people a billion dials to turn, because I feel like that limits the GM's ability to explain what was going on.

But at the same time, the 'billion dials' I hyperbolically described are designed not only to create fairness and representativeness in the outcome but to encourage the building of a really precise and detailed world.

In an ideal situation, all of that micromanaged stuff that goes unaccounted for is used to justify the outcomes. So what do you do with all that stone you tax from the mines? You build forts here here and here. Lets say the players win their key battle in an unexpectedly short amount of time. Why do they lose so little territory? Because their foreign invaders attacked in a gorge near one of the forts you built, and didn't get far. If it took them a long time, why did they lose so much? Because the invaders attacked from one of the places you didn't put a fort.

But realistically having the details of specific locations not matter might lead to them not being developed. And I do want the players to explore their world.

QuoteSo, though I love your justifications of "low economy + high defense = coup", it will have to be very light sketch so as to allow an rpg motivation to go into 1st person and experience the world's detail. Otherwise you'll be creating a kingdom conquest strategy game in primary and overall sidelining or abandoning playing the role of an individual (regardless how powerful) which is often seen the heart and soul of rpgs.

I'm afraid I don't know what you mean here.

I agree with you that 1st person experience is the heart and soul of rpgs. I feel like the obstacles require the players to go 1st person into the world to deal with problems with their skills, combat stats, and player skill as dungeon delvers, but perhaps that isn't enough.

I don't think I have to worry about creating a kingdom conquest strategy game in primary because the GM has to choose to give the players a state, having one isn't integral to the game and doesn't have to effect player progression, you can lose your state without dying, and when you do the game goes on.

Bloody Stupid Johnson · July 19, 2013, 02:21:33 AM

Interesting. I don't think the justification of too-high morale causing people to uprise because they think they can do better is consistent with some of the modifiers. For instance, you can stop an uprising due to morale overflow by levying an unpopular tax (-1-3 morale) whereas you'd expect this would, if anything, encourage revolt. I think it might be better off with open-ended scales, perhaps adding Territory as a fourth number so that shifts in that can be calculated more easily (e.g. sending explorers to somewhere might add Territory at an economic development cost).

It might also be good to work in some sorts of random tables for use with some edicts or situations, maybe including some events that need action from the PCs (Diplomatic mission to neighbouring kingdom, quell rebellion in province, etc).

Opaopajr · July 19, 2013, 07:17:47 AM

Basically avoid the fixity of mechanics over setting, to avoid "game state says X, now Y must happen, counter Y with Z next turn". You want them to engage the world more than the mechanics, lest setting becomes ignorable. A shift from managing accounting spreadsheets to managing personalities and issues helps.

Birthright does this by placing each location with 5 resource aspects, and a seat of power for each. Thus NPCs and PCs can have different overlapping domains. This naturally creates friction (or cooperation) during the process of management. Further it encourages adventure to deal with seasonal random events, delegation to help juggle the influx of events, and events are often couched as moments best benefitting a 1st person touch.

PF Ultimate Campaign does this by giving you a spread of court positions to fill, thus delegation and negotiation. There is less shared power struggles over provinces, thus you'd have to instigate friction. However, with more titles it seems so far to anticipate more incoming events. And it also gives a Sim City process to micromanage favorite urban locales. I'll be playing PF UC more soon so as to give you a better sense.

Doccit · July 19, 2013, 09:31:49 PM

I know a Bloody Stupid Johnson from The Kingdom Of Loathing. Have you played that game?

As for the criticism I take your point Opaopajr that this feels a little bit more like an optimization puzzle than an element of a role playing game, but I don't want to go in the direction of appointing people to a whole bunch of positions, especially because I am against doing stuff like "people are less likely to revolt if you have a high constitution". This system definitely needs to change though.

I think that I am going to get rid of pre-defined edicts and have the players just decide what they are going to do and declare in the world, and have the GM judge what effect it has on the game states. I'm also going to allow the players and GM to divide their territory up into provinces which can expand individually. I'm also going to have a seasonal rolling table full of things which can randomly alter your state/provinces, and have amenities make you immune to some of the effects on the table and add to them.

Or I might just scrap the whole thing and start from scratch. The thing I like most here is key battles. That is what I want to keep.

Opaopajr · July 19, 2013, 09:46:43 PM

No, don't scrap it! Refine what you want.

This is why we ask for advice and criticism, to talk through what we didn't realize was our design priorities.

If you want to avoid the push and pull of titles personalities, and delegation, you will likely focus more on direct event management, Sim City province land improvements, and mass combats.

Of those three I'd say mass combat sounds like your passion. Check out Adventurer Conqueror King and see if those mass combat rules float your boat.

Also, let's dig deeper into your campaign priorities. If you had to give a list of your 5 most desirable roleplaying game outcomes for this style of play, what would they be?

Doccit · July 20, 2013, 01:49:22 AM

Actually, I think direct event management is what I'm interested in. Mass combat in this game's isn't actually so massive. Basically all the player characters are magic users (about 1/500 people are), and magic users are way more powerful than everyone else. Armies are generally composed exclusively of magic dudes, and not many of them. 4-5 player characters is a force that is reasonable to conquer a small territory if it isn't particularly well defended.

Simulating mass combat I'm not super interested in. A system whereby how the players do in one combat is representative of how their military does in a war in general seems cool to me.

In terms of sim city micro managing though, players constructing buildings with private commercial purposes seems really odd to me. I mean, they spend the tax dollars building a general store and then just give it to some guy? Or does the government take all the profits? Running a totalitarian state is really damn demanding, and I don't think that is what most people want when playing an RPG, and yet there is call for every commercial activity that happens to be financed and controlled by the government.

I'm not entirely sure how to answer your last question, but what I want is...
- Players to be able to ignore complexity if they aren't interested in it
- Elements of randomness which force the players to solve problems creatively to help their state grow

I'm super sleepy. I'll refine these ideas in the morning.

Opaopajr · July 20, 2013, 07:32:25 AM

I should have given an example on how to answer my question, sorry!

i.e.
5. Have a player lead an army to battle and strategize upon a map various skirmishes, in a macro level. But roleplayed with HQ war room debates, switch viewpoint into messenger and scout missions, return to field general viewpoint calling out march orders to distant lieutenants, roleplay bivouac assassination attempt, suicide missions, and duels, etc.

Basically take mass battle and run 1st person through the eyes of several participants at various levels of participation.

(some don't like the idea of switching viewpoints to npcs, especially those with high chances of failure. some just pale at the thought of all that work and time. some might find it all needlessly melodramatic when statistically it may not mean much in territorial expansion. et cetera. but some may find it gaming gold.)

Doccit · July 24, 2013, 07:44:03 PM

Just to let you know I'm still thinking about this and refining a system. The last few days I've been putting the finishing touches on another game which I finished and released to tumblr. It still needs lots of editing mind you.

Anyway I've got a bunch of ideas that I'm putting together right now.

Opaopajr · July 25, 2013, 05:27:04 AM

Good! I look forward to it. I hope you find our forum's criticism constructive.