Another archive post? Shocking! Why would I do such a thing?
Because of my prep for Origins where I’ll be running Neo-Shinobi Vendetta and/or Magic,Inc. With that plug out of the way, let me explain why I picked this post.
...Because I’ve got a campaign or maybe just a game in my head. I’m not sure
how you'd do it or its full shape. Some of this comes from a
post I read on superhero domains, some from the Green Law of Varkith, and some
from flipping through James Iles’ Legacy: Life Among the Ruins. For this I imagine a huge fantasy city,
something like Abashan, Nochet, or Waterdeep. The players each run a faction within it. Those factions have a character sheet (or playbook) as well as a “face” acting as the player’s avatar. If we went with the classics you could run a merchant faction,
an element of the nobility, thieves guild, military power, independent bureaucracy,
city watch, sorcerer cabal, or other interest-unified gathering (ethnicity,
profession, other).
So that's pretty close to Varkith, which has a
Planescape-like faction system, but there the players have a shared faction (which makes sense). I’d like something that encourages
individual interests and agendas: closer to Urban Shadows. The player factions
compete against each other and NPC factions for influence, power, and their
particular desires. But there’s an additional semi-cooperative element to
this. They also have to deal with threats to the city as a whole from
conspiracies, ancient evils, and potentially occupying forces.
I’m pretty sure I’m reinventing the wheel here. I haven’t
looked around to see what new tools and games are available to handle this.
Kingdom comes to mind, one of my favorite games. But that has almost too much
abstraction. I want the factions as an element players can advance and develop. Legacy has
a lot of this but doesn’t quite click for me; I’m not sure why. I need to play it to grok what's going on there. (It also occurs
to me this whole thing- or rather some stripped down version- could be a fun way to do a
game about the different Houses from Ars Magica. So another tangent...)
Anyway, that’s why I dug up this old piece. It is out
of date. As before I’m leaving this 2010 post unedited and painfully
overwritten.
I like building games-- that is, I like games where the PCs build
a place for themselves. That might be literal in the case of establishing a fortress
outpost, or abstract in the sense of creating a fellowship. My campaigns repeat
some themes and structures; building alliances and communities comes up often. At
the climax, the players can win by bring together their allies. The PCs remain central,
but their earlier choices and effort allows them to exert the influence over a wide
range. They go from simply winning to winning big.
Accordingly I have a fondness for games which provide mechanics
for actions and ideas at that larger scale. Even though I'm a mechanics-lite person,
I love rules and systems. I scour games for how they handle these ideas. Usually
games which have these rules follow at least one of three structures:
- Rules for building communities which serve as a background element-- but have a mechanical effect.
- Rules for players controlling groups as leaders (nations, armies, bands, companies, cults, organizations, etc)
- Rules for playing those organizations as a form of “player-character”
Any input or suggestions for things I've missed is appreciated.
I'm sure a number of d20 supplements provide rules for handling
the creation and maintenance of a military or mercenary company, but I'll point
to just this one as an example. The game assumes that the players will take the
role of officers and members of a company. That's more a factor inherent in the
setting and campaign ideas than in the mechanics presented. The system does provide
some rules for recruitment, supply, company structure and the hazards of war (like
disease running amok in the camp). That actually takes up a rather slight section
of the book. Instead it focuses more on handling warfare at several scales and providing
the color and grit a GM needs to convey the idea of a military unit-based game.
This served as the inspiration for my own Planescape game. In that case they had two characters each and we spent
some time during sessions thinking about recruitment, divisions and organization.
John Wick returns to the samurai genre (having written Legend
of the Five Rings) with this adaptation of his Houses of the Blooded
system. Groups begin first by creating a clan for themselves, a collaborative process.
They define the daimyo, holdings, aspects and so on of their clan. This in turn
shapes bonuses and options for the PCs. It is a pretty simple and abstract system,
but I can imagine porting to other games and developing it further. One of the key
features for the game is that the players make up important people in the clan--
not the typical ho-hum samurai assigned to guarding a grain transport. PCs might
be military advisors to the clan, oversee the secret informers, or manage the estates
and holdings. From the beginning, the players invest in the community of their clan
through ownership and participation.
The game functions in stories told per season. Each season the
daimyo decides on season actions which can have effects on the clan as a whole--
increasing resources, involvement in political intrigue, preparation for war, and
so on. Officers of the clan also gain season actions. As the clan expands they gain
more possible actions. This system has a number of abstract sub-systems, including
the role of warfare. I like that the players have a say in moving the course of
their community. The system and mechanics presented here are abstract-- more of
a framework. Groups desiring more crunch or detail could easily add to this. I think
its a strong starting point for GMs thinking of how to handle these issues.
(ed. note: We did use some of this for my homebrew L5R campaign.)
In Ars Magica, the players serve as members of Covenants,
essentially magical households. The rules provide mechanics for how the household
is set up, what kinds of resources it provides, the character and tenor of activity
and so on. The center of most campaigns will be on the lives of these communities--
carving them out, developing them, setting an agenda and so on. Each Covenant is
in a “season,” describing how vital they are. A “Spring” covenant has life, youth
and idealism, while an “Autumn” covenant has begun to decay and becomes set in its
ways. The game provide for interactions between various covenants at regional gatherings
and Tribunals, but the play focuses on the building game magical life.
An ambitious failure as an rpg, in Aria the players played
nations, cultures and communities over time. Or at least they could-- that was supposed
to the the intent of game. But reading through you might find that hard to discover.
Aria came in two books Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth and Aria: Worlds. The main
book supplies a dense and over-written basic fantasy rpg, with some suggestions
on how you might run characters across several generations. These ideas seem sketchy
at best. When I say over-written, I mean it. Every single game term and idea which
could be given an obscure and pretentious name, has been. The basic book is huge
(500+ pages) for the little you actually get.
The second book of the pair, Aria Worlds has mechanics
for how to create a culture. Even with that as the focus of the whole book, the
options feel pretty minimal. As a resources book for world-building, it might be
useful. As a game to actually play out the interactions and history of those nations
in a campaign...I'm sorry “Canticle”...it doesn't hold together well.
I'm still working through Reign but at heart it seems
to do everything I'm interested in for handling groups and communities in games.
The system works with the generic idea of “companies” across levels. To handle those
it presents a set of rules which can be adapted to many games. Companies-- from
religious cults to cities to business franchises to mercenary groups-- have stats
and options. Player-level characters can interact and affect these companies. Companies
can even battle one another in an abstract fashion. The focus of the game can easily
shift— depending on whether the players are interested in their own actions within
the company or more the meta-level groups interacting. I'm going to steer away from
saying too much about this as I haven't had a chance to really wrestle with the
mechanics. Those who have used it seemed really pleased, so I suspect it has systems
which can be ported.
One of the lost settings of TSR, this one never caught on little
the others did. I suspect because the game itself was most concept than actual setting.
Few but the most die-hard could actually describe the details of the world of Aebrynis.
I will admit I have some fondness for one area, described in Cities of the Sun,
Khinasi a North African analogue.
The key concept behind the Birthright lay in players becoming
regents of areas-- with each area having a powerful bloodline magic which could
be captured and used. Those powers ran from the personal to the regional level.
This power, called Regency, separated the PCs and potent NPCs from the population.
The game included a system for expanding control, for actions on a multi-month scale
which mirrored the standard combat actions, for grand scale warfare and for rulership.
The emphasis lay on military considerations, but various expansions and optional
modules added more to statecraft and commanding a community. Later supplements expanded
the kinds of societies and ruler roles used. The setting has some great ideas, but
with real military bent (supplements included army cards, battlefield templates
and the like). It felt a little like someone had crossed Divine Right with
AD&D. The setting also never really managed to sell to players exactly
how a group would operate-- would they all be kings? What would the modules be like?
A rich and interesting failure.
This Ghostbusters-inspired rpg handles the idea of community
very loosely, In this case, it is the franchise which the players manage and run.
But that company earns its keep by fighting against the supernatural. Mechanically
each franchise has three aspects (Gym, Library and Credit Cards). Dice get divided
among these and they can be called on during the game as a resource. The tension
arises from the players trying to build up those dice and fighting against their
depletion. If the players run out of dice, they're forced to take a bank loan of
more dice. You end up with a light framing system for a fairly abstract game.
The second edition of HeroQuest converted the game to
a generic version. However some of the roots of its Gloranthan past can be seen
(beyond the bit of setting material in the back of the book). Glorantha as a setting
focuses on groups and communities-- they essentially define the characters and often
provide the frame for campaigns (especially for Orlanthi or Sartar games). Even
characters outside of conventional kinship or other groups have themselves defined
by that break. The Humakti Deathlord is a dangerous outsider not only because of
his god, but because he has split from the ties and support that help explain a
person.
HeroQuest abstracts many aspects. The system for community
construction has some nice details which make it portable over to other games. Each
community is defined by a set of abilities (Wealth, Military, Artistic Merit, etc).
The players or group may set these aspects at the beginning of the campaign and
assign them values. The abilities then provide a resource the players may draw upon
to aid them in the course of their adventures. They have to be careful not to deplete
or squander them, as there are consequences. The rules have guidelines for crisis
tests, bolstering community resources and other factors. All in all it presents
a decent (and simple) set of rules for GMs who want communities (of many types)
as a presence in their games but don't want a lot of book-keeping.
Weapons of the Gods has two approaches linking players to communities.
On the one hand, WotG “monetizes the setting” to use Ken Hite's description for
it. During character creation (and later) players can buy themselves destiny connections
with various groups, ideals, organizations, cults, and so on. At the lowest level
you're a member or have friends in something-- or even perhaps a rival or enemy.
At higher levels your destiny is tied in with the story of that group. In a sense
you can buy into the plots, stories and backgrounds of the setting. In many cases
this provides a measure of community connection and support. As executed it is both
a fascinating mechanism and obscurely presented mechanic. I had to have Hite give
me perspective on how it worked to get what was happening in the rules.
On the other hand, WoTG provides a system for grand-scale actions
and play called The Great Game. This shows up in the Weapons ofthe Gods Companion. The system can be used to work out wars, but includes
a component for shaping the destinies of regions, groups and kingdoms. Players can
increase resources, set agendas, and play out diplomatic conflict-- though abstractly.
The system assumes player management of a group or order-- such as a bandit rebellion
ala The Water Margin. But it could also be played out as a tool for figuring
out large-scale events in the game world.
This is an interesting supplement for Runequest II, Mongoose
Publishing's revision of the RQ system. The new version of the Empires supplement
seems to roll together information and ideas from the earlier Empires and Guilds, Factions &Cults supplements. I've looked at the previews and some reviews for this,
and it is on my list of things to pick up in the future. Empires strives
to provide rules for handling three levels. First, the rules can be used so that
abstractly players play nations or groups as characters. That's a pretty ambitious
project as we saw before with Aria. The rules suggest this might be done as a backdrop
or meta-game for a campaign. That's an intriguing idea. I can imagine almost having
a Play-By-Email or Forum game going on while the standard fantasy campaign would
be happening. Events from that might trickle down to the players-- it might be a
nice thing to combine with a mercenary company campaign frame...hmm...
The second level provides rules for characters who manage organizations
and estates. They're given a framework and system for resolving affairs, dealing
with conflicts and managing events. So I'd assume this would be more for later settled
characters-- though again I can imagine an interesting campaign frame coming from
this. Perhaps a Gormenghastian household of dueling administrators, seneshals, and
butlers. The characters could band together to chart the course of the castle's
affairs against rivals. The third level gives rules for building groups and organizations--
which seems to be what it takes from the earlier Guids, Factions, and Cults.
I like the idea of players being given access to these kinds of tools and letting
them chart the course. This uses Basic Role-Playing but I'm assuming could
be easily and generally adapted elsewhere.
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