My game called GUILDS

[OddballE]

Here is an overview of my game called GUILDS. 

You are a member of a guild in the great human city of Council Bluffs 1 year after a revolution gone badly.  There are too many guilds, no king, very few nobles, and an inexperienced council making the rules.  Your goal is to doing anything possible to get higher reputation within the city of Council Bluffs.  A higher reputation means you can get away with more.  You are 1 guild in a city of 400 guilds.  You and your guild now have to make a name for itself in the city competing with other guilds.  You can try to take out other guilds, do random jobs for people or the city, or various other things to gain reputation.  If you climb the ranks to fast others might try to bring you down.  Also only guilds with a rank of 85 or higher may apply to be on the council.

The game starts 1 year after a revolution gone bad.  The council (made up of guilds with a reputation of 85 or higher) of the city Council Bluffs was in charge of making laws and having them approved by the nobles and king.  Over the years the council stopped asking the nobles and the king.  The council also started making it very hard to become a legal guild in the city and placed there own guilds on top of the social chain.  The council got greedy and started passing laws to increase their own pockets.  They raised taxes so even some of the most profitable guilds had a hard time paying.  When the nobles and the king had enough they had word spread that the council would be disbanded and the people of Council Bluffs cheered.  The council never got disbanded because the king and all of his heirs were killed in the night.  The nobles who wanted to disband the council were also killed.  There was no proof that the council did it but most people thought they did.  The people and the guilds of Council Bluffs had enough and revolted against the council.  The council was wiped out and there guilds as well.  Then the people went after the nobles that supported the council.  When this was all done new guilds were chosen to be on the council.  Trying to win the favor of they city the council declared that no guild need to be approved.  Within months the guilds in the city had risen to 600 guilds and the blood spilt soon after.  The guilds starting fighting each other to wipe out the competition and it got carried away and into the public streets.  The caravans were also attacked causing strain on alliances with other races.  Some order came about 9 months after the revolution that followed and the council put in laws to try to stop the fighting and bring the city to peace. 

GUILDS uses 3 D12 for its dice system.  When rolling for skills you roll your 3D12 and add that to your skill + sub attribute total.  There are 7 main attributes and every main attribute has 2 sub attributes.  The sub attributes are used to increase the main attribute and for skills.  The main attribute covers bonuses you might get and are used in charts. 
Damage is set for every weapon in the game, plus or minus any strength bonus you might get.  Damage is broken down into locations, which there are 6 of:

Head
Torso
Left arm
Right arm
Left leg
Right Leg
Each location has a set number of hit points, and once the hit points are gone that location is useless or you are dead.  You can do a called shot for a penalty and if you succeed at the called shot then you do double damage.  Magic uses charts to create spells.  There are known spells but every spell can be modified to a new spell.  Every one and every thing is magical in GUILDS.  There are 7 charts and out of the 7 charts you must use at least 4 charts to cast your spell.  You pick the effect you want for each chart and total up the number value of each chart.  When you come up with a total then that is your target number.

Reputation is the most important thing to any person or guild in the game.  If a person or guild has a low enough reputation they are not counted as a person or guild, so therefore the rules that protect people do not apply to them.  This means that with a low enough reputation you can be killed in the middle of the street and on one will help neither you nor any penalty done to the party that killed you.  So as a way to keep a track of how well someone is doing whenever a guild is assigned to a mission a magical ball is sent with them to keep record of what happens.  The customer can then look at the ball and see if they did a good job.  If they did he will spread good things about your guild and if you do things wrong they can say not so nice things about you.  The council can also look at these balls and see for review for your official city reputation.  If you are doing a raid on another guild the guild master can send one along with the guild to see if they missed anyone or how the guild did.  The penalty for getting caught committing a crime is high, not only do you lose reputation for you and your guild you will have to pay a fine, or maybe jail time.  In some cases death is the answer.  When we talk about jail we do not mean a normal jail, you are sent to another realm for your time and if you are still alive at the end you may come back home.  If they cannot find you when judgment is past then a bounty is sent out to all guilds and they do not have to bring you back alive. 

Experience is broken down into 2 sections: Guild experience (GXP) or personal experience (PXP).  With guild experience you can raise your personal reputation, your guild, status, or your guilds reputation.  With personal experience you can raise you personal reputation, skill, sub attribute, add or subtract bonus or flaws, and add weapon styles.  Only half of any XP amount you get can go into 1 thing at a time.  You choose where to put the experience either into GXP or PXP.  When experience is handed out reputation should also be handed out.  If you succeed at your task then you should get 1 or 2 points of reputation.  If you fail then your should lose 1 or 2 points of reputation. 

When we start to sell this game there will be a section on the website (Not built yet) that will have local people looking for guilds for jobs.  It will list what they are paying, what the job is, and about how much reputation your guild will gain form each job.  It will also have a Council Bluffs newsletter that will have what has happened in the last couple of weeks.  If you sent in your story of what job you did or what guild you wiped out and how you did it you could in up in the newsletter as part of what happened.  This is so time can pass in the game but people can see events that are happening like a real city.

The game mechanics are down pretty well. The biggest problem I am having is with the rules for guilds.  Creating your own guild is like creating a character in a way.  You have 45 points to spend among several different areas.  What we are having trouble coming up with is systems to handle the guilds and how reputation should be handled and how to enforce the rules in a system.

[Adam Dray]

Impressions:

Hey, cool! It's really focused on the Guild play now! Excellent. I can see how you're really refining your ideas and presenting them in a better way each time you post.

Second paragraph ("You are a member of a guild...") really tells me a lot about the game, and that's great. Some quibbles with it though. "Get[ting] away with more" isn't an exciting goal to me. It seems that you want your guild to be powerful (reputable) so that it can control the council. Why do you want to control the council? Some reasons might be: to get filthy rich by changing the city's laws, to make the city a better place to live through progressive rulership, to defeat a foreign enemy that threatens the city. Essentially, what powers do guilds on the council have that guilds not on the council do not? "Get away with more" doesn't really give me anything to work with.

Third paragraph is a big setting dump. After reading it once, I did not like it; I felt that it was all exciting action that would have been better served as the stuff the players do. After reading it again, I have changed my mind. The setting information explains the flavor of the game and gives me a good idea about the kinds of things that could go on in the game: passing laws, raising taxes, kingmaking, riots and insurrection against the oppressive guilds, nobles reclaiming their power, interguild fighting ("Gangs of New York" style).

Now the rules. Why 3d12? Is a 3-36 bell curve essential to your system? Can you quickly add 8 + 11 + 6 + 4 + 2, as your rules might require?  Numbers could fairly easily reach 40+. You don't mention how you use that number, either? I assume it's compared to a Target Number of some sort?  How are TNs determined?

Then you launch into the damage system and it sounds like D&D with hit locations. That might be fine. I dunno. Do you want your game to feel like D&D? If so, you lost me way back in the second paragraph. None of that sounded like personal combat asskicking to me. In fact, all the combat I can imagine in your game involves one group of people against another -- not personal combat. How important will one-on-one fighting be when you have an entire guild to back you? 

What kind of guilds are we talking about here, anyway? Like traditional guilds for the Limners and the Chandlers and the Cartwrights and the Silversmiths and the Teamsters? or D&D-style fantasy guilds like the Fighters Guild and the Mages Guild? or basically sanctioned, organized crime organizations? or World of Warcraft-style guilds (essentially just groups of adventurers banding together for quests)? I suspect you've been playing a whole lot of a certain MMORPG and you're translating its ideas to the tabletop, no? Your jail concept strongly suggests a multiplayer computer game solution.

If you want it to be traditional guilds, you might want to do some historical research on guilds and unions to understand the forces behind their creation. I suspect that the chaotic setting you've explained here wouldn't easily support hundreds of guildlike entities. But don't let that stop you; this is a fantasy game, right?

If you want to use MMORPG-style guilds, better say that up front. Define what a guild means, since it is what your game is all about.

"Reputation is the most important thing to any person or guild in the game." Yet you wrote about it AFTER combat. ;)

Does each player have his own guild or are all the players from the same guild? If they're all in the same guild, who is the guild leader? Is it some NPC or is it one of the PCs?

Regarding rules for creating guilds, think of a guild like a character. What are the important attributes to model for a guild? Those attributes should align with the things that guilds, as entities, DO. What can a guild DO? What rules will you write to help players understand how to do things with their guilds. "Hey, if we raise our guild's Strength to 25, we can use the Pressure Legal Official power for 5 GXP a shot!" "Damn! That other guild is attacking our territory. We get a Defense roll, right?" A structured play example (see the sticky at the top of this forum) would help you a lot here.

[Josh Roby]

Hey John, are you using the term 'guild' in the historical sense as in, say, medieval and renaissance London, or in a more RPG-centric sense of 'band of adventurers working together'?

[OddballE]

When the term guild is used it is not a historical guild or union nor is it a MMORG either.  I came up with this idea long berfore I heard about WOW.  A guild is a group of people with somewhat Similar goals.  There are some guilds that will be run more like a historical guild and some like a fantasy guild.  For example Bob starts a guild and decides he wants nothing but fighters and mages so he can go out and andventure and gain rep that way, while john will let no one in but crimals so he can take down other guilds.  The main point of a guild is to get whatever your main goal done in the easiest was.  If you want to take down other guilds you would want to hire all sorts of people with different backgounds and if you just wanted a party to go out and kill stuff you would want mainly fighters.  I hope this helps a little.

Now I am going to try to answer a few of the other questions and if I miss some please re post so I can get to it.  As far as the order goes I just put stuff down as I remembered it so there is no real order to the post.

Personal combat is very imporrtant because if you can not hold your own in a fight then guilds may not want you or you will not live very long.  Also depending on the size of your guild or where you are you might have the protection of your guild.  In playtest we found that more fights happened one on one more than in guild fighting or smal groups like 2 on 2.  The reason we went with the D&D feel is because with this game combat for the most part will not last more than 4 rounds.  4 rounds was our average the longest lasted 6 rounds and our shortest 2 rounds.  You can drop the biggest guy with the most hit points and armor in 2 rounds in a one on one fight.  Because of our called shot rules and the hits equal to the damage combat is quick.  We went the the hit points and locations because out of everything we came up with this seems to work best with the game and the combat. 

We choose the 3D12 becasue it is something different from the normal and because it is easy to add up.  When we came up with this we knew that the numbers would go well into the 40's and in fact have made a point about that in the rules.  The numbers are used on 2 ways.  Opposed actions which you are putting your skill against other people skills.  Whith this method you total goes against the other persons total, if you beat theres then you win and if you get lower you lose.  Ties go the defender.  The other way is non-opposed actions in which you have a target number to beat.  The TN are done by the GM with the help of the players to come up with a good TN for the right time.

As far as who is apart of which guild that will be left up to the players and the GM.  Every player could be from the same guild with a player as the guild master or each player could be from a diffrtent guild joining in a alliance for a certin job or fight.  This part is left open so there is more options to the GM and players.

[unheilig studios]

so... its Dungeons and Dragons.

Groups of Adventurers work against other groups in a largely lawless society.

except you use 3d12 instead of d20.

It would be vastly more interesting if it concentrated more on Historical Guilds, then it might provide a gaming experience a bit different than the usual fare. Its also a little troubling that you only had two paragraphs to say about your game before we were talking about hit locations.

but that's just me.

[Josh Roby]

In John's defense, even a DnD clone that had some solid interparty and intraparty rules would be interesting to see.  Nothing wrong with generic fantasy, after all.

[Graham W]

John,

I like the idea of exploring guilds. I actually have a lot of questions so, if you don't mind, I'll just type them all and you can answer the ones you're interested in.

If the party is made up of people from different parties, what's their reason for going on an adventure together? If it's a group of thieves going off together to rob a house, I can understand it. But if it's a fighter and a thief and a stonemason, I'm not sure what keeps them together.

Do the player characters start their own guild or join an existing guild? If they join existing guilds, are they each given duties from their guilds? Do these duties all combine together to form an adventure in some way?

It sounds to me as though there's a major theme of guild rivalry in the game and I like that a lot. Does that come out during play? Do the players have to work against each other in some way? Do they have to sabotage a rival guild?

What sort of guilds are we talking about? Are they the traditional fighters and thieves guilds? Or might there be a surgeons guild, a stonemasons guild, a fishmongers guild, etc?

And you might have answered these questions in a previous thread, but I'd like to know the answers to the traditional Forge questions: what is the game about? What do the players do? What do the characters do?

Feel free to answer any of those you feel like and ignore the others. Good luck with it.

Graham

[OddballE]

Lets see if I can answer thses questions.

If a group of people lets use the example fighter and a thief and a stonemason were in the same guild and the guild master took a job for the guild to go and uncover a chest for a customer then he would choose the party which happens to be a fighter and a thief and a stonemason.  The jobs that the guilds take whatever they might be should be what keeps the group togeather.  As far as the group being apart of different guilds then the simple answer is allies.  Every guild have allies they call upon when they need help.  If a guild was planing a raid on another guild and did not have all the skills needed they would go and ask one of there allies to help.  In return the allies could then ask for a favor of your people.  So the party would stick together because the guildmasters of the allied house need things done.

People can start there own guilds, join and existing guild, or have the GM make a guild for everyone.  Every player may be apart of a different guild if they wanted. 

As far as guild rivalry goes yes people should try to sabotage another guild if they can.  Because there is no open fighting among the guilds in the public streets things have to be done behind the sceens so to speak.  If you can make your guild look better while making another guild look bad then go for it.  Just be careful not to anger the wrong people if they are trying to help.  The players and characters should know the fine line between hurting another guilds rep and hurting themselfs or doing the sabotage at the wrong time.

As far as what types of guilds there are we are not talking about fighters guilds and the such.  Guilds are a group of people after a common goal.  For example when you create your goal you decide that you want to take out other guilds then you want many different kinds of people in your guild.  You want fighters, theives, mages, scouts, ECT.  You want people to cover all parts of what you need to get done.  If you want to create a guild to go out and adventure then you will most likely have mostly fighters.  The type of guild will be up to the person creating the guild. 

When you join or create a guild you are givin a role and rank in that guild.  Your role is like your job for that guild.  The guildmaster tells you what you need to do or who you need to work with to get a job done.  Most of this will be done in guild creation (which covers more than just creating guilds). 

As far as this being like D&D yes it is somewhat like D&D.  I think every game is in some form like D&D.  You get your party togeather and do whatever you are doing.  I do not think any RPG can get away from that.  As far the the small amount of paragraphs I have before hit locations I was trying to do a short summery of the game and may not have expanded on things enough.  The society is not lawless just the guilds part.  Most of the rest of the society has laws are are being followed.  It is just the guilds which is what the players are apart of that is having troubles.

[OddballE]

This post is about guild and personal intimidation.  Your guild and personal reputation relates to how much people respect, fear, or laugh at you.  to show this in the game we have decided to add bonuses or penalties to a intimidation roll.  The intimidation rolls can be used to make people fear you or your guild or to get them down so you can take them out easier.  All intimidation rolls will go off of your intimidation skill.  With guild intimidation you must have a total of 3 guild members there to make a roll.  The higest ranking member makes the roll because they will be the most important person.  If everyone is of equal level then the person with the highest personal reputation rolls.  If you succeed at the roll the guild you are trying to intimidate gets a -4 penalty for 1 day.  This will affect the whole guild you try to intimidate.  If the guild loses the reason to be intimidated like you pick a fight with them and you lose then the effects are gone and they are no longer intimidated by your guild.  When using your personal reputation you a affecting a few people and everyone you are trying to affect gets a roll.  With personal intimidation this affect will also last for 1 day.  You can use the intimidation to move in on others turf, influence others around your area, or even try to get out of a fight.  There are many ways to use your reputation for intimidation.