Interstellar diplomatic game

[lambda]

Hi, I'm new here (not even much lurking, but I've read a few of the theory articles), and I've been having an idea kicking around in my head for a day or so. I'd like to sketch it out a bit, and see if anyone knows if anything similar has been done or has suggestions.

The premise is that the players are engaged in diplomatic efforts to stop from starting, or come to a peace agreement in, an interstellar war (or other types of interstellar diplomatic issues). Each player will create a civilization, based on the human race spreading out at sub-light speed between the stars, possibly with divergent evolution, and will create a character who represents a diplomatic envoy from that civilization. Different envoys will have different amounts of freedom to act or influence over their society, which influence their bargaining power; some may be the Emperor of their civilization, able to unilaterally decide what their civilization will do, while some are lowly functionaries who have to toe the party line. Furthermore, they will all be involved in politics, interpersonal relationships, and the like on the ship or space station they are meeting on, and will have varying amounts of influence in that realm. The GM will take the civilizations and characters created, and create conflicts and goals that the players are to resolve. Each player will control one character, and the GM will control the forces that the characters can't control; the leaders and populaces of the civilizations at home, NPCs on the ship/space station that the players are meeting on, and so on.

My goal is to have the story driven by the conflicts and cooperation of the characters based on their differing goals, and the goals of their civilization. The game should sort of feel like the situation in Babylon 5, but with unique cultures, characters, and settings, where ambassadors from different get together to try and solve the conflicts of their civilization, while also dealing with personal and local problems. I would like to introduce mechanics that involve some sort of resource management and possibly trading, but I'm not really sure about how that would work yet. This setup is influenced by Theatre Style LARP and Amber based Throne Wars (though instead of a single goal in a throne war, I would hope for each player to have several goals that may or may not be at odds with the goals of other players). The target audience for this game is players who have played lots of traditional, system heavy, we're all going to be an adventuring party going out on a quest manufactured by the GM, and introduce them to more character conflict driven types of games; I also hope that people with more experience in such games would like this as well. I hope that it will be appropriate both for one-shots and longer story arcs.

OK, that's what I have so far; just a bare concept and some hopes for what the game can become once I flesh it out. Now, for the questions I have for you:

1) Does this sound like an interesting game to you? Would you be interested in playing, or at least learning more, if you heard about the game described above? Which parts would grab you the most and which could you do without?

2) Are there already any games that do something substantially similar to what I describe? Are there games that do anything substantially similar to a major portion of what I describe? I'd like to know if I'm re-treading old ground, or if this game could do something new; or, if there are games that I may be able to learn from, either mistakes or successes.

3) Here's the fuzziest, most open ended question, that's basically what I'm trying to work out as I design this. What sorts of systems will give the feel that I'm looking for? I want tense, diplomatic negotiation, conflicting and supporting goals for the different players, a sense of having to make difficult moral trade-offs, and the like. What kinds of mechanics can you suggest that would support this? Should there be a detailed simulation of the military, economic, and cultural power of the different civilizations? Should people trade in abstract ideas of "influence" in different spheres? I'm not asking for a definite answer, but maybe suggestions, thoughts, pointers to examples of how other games achieve similar goals, and so on.

Thanks,
Brian

[MatrixGamer]

Brian

Thanks for posting!

You have a very ambitious project in mind. On one hand you want players to create a variety of interstellar cultures. You want these cultures to be able to interact in some kind of economic game. That suggests military game interactions as well. That alone is a lot. Next you want to create characters from these different cultures and bring them together in a party to do adventures that the GM makes up from the conflicts presented in the big picture game. Am I right in these assumptions?

There are certainly boardgames that cover star empire interactions. I used to play one called "Star Fall" back in the late 70's but there are lots of others. Cosmic Encounter is another old classic of that genre. What I've not seen a boardgame do though is do the civilization culture creation part. That seems more up the line of what Engle Matrix Games and Univesalis do.

EMG's are my creation so I'm most familiar with them. I made them to do exactly what you're describing - role playing entire countries. The idea is that the world/worlds are described by a matrix of information (kind of like a tourist brochure - just the main points). As the game is played this information is added to and transformed. Each turn a player makes an argument for what they want to have happen next. Another player acts as referee and decides what the player has to roll for it to happen. The first player rolls and it either happens or doesn't. If it does then it is added to the matrix. Players can jump in with counter-arguments leading to dice rolling competitions so there is player interaction within argument making. Players may also stop at any time and do little improv role plays between themselves.

The matrix can focus on pretty much anything you want but for your games purposes I'd suggest there be a box in the matrix that sums up a countries economic system in a single line, another line that sums up their political system, another few lines that describe their most important cultural institutions. Then have cultures spar with one another over a set number of relationships (such as: tributary, colony, partner, junior partner, enemy, tense peace, etc.) You can make up the list and add to it as the game is played. It exists to help players imagine what to do in the game. This will give you a short digestible description of worlds that players can then use in their arguments. - I don't see this as interesting a rules heavy player though because the rules of play are very simple. What is complicated is learning about all the planets.

Universalis on the other hand has players narrate a story and build a world without arguments or a game master. Instead players bid for control of the narration as they play. Check out the Universalis web page for more detail.

Switching from a high level of play - like above - to a personal level - like a Lord of the Rings adventure party - is tough. It is probably best to separate this into different play sessions. Rather than having the GM make up the characters and adventures, you might try having the players negotiate with one another about who they think would come together in a part. Do a Matrix Game or Uni game of the back story of each character where everyone is a part of that character's brain. That way everyone is invested in all the characters. Also have players come up with suggestions about what kind of weird things are going on in the world. Then use that as the core of the adventures. It shares out some of the power of setting up the game that is kind to the GM and also can increase player's commitment to the campaign.

Your post touches on but doesn't explicitly say you are using relationship maps. I hope you are. It is a very solid technique to run a narrativist game. Basically it consists of a page with the key NPCs names on it and some notation of how they relate (who are enemies, friends, relatives etc.) As players do stuff it helps show what NPCs will do in responce.

You are at the start of a big project. Everything I've said here can be completely ignored if it doesn't help. There is no one right way to do it. Right now it is too vague to tell if it has any marketability. It's too soon to think about stuff like that anyway. First enjoy the process of creation!

Good luck!

Chris Engle

[lambda]

Thanks for posting!

Thanks for replying!

You have a very ambitious project in mind. On one hand you want players to create a variety of interstellar cultures. You want these cultures to be able to interact in some kind of economic game. That suggests military game interactions as well. That alone is a lot. Next you want to create characters from these different cultures and bring them together in a party to do adventures that the GM makes up from the conflicts presented in the big picture game. Am I right in these assumptions?

Yes, this is an ambitious project, but I'm perfectly willing to scale it back to something manageable and then build up the rest if I feel it will still add to what I have. What I'm thinking about is starting by doing a one-shot where the characters and civilizations are already created, and where all of the goals are things that can be resolved in a session or two. Then I can see what sorts of things provided interesting interactions and what didn't, and try and make the character and civilization creation process emphasize those kinds of things.

You are right in some of your assumptions. I do see economic and military interactions between the cultures as being important, though I'm not yet sure at what level of abstraction I want them. I don't necessarily want to have detailed simulations of "the Denebians attack with 3 capital ships at Tau Ceti," but perhaps just something along the lines of "I spend 3 points of military to take your 1 point research and 1 point economic base," and let the players and GM fill in the details of how to narrate that. Or possibly even leave these things beyond the player's control; after all, they're only ambassadors, and they may have to deal with the repercussions of their leaders doing something they didn't anticipate.

Also, I don't want the standard "get a party together and have them go on adventures" kind of structure. I want the conflict and drama to be based on interlocking goals between the players. Each of the players creates a civilization and character, and the GM weaves all of them together into an interlocking mesh of politics and intrigue. For example, say we have Bill, with his culture the Taucetians, a peaceful culture which does an awful lot of academic and scientific research, along with his character Tenar, an aimlessly wandering son of a wealthy family who's trying to get some focus by being a civil servant. Sue creates the Denebians, a wild, hedonistic, and warlike culture, along with her character Zenka, an heiress to a Count of one of the Denebian planets. Now, when Bill created his character, he chose an unrequited love trait, while Sue has a sordid history trait. Of course, in a real game, there would be at least one or two more characters to make things more interesting. The GM takes these cultures and characters, and weaves them together in an interesting way. He might make Bill's unrequited be for Zenka, Zenka's history be that she killed the former captain of the ship they're on in a lover's rage (which one of the lieutenants knows about, but won't tell because he was bribed), and then have a research group from Tau Ceti accidentally wander into the system of a top-secret Denebian military base, who captures it and threatens to attack due to the "spying" they think Tau Ceti was doing to them. So, Tenar's goals are to court Zenka, while also diffusing the diplomatic situation and getting the Denebians to release their astrophysicists, while Zenka's goals are to cover up her past (which may be starting to leak out) and at the same time get some form of payback for the affront to her culture's honor.

So, not a traditional adventure at all, but much more of what you see in Theatre Style LARPs, where each character has interlocking goals and plots that they need to resolve, sometimes in conflict and sometimes in cooperation with the other characters.

EMG's are my creation so I'm most familiar with them. I made them to do exactly what you're describing - role playing entire countries. The idea is that the world/worlds are described by a matrix of information (kind of like a tourist brochure - just the main points). As the game is played this information is added to and transformed. Each turn a player makes an argument for what they want to have happen next. Another player acts as referee and decides what the player has to roll for it to happen. The first player rolls and it either happens or doesn't. If it does then it is added to the matrix. Players can jump in with counter-arguments leading to dice rolling competitions so there is player interaction within argument making. Players may also stop at any time and do little improv role plays between themselves.

The matrix can focus on pretty much anything you want but for your games purposes I'd suggest there be a box in the matrix that sums up a countries economic system in a single line, another line that sums up their political system, another few lines that describe their most important cultural institutions. Then have cultures spar with one another over a set number of relationships (such as: tributary, colony, partner, junior partner, enemy, tense peace, etc.) You can make up the list and add to it as the game is played. It exists to help players imagine what to do in the game. This will give you a short digestible description of worlds that players can then use in their arguments. - I don't see this as interesting a rules heavy player though because the rules of play are very simple. What is complicated is learning about all the planets.

Hmm, interesting. I was thinking that each culture would be, essentially, the creation of one player, and then controlled by the player and/or GM depending on how much influence that player had over the culture. I will have to take a look at your Matrix Games and see if I like the ideas there. Thanks for the pointer!

Universalis on the other hand has players narrate a story and build a world without arguments or a game master. Instead players bid for control of the narration as they play. Check out the Universalis web page for more detail.

I've heard of Universalis, but that's not quite the sort of thing that I want. I do want there to be a stronger identification between the players and characters than you get in Universalis.

Switching from a high level of play - like above - to a personal level - like a Lord of the Rings adventure party - is tough. It is probably best to separate this into different play sessions. Rather than having the GM make up the characters and adventures, you might try having the players negotiate with one another about who they think would come together in a part. Do a Matrix Game or Uni game of the back story of each character where everyone is a part of that character's brain. That way everyone is invested in all the characters. Also have players come up with suggestions about what kind of weird things are going on in the world. Then use that as the core of the adventures. It shares out some of the power of setting up the game that is kind to the GM and also can increase player's commitment to the campaign.

The idea of having culture creation and play be two separate phases of the game is interesting. Actually, I was thinking of possibly doing part of the culture and character creation as a sort of Amber style auction; each player can bid on different advantages, stats, technologies, and so on that their culture has, as well as things like how much influence they have over their cultures. Once they have that done, they each go and do some further creation with the GM in secret, buying non-exclusive traits and fleshing out the details of their culture and character based on the framework they've already created.

I do want this to be more open to player driven creation of the setting and situations than your typical game, but still allow the GM to be the one who really ties it together. I want there to be able to be secrets that the players themselves don't know, and a strong identification between the player and their character, so having all of the situations be suggested by the players isn't quite right (although the situations will be strongly influenced by their design, since the GM will create the situations by weaving together the players and cultures into a big intricate plot that's based on the goals, strengths, and weaknesses of the players).

Your post touches on but doesn't explicitly say you are using relationship maps. I hope you are. It is a very solid technique to run a narrativist game. Basically it consists of a page with the key NPCs names on it and some notation of how they relate (who are enemies, friends, relatives etc.) As players do stuff it helps show what NPCs will do in responce.

This sounds like it could be a fruitful idea. Do you have any references to existing systems for this sort of thing?

You are at the start of a big project. Everything I've said here can be completely ignored if it doesn't help. There is no one right way to do it. Right now it is too vague to tell if it has any marketability. It's too soon to think about stuff like that anyway. First enjoy the process of creation!

Thanks for your suggestions! I'm well aware that I can ignore or use what you suggest as I see fit. I'm just looking for brainstorming and more ideas at this point; this is a very early idea, and so I want to know what parts sound interesting, what's too ambitious, etc.

Good luck!

Chris Engle

Thank you!
-- Brian

[MatrixGamer]

The game "Dogs of the Vinyard" uses a relationship map as a central mechanism. If you start a thread asking about relationship maps the experts will certainly explain it better than I can.

I like the idea of creating a very simple economic system that players can play with. You set up rules and let their playing find the equlibriums. Somehow it should connect back to the societies they create but I'm not certain how.

You mention traits refering both to characters and cultures. As I read I could see the tourist brochure - filled with short descriptions of things/traits. The factoid approach.

"Sirus Major is the seat of the Sirius Start Empire. In the last thirty years they have established dominion over all their neighbors.

Economy: 2
Military: 5
Culture: 1
Science: 3

Come visit the Mountains of Mars! Breath the healthy sulfer air.
The Serious Ship yards are the largest orbital facility known.
The X95 Star Cruiser has never been beaten in battle.
Last year Dr. Albert Singh won the Nobel prize for physics."

It doesn't dictate what must happen but does allow the easy access of information that could be crafted into a story. An X95 is in the ship yard. The doctor knows something and somehow action will go to those mountains.

Chris Engle