Pyron and the Galactic Frenzy

[Eric J.]

Alright, I admit it.  I play computer games.  If you've ever played Star control, or Master of Orion you know what I'm talking about.

No?  Well let's try this: Age of Empires

Command and Conquer?

Starcraft?

Come on.  Someone must have played Starcraft.

Warcraft?

Hm... now the big guns.

Risk.

If you haven't played risk, here's something that kindof fits: Chainmail.

Okay THERE all the hands shoot up.

Anyway, I had an idea the other night for a cool game (assuming that it doesn't exist already).

It's a roleplaying game just like any other.  However, the setup is for Galactic Empires.  Each player is given a set of points.

750 Galactic Points (GP)
750 Personell Points (PP)
750 Character Points (CP)
1500 Anything Points (AP)

With that, the players allie together and create empires bent on conquering eachother one way or another.  That empire can be a Theocracy, a smuggling empire, a cult, or whatever.

In any case, after the empire's established, the players each get a highly powerful high ranking PC who they essentially play.  They can be used for diplomacy missions, inspiring their troops, commanding their ships, or going on field missions.

The play is dominated by a Gamist/Simulationism Goal.  You want YOUR empire to win.  Spy on the other players. Consort with the GM.  As long as the GM's fair, it's all cool.

So does anyone:

Know of any previous examples of like RPGs?
Think this could work?
Anticipate any obvious problems?
Postulate that maybe this is a cool idea?
Want me to examine any issue further?

[Nathan P.]

This is something I've been thinking about delving into, actually. At the very least, I have some notes tucked away on my hard drive...

Essentially, I would like to explore the notion of character as something other than a person, or even multiple people. Ideally, each player's character is a Nation, with all that that entails. There would be mechanics for diplomacy, war, resource extraction and exploitation, political and economic systems, citizen happiness, city growth, border drawing and expansion, etc.

So I guess I'm chiming in with a "cool idea" and "examine the idea further". The potential problem I'm seeing, and having some issues with myself, is paradigm shift. How do you get a player to identify with something as amorphous and large as a country in the same way he does with a standard character? How do you make the experience not feel like a boardgame without the board? Stuff like that.

Admittedly, this is pretty low on my priority list (4th one down, actually), but I wouldn't mind talking about it some at all.

[Eric J.]

That's what I started out as.  I eventually figured that you can't.  And even if you do, it becomes a war game.  How do you keep track of your forces?  Are you an omnicient emporer?

It becomes a war game instead of an RPG.  I had it set up in the beginning as 3PCs but I figured that if 3, why not the whole empire?  And if it's the whole empire, how's it roleplaying?

So I decided to get them to care about the empire by making it a part of the fundamental premise.

May the wind be always at your back,
-Pyron

[simon_hibbs]

Yep, it's a wargame. The roleplaying element is incidental. There's a shared imagined space, and theer are characters, and you're playign one, but your primary method for interacting with the game world (SIS is not through controlling the actions of your character. It's trought shuffling around 'Empire Points' and controlling the movements of space fleets.

If you did these things by roleplaying them through, i.e. actucaly play your character talking to generals and engaging in conversations with ministers of economics, then in my book it would be a roleplaying game. In fact many LARP/freeform games involve this kind of stuff with players takig the roles of ministers and generals. However that would simply be impractical and unnecessery for this kind of game since the players are all on different sides, so your interaction with the SIS would not be primarily through the controll of your character.


Simon Hibbs

[Nathan P.]

What about anthropomorphizing?

Say, on the character sheet, you have stats like Strength, Consitution, Intelligence, etc.

In-game reality, when you roll on Strength, its your armys surging forth, a failed Consitution roll means your network of hospitals and disease control centers can't get the vaccine for a new plague to citizens in time, etc.

What if you play in multiple phases, with one being the "person" phase, and the next being the "translation" phase, where you turn all the results from the "person" phase into in-game effects.

Another idea - what about a scalable character, where at the individual level he's a president or general or whatever, at the next level up he's a component entity of some kind (like a city, an army), and the next level up he's the whole nation. So you kind of zoom from one level to another, depending on what you want to play.

Thoughts?

[xiombarg]

Also, a lot depends on how it's mediated. I mean, if you have a GM mediating it, or something more story-based making decisions (like, say, Coins in Universalis), it would partake of the freeform and flexible nature of roleplaying, enough to at least put it on the borderline.

Of course, you're skating close to free kriegspiel...

[Ben Morgan]

What about anthropomorphizing?

Say, on the character sheet, you have stats like Strength, Consitution, Intelligence, etc.

In-game reality, when you roll on Strength, its your armys surging forth, a failed Consitution roll means your network of hospitals and disease control centers can't get the vaccine for a new plague to citizens in time, etc.

This would tie in very nicely to the concept of the empire and the emperor being linked. Sort of like how the 'health' of Camelot was linked directly with the health of King Arthur.

-- Ben

[Vaxalon]

I have a set of rules like this that I work on when I'm feeling masochistic.  A tabletop game where you play the organization, rather than individuals.

It has been a hard slog getting it to anything even close to what I want.

[Kaare Berg]

Wouldn't this thing be doable with a HQ like system?

Eric,

IMO you need to define where the focus will be, will it be on the rulers themselves( the PC) or on their subjects (the empire).

I think I know where you are going with this but i'm not sure.

K

[Eric J.]

I think that the focus will be on the PC and the empires.  Each player takes part in the construction of his or her own empire and domination is a part of the premise so I think they'll come to identify with their ideals and stuff.

The only means that the PCs have to control their empire, however, is their PC.  It's just like any traditional RPG except that the players are part of an empire creation system pre-game and the focus is on empire battles.  They'll play a higher-up who's trying to gain power.

I gave them the unique option of giving them a variable amount of points to work with.  They can spend their Optional 1500 points on their PC, their forces, or their starships.  They can build the greatest Starfleet for their character to command, or make the scariest assassin conceivable.

I've told them that the focus is on winning for their empire and for themselves, personally.  Of course, the only way they have of interacting with the game is with their 1 PC.

Here's a question that this brings up: What's the difference between having multiple PCs and wargaming?

May the wind be always at your back,
-Pyron

[Nathan P.]

First thought that comes into my head is that wargaming is explicity OOC - that is, part of playing the game is relying on the players personal knowledge of the game, and of the tactics and strategies that produce the results they want.

One player with multiple characters, on the other hand, approaches the game from a variety of IC perspectives, depending on the character being played.

I don't know how well, if at all, this translates into GNS-speak, but that's the distinction I make - on some level, in an RPG, a player is obligated to approach situations from the perspective of their character/s. While this is an option with some wargames (building an army by theme, as opposed to by whats most effective to take, for instance), it is by no means required or even expected.

To bring this back to nation-as-character, an RPG with nations as characters would necessitate that players approach in-game situations from the perspective of their nation-character, as opposed to on a strategic level. Whats in the best interests of the nation-character, as perceived by itself?

[Kaare Berg]

Natan P answered your question admirably. so let me expand upon this.

So what you are doing is baisicly giving them extended resources in the shape of an empire?

And you are looking for a way to mechanically handle this while playing a role-playing game and not a wargame?

If so let me suggest that you use some sort of extended conflict.
let me illustrate my thinking:
Player A makes a move to capture the important planet Goal 1, Player B tries to oppose A.
Player A announces that his psi-troops are infiltrating the planet Goal 1, at rating X. B narrates how he set his space-smugglers into action trying to hep the natives of Goal 1, the smugglers have rating Y.

A rolls against X while B rolls agains his Y and their results are compared. The loosers rating/hp or so is reduced (temporarily) and the GM narrates why. Another rounds of rolls and the bout continues.

Again look at HQ.

Or better tell us what system you are using? This gets to be a bit guess and miss.

On a side note, if this is to a PVP game you definitly need to adress social contract, which in a rpg can become a much more tricky than in a wargame. And here is a large difference between the two.