Gettin' old, tactical to strategic preference

[Mike Holmes]

That's pretty good, Tim. How about a system where the player bids people? Sounds like it would have interesting ramifications to me. :-)

Mike

[Tim Alexander]

I like that idea a lot actually. In addition to bidding the faceless masses of people you could bid those 'keylight' characters that players would be using in the skirmishes and 10x10 room sort of conflicts. I bet you can garner a lot of step on up when Mongo, your tank, is on the line if you don't win this skirmish. No to mention the fact that your fiendish ork opponents will win time in the overall war while you try to recover from Mongo's untimely death and bring a new keylight into the forefront.

-Tim

[contracycle]

That's pretty good, Tim. How about a system where the player bids people? Sounds like it would have interesting ramifications to me. :-)

I was toying with a poker-like mechanic for this effect a little while ago.  Your cash reserves in poker - like troops - are both the subject of play and a mechanism of play.  You might be able to build a CCG-like system in which units/people are bid towards a conflict or engagement.  Either side would have to raise or fold per normal, in the process committing more and more troops to a discrete engagement.  If they decide to call, the committed sides fight it out.

This would be aimed at the following effects:
- the way in which armies can get drawn in by a small skirmish
- the pain of deciding to sacrifice troops for the bigger picture
- break battles up into several sub-engagements

Equally, theres an elegant anaology with the ante; of course, if you have NO troops contesting a point or manoeuvre, there's nothing to be resolved.

[Callan S.]

The players call for a small scale skirmish (let's say a human group making a clandestine attack to make way for an important courier for reinforcements to the main conflict.) Chess pieces (or a gamist RP currency equivalent) are bid to decide aspects of the skirmish, the winner of the bidding getting some sort of tactical advantage in exchange for greater risk, and then the scene is played out via TROS. The winner of the skirmish gains or loses the relevent pieces bid and you return to your newly modified chess game.

I'm not sure if its what you ment, but this part sounds like having rules that actually manage scene framing. So a bunch of battles are abstracted, but the ones where the players can't leave it to chance/the ones where they can make really interesting choices, they wouldn't just use the old 'GM cooks up the exciting scene' thing, they'd actually create the exciting scene themselves by applying rules (much like at an individual level they might set a micro scene by rushing up to a couple of opponents). And of course, the scene framing rules are full of gamey goodness to be had. Setting an exciting scene is not only rewarding, but has some gamist method of doing so.

That sounds really intriguing. Is it what you ment?

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Callan,

Yeah, that's pretty much what I intended, that the whole bidding process lets you define the scene that ensues. That way it gives an incentive to bid, since it gives a tactical advatage, but there's also an incentive to put yourself in a weaker tactical position because you can garner a bigger win. It was basically my way of taking care of the "toss the grenade in, clear the room, sweep sweep sweep" issues you talked about. This way, the GM just wouldn't adapt the environment at random, deciding, "Hey, the orks figured out the grenade trick." Instead the players might well decide, "Ugh, GM is crushing us at the chess game and we need to make a big hit. We'll take a shot with a low bid and have the worst of it in a small but critical enagagement." IE, you don't have any grenades... or some such.

I haven't picked up Universalis, but I'll bet you could use Ralph's framework and a bunch of rules gimmicks to create such a game. While Uni doesn't offhand lend itself to gamism, it's so adaptable (from what I understand) that you could very well build a game that way if you so chose. It would at least give a jumping point for some of this stuff. If you do so, let me know because the more I think about this the more interesting it sounds.

-Tim