I am legion, we are many

[Jeff Turner]

Has anyone heard of a game or system that casts players as organizations or groups?

For example, a player has either a stable of characters, represents a corporation or entire kingdom, or even a nation?

Ever since I found out that corporations are legally considered persons in the US, and thought there might be an idea for a game there.

I just wanted to see if there are any games/supplements that I could check out for inspiration.

Thanks.

[Paul Czege]

Hey Jeff,

Check out Ian Millington's Minions.

Paul

[TonyLB]

I know of several games whose mechanics easily encompass such characters.  Basically, many games that have discarded "representing what a person is" in favor of "representing what a person does to the story" end up with a "character" being represented by a bundle of effects that they can bring to the story.  Universalis is the most explicit of these.  Capes gets pretty explicit about it too.  My familiarity with systems beyond that (HeroQuest springs to mind) is insufficient to say more with any certainty.

I haven't played any games where groups are the only choice of representatives in the game-world.  It's an intriguing thought.  What kind of stories would you tell on that level?  What kind of insights do the hard decisions of corporate-entities give us for our own lives?

[Christoph Boeckle]

Isn't Ars Magica about creating a wizard and his crew of henchmen, then playing either the one or the others depending on situation?

[contracycle]

Isn't Ars Magica about creating a wizard and his crew of henchmen, then playing either the one or the others depending on situation?

Yes although there is not that much about the "collective entity" as it were.  As I understand it, people are mor elikely to switch which character is current now, although there is a fair amount of play oriented around the interests and affairs of the covenant itself.

[Paul Czege]

It's hard to find, but there's also Realms of the Unknown, by Timothy A. Dohrer and Gerry Evenwel (two books, a Player's Manual and a Controller's Manual, published in 1991).

Paul

[Sean]

Actually, Paul, the player's book is free at

http://www.dohrer.com/tim/rotu/rotusite/rotumain.html

and I think Tim Dohrer still sells copies of the GMs manual. ROTU was very interesting to me (picked it up on Paul's recommendation) in terms of thinking about what can be an RPG and what can't. We played informal games like ROTU in high school (another published one I have is Lords of Space), and looking at the rules you might say 'wargame', but in terms of the way they play they actually feel more like an RPG to me, for a variety of reasons.

[Michael S. Miller]

YOu'll want to take a look at the long-out-of-print ARIA: Canticle of the Monomyth from Last Unicorn games. In addition to Player Characters, the game includes Player Nations. You're supposed to create history for your nations through play, and then zoom in now and then to the character level for the individuals at historical cruxes. Personally, I never thought the game was very playable (very unweildy rules), although people have played it. There was (still is?) a long-running PBeM that used FUDGE as a system. You might be able to find it at ww.pbem.com

Also check out Executive-Class Sorceror and its spin-off threads for ways to use Sorcerer to do this kind of thing.

I don't have time to do any more searches right now, but there's a thread on Birthright as Sorcerer in the Adept Press forum that's very inspiring, as is a thread on Narrative Wargaming in the Birthday Forum that may be of help.

[Andrew Cooper]

I've made a small game based off of FATE where you play an entire nation.  It's Sci-Fi based but it doesn't have to be.