[Bloodlines - a generational RPG]

[Kami-no-Mark]

b]Aim
A co-operative roleplaying game where the players take play the heads of noble houses, control the houses themselves and create the map of the lands they find themselves in.  The game is (currently) GM-less, rather a big step for me, with the "King" being an NPC controlled by the players.

Initially, it is about creating and expanding a community in the face of an unknown and possibly hostile environment.  As time progresses, and generations pass, the original laws of the founders might become restrictive and outdated.  How the players, their characters and the society they create react to all of this should make for interesting stories further down the line when the day-to-day threats to survival are not as pressing.

Rules/Concepts<Questions
- Is this an interesting concept?  Would people play such a game?

- Would anyone be interested in discussing it / playtesting it?  I'd warn you all that (so far), it's had the grand total of two 2-player playtests.  I'm trying to pull together another group to give it a run with 3 or 4 players (something around the "usual" number I envisage for the game), but it's taking a little time to schedule in.

Now that I'm posting this out on the Forge, I've also got some worries that the current mechanics might be "stealing" too much of Matt Wilson's and Malcolm Craig's hard work.  I'd appreciate thoughts on that as well.

Any other thoughts or questions are appreciated, as I'm sort of feeling my way out and don't necessarily know what questions I should be asking myself.

Many thanks.

Mark
Aim[/b]
A co-operative roleplaying game where the players take play the heads of noble houses, control the houses themselves and create the map of the lands they find themselves in.  The game is (currently) GM-less, rather a big step for me, with the "King" being an NPC controlled by the players.

Initially, it is about creating and expanding a community in the face of an unknown and possibly hostile environment.  As time progresses, and generations pass, the original laws of the founders might become restrictive and outdated.  How the players, their characters and the society they create react to all of this should make for interesting stories further down the line when the day-to-day threats to survival are not as pressing.

Rules/Concepts<Questions
- Is this an interesting concept?  Would people play such a game?

- Would anyone be interested in discussing it / playtesting it?  I'd warn you all that (so far), it's had the grand total of two 2-player playtests.  I'm trying to pull together another group to give it a run with 3 or 4 players (something around the "usual" number I envisage for the game), but it's taking a little time to schedule in.

Now that I'm posting this out on the Forge, I've also got some worries that the current mechanics might be "stealing" too much of Matt Wilson's and Malcolm Craig's hard work.  I'd appreciate thoughts on that as well.

Any other thoughts or questions are appreciated, as I'm sort of feeling my way out and don't necessarily know what questions I should be asking myself.

Many thanks.

Mark

[xenopulse]

Mark,

Yes, the idea sounds interesting.  No, I wouldn't worry about "stealing" too many mechanics, as long as you put it in the acknowledgments.

I think if you want more feedback, it would be a good idea to post the playtest document of the complete rules so that people can read it through and/or test it.  I can catch a glimpse from your description, but it's not structured enough to really figure out exactly how the pieces work together.

Good luck with the project!

[Kami-no-Mark]

Hello Christian.

I'm rather embarassed at the documents I've got.  I'm just rushing through the "main" one now (all 5 pages) to get it looking a little more presentable.  I then just need to find somewhere to host it, and I'll post a link.

Thank you for the encouragement!

[Kami-no-Mark]

SETTING
This would be decided on and created by the players, as play continues.  However, my "default" would be a Medieval-fantasy setting.  I'd tend to give the various races a twist, but that's a personal preference.

The assumed starting position would be:
King & nobles, with whatever retinue they have, flee defeat, hoping to establish themselves somewhere new.  A storm forces them to "crash land" on a deserted stretch of coast.

All they start with is a tiny settlement.  As for what happens 10, 20 or 100 years down the line, who knows?

MAP
The players have an initially rather bare A3-sized piece of paper as their map, comprising a few features that they've agreed on (a river here, a forest there, etc).  Players would take it in turns to add some extra features (islands, ruins, specific resources, etc), probably until they've got three each or so, and then they can place their initial settlement on the map.

You'd want to be using pencils for this, as there'll be opportunities (and disasters) to change the face of the map.

[Kami-no-Mark]

[Kami-no-Mark]

[Simon C]

I'm currently looking at GMless game designs as well.  One thing that has struck me with GMless games is that there's much less incentive for creating a "Shared imagined space" - the fictional stuff that the players make up that explains what all the dice rolling is about.  With a GM saying "There's an orc in front of you, what do you do?" it's pretty hard to avoid an SIS.  With the rules that you've presented, it seems like players could play it a lot more like a board game (I'm reminded of "A Game of Thrones"). Since the rules provide so much information about what is happening, there's little motivation for the players to elaborate on this, and it seems like their contribution would be pretty much limited to adding colour.  It seems like you've replaced the GM with a large number of random charts, and I'm not sure that's the way to go.  Rather than having the game inflict challenges on the players, whcih they must overcome, I think a better model is to have players inflict challenges on themselves, because that's how they get the resources they need.

I really like your ideas though, and the game concept is solid.  I like your traits system for characters.  For some reason I find the idea of "bloodline traits" very exciting.  It's something about the way it lets you have a really strong connection to the previous characters. 

Overall, my suggestion is that you need to strip this back to what's really essential for your game, and go from there.

[Kami-no-Mark]

Thanks for your kind words and advice, Simon.

It seems that I've still got quite a bit of old-style baggage with me that I need to kick a couple of times.

Your point about the lack of incentive to create SIS is a good one.  I hadn't thought of that intially, but I can see what you mean.

Looking at it again, I do need to trim back those random tables or get rid of them.  Initially, one of my playtesters was very keen on having a multitude of random elements, from character traits to incoming threats, etc.  In hindsight, I'd rather be able to play with a much reduced random element.

I need to strip things back a bit more and crystallise my ideas better.  Unfortunately, with the prep I'm doing for my Live game, that will have to wait until after Saturday.  That, and I've found I often get better results when I discuss/debate something with others.  I just flounder about in Ivory Tower of Ultimate Creativeness.

For my playtest next Thursday, there should be 3 or 4 of us, and I'll apply the following changes to get things moving in the right direction:
- the Advisor (rotating player) get to determine what idea is presented to the King's Court, rather than randomly determining it.
- Events will, similarly, be determined by the Advisor.
- I'll worry less about distances and sizes, allowing players to gauge is as they see fit.

I'll try to pull out a few things that I still quite like, and my reasons:
- ageing: theoretically the character can last out 20 years, but the first failed roll (& new negative trait) suddenly concentrates the mind, as there is a very finite number of years left, and no "safety net".
- Lending someone else Traits/Influence: not only does it open up more(?)narrative options, but given the crossover and "fixed cost" nature of it, it is easy to determine what it's worth (and how much they owe you).
- Random element to the King: I like the idea that whilst the players control this NPC, the control isn't total, allowing for "curveballs", ensuring that the setting isn't completely democratic.

I have one question, though, that I could do with some ideas about:
- If the players set their own/one another's challenges, what is a reasonable way to determine the difficulty of the challenge?  Should I/we just arbitrarily decide on this, determined by story-need, or would you recommend some sort of guidelines?

Thanks!

[xenopulse]

Mark,

I read over the rules and had a bunch of small questions, but I think Simon is right in that we should focus on the big picture first.  Here's your mission statement:

Initially, it is about creating and expanding a community in the face of an unknown and possibly hostile environment.  As time progresses, and generations pass, the original laws of the founders might become restrictive and outdated.  How the players, their characters and the society they create react to all of this should make for interesting stories further down the line when the day-to-day threats to survival are not as pressing.

Your rules do address creating a community in the sense that you build buildings and the likes.  They also have a minimal entry for making laws, but then no indication of how these laws will matter to the game, how players will have to confront the laws, or what they mean for the characters in the game.  In fact, I'm going to guess that, with the amount of board game strategy and resource management you have in there now, the players will not care very much about their characters as persons but instead see them as votes and traits.

And, you know, that's not a bad thing.  It looks like a fun game; but it doesn't look like it's addressing what I thought was the core of your mission statement: the establishment of laws and their later ramifications.

So the main questions are:
1) How are you going to make the laws matter?
2) How are you going to make the players care about the application of the law to the population and/or individual characters?
3) How do you encourage and reward people dealing with these issues?

Now, I think your mission statement is great, but it's also a very difficult project.  You're trying to weave together nation building simulation with a thematic and very important topic.  I believe, if you can make it work, it'll be a hell of a game, so I'm going to continue watching how you develop it

[Jason Morningstar]

This is interesting.  One game you should check out is Hero's Banner from Tim Koppang, which handles multi-generational play in an elegant way. 

I like the collective mapping aspect of your game.  I suspect that will work very well.  You have specific references regarding scale, which I think may be a mistake - why not allow the game to handle vast empires or tiny feifdoms, as the players choose to sketch?  This also goes for initial situation.

[Simon C]

I'm still really interested in this idea.  I think it has a really interesting focus, and I'm looking forward to seeing where you go with it.  Here are a few more ideas which you can do with as you wish:

The things that seem key to me are:
 - the map of the realm
 - the book of laws
 - the roles of authority in the realm

Anders Larsen has talked about a game he is writing, where a map which is drawn during play forms a key feature of the game (And he should really keep posting about it - enquiring minds want to know).  I think you could do something similar in your game.  Even if it's just a way of ensuring that players referr to the same places in their descriptions of events, it has a very powerful feeling, drawing new things onto a map that becomes game canon.  I can imagine very exciting conflicts about who gets this right.

The book of laws sounds like nothing I know of in other games.  It's inherantly exciting to me to think of inscribing laws into a book, which will affect the game world forever more.  It would be even more exciting if these laws could have major effects on how the game is played.  I can imagine very exciting conflicts about who gets to write new laws, or expunging old ones.

The roles of authority, such as the "adviser" you mention, are a key concept, I think.  Rather than having this pass around the table in turns, I think it would be great if the player characters bid their power to assume these roles.  Have you played "a Game of Thrones"? It's a board game with no random elements, and many key game functions (who go first, who wins draws, etc) are decided by the player who holds a certain role of authority in the game.  I can see this being mechanically useful, as well as being a great way to bring in some more story-based elements.  If my character is the new Earl of Pembrook, that's cool, but if he's the new Earl of Pembrook, who must fight to retain the position of "adviser" that has been held by his family for generations, that's much more involving for me as a player.

Some other ideas:

Tying "rounds" in your game to "years" in the setting is gold, and you should keep it forever.

"Princes Kingdom" has some nifty effects for aging, where older characters are more powerful, but also more troublesome.  You could look to it for inspiration.

I think a great way to bring in more SIS is for each player to introduce "trouble" to the other players, incorporating the map and the book of laws in their description.  They could act as a mini GM for the "trouble" scene, and the outcome could determine what kind of rewards the player gets.  So, for example, a player could introduce the situation "bandits are attacking the woodsmen in the East Wood.  The law forbids anyone to go armed in the woods, because of our treaty with the elves. A child has been kidnapped, and a mob is forming to go after him."  And the other players (perhaps all the players?) must resolve this problem somehow, using their traits, helping each other, and so on.  So, someone might say, "Ok, I'll go down there to talk to the mob, surely I can convince them to leave this problem to me... I'll roll my "Voice of Reason" trait."

[Kami-no-Mark]