Game Setting Idea - The Grand Strategist / reverse dungeon crawl

[Adarchi]

Concept overview:

Normally players adventure out into the unknown and battle through areas and exploring something the DM has created. Instead, the players are tasked with preparing for a coming onslaught by organizing the town / keep.

Possible Story:

"The Grand Strategist" (GS) has never lost a battle, nor has he fought one in recent memory. His services are for sale to the highest bidder and in return he provides guaranteed victory. In actuality the man's reputation is such a deterrent that he has never had to do any strategy (or it was too many years ago, weapons have changed, etc). The rise of a new power (orcs, undead, the pretender-king) has necessitated the hiring of the GS. Knowing the new power won't back down this time, the GS hires the players as a war council to take care of the "little details."

The players have X months to prepare for the first battle of a major war. During this time there is no combat but lots of room for diplomacy and strategy.

Possible options for players:

• Intimidate, bribe, or gamble (and win) a mercenary group to join in. (Otherwise they leave before the battle)
• Convince the local blacksmith to release his cache of weapons. Optionally someone with lore, certain magic, etc could enchant them
• Train the town watch
• Order conscription and force others into the fight
• Destroy villages in between to diminish the oncoming army's supplies
• Setup road blocks and traps
• Hire / force the local masons and carpenters to build walls and fortifications
• Send diplomats to call for aid from surrounding areas / races
• Trick / cajole / lie to others in order to get them to join
• Intimidate / reason with the captain of the watch to place his men in specific ways
• Teach members of the town buffs (thinking of a bard's song here)
• Try to get some info the the GS about some battles he must have won
• Petition the gods for aid (natural disasters, supernatural allies, blessings)
• Hold the line during the battle
• Encourage their forces during the battle
• Light the fires of industry to make better weapons and armor
• Teach villagers better farming techniques or otherwise enhance the quality of life to attract more people to come to town
• Research the village history to find stories to inspire the townfolk and learn about hidden secrets

[Vulpinoid]

The first thing I thought when reading the title of this thread was an old module in which the players inherit a castle and they have to lay traps against incoming adventurers and scoundrels who seek to loot their new home...that or the old computer game "Dungeon Keeper".

Upon reading the thread, a new idea instantly came to mind.

Play Space Rat: The Jack Cosmos Adventure Game.

Change the setting from sci-fi to fantasy...change Jack into the Grand Strategist....leave pretty much everything else intact.

Just the first idea to come to mind.

V

[Egonblaidd]

My first impression was similar to Vulpinoid's, my second was "A Tower Defense RPG!"  This goes way beyond simple Tower Defense, though.  This seems more like a full blown strategy game, one of my favorite videogame genres.  Did you have questions or did you just want to see what people thought of the concept?  I like it, there's a lot of possibility there.

[Simons]

I really like the idea (PM me when you need outside playtesters, I might be able to help).

One thought/question, when it comes to the actual battle, will it be mostly a narrative, or a hard, number-crunching, dice-rolling, (miniature moving?) strategy game?  And is your goal to have the battle decided mostly before the characters get to the field (possibly even avoiding battle altogether)?  How much of it will still be a surprise the day the orcs show up?

Also, you mention having players tow the lines.  How much do you plan on having your characters be actual adventurers? How much of an impact the actual character is going to make on the day of the battle?  Are we talking Boromir defending the ports of Gondor (i.e. "practically fighting the orcs" himself), Aragorn/Gimli/Legolas in Helm's Deep (i.e. doing significant bits of fighting at key moments, and killing a lot of orcs, though most of the heavy battling was done by ordinary soldiers), or Gandolf in Minas Tirith (i.e. fighting some, but contributing mostly as a general, signaling reinforcements, and by boosting morale).*  What kind of power are the characters actually going to have?

Simon

*To LotR fans out there, I apologize deeply if I have butchered what happened.  I've only seen the movies, the books are on my "to-read" list.  Mostly I thought this would be the best example I could think of. 

[Adarchi]

One thought/question, when it comes to the actual battle, will it be mostly a narrative, or a hard, number-crunching, dice-rolling, (miniature moving?) strategy game?  And is your goal to have the battle decided mostly before the characters get to the field (possibly even avoiding battle altogether)?  How much of it will still be a surprise the day the orcs show up?

At this point I'd hope that the actual results would be similar to chess in that everyone knows the outcome of any one skirmish but the overall battle is still to be determined. There should be some space for some exceptions but these should generally be rare. The goal of the battle for the PCs is to protect the town. The goal for the enemy is to destroy it (or even just get by it ala tower defense as mentioned above). Casualties are a result of this conflict, attrition isn't necessarily the goal.

Also, you mention having players tow the lines.  How much do you plan on having your characters be actual adventurers? How much of an impact the actual character is going to make on the day of the battle?  Are we talking Boromir defending the ports of Gondor (i.e. "practically fighting the orcs" himself), Aragorn/Gimli/Legolas in Helm's Deep (i.e. doing significant bits of fighting at key moments, and killing a lot of orcs, though most of the heavy battling was done by ordinary soldiers), or Gandolf in Minas Tirith (i.e. fighting some, but contributing mostly as a general, signaling reinforcements, and by boosting morale).*  What kind of power are the characters actually going to have?

Keeping with the LotR references, I'd imagine the PCs would be more like Gandalf. Generally behind the scenes setting everything up but when the men of Minas Tirith allow a breach, the PCs step up to protect the weak point. Maybe a better analogy would be superman, there's generally no danger that  a random shot will take him out but the enemies goal is usually more complicated and thus it keeps him scrambling. The tension would be in the town falling, not in the PCs dieing.

Overall there should be a large map, possibly with miniatures and such. However, the PCs should have a lot of leeway on what they want to do to prepare and I'd hate for the miniatures to get in the way. For inspiration see Zulu where outnumbered British soldiers have to come up with a makeshift defense against a near endless wave of Zulu warriors.

[Adarchi]

My first impression was similar to Vulpinoid's, my second was "A Tower Defense RPG!"  This goes way beyond simple Tower Defense, though.  This seems more like a full blown strategy game, one of my favorite videogame genres.  Did you have questions or did you just want to see what people thought of the concept?  I like it, there's a lot of possibility there.

I love Tower Defense games, obviously they've rubbed off on me more than I suspected.

I've been trying to break the mold of typical RPGs and wanted to share my ideas with others if they'd like to use them. Maybe I could put something together for others to playtest if there is enough interest.

[DWeird]

Possible Story:

"The Grand Strategist" (GS) has never lost a battle, nor has he fought one in recent memory. His services are for sale to the highest bidder and in return he provides guaranteed victory. In actuality the man's reputation is such a deterrent that he has never had to do any strategy (or it was too many years ago, weapons have changed, etc). The rise of a new power (orcs, undead, the pretender-king) has necessitated the hiring of the GS. Knowing the new power won't back down this time, the GS hires the players as a war council to take care of the "little details."

I remember reading a fantasy book on something roughly along those lines, where an apprentice magician somehow manages to pass as a kingdom's master wizard and then has to defend said kingdom from an army of invaders. One of my favorite moments goes something like this:

Mage's demon companion who passes as a human somehow: "Bah! This map isn't even up to scale... The approaching line of the enemy army is longer than the borders of this kingdom!"
General who's name is a pun on "Huge Axe", red in barely-controled rage: "It is up to scale."
Apprentice mage: An 'Oh snap!' expression.

Fun for all.

Anyway... Is the comedy aspect present in the "Never lost a battle because no one ever showed up?" intended or accidental? If it's intended, there are loads of ways to amplify it... I.e., the Grand Strategist doesn't actually have the skills needed to do anything on that list of yours, and has to learn them there on the spot. The PCs hired into the GS's employ are equally incompetent... So rather being a strategic game of a vast scale, it'd be a strategic game of a vast scale + numerous attempts to hide one's own incompetence and pin the blame on someone else.

And to be truthful, I wouldn't even know which of these two was more realistic.

[Egonblaidd]

Of course, the players would eventually become experts, so you'd lose the effect of incompetent players fairly quickly.  Perhaps one way to keep the players acting like they are incompetent is to whip up a custom set of rules (or choose rules from a list) and then give each player a different variation of those rules.  So one player might insist that siege weapons can move through forests and mountains while another insists that they have to move along roads or flatlands, or another player might be meticulously keeping track of fuel for flying units and retreating them to refuel when they get low, when everyone else has been told that fuel is irrelevant in this particular game.  The only way to figure out who's right is to actually try to break one of the rules, but at the same time you have to make sure you don't lose (for example, if one of the rules is "these enemy units can't attack me in this certain situation... I think").  You might want to have a rule that the players aren't allowed to share their list of rules, all they can do is argue them when the rule comes up.  If the game is supposed to be more comedic, you can even throw in abilities that are useless in certain games, for example "cloaking devices" (or spells) that don't work this time, but may have in a different game.  That way the players should do at least one useless thing during a game, which could lead to some serious consequences.  In order to do this you'd need a list of rules that didn't depend on each other to function in the game.  Things like:
Siege units must move along roads or flatlands
Units in a forest are invisible
Air units can't be attacked from the ground (though ranged foot soldiers can defend themselves if attacked)
Buildings can be captured and used against the previous owner
Etc.
The rules should be worded such that it is more significant when they are absent than when they are present, since, given a sufficient number of rules, it is easier to notice if a rule is present than if it is missing.

If the game is meant to be more serious then ignore all of the above.