A Political Space Roleplaying Game

[Gwen]

This is an idea I had earlier this year.  (I know I have a lot of ideas, but I have RPG ADD.)

I really liked the idea, but I got hung up on a lot of problems, so I figure many of you might be able to help me develop the idea.

The concept was each player started with one planet, which they could name and create on their own.  In creating the planet, they had, say, 25 points to divide among different aspects like:

population
fuel
technology
water
food
weaponry
exploration

Each one would be on a scale of one to five.  Each point represented a different level in development with 1 being the lowest, 5 the highest.  Something like:

population:  1mil, 10mil, 100mil, 1bil, 10bil
fuel:  water, oil, nuclear, fusion, ???
technology:  printing press, calculators, computers, supercomputers, AI
water:  10%, 25%, 50%, 66%, 75%
food:  scarce, impoverished, average, abundant, over-abundance
weaponry:  swords, flintlocks, rifles, lazers, plasma weapons
exploration: 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d12

The dice for EXPLORATION would be rolled at the end of the week or month or whatever time unit was assigned to the "turn."  The goal is to roll over and over, adding up the results week by week until you reach 25.  At which point you discover a new planet.

There would be a star chart pre-drawn, and the planet discovered is the pplanet closest to your homeworld.  Then you get a NEW 25 points, so create that planet and you continue growing.

Eventually the players would be discovering planets at the same time which is where the diplomacy comes is.  Trading resources for planets could begin.  Players could join up and form teams and have to roleplay out their co-existance.  If they split up, they would have to divide up the planets and disputed planets would have to be fought over.

Fighting for a planet would involve the two disputed parties trying to win over the votes of the people (the people being roleplayed by the OTHER players) and everyone votes and whoever wins gets the planets.

Then war might break out as the disgruntled loser tries to take them back.

Can anyone offer some suggestions?  Perhaps help me develop this idea?  It's really raw right now, but I think it could end up being really fun and play could last a long time.

[Emily Care]

That sounds like a great idea, Gwen.  

What kind of "role" do you envision the player taking?  Would the player take the place of the world parliment or leader? I can see it having something like in Civilization where you could choose the kind of goverment/s the world has.  This would influence what resources you'd be able to access, or what kind of unrest you have etc.  I'm seeing the players having to negotiate with their own populace, as well as do diplomacy with the other players.  That's a whole 'nother level--would it have a competitive goal or be open?  It could be a race for expansion against one another or deal with invading threats from alien races or have a goal of creating a federation of planets that has to deal with all of the conflicts (over borders, resources, etc) that nations have to deal with.  

Lots of potential, another excellent game idea from you. :) Keep going!

--Emily Care

[Mike Holmes]

Hey Gwen,

You do have cool ideas. But you mention having RPG ADD. You wouldn't be the first designer. Is your goal to actually finish any of these games? We can't play them until you do, so it would be dissapointing to find out that you only like to start games, and not finish them. Can you reassure us that you'll get to completing your other designs at some point? I don't know about anyone else, but it would make me a lot more comfortable posting to new designs.

I wouldn't want to enable somebody's dysfunction. ;-)

Mike

[Gwen]

To tell the truth, Mike, I'm just waiting until I get my new computer for x-mas so I can run the Abode programs I need to make the PDFs.  I'm running on an old 200mhz celeron with like 2 RAM.

Once I get my newcomputer, I will start a website and supply free finished products of all my games.

:)

[Mike Holmes]

To tell the truth, Mike, I'm just waiting until I get my new computer for x-mas so I can run the Abode programs I need to make the PDFs.  I'm running on an old 200mhz celeron with like 2 RAM.

Yikes!

um

Yikes!

Once I get my newcomputer, I will start a website and supply free finished products of all my games.

Yaaay! That's what I was hoping to hear.

Ever thought about publishing?

Anyhow, as to the game, I play a lot of Starfire with folks online. Ever heard of that? It's a strategic adaptation of games like Star Fleet Battles (wait everyone, don't run off). Anyhow, the reason I play, almost solely, is for those diplomatic moments when players meet. It's a trip. I see this as being similar in some ways, so count me as interested. That said, there are a ton of models for this sort of thing, and you might be benefitted by looking around at what's available.

Mike

[bluegargantua]

[political space opera game details skipped...]

Can anyone offer some suggestions?  Perhaps help me develop this idea?  It's really raw right now, but I think it could end up being really fun and play could last a long time.

My suggestion would be to find a copy of Pocket Empires for Traveller.  This was the latest incarnation of Traveller before the new T20 book.  (large black books harkening back to their first addition)

Pocket Empires had you asssuming the role (or roles) of a ruling family who used socio-economic manipulation to infiltrate and dominate backwater star systems far in advance of Emperor Cleon's expanding Imperium.

As befits the Traveller series, there are charts ad nausem to detail everything from star class to tech levels.  But as a sourcebook it was really, really cool.  Tons of ideas and creative sparkers.  Another "I'd really like to play this sometime game".  If your game is more accessible (by which I mean, you don't need a supercomputer to track Gross World Product by quarter), you'll have a winner.

later
Tom

[Gwen]

What I'd really like to know is what resources do you think are crucial to a game like this?  And how many resources is too many?

Is population enough, or should it be divided between military pop, science pop, entertainer pop (for morale), labor pop, etc...

This would certainly be more detailed, but would it be worth the extra math and tracking?

I also think that a MEDICAL resource would be good.  The lower or higher it is represents the mortality rate of the planet.  As the medical resource goes down, so would population.

Can anyone help me develop a sound (realistic) list of planetary resources?

[damion]

You might be better off just using a +/- system, with a planet having some default value of other resources.

Something like this:All planets have all resources.

Players pick N resources they are better at(an possible become less good at some to become better at others).
It might be interesting to tie this to the development of the culture, if you want to get aliens into it.

Here's my example, I set N to 3.  :) You can also pick neutral traits, which are sometimes bad and sometimes good. The example is sorta silly.

Planet:Kronos
+Military(Militant inhabitants)
+Technology
+Large Population
+Alliance with another system
-Environmentally devastated
-Inhabitants unpleasent(so little, say tourism, or entertainment)
. Strange honor system
. Lack of small furry things
-Lack of medical knowledge(non-medically inclined people)
+Large Industrial Base

The idea being that you create the 'resource' in the system sorta dynamicly, because comming up with an exaustive list seems hard

[bluegargantua]

What I'd really like to know is what resources do you think are crucial to a game like this?  And how many resources is too many?

Well, one thing that seems very important is Technology or Tech Level as it's often referred to in games of this type.

It's important because the whole idea of an inter-stellar game breaks down if no one can travel to another planet.  And it becomes crucial in the event of inter-planetary war.  If side A has trans-warp stardrives and Side B only has generational ark-ships, combat will be pretty lopsided (even if Side A can only transfer a few people at a time).  Higher tech planets can probably effect a take-over without open bloodshed if their tech levels are high enough (kidnap leaders, replace them with robot duplicates, leak the story to the local tabloids so the idea is discredited and rule with impunity).

My gut feeling is that you're suggesting that most Player Planets will start out with enough Technology to rapidly explore the surrounding area of space.  Other planets may not.  But you should have some idea of what level of technology corresponds to star-faring society and what that means.

Is this more of a "sole-survivor game" or is it possible that players can form "Federations" and go for a joint win?  Another big factor may be determining what type of race inhabits a planet.  Two races with radically different biologies may be able to thrive on completely different planets.  Sharing resources might be very useful for them.

Just more random thoughts
Tom

[Todd Bogenrief]

Just a side thought in a variant to having a lot of varying tech levels.  How about all the sides are fairly technologically equal (thinking of the Dune universe), and sides can use research to develop a technological edge once the game is started.  This edge could be specific technologies, or just something left vague.  It could definitely be another resource players could use to buy/sell/trade/coerce with.

[Kuma]

This is an idea I had earlier this year.  (I know I have a lot of ideas, but I have RPG ADD.)

Amen, sister.

The concept was each player started with one planet, which they could name and create on their own.  In creating the planet, they had, say, 25 points to divide among different aspects like:

population
fuel
technology
water
food
weaponry
exploration

Ok, I have some experience in this, because my Elsewhere game system deals with exactly these sorts of issues.  Without tipping my hand too far on Elsewhere but still helping you out, I'll offer you the following advice: if you really want people to build the worlds that they want to build, the best option is to make certain presumptions and then modify from there.  Mainly because in order to have a space-exploration game, fuel and technology are going to have to be at about X level *anyways*, or you're not going to have space-exploration, let alone space-politics.  But the question is: how do you have a system where the base for the players is one thing, but doesn't confine the system to being top-heavy or cludgy?  Well, you have two scales.

The first scale is for planets that are still Bounded (a term I borrow from the Homeworld strategy game).  These are worlds where the ability to expand into the surrounding stars has not yet been achieved.  This scale goes from 1-10.  Then there's the Unbounded, where the civilization has gotten to the point that they can move to other worlds.  When a civilization reaches the Unbounded barrier, all of the statistics reset, with 10 --> 0.  Sections of the civilization that are less developed than the Unbounded state now become liabilities on the interstellar stage.  At best, the civ starts with all 0 and starts building again.

In this way, you avoid having a massive single scale to cover all of the possibilities which goes logarithmic on you.

Each one would be on a scale of one to five.  Each point represented a different level in development with 1 being the lowest, 5 the highest.  Something like:

population:  1mil, 10mil, 100mil, 1bil, 10bil
fuel:  water, oil, nuclear, fusion, ???
technology:  printing press, calculators, computers, supercomputers, AI
water:  10%, 25%, 50%, 66%, 75%
food:  scarce, impoverished, average, abundant, over-abundance
weaponry:  swords, flintlocks, rifles, lazers, plasma weapons
exploration: 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d12

1-5 is not granular enough to encompass technology or resources very well.  Using what I've just said about Bounded and Unbounded, let's take a look at one of your categories: fuel.

Water, oil., nuclear, fusion, ??? -- not very dynamic.  Water power was dominant for a good chunk of medieval and colonial history - but oil only dates to the mid-late-1800s, nuclear to 1940s, and fusion to sometime in the near-mid future.  Picking a point at random, let's see if we can't come up with the Bounded and Unbounded Power Source lists:

0 ...

By the way, always start these sorts of things at zero.  Just from a game standpoint, it makes the math so much easier.

0 ... Muscle
1 ... Draft Animals
2 ... Water
3 ... Air
4 ... Steam
5 ... Coal
6 ... Oil
7 ... Electrical
8 ... Nuclear Fission
9 ... Solar
10.. Fusion

At Fusion, the civ has achieved one of the requirements for becoming Unbounded, and so we reset to zero.  The main problem that you have with the Unbounded list is that you're pretty much on your own ... one list could look like this:

0 ... Fusion
1 ... Cluster Fusion
2 ... Cold Fusion
3 ... Open Antimatter
4 ... Shuttered Antimatter
4 ... Gluon Energy
5 ... Singluar Quarks
6 ... Quantum Excitation
7 ... Zero-Point Energy
8 ... Quantum Singularity
9 ... Stellar Singularity
10.. True Singuarity

I mean, it just kinda goes bonkers, but you get the idea ... my list isn't as graduated as I'd like it to be ... but I'm at the end of a 3rd shift, so you'll just have to take my word that this idea can work.  :)  

Technically, at the other end of the Unbounded scale you could have another scale: the Transcended, for truly galactic civilizations.

In this same way, you get a much more granular feel for the worlds that your explorers are going to come upon - not all of them are going to use oil power - the roll of the interstellar dice says a lot of civilizations are going to be pre-machine.

There would be a star chart pre-drawn, and the planet discovered is the pplanet closest to your homeworld.  Then you get a NEW 25 points, so create that planet and you continue growing.

I'd make it random, with the players being able to spend some sort of resource to make it a more attractive world.  Say their own world is poor in Power.  When they get to the next world, they find that *hey!* it's rich in the resources they need!

Can anyone offer some suggestions?  Perhaps help me develop this idea?  It's really raw right now, but I think it could end up being really fun and play could last a long time.

If you'd like more details, I'll gladly share.  Ask away.