Power to the Goblins!

[Epoch]

The concept I can't currently get out of my head is gritty class-based struggle in Arcadia/Under the Hill/Faerie.

I'm seeing this as a human-less game, with the real world not entering into it at all.  Instead, our world will be 17 places: 7 "daylight" (Seelie) nations, 7 "night" (Unseelie) nations, 1 dawn nation, 1 dusk nation, and Center, the place that they're all adjacent to (imagine a wheel).

The concept is a highly fantastic world with gritty warfare and a fair amount of political/social commentary and satire.  Fanciful images (the headless cavalry, or a row of jack-o-lanterns warding off attack, or nymph irregulars) contrasted with brutal results.  I'm particularly fond of the notion of peasant vs. noble conflicts within a given realm.

Question 1:  Does that grab you?

I'm kind of torn as to where on the spectrum of roleplaying to wargaming I should put this.  On one hand, I'd kind of like to make it a wargame-with-RPG-elements, like Necromunda, if for no other reason than that it'll be a lot more likely that I'll actually be able to play it if it's a wargame.  On the other, I want a wide variety of races and things going on, which is brutally hard to balance in the way a wargame demands.  Not to mention the many more peripheral systems that you need in a wargame -- it's just mechanically tougher.

Question 2:  What do you think?  Wargame, RPG, something in the middle?

I'm thinking about systems.  I know Warhammer pretty well, and it's useful both as an RPG system and a wargaming system (with variants).  D20 could do the job reasonably well, but I find high-lethality stuff a bit of a pain in it.  GURPS has a wealth of options, does the gritty thing well, but I kind of shudder at the chargen and the balance issues when its system is opened up to a lot of options.  BESM might do the job very well, but I'm a little concerned about the grit factor.

Question 3:  Any suggestions?

[Mike Holmes]

#1 - Yep, it grabs me. Then again almost everything does, but I like the short description so far. I see lots of politicking. I like that.

#2 - Do both. Make an RPG and a Wargame that are fully conversant with each other.

A real neat trick would be to create a Simmy or even Narrativist RPG system, and at the same time have the entirely gamist battle system playable on its own if pople like. So, make yourself a noble if you like the politics, and hire your best wargammer friend to be your general and fight your battles for you. Or do both if you're into both. Neato.

I think that the trick would be to stage the Premise of the Narr part of the game in a scope of play where the outcomes of the battles would be no more important than die rolls. The wars then become a shifting backdrop for Narrativist play. Make sense?

#3 - Make your own system. I'll help if you're interested. If you must use something extant, I'd suggest tailoring FUDGE to fit. OTOH, that would probably result in Castle Falkenstein. Hmmm...

Mike

[Epoch]

#1 - Yep, it grabs me. Then again almost everything does, but I like the short description so far. I see lots of politicking. I like that.

Woot!

#2 - Do both. Make an RPG and a Wargame that are fully conversant with each other.

I hate you, you big enabler, you.  This is, of course, the ideal.  I'm highly dubious that I'll stick with a project long enough to actually do it.  But if people encourage me to try...  :razz:

A real neat trick would be to create a Simmy or even Narrativist RPG system, and at the same time have the entirely gamist battle system playable on its own if pople like. So, make yourself a noble if you like the politics, and hire your best wargammer friend to be your general and fight your battles for you. Or do both if you're into both. Neato.

It would be a real neat trick.  A real hard one, too.

(I think that D&D and Chainmail, the new versions, work together like this, by the way)

I think that the trick would be to stage the Premise of the Narr part of the game in a scope of play where the outcomes of the battles would be no more important than die rolls. The wars then become a shifting backdrop for Narrativist play. Make sense?

Yeah, it does, though as I've perhaps mentioned in the past, I'm not a big fan of purely Narrativist play.

#3 - Make your own system. I'll help if you're interested. If you must use something extant, I'd suggest tailoring FUDGE to fit. OTOH, that would probably result in Castle Falkenstein. Hmmm...

I want all of you to witness the fact that Mike Holmes is actively trying to get me to lose my job by working too hard on games.

Okay, that said, sure, I'll give it a shot.  No promises that I'll carry it all the way through.

First thing I need is a core mechanic.  I don't see any strong reason to get fancy with it, either.  How about a roll-and-add or a zero-centered-bell-curve system, like I hear all the cool kids are doing these days.

Next thing I'll need is a racial creation system, I think.  I just don't think that I could create enough races to make myself happy with the diversity of this place.  So, something to do with that, and it would ideally give an accurate measure of the racial balance (in case anybody plays a pure wargame version, and needs to create balanced armies) or at least a general sense of racial balance (for the benefit of beleagured GM's and PC's trying to figure out if they're presenting a challenge to their opponents/the outcome is in doubt).

Then I'll need a robust magic system which handles the variety of magic in an extremely fantastic world.  This may be easier than I think -- it could just be a couple of well-named skills -- but it bears consideration.

So, anyone want to help me dig in and start?

[hardcoremoose]

Smashed Jack O' Lantern heads, spilling their overripe contents beneath the hooves of a headless cavalry...count me in!

The rpg should come first, of course, just so I can play it.

- Moose
(being entirely too selfish)

[Epoch]

Moose,

I don't think that there'll be a lot of differences between the two.

If Mike my apparant accomplice-in-crime wants to wade in on the subject of core resolution, I can probably hack together very "lite" basic rules for the RPG, that we can add on in great depth for the wargame, without much trouble.

[hardcoremoose]

Sounds good my friend.  I look forward to seeing it.

[joshua neff]

Mikepoch--

You've played loads of Amber. As Ron noted, one of the cool & fascinating things about that game is how well it drifts into gamism, simulationism, or narrativism, depending on how you play it. Sounds like this setting would be good for that as well. So...do something like Amber. Only different.

Okay, like races. I agree, there's no way to have a list of races & have it be satisfying to everyone. As Jared's pointed out, on of the frustrating things about Changeling is the limited races (for a game about creativity). Now, Amber's powers & magic systems are pretty easily messed with & customized. Same with the demons in Sorcerer. I'd say with the races, just have a batch of "qualities"--powers, advantages, disadvantages, & so on. Make it easy to put together your own race, like building with Legos.

Just an idea. I'm not really a game design guy.

[Epoch]

Josh,

Ve vill remake you into a designer.  Ve haff the teknology!

Yes on the "make a driftable game."

Yes on the "qualities list" for races -- the difficulty is creating the list in the first place (example:  suppose that you have an "extra limbs" advantage.  And you have a "flight" advantage.  Does someone with wings who can fly purchase one?  The other?  Both?), and costing it appropriately, so that people can play what interests them without getting walked all over by people who play what's "good."  (This is more important for the wargame side than the RPG side, and less important on the wargame side than in most wargames, if our default assumption is that what's in an army is determined by the results of roleplaying rather than by the players spending X number of points, but it's still important).

If anyone's interested in this project and doesn't fancy themselves a big systems monkey (ook!  ook!), but would like to contribute, my suggestion would be to just describe a vaguely genre race or magical ability, in purely qualitative terms, so that I and any other monkeys who do the mechanics have a target to aim for ("Must be able to adequately model the fruits of Josh Neff's sick, twisted imagination").

Here're some examples from me:

Jack O'Lanterns

I tend to think of properly carved Jack O'Lanterns as wards against harmful magic.  They'd probably only work within the Night/Unseelie areas, because, really, a Jack O'Lantern during the day just looks stupid.  They probably have an area of effect (makes harmful magic more difficult within radius of X), and possibly a facing (makes harmful magic more difficult if you're facing the lantern's face).

Goblins

These are my take on classic goblins.  They're short -- maybe three feet in height, and have long, long spindly arms (they can put their palms flat on the ground without bending at the waist).  They have big eyes which catch the moonlight.  They're not as strong as most bigger folk, so they often avoid direct conflict.  They've got the same range of intelligence as humans -- some are dumb, some are bright, lots are in the middle.  They tend to be low on the social pecking order.

[ Editted for spelling. ]

[ This Message was edited by: Epoch on 2001-12-06 18:47 ]

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Okay, someone go find Pete Seckler and drag him into this, 'cuz this is so his territory (goblins? pumpkinheads? oh my!).

Rather than have a list of physical "things" (wings, extra appendages, night vision, etc.), pare it down to the abstract essentials. Boosts to attributes and special effects. If my character can "FLY" it could because he has wings (like a bat) or has a mount that can fly (a pixie on a dragonfly) or does the spooky-floaty thing (a ghost) or whatever. What does the physical body part or whatever DO? THAT'S what the list should be.

You could also go for a Puppetland-y "Things I Can Do / Things I Can't Do" list. But that kidna gets in the way of your two-tiered play structure.

Oh, and the pumpkinheads should be dormant during the day. At night they sprout viny legs and viny arms to go trick-or-treating through the night. Boo!

[Blake Hutchins]

Jared,

Check out Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter for a really interesting take on this kind of world.

Best,

Blake

[Epoch]

Pumpkintown (was that what it was called?  The twilight/night place) is certainly an influence.  I see this as less cartoony, more like the classic, scary faerie tales, plus a sort of Victorian or slightly pre-Victorian working-class/aristocracy social hierarchy.

Oh, and there isn't, I think, "daytime" and "nighttime" in this world, or maybe there is, but only in Center.  Everywhere else is stuck in its appropriate phase -- the Seelie kingdoms are always day, the Unseelie kingdoms are always night, and the two twilight kingdoms are always dawn and dusk, respectively.

[ This Message was edited by: Epoch on 2001-12-06 19:57 ]

[Torrent]

1:  Neat Idea.  I'm intrigued.
2:  I agree with some of the others that a combo sort of treatment would be quite interesting.

Comments:  Much of the myth about the Fae shows them as being more set to the seasons than the day-night cycle.  If you were willing to reduce the numbers to 5 Seelie and 5 Un-seelie, you would get 12 nations.  Each could easily get associated with a month of the calender. (I do realize the 12 month calender is more of a Roman Thing, but oh well it fits.)  The next nice thing about this is that you could then use the d12 for rolls in both the Wargame and RPG portion as a tie-together trick.  Just a thought from a late-night sugar-loaded mind.

My latest little research kick is CCG's.  I see them as sort of between Wargames and RPG's, but that is a different topic.  One of the things about the card games is they boil the basic stats quite far down, and then add on descriptors of abilities.  I don't play wargames much, but the same could be true for them as well.  
If you had a set of abilities/special bits, that translated from the Wargame half to the RPG half, translating characters would not be too hard.  Like 'Flight' allowed just basic narrative flight in the RPG, would allow some sort of standardized advantage in the wargame.  This would mean your characters in the RPG could end up as just sort of a list of descriptors, ala Underworld or Over the Edge.  Which may not be that bad depending on the type of game you intended.  

Sorta my thoughts.. I would be willing to add help if this goes forward. I'm quite fond of the Fae/Celtic legends and most games involving them.

Torrent



[ This Message was edited by: Torrent on 2001-12-06 23:20 ]

[Epoch]

Hmmm.  After some thought, I think I like the seasons thing.  I'm probably less keen on using d12's for anything, based simply on the fact that they're probably the least common die among the usual polyhedrals for anyone to have.

So then, rather than being stuck in a time of day, each land would be stuck in a seasonal thing -- maybe one Unseelie early spring, three Unseelie winters, and two Unseelie falls, two Seelie springs, three summers, and one fall.

I realize that there's pretty much nowhere in the world in which there are actually three months of each season, but I'm not too stuck on realism here.

The descriptor trait thing might be doable -- the issue is that those systems are often very loosey-goosey in RPG's, and a wargame needs things nailed down.

[Epoch]

Okay.  Starting tomorrow, I'm going to begin nailing down parts of the game.  I am expecting help from those of you who said you would.  This is too big a project for me to do on my own right now.  :smile:  However, perhaps unfairly, I'm going to be despotic about resolving things into a single game as we go along -- I'll try not to be too unreasonably despotic.  If I end up being a dick about it, I imagine that everybody will abandon the project and I'll grind to a halt.  :smile:

So.  If you have any kind of core mechanic ideas, write about them in the next 24 hours.  Things I think are important (non-exhaustive list):

 
• The mechanic should be usable, with perhaps some modification, in the wargame as well -- that means relatively low handling time, and, if at all possible, ability to roll multiple characters at once.
  
   
• High numbers should probably be better -- people seem to have an issue with roll-under mechanics.
  
   
• Easy modifiability is a must -- wargames are only interesting if there's tactical stuff involved, and that pretty much means that people have to get positive or negative modifiers by doing certain things.
  
   
• Common dice types are preferred.  I think that die types go like this in order of commonality: d6, d10, d20, d8, d4, d12, everything else.  If we're down in the d8, d4, d12 range, I think we need to think again.
  

If you've got setting ideas, game name, races, magical abilities, or general systems mechanical stuff, by all means, post 'em whenever.

Presuming that people do start to contribute to the point where a single thread on the Forge gets unwielding for information storage and retrieval, I'll compile and post to a web-page.

POWER TO THE NAIADS!

[Mytholder]

Pumpkinheads should surely be bomb-throwing-anarchist-style grenades.