A quote I've seen in somebody's sig on another site:

"D&D is the ultimate right wing wet dream. A bunch of guys who are better than your average joe set out into the middle of nowhere where they murder and kill everything they come across in order to stockpile gold and elaborate magical bling. There are no taxes, no state and any poor people that get in your way get their village burned to the ground. It's like Ayn Rand on PCP." - Mr. Analytical

Hm.
I'd recommend taking a look at this post: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=13852.0 It's a topic called "Libertarian RPG", and so there's a 50/50 chance (or more) that it'd be ideologically opposed to what you've got going on (i.e. is your stuff social-anarchist or individual anarchist in nature?)
That being said, I have some suggestions/questions for ya - what do the players do? If they're anarchists, or at least taking part in anti-authoritarian revolution (^___^ yay!), then you could probably structure game mechanics in terms of things like The Cause, personal resolve towards the Cause, progress towards the revolution, the chance of someone betraying/joining the Cause, and so on.
Any idea on stuff like Creative Agenda, etc?
I can appreciate what you're thinking with removing "dominance hierarchy from the equation", and I'm intrigued by what "communal experience system" could mean. A relationship mechanic is a bit more standard, at least around the Forge, but that's no reason not to go ahead with it anyway!
Cool.
Also - I had a thought along the lines of "Life-cycle of a revolution" - if the revolution succeeds, is that particular storyline over, or do you move on to the next stage (new gov't, the absence of a new State, etc.)?

Social anarchism. Definately.

What do the players do? Well, in addition to playing as characters, they also perform roles traditionally assigned to DMs. This is done through a distribution of labour much like the class system. Each player takes up a role fleshing out different elements of setting, color, and situation. Everybody is in charge of character and system.
Every player has the right to propose rulings and houserules, and it is up to the group to discuss them and come to some kind of consensus.

I think I'm leaning towards simulationism. This game is largely based around the deconstruction of Dungeons & Dragons. I want to emulate the dungeonpunk genre, but also dig beneath the surface of it and get the players to think about what these fantasy worlds would be like if the characters within were real people.

Oh, okay - good to know you have an idea of what play could look like, i.e. dungeonpunk with a really critical eye.
My question for you is this: where's the anarchy? Is it the approach to design (which focuses on collaboration and shared authority between players), is it in the setting/setting-related mechanics itself, as per the suggestions I made, or is it somewhere else entirely?

I want to emulate the dungeonpunk genre, but also dig beneath the surface of it and get the players to think about what these fantasy worlds would be like if the characters within were real people.

I'd say the anarchy is in the design and the setting... at least for now. I'm not quite sure where to approach it otherwise to tell the truth.

I'm really not sure where to go with the tone though. In numerous prior projects I've always gotten stumped trying to figure out if I wanted to go in a direction that was more comic and satyrical. or more serious and gritty, or some kind of tongue-in-cheek juxtapozition of the two.

I can already tell you though that I don't see very much magic being used by player characters at least.
Maybe the players could perhaps pick up some magical 'craft' similar to the rituals from D&D 4E. These would mostly be noncombat utility effects like brewing potions, divination via tea leaves, or building a fire on wet ground.
Maybe if enough communal XP is gained the players could gain some magical rituals that require multiple people to cooperate in order to produce a magical effect... but that would be pretty rare. I don't really intend for the player characters to shoot fireballs or anything.

Player characters would be able to arm themselves (mostly with weaponized farm-implements or molov cocktails) and work together to take down a larger threat. This would be modeled after peasant revolts where an undisciplined rabble goes up against trained soldiers.

I see actual games going a little like this:

At the beginning of each session, the players each choose an 'Issue' for the characters to tackle in the game world. Generally I intend for the issues to deal with inequities; players could choose more general types of inequities like
"The rich get richer and the poor get poorer."
or the could choose more specific ones like
"All Drow are percieved as evil"
or
"Dwarves can't be wizards."
Issues don't neccessarily have to involve inequities however. A player could choose something like
"The Imperial Army is coming!"

The player characters go on quests to solve these issues. More issues can arise in play, and sometimes solving one issue causes another issue to pop up.

Perhaps one way that players handle these issues is by facing symbolic monsters.
To quote Donna J. Haraway:
"The word monster shares more than its root with the word 'demonstrate'. Monsters represent."

In classic and even contemporary pulp fantasy, monsters are often used to symbolize nations and ethnicities. The old Conan stories were really racist when you read into them. Arguably, even Lord of the Rings is pretty racist in parts.

With this game, I want to get away from monsters as representations of people and use them more as represenations of ideas and concepts.
Player characters can fight these monsters and destroy them... or befriend them!

Absolutely, Lord of the Rings is racist, at least in the sense that it's full of "fell races", etc. Orcs are disposable people, made exclusively to serve the immediate recruitment goals of Sauron and Saruman; hell, they're made, respectively, by torturing Elves or by putting mojo on mud. Don't forget the desert-folk: the humans who serve Sauron. I used to wonder if that was some sort of Afrika Korps, World War 2 reference.. who knows?

There's a minibook/series of articles called "Seven Theses: Monster Culture". I have a PDF of it if you like; it talks about the multi-layered symbolism of folk-tale monsters. A recurring theme in Anarcho-Fantasy! could easily be a study of the ramifications of one's actions; remember that scene in Hellboy: the Golden Army where they have ol' Red take down a gigantic nature spirit? Well, plenty of horror-genre creeps come about because someone (or a society) is transgressing some kind of law or taboo; maybe the harried splinter factions of a defeated peasant revolt take to the wild and call upon the powers of nature to topple the hierarchy endemic to feudal society? That'd be neat!
They'd have to give away their humanness to achieve that agency, but that's related to the radicalization process - arguably, we get so used to thinking (especially in the US) that all people are or wish to live a bourgeois lifestyle and ethos, such that we see radicals and non/anti-bourgeois individuals portrayed as inhuman all the time in movies and television. How much easier is it for writers to declare a certain kind of person (someone who purges all emotion, for example ^_^) to be non-human, than to suggest "yes, you too could be like this, viewer!"?
I think really honing in on what society considers honorable, respectable behavior could be worthwhile for game mechanics ideas, as could the old Norse concept of a "warg" -

The Proto-Germanic *wargaz meant "strangler" (see modern German würgen), and hence "evildoer, criminal, outcast".

Sweet!
Yes, I'd love to check out that pdf.

Hmmm... I wonder if it might be cool to give players the option of playing monsters in addition to townsfolk.
I'm a big fan of H.P. Lovecraft's dream cycle, and for the longest time I've been aching to play as a Ghoul in a Call of Cthulhu or Cthulhu-Tech game.

One of my complaints about white box OD&D is that, while it suggests the possibility of playing any type of character, even a a baby dragon, it doesn't really give any advice for how to go about statting up such a beast.
I think that I want to have a lot of system transparency in my game and include little sections that provide hints and tips for players who wish to create their own classes and races and whatnot.

It is important though that these creatures should be balanced with simple human townsfolk. A rust monster character should not be superior overall to a human blacksmith, but simply special in its own way.

System transparency sounds pretty sweet.
As far as PCs portraying monsters, and with that peasant-revolt example I used, it might be good to substitute religious symbolism for politics, kinda sorta. Tap into the blood-and-guts themes behind political stuff you want to address through your character, and you'll find your way to the religion-equivalent easily enough.
If you'd like the PDF, send me a personal message with your e-mail address, and I'll shoot it your way :)
I got the article through a film studies class called Cultural Constructs of Sexuality. With any luck, the file has information on how they crafted the Xenomorph's costume for Alien. Creepy stuff.
On that note, I'm of the opinion that horror, and Lovecraftian horror at that, is intensely reactionary in its politics. That makes it pretty tricky space to work in if that's not your bag, especially because of the monstrousness bequeathed upon anything Other, which is limiting as far as "making your case" for your character's perspective on things.
That's one reason why I tend to not have much interest in horror - most of it is superficial "don't break the taboo" stuff, with little actual analysis or thought put into it.
Not that fantasy doesn't have its problems, too - ol' Tolkien's setting was all about the divine right of kings, etc. Blech ^_^
Oh, what's a politically radical sci fi nerd to do?

I'll send that PM after I finish up this post. :)

Ever see the Clive Barker film Nightbreed? I'm thinking maybe that might make for a good source of inspiration here.

Dungeons & Dragons is a really pulpy mish-mash of things taken from every mythology and every genre, so I think I'll go in that sort of direction. That is, I don't think I'll confine myself to the trappings of only one genre, but rather pull from a variety of different sources. I may very well use elements of horror and science fiction along with anything else I can find that can reinforce my ideas and give players cool things to play around with.

I've been thinking about the tone I want to use for the game, and I had an idea that I wanted to run by you guys:

Punk-Rock

Political, anti-establishment.
Frank, confrontational.
Do-it-yourself ethic.
Rebellion.

These are elements that I think fit into the overall vision I have for this game.

I think that juxtapozing punk-rock asthetic against medieval and Tolkienesque themes could make for some interesting settings.

If I go in this direction, I'm going to want to look at OD&D for all the freedom it does allow, but do away with a lot of its structures.
I might look for some way to break down 'turns' and 'initiative' and try to figure out ways to enable more freeform gameplay.

Your thoughts?

My take: the 'political problem' with "D&D (type games)" is twofold.

By 'problem' I mean the absence of any real politics.

Firstly, the Powerful (characters and the NPCs and monsters) dont seem to really need the labour of the poor exploited peasants (/hobbits/goblins etc).

For example, Create Food And Water is merely a Second Level spell.

So I think you need to put the exploitation back in to the fantasy political economy.

Secondly, you need to abolish the objective cosmology of standard D&D games with alignments and a god manual etc.
Sure, have cults and religions and superstitions....and by all means give some of them impressive magic powers...but dont have any source of authority in the setting beyond the groups own self-serving claims.

chronoplasm wrote:
Punk-Rock
...
Do-it-yourself ethic.
...
I think that juxtapozing punk-rock asthetic against medieval and Tolkienesque themes could make for some interesting settings.
...

I think I will play up the rebellion against guilds along with rebellion against feudal lords and rebellion against the organized religions of the setting.
The fact that sorcerers and dragons exist in the world should give the players other things to rebel against as well.
Perhaps these things could be wrapped together so that the huge multi-kingdom guilds also function as cults with their own patron deities and are lead by sorcerous master guildsmen.
Each of the guilds and their patron gods could be under the rule of a single powerful church run by a powerful lich who claims to represent the interests of his god; the dragon god.
Something like that maybe?

I was also thinking maybe spells like 'Create Food and Water' wouldn't exist in the world as such.
Magic in this world would carry a much higher cost; blood. Wizards are required to perform regular human sacrifices to acquire spell-components. Massive temples must be constructed to appease the gods, requiring thousands upon thousands of peasant laborers and centuries of back-breaking work.

So I'm thinking of going with something that is loosely based on medieval Europe, but I'm taking as many liberties here as traditional fantasy does.

...Just to clear something up.

The above is just one direction I might go for a possible example setting that players could use.
I don't want to be too authoritarian and create any sort of definitive setting that players must use.
I want to be flexible about this, you know?

Stay flexible? Well, that's easy enough to do - provide a pretty basic premise, and don't create a setting! You want anarchist game design, you've come to the right place - one of Ron Edwards' biggest public gripes with big gaming publishers is that they make products that are essentially coffee table books that show off the designers' setting, and have some rules tacked on so it's less obvious the whole thing is a redirected novel-writing urge.

It could be something as basic as "you, the little guys, are in the path of murderous, magic-sword-wielding psychopaths. What to do?" Or, it could be "Feudal society, supported by wizards and miracle-workers, has pushed the common people even further into the mud. How do you live with this?" Since D&D fantasy is so unformed and non-specific, even a tribute/critique in that direction wouldn't be hindered by a thin or nearly non-existent setting.

The important thing is the Premise, in a Narrativist sense, I imagine. Setting comes out of that, from a combination of the PC concepts and the Premise. Good stuff - nice and organic ^_^

Thanks. :)

I was thinking about races, how many I wanted to include, and what kinds.
I'm thinking now that I might just want to have two:
Human and Monster
Of course I would have examples in the book for different kinds of monsters that could be created, but they would be very simple and bog-standard examples.
Basically, Humans get extra skills as well as bonuses to class features such as Tool or Weapon proficiency. Monsters get a floating +1 bonus and a floating -1 penalty to any ability scores of their choice, as well as the option to take special powers like Natural Tool or Natural Weapon in place of class features.
The classes would be based on the roles used in D&D 4E (defender, striker, controller, and leader) but I would use different names for them and make my own little tweaks (I'm not really happy with how Wizards is handling the controller role anyway). They would be kept very vague and open to refluffing so that the players can flavor them to their tastes.

I don't really want to do any sort of point buy like GURPS... simply because I'm not a fan of it.

Is this sounding okay so far?

What are your ideas for core mechanics?

It's not terribly original, but I was thinking something like...

• Roll a pool of d20 dice against a target number; success is determined by the number of dice that roll over.
• Your ability scores determine the number of dice you roll in certain situations.
• You can add skill modifiers to the dice. You can use any skills that you can justify as being relevant to the situation, but each skill can only be added to a single die. If you can justify using the Intimidation skill to open a door for example, and the group buys it, then go for it, but you can only add your Intimidation bonus to one of the dice.
• Each die that lands on a natural 20 counts as two successes.

The game may also include optional 'role under' variant rules for those who prefer it.

Oh, I'll read those pdfs while I'm at work tomorrow. Thanks again. :)

What about some kind of Fifth World style, animistic/holistic approach to the world, as exemplified by the PCs?
That example with Intimidation got my brain going - what if you really were browbeating it into opening? What if, just as Conflict Resolution implies

When using this Technique, inanimate objects are conceived to have "interests" at odds with the character, if necessary

Reading this thread there was one idea I was almost immediately bursting to include: What I see as a common corporate fallacy (not among normal peeps, more among some of the hardcore corporation cheerleaders) is that some big guy comes in and builds this giant corporation that has it's productive ability somehow derived from his innate power, ignoring all the guys actually designing and making the stuff. Now this got me thinking; what if you create a relationship mechanic that makes some characters who are "levelling up" look like they are increasing in innate power, but actually getting into crazy relationships where their awesomeness is being subsidised by other people. I'm talking about divine champions who have their power created by the ritual efforts of cults, wizards with a whole school at their back to get spells from, or spells they "find around" that belong to the local people, martial warlords who's "minions" sacrifice themselves for their victory and of course gadget thieves who steal and then recombine other people's magic items to take advantage of their synergies.

Something like that, where these heroes come through decimating the local economy and society as a form of protection racket against all these monsters, and the peasants taking up arms to fight their own battle.

If the relationship mechanism allows both equally-respecting symbiotic links and parasitic links, with your group required as a seed to start true cooperative resistance getting off the ground, then the premise of the setting is sort of built into the mechanics, and you can just chuck various starting situations around from mindflayer slave-pits, to heroes + their protection racket, to feudal culture enslaved by a surreal magic enhanced celebrity!

Abkajud:
The dice pool idea there is actually loosely inspired by the skill challenges of 4E. Your dice pool actually represents a series of actions to complete one task.
The target number for the rolls represents the difficulty of the task, and the number of successes required to complete the task represents the task's complexity. Some tasks may have low difficulty but high complexity while other tasks may have high difficulty but low complexity.

I like the animism idea. It reminds me of an older idea for a game I had called Townsfolk (placeholder name).
In Townsfolk,
Farmers were scythe-wielding warriors specialized for mowing through large mobs of plant monsters.
Lumberjacks were axe-wielding warriors specialized for chopping down giant plant monsters many times larger and more powerful than themselves.
Miners were hammer and pick-axe wielding warriors specialized for digging through layers of defense to chip away at mineral monsters with high HP.
Fishermen were net and spear wielding warriors specialized for luring in and snaring aquatic monsters.
Everything in the world had some kind of monstrous spirit in it, forcing average people to perfect their occupations into fighting-styles just to get things done.

JoyWriter:
Cool idea!

It reminds me of another game I was working on a while back where you play as a living god, and your goal was to collect worshippers and build up a cult of personality. Each worshipper you gained magnified your power.
Something like that then?

Hmmm... Before I wasn't thinking of giving players much in the way of spellcasting, but now I'm imagining some sort of communal 'folk magic'. Through their relationships, players can combine power to cast spells. Spellcasting isn't something that is performed by a single specialized member of the party, but rather something that the group collaborates on to make possible.

Exploitative mages however place themselves at the center of the magic circles and concentrate the power of the group into themselves rather than dispersing it throughout the group.

Is that sort of what you are getting at?

Ah, I remember Townsfolk. It sounded really neat, actually :)
There's something characteristic, something vital and central, about a non-magical, really quite mundane power source for the PCs. Think of socialist realism in art - it glorifies, even deifies, the agrarian, the commonplace, and the practical. At this point in the conversation, I feel like your anarcho-fantasy game has a couple of routes it could take: a group vs. individual, four-color, Chrono Trigger-style game, wherein the PCs and the baddies are equally fantastical and colorful, but the bad guys obsess over exploitation while our plucky heroes work together...
OR a "soft power"/cooperative approach wherein the actually-quite-disempowered good guys and their allies have to not only work together, but use every trump and advantage they have to get one-up on their oppressors.
The former seems a bit too Saturday morning cartoonish, while the latter seems to evoke more pathos, have more panache, etc. It's a bit like the options available to the anarchists and communists fighting the fascists in Pan's Labyrinth: the good guys wear brown, or at least avoid black, and live in the woods, and some have to live under the heel of the fascists to keep their communication and supply lines open. The fascists live like military dictators, which they were, and have free access to food, and shelter, and medicine, so long as they toe the party line and follow orders.
I don't really want to see my players dishing out four-man synergy attacks (even if hammer-and-sickle emblems appearing in midair would be bad-ass!), but rather, I think that flashy, expensive magic should be a think for the bourgeois and the ruling classes, while quiet little prayers or cantrips that just nudge things in the right direction, at the right moment, would befit the desperation and poverty the PCs have to deal with.
But yeah, the basic idea of synergy sounds awesome. Dig it! :)

Ok, here's my idea cut down to heroquest brevity, missing huge swathes of what makes it awesome (but on the other hand perhaps showing alternate applications).

Instead of levels and classes, you have relationships, and those relationships replicate classes in terms of effects. Two characters must agree to a relationship, and must participate in the action that keeps it going. The effect of the relationship is generally asymmetric, but can be paired to make an arrangement agreeable to both. Relationships give bonuses to rolls in the specific field they operate in; everyone can do a little magic, fighting or sheep rearing, but relationships are required to boost the values into noticeable levels. So one player can become "the farmer" and requires certain things to do his job, but when he has them is able to produce extra crops, or more specifically, has more narrative power over how little crops they have.
Heroes frequently "save people" and move on, with little understanding of how much their requirements tax the people they leave, considering their growing power as just a natural feature of "completing quests for the peasants".

The second part is synergy, where actions can be combined in interesting ways to boost effectiveness and do cool stuff they couldn't otherwise do. This is in the field of fictional appropriateness, but would have guidelines showing the possible intersections of different relationships. This would be the core of group based conflict resolution, hopefully sufficiently freeform to allow creativity, sufficiently structured to allow people to hook in in the first place.

As I don't believe in Marxist social constructivism, (:P) the third part is natural stats. These form both a temptation to go it alone and hero about based on your innate superiority, and an encouragement to work with people who are weaker. Hopefully the first two mechanics would do enough to overwhelm these advantages to show the value of social engagement!

Now I notice I've taken out your elegant "caste = narration rights" thing, but I suppose that could be added back in, giving players a background that gives them a starting relationship at low value and authority over a sphere "My dad says that those woods are full of sprites, so we avoid cutting near them". I was thinking that this history could set external conflict, whereas whoever has the appropriate skill tries to solve it. Or even better, the person offers up the problem to the guys to see if they can help him solve it by organising!

Finally, how do you cover stealing with relationships? Well perhaps if you have enforced relationships then "much richer than" is a relationship that requires people to be poor to power it! Stopping forced relationships is not something I have worked out yet though. Perhaps people have to refresh the relationships periodically?

Abkajud:
Maybe I could go in both directions via optional rules and modules? Both approaches appeal to me and I'd like to be able to explore them both. It would be up to the players to decide which way they want to go in (as long as they come to a consensus with their groups!)

JoyWriter:
Forced relationships eh? That's a pretty nifty idea!

Perhaps some adversaries in the game can impose forced relationships if they are victorious in conflict. This could be a dictator who quells an uprising and imposes harsh punishment on the rebels or it could be a parasitic creature like a vampire or a brain-worm that latches onto a host. It could be a lot of different things.

Perhaps players might also decide to start the game with forced relationships as a drawback for their characters in order to justify some extra benefit in another area. For each forced relationship they impose upon themselves, they get some kind of equivalent bonus of their choosing (usually an extra friendly relationship such as "Enemy of my enemy" for example).

Removing a forced relationship can work much like combat, except that it is usually a bit more complicated as a task.

Shift the d20's for d6's and this is really sounding close to the system and many of the concepts I've been working on.

Especially the relationship stuff.

Cool, I'll be interested to see where this develops.

V

What about Endgame? Do you plan to have some endgame mechanic?

And what about magical items and equipment ownership? (Or magical items nature and fonction, etc...?)

After all the forced relationships have been shaken off and the Issues have been resolved, I suppose the player characters could try to set up their own independent community.
There needs to be one final conflict though... just to end things with a bang.
This could come in the form of a BBEG "End Boss" or it could be something like "Is our community sustainable?"
I'm thinking of maybe doing up some kind of random table of Demons that symbolize things like 'Greed' or 'Excess'. Players could use these demons as a final conflict if they don't come up with their own.

As far as magic item ownership goes...
What if magic items damage relationships? It would be kinda like the One Ring from Lord of the Rings and how it turned people into greedy jerks with creepy eyes.

I think end-game could be optional, or there could be semi-end-game going on instead/as well. Basically, you could retire the community once you've managed to shake off any immediate, pressing threats to its stability, and then introduce it, if you like, in a future campaign with different PCs. No point in throwing away a perfectly awesome, "completed" storyline, eh?
I have to admit, I'm confused about forced relationships, and relationships in general - can you explain what starts them, maintains them, and ends them? Thanks! :)
Also, the theme of corruption from LotR is an excellent, excellent idea to raid for concepts. Go for it, and remember the Ring of Gyges: if a man is unaccountable to his peers, what cares he for them?

I'm still a little confused about it myself, but I'm working on it.

Here's what I'm thinking:

Relationships can be grouped into 'asymmetric' and 'symmetric' categories.
Asymmetric relationships grant a bonus to one character in the relationship, but usually at the expense of the other.
Symmetric relationships grant either a bonus or a penalty to both characters in the relationship equally.

Relationships can then be grouped into 'consenting' or 'forced' relationships.
A consenting relationship is one where both chararacters in the relationship agree to it.
A forced relationship is one where the relationship is imposed as the result of conflict.

A consenting relationship is maintained if the two characters simply agree to maintain it, and it can be ended just as easily with mutual agreement. If one character decides to break free of the relationship against the will of the other, conflict occurs to resolve this.

A forced relationship is formed as the result of conflict, maintained through constant conflict, and requires conflict to end.

Does that sound okay so far?

Oh, wow, that means you could have stuff like vendettas, blood brothers, oaths... so many things! Two sworn foes could get boons from their mutual hatred and desire to defeat one another (symmetrical, forced), a vicious taskmaster could get a buff from abusing the slaves in his stable (asymmetrical, forced), or a couple of reavers could make solemn oaths to die to protect the other (symmetrical, consenting).

What of an asymmetrical, consenting relationship? Say! What about a king and his thanes, or a Hero and the local townspeople?

This is an exciting idea! :) And I think I get it!

Well one of my ideas for an endgame is that the PCs and friends form a little anarchist collective of their own, and their objective is to deal with the needs of the village and get the others involved in solving their own problems. This means they stop performing the activities that sustain the heroes relationship's and so those heroes, suddenly finding that the "class abilities" they earned are weakening, and come back to the villages.....

That's the final conflict, and like the previous ones, it's not purely combat, but it is thematic!

Snags; as much as I like the idea of a paladin getting 8 negative levels suddenly because the church that keeps praying for him has started praying for the local village instead, this doesn't really fit with the other class ideas. Equally the single mechanic doesn't easily cover "magic item theft" as a relationship, unless different forced relationships need different actions to sustain and to break. So perhaps some are harder to force in the first place, but sustain themselves; it's almost impossible to stop "not having something"!

But that is super-simple, and as you say C, you can add an extra layer with the magic item rules. No ideas on that myself at the moment, though.

I also thought of every relationship as being asymmetric, but you can pair them sometimes to make a symmetric one, putting bonuses and required actions on both sides. That way you can cover the greater needs of industrialisation or scholarly magic or whatever with greater "costs" for higher levels.

Also because of the synergy rules, it might be in your interest to give someone else a bonus, because their activities could be beneficial to you. The amount to which you can make that work could be a big puzzle part of the game; "Help us do ____ and you will find ____ is so much easier, because we can____!" sort of stuff.

Personally, I think relationships that Heroes accrue could be interpreted, within the story, as "greatness" or "arete". If we move away from the full suite of magic-users (full- and half-caste), then rougher, more indistinct "hero types" appear, like in LotR. If, through conflict, the local farmers manage to end their forced relationship with a Heroic ranger-type, then the Hero would be less skilled at hunting, or fighting, or herbs, or some such.
I think the concept of generalized greatness springs forth from D&D's level system rather nicely - especially in 3rd edition, wherein monsters like ghouls can "drain levels" and, for the first time, characters can spend XP to make magic items. This means that "levels" are ... well, to me, the best word for it is arete, that Greek concept.
From the 'kipedia:

In its earliest appearance in Greek, this notion of excellence was ultimately bound up with the notion of the fulfillment of purpose or function; the act of living up to one's full potential. Arete in ancient Greek culture was courage and strength in the face of adversity and it was what all people aspired to.[from the "arete" article at wikipedia.org, accessed today]

Abkajud wrote:
If we move away from the full suite of magic-users (full- and half-caste), then rougher, more indistinct "hero types" appear, like in LotR. If, through conflict, the local farmers manage to end their forced relationship with a Heroic ranger-type, then the Hero would be less skilled at hunting, or fighting, or herbs, or some such.

If relationships can bind people and concepts, they might as well be able to bind people and places or things...
...Which isn't a bad idea I think.

Hey, V! :)
how about this: Heroes lose their unusual or supernatural-ish capabilities along with related relationships; if people don't swap stories of your amazing prowess anymore, maybe you've lost the mojo... I'm all about the socially constructed individual ^_^

Chrono, I think opening up relationships between all kinds of entities gives a more holistic feel to the rules/setting, but that might move it away from political territory in favor of spiritual, religious, and mystical. Does that work for ya?

chronoplasm wrote:
If relationships can bind people and concepts, they might as well be able to bind people and places or things...

And on this note, Chrono, have you checked out the oath-binding mechanics in Changeling: the Lost? Could be some good stuff there..

Abkajud:
I've never played Changeling, but I'll ask my gaming group about it when I meet up with them tonight.

I just checked out that PDF you sent me, and now I've definately decided on including monsters as playable characters or NPCs allies and casting imperialistic humans as the primary antagonists.
...It's always up to the players to decide how they want to play, of course.
Monsters, being less social or at least less organized would start the game with fewer relationships than humans, but can get monstrous traits instead.
Perhaps monsters could have access to special relationships though like "Why did you create me?"

Vulpinoid:
Cool beans!
I like the idea of prerequisites for relationships. It's kinda sounding like 'Feats' from D&D though.
Do you think I should work with some kind similar structure or make it more freeform?

chronoplasm wrote:
I like the idea of prerequisites for relationships. It's kinda sounding like 'Feats' from D&D though.
Do you think I should work with some kind similar structure or make it more freeform?

Vulpinoid wrote:
If you want to gain a relationship to the "Duke of Monmouth", you already need to have a proven relationship to the location of "Monmouth" and a relationship to either the occupation of "Courtiers" or "Military".

On a character development level (and trying to pull my suggestions back to the original notions of the thread)...a group could define their own benefits from a communal collective. A farming commune could gain easier access to food supplies than if they were working on their own as individuals, a mercenary collective could find their combat skills improve due to close interaction with other warrior-types. The more members in the collective, the bigger the benefits might be, but the more obligations would be imposed on the members to keep things running smoothly.

contracycle wrote:
I like the second two but not the first.  After the Norman conquest there was a fair bit of friction between the native Anglo-Saxons and the incoming Norman administration, which would well be represented by having a rleationship to the duke that did not ewquire a relationship to the location; the relationship to the location is then one that is imposed as a consequence to the raltionship to the duke.  That would emphasize the idea of rulership NOT being a voluntary and reciprocal relationship.

Kevin,
 I was on vacation, just got back.
 Here is my idea:
Divide the opposition into roles: Exchequer, Brigadier, Vizier, Minister
Neither side directly fights each other. The Exchequer and the Farmer never clash face-to-face. But the Farmer feeds the rebels while the Exchequer pays the mercenaries to suppress the rebellion.
So, all of their abilities create tools that help with that conflict, no?
I dunno, its just an idea

OK, so here's some ideas for example relationships:

• Friend
• Enemy
• Friend of a Friend
• Enemy of my Enemy
• Parent/Child
• Sibling
• Lovers
• Married
• Unrequited Love
• Feared/Afraid Of
• Owner/Property
• Worshipper
• Homeland
• Occupation
• Symbol

I might add a couple, but I think that's about what I want to start off with and then let the players come up with their own from there.
I don't think I want to deal with a lot of specific race or heritage type relationships; I'm thinking mostly "fill in the blank" types of things.

dindenver:
The names of those roles are far too long!
I do need to put more thought into the opposition though...
First I think I just need to kinda fill out a matrix and then kinda go from there.
Going back to my description of Conflicts and task resolution; tasks have a 'difficulty' rating and a 'complexity' rating. Difficulty is the target number for rolls and complexity is the number of successes required to complete the task. I'm kind of thinking of opponents along those lines at the moment...
Complexity (Low), Difficulty (Low)
Complexity (Low), Difficulty (Medium)
Complexity (Low), Difficulty (High)
Complexity (Medium), Difficulty (Low)
Complexity (Medium), Difficulty (Medium)
Complexity (Medium), Difficulty (High)
Complexity (High), Difficulty (Low)
Complexity (High), Difficulty (Medium)
Complexity (High), Difficulty (High)

(It's OK for bad-guys to have dominance hierarchy; you are rebelling against them. :)

Conflicts could be resolved physically, socially, or through a variety of other methods. Each type of opponent would have a certain kind of conflict that they favor. Some opponents fight with words and others fight with swords.