Blockades

Was able to playtest the Warfare mini-game this week.  Went pretty well.  Decided that some sort of stacking limit (restriction on the number of units in each zone) was helpful to preserve a dynamic battlefield.

Thought a bit more about blockades.  One solution that sounds pretty good is to have certain zones become "blockade zones".  If the attacker occupies these zones, they may drain the resources of the defender.  It is assumed that these actions take weeks of time, thus zooming out the action as appropriate.

Added some more words to the Warfare and Infiltration chapters this week, meeting my somewhat loose goal of writing at least 1,000 words a week.  Focusing on seasons and threats seems like a good next step, now that something is down for each of the four mini-game types.

With seasons and threats looking good, perhaps a campaign can start in earnest!

Sieges and Blockades

One of the iconic scenes in fantasy literature (and medieval battle) is the siege of a castle.  In history (possibly less so in literature), a siege involved a blockade, with the intention of starving out those within the stronghold.

Representing this in an RPG is tricky.  It seems that most RPGs don't really touch it, even those which feature some measure of large scale battles.  Birthright did have the concept, although it involved tracking where units were on the map, and recording how long they remained in a zone with a fortification.  This method involves a little more book keeping than I was hoping for, as well as not fitting the season based structure of WotA.

It's fine to ignore the concept of blockade, and just focus on battles.  This would presume that any structures attacked must be taken during the same session, or the attack is thwarted.

I see two different scales in terms of warfare, a strategic zoomed out view and a tactical zoomed in view.  In the first, units wouldn't move much, as zones on the map might represent large distances.  When groups of units met, they would do battle according to some sort of rules (missile first, etc, etc).  This is a little like Birthright did it.

The second view is more Diaspora, where the zones on the map are smaller (yards, not miles), and time scales are shorter, representing a battle.

I prefer the second zoomed in view for fighting out battles, but the zoomed out view has the advantage that it provides a better framework for a logistics game - where you spend resources to starve out another faction. So, what would be a good way to allow for that aspect in the zoomed in view?

One possibility: if all the defenders are in a strongpoint of some sort, capable of providing defense, the attackers may use a special "siege" action, which effectively zooms out the time scale, costing both sides resources.  This could be done until one side cracks?

It's a little fiddly, but it may work to capture the idea without having lots of extra information to track.

Coming up with a rule that captures when that situation can occur might be tricky.  For instance, one unit could be on the map, but not really engaging the opponent?  It could be a "all defending units are outside the strongpoing, or unable to affect the attacking units" sort of rule.  That would give the defender some motivation to harry the attackers.  Otherwise, they are effectively giving up.

Then, when the scale zooms out to involve siege, it is assumed that much larger units of time pass by (weeks or months), as the people holed up whether the storm.  Eventually, one side or the other will crack, either the attackers assaulting the strongpoint, or the defenders exiting.

Warfare Design

The final mini-game in WotA is Warfare, the clash of units in battle.  While I have some idea for how many units each faction may get, and how they would move around a map, the narrative scenes leading up to the mini-game, as well as how to create said map, is less clear.

The Infiltration mini-game used set themes in the narrative scenes (setting up and heist and getting away with it, respectively).  The other mini-games (Skirmish and Negotiation) use narrative scenes that are pre-written in the text based on the target of the Skirmish or Negotiation.  It's difficult to see how Warfare could be reduced to the sorts of narrative scenes present in Infiltration, so I'm leading towards making it work more like Skirmish and Negotiation.

That said, it seems difficult to write narrative scenes, since the Warfare mini-game isn't as constrained.  It may be possible to write a variety of example generic scenes in the Warfare chapter, as well as other narrative scenes for each faction in the game.

Finally, there is constructing the map with all the various zones.  In Skirmish, this is also largely done ahead of time, although it is possible for the players to add aspects to zones before the fight gets underway.  The same tactic may be worthwhile here, although it doesn't seem practical to come up with maps for every single region where a battle could occur.  Perhaps a set of general zone maps, which could be modified by adding features in some fashion?  The players then may be able to add features to each map as well, in a similar fashion to Skirmish.

Espionage Part II Recap

The Espionage mission in it s current form went pretty well, but found a few problems which playtesting may help me articulate:

• Different Narrative Scenes.  It would be nice if the narrative scene structure for the Infiltration missions was no different than for the others, or at least very, very, close.
• Second Narrative Scene.  The second narrative scene was an elaboration of the first, adding more details about the different obstacles that needed to be overcome.  In practice, though, these details weren't really used in the mini-game.  It also adds quite a bit of time to the game to work these in.
• Plan.  At the beginning of the mini-game, the players make a plan.  While this is somewhat interesting, again, in practice, this is pretty time consuming, and subject to lots of change as the mini-game gets going.
• Time.  The additional creative element of coming up with details about the target made the session take too long.
• GM Fate Points.  In this iteration, spending these fate points required changing details of the plan.  Unfortunately, doing that could considerably add to the duration of the game, as well as requiring quite a bit of creative narration.  As such, it's better if the fate point spends are easier to accomplish - they should be resolved fairly quickly during the mini-game.

So, the current idea to address these issues is to have two narrative scenes (as usual), but with a different focus.  The first narrative scene might be a "get in" scene, where all the obstacles to getting in and getting access are listed.  The second is the "get out" scene, where all the obstacles to getting out safely are listed.

Every time one of the stress boxes is checked off in each of these scenes, a new obstacle is added to either the "get in" or "get out" pile with a number of stress boxes equal to those checked off.  Thus, the first scene might have a "Determine physical security" obstacle, which might produce "Hallway trap" and "Door lock" obstacles for the mini-game.

At the start of the mini-game, then, this list will be tackled by the players in a similar fashion to how the narrative scenes work.  One difference is that the number of stress boxes won't be uniform (at 3).  Also, the idea of an "alert track" is still in play, which goes up over time as the players deal with the mission.

The final elements to put in play are ways to raise/lower the alert track.  Failed rolls should raise it, and possibly tagging aspects or getting shifts on successes may lower it (preferred?).

Each obstacle in the mini-game may function almost like a "zone", where players move to in order to engage the obstacle.  Thus, it may take an action to move between zones.

Also, having "get in" and "get out" obstacles may make for an interesting difference in terms of getting caught.  That is, getting caught going in may have lesser repercussions than getting caught going out (which would be getting caught red-handed).

Finally, the GM needs to have a good way of spending fate points, that doesn't require too much thought during the mini-game.  Might be enough to add to the stress tracks of obstacles (like the regular narrative scenes).  Maybe, if the obstacles are zones, could even add aspects to the obstacles themselves, which could be compelled to affect the character in some fashion.

Espionage Part I - Recap

Played through the first half of an Espionage mission, and it went pretty well.  The narrative scenes in the Espionage missions revolve around the planning of the mission.  Figuring out what sort of security is in place, who has access to the target, and weaknesses or vulnerabilities.

The narrative scenes in Espionage are slightly different from other missions, in that the obstacles resolved in the first scene turn into the obstacles to resolve in the second scene.

For instance, the first scene may have an obstacle such as "What does the guard force consist of?" - and, as the stress boxes are checked off on this obstacle, new obstacles are created.  Such as "guard dogs" and "night watchman".  These are investigated in more detail in the second narrative scene.

This seems to work fairly well, although it is a departure from how the other narrative scenes work, which isn't usually desirable.  It could also be handy to have some lists at hand to help fill in details, since this isn't really done beforehand.  Or, maybe that's the role of the GM before play begins?

Infiltration Playtest 1

Tonight I'm hoping to run through Infiltration for the first time.  After making some progress on it months ago, it was pushed to the wayside for other considerations (a few Skirmish missions and a Negotiation mission).  The good news is, those went pretty well.  Unfortunately, after revisiting the Infiltration rules, I felt like they needed some tweaks.  Part of that was due to changes in other parts of the game (the narrative scenes).

Anyway, now Infiltration consists of two narrative scenes of planning, followed by the tactical mini-game.  The first scene allows the players and GM the ability to collaboratively lay out the sort of security issues that might come up.  The second scene is the players investigating those in more detail, looking for vulnerabilities.

The mini-game starts with the players laying out a potential plan to deal with the problems.  Each of the security obstacles discovered in the first scene has a number of steps, which correspond to skill rolls needed to remove the task.

There is still an alert track which represents how close the characters are to getting caught.  It represents the paranoia of the opposing faction that something is amiss.

My goal was to have the Infiltration mini-game revolve around a push your luck element.  As the alert goes up, there is a greater chance of getting caught.  But, aborting the mission means somewhat wasting the season.  Furthermore, it's possible for one character to get caught, but other characters to still succeed.  Of course, there could be somewhat of an international incident, but it might be worth it.  (Or, the character has a stunt which helps them disavow all knowledge.)

Equipment in WotA

This week I wrestled with how to handle equipment in Wrath of the Autarch.  Fantasy games have a history of defining characters by the combat gear they wield.  The tough part about including rules for equipment in WotA was that it potentially creates a situation where combat is overemphasized compared to the other parts of the game.

Ultimately, I decided to just roll all the functionality of equipment into Stunts.  Stunts have a number of mechanical effects, such as adding to rolls, reducing Stress damage, improving effects, etc.  By abstracting out equipment to stunts, it has a way of grouping everything that modifies rolls into one spot.  And furthermore requiring players to invest in Stunts by spending Fate Refresh.

Equipment is handled very narratively.  If you want your character to have gear, they just have it.  There are no rules for encumbrance or costs for items.  There is an assumption that every character has some basic equipment necessary to use their skills.  Using Fighting implies the carrying of a weapon, etc.  However, there aren't any mechanical benefits for this type of gear.  If you want them to have awesome gear, which provides mechanical benefits, then you have to spend for it.

Players vs. Rules

One sentiment I've encountered in regards to tabletop RPGs quite a few times is a variant of the belief that system doesn't really matter: an RPG "can't be all players/can't be all rules".

I'm not exactly sure how to unpack this statement.  On the surface, it sort of seems absurd.  After all, games are exactly sets of rules.  So saying it's not "all rules" doesn't make sense.  After all, if you take away the rules, what are you left with?

I think the intent behind this idea is that so-called mechanical solutions aren't appropriate for many instances of play.  But I think this is a misunderstanding of what mechanics are.  I think, what this really is, is a stance against rules-heavy simulationist style play.

But that's not "rules vs. player", it's players applying a certain set of rules.  I don't think the "system" in "system matters" just boils down to dice mechanics.  "Describe what your character does, GM decides results" is a universal role-playing system that promotes a certain style of play.

More Infiltration

After talking it over with friends, I have a sketch that's starting to become a full fledged mini-game for Infiltration.

Essentially, Infiltration is a series of obstacles, further subdivided into tasks.  These obstacles and tasks are created during the acts leading up to the finale.  While those scenes are played out, the heroes divide up responsibility for the plan.

During the mini-game, each character attempts to remove an obstacle by addressing the sub-tasks which make it up.

Besides obstacles and tasks, a suspicion tracker is used, which slowly escalates during failed rolls for tasks.  If this reaches a threshold, the hero is caught, and must face penalties.

When an obstacle is removed, the suspicion track goes down some, reflecting the new situation that results.

For instance, an obstacle might be "Palace Guards".  Tasks to get by them might be "Make a uniform", "Enter hallway", and "Command guards to leave".

Infiltration

I'm interested in coming up with playtest packets which flesh out the different types of missions in Wrath of the Autarch: Exploration, Infiltration, Diplomacy, Quest, Warfare, and Threats.

The biggest question mark at this point is infiltration, the act of either stealing knowledge about a development or sabotaging a development.

My initial thought is to create a mini-game which is populated during the three obstacle scenes.  The obstacle scenes could be somewhat standard in terms of tone, such as:

• Establishing a base of operations.
• Researching the target.
• Coming up with a plan.

The mini-game might then be a series of steps which can be filled in during the planning scene.  Then, success or failure of the mission would occur depending on how well each character succeeds in executing the portion of the plan they're responsible for.

If it's simple skill rolls to advance along the various tracks, then this may be a little abstract for an esponiage themed session.

It seems like the omnipresent concern for espionage is getting caught.  So having a meter for the amount of suspicion aroused might be useful as well.

Lessons from the Strategic Model

After playing through the strategic model a few times, it made me question some elements that I took for granted in Wrath of the Autarch.

One of those is attributes for the different factions (military, influence, arcana, and technology).  The more I thought about it, the more they seemed unnecessary.  These can probably be covered by developments.  The sorts of developments a faction has built effectively fills in those areas.

I think population and stability are still necessary, though.

With that in mind, I may need to tweak the model again, and just use the developments, somehow weighting them based on effectiveness in accomplishing certain missions.

I'm sort of alternating between a strategic model and zooming in on the mechanics of the actual missions.

FateThulhu

I've been interested for a while in marrying Call of Cthulhu with FATE.  Still haven't looked around to see if it's already been done, but it seems like a natural fit.

In particular, I like the way Trail of Cthulhu distinguishes between investigative skills and general skills.  It seems like treating investigative skills similar to aspects might be a fun way to make a character.

Similar to Trail, all the investigative skills are divvied up between the players, and then used without rolling dice.  If you have the relevant investigative skill, and are involved in the scene, you get the clue.  Instead of treating the skills like pools, FATE points could be used when it's possible to get some extra result above and beyond the clue.

General skills would be handled in a more traditional FATE fashion.  However, since sanity is such an important part of Cthulhu, it might be good to add some extra mechanical weight to sanity.  Consequences might work, particularly if the GM could use free tags to really play up the consequence.

Initial Strategic Model Playthrough

Played through the Strategic Model this evening, which went reasonably well.  It was a pretty easy victory for the Stronghold, although they rolled well and got a great region on the first turn.

There were a few clarifications, and the sheets could use some reworking.  I edited them so that it's possible to use a tracking cube to monitor the attribute values.  That should speed up play quite a bit, as there was too much erasing and rewriting.

My initial thought is that it's a little too easy for the Stronghold.  Which was the point of making this model to begin with.  But I want to play it through a few times in succession before I start the tweaking.

The other issue is that threats might need some work.  It's tough coming up with a balanced way for the GM to cause the player's grief, but it's important in such an adversarial style of game.  The tricky part is going to be not overwhelming the GM with all the details about how to create threats.  I'm thinking in the actual WotA game that I'll maybe just have charts of threats for the GM to choose from, rather than having to build them too much from scratch.

Strategic Model

Well, I've switched the project name to Wrath of the Autarch.  Like it better, but could change it again later.

Unsurprisingly, kingdom building games are very difficult to design.  There are two different scopes to the game: a mission scope and a seasonal scope.  Where the mission scope focuses on the roleplay during the session, the seasonal scope is how the results of all the missions affect the different factions and the Stronghold.

It's not really practical to play out a 25 or 30 session campaign to see if it's well balanced.  Instead, I'm interested in creating a strategic model, which abstracts details like characters and developments and aspects out, instead focusing on just the high level faction skills, as well as how all the missions interact with each other.

To that end, I'm going to create a model with the following features for each faction:

• Stability
• Population
• Influence
• Military
• Arcana
• Technology
• Characters
• Regions

With the exception of regions, these are all single values.  As much as possible, I'm going to keep the values the same as they are in the regular game, with a few exceptions.  One is characters, which is just a score representing how skilled the characters are.  Obviously, this is a major abstraction, but it's essential to facilitating a strategic model.

Developments also are abstracted away.  Instead, developments will just affect the key faction skills: stability, population, influence, military, arcana, and technology.

After creating faction sheets, I'm going to define the missions in terms of these new values.

Hopefully this view of the game will yield useful information.  Questions like, how long does the game take to complete?  Are all the missions equally useful?  How balanced are the factions?  Are there any clearly better strategies?

If I can build a decent model for the game, I can try to build the missions to reflect the difficulties in the model, and I should have a better shot at making a balanced game, without having to play through it multiple times.

The Endgame

The Fall of the Autarch departs from most RPGs in that it has a campaign end condition. There are a few games that have such a thing, like Burning Empires, which FotA draws some inspiration from. In that game there is a single value, Disposition, for both the heroes and the Vaylen (the big bad of Burning Empires), which underlies how strong the forces are. Various "maneuvers" are played against the GM, who controls the Vaylen faction. These will affect the Disposition of one side or the other. When a side has their Disposition drop down to 0, they effectively get what they want out of the conflict.

Most other kingdom building games don't have such an end condition. Instead, it follows a more traditional RPG path, where each side simply continues playing, until some narrative ending is reached. The bad guy is slain, people stop showing up, etc.

For FotA, I'm leaning towards following the Burning Empires model. Instead of Disposition, though, the faction Stability value will probably be the important piece. The mission types will usually either affect the Autarch's Stability or the Stronghold's Stability (occasionally both). When one of these values drops down to 0, the campaign is over, and that side has collapsed.

My main worry about using a single value is that the game may have a period where it's pretty obvious that one side or the other has won, but it takes forever to play out. This happens quite a bit in boardgames, and isn't usually very fun. In boardgames, a player can frequently concede, which is certainly possible in the RPG as well, although that isn't quite as fun. Maybe there can be some "high risk/high reward" type missions that will allow a side to get back in it, or become completely broken. That is, spend Stability as a last hurrah, which is certainly a more climactic way to end the campaign than getting nickle and dimed to death. 

Something I'll have to think about.