Autarch Strategy in WotA

I've blogged in the past about strategy from the perspective of the players running the Stronghold.  This post concerns the Autarch strategy in Wrath of the Autarch (what the Autarch player does to win).  Previously, I had developed a system where the Autarch would gain access to various threats based on the year of the campaign.  Basically, for every year of the campaign, the Autarch gained access to more powerful threats of various sorts (Warfare, Diplomacy, Infiltration, and Skirmish).

However, because the Autarch gained access to every sort of threat, there really wasn't any strategy on the part of the Autarch player - just choose the threat type that couldn't be defended.  It also wasn't that fun to be the Stronghold players, because investing in defense in one area just left another area exposed.

The further I get in design, I also have a better vision for what this game is all about.  Wrath of the Autarch is a competitive strategy role-playing game.  While there is a GM of sorts, there is no GM fiat, and the GM/Autarch player is trying to win.  In such a game, it's far more interesting if there are strategies for both the Stronghold players as well as the Autarch player (I may shy away from using the term GM in the book - not sure).  So, I came up with the following.

Threat Pools

The Autarch player allocates points into a set of four threat pools in order to harm the Stronghold in various ways.  There is one pool for each mini-game in WotA (Warfare, Diplomacy, Infiltration, and Skirmish).  Threats have various requirements in terms of threat pool levels, and not surprisingly the mini-game used in that threat is the same as the pool name.

Rather than have the Autarch player secretly track all of these pools, however, I use a method of revealing hidden information that I first saw in War of the Ring: the Autarch player only allocates points into pools when executing a particular threat or when forced to by the Stronghold players (via an Infiltration mission or something similar).

Note that the pools are not expended when a threat is chosen, rather they represent requirements for more powerful threat.  Maybe pools is the wrong word here?  Instead, the number of threats are restricted by current year (each year may only have a number of threats equal to 1/2 the current year) as well as by type (the same threat may not be used more than once a year).

Example

For example, here are some Autarch threats, along with requirements of different types:

Propaganda Campaign (Infiltration)
  Requirement  7:  -1 stability
  Requirement 12: -2 stability
  Requirement 17: -3 stability

Military Strike (Warfare)
  Requirement   9: Standard infantry, archers, and cavalry.
  Requirement 14: Advanced infantry, archers, and cavalry.
  Requirement 17: Elite infantry, archers, cavalry, and catapults.
  Requirement 21: Elite infantry, archers, cavalry, and cannons.

Turn Faction Against Stronghold (Diplomacy)
  Requirement  6:  -1 Disposition
  Requirement 11: -2 Disposition
  Requirement 16: -3 Disposition

Let's say it's the end of the Winter of the second year (8th season), and the Autarch player has not been forced to declare where points are allocated to threat pools.  In that case, during the declare threats phase (end of season) - the Autarch player may either choose to launch a Propaganda Campaign or to Turn Faction Against Stronghold, since both of those have options which require eight or fewer points.

If the Autarch player decides to Turn Faction Against Stronghold, they would be forced to allocate pools as follows:

Infiltration: 0
Warfare: 0
Skirmish: 0
Diplomacy: 6

This is because the Turn Faction Against Stronghold threat requires a Diplomacy Threat pool of at least six.  The Autarch player would also have two points left over.  Now the Stronghold players would know that the Autarch is going to use Diplomacy to bother them, so they better strengthen their relationships with allies!

Continuing with this example, let's fast forward to the Spring of the fourth year (13th season).  Assume the Autarch has the same pools as above, as well as seven points that haven't been allocated.  Five of them could be put into Diplomacy, gaining access to a better Turn Faction Against Stronghold threat, or the Propaganda Campaign could be used, putting seven into Infiltration.  Finally, in two seasons, a military option could be chosen, if the Autarch is comfortable waiting.  The Autarch decides to wait - preferring the flexibility of a future threat to acting now.

However, in the Summer of the fourth year (14 seasons), the Stronghold players decide to Infiltrate the Autarch in order to figure out future plans.  They succeed, and choose as the success condition to force the Autarch player to allocate the eight points which aren't allocated!

The Autarch player decides on:

Infiltration: 0
Warfare: 8
Skirmish: 0
Diplomacy: 6

So, the players know that the Autarch is changing gears, supplementing Diplomacy with naked aggression in the form of military attack!  And they only have one season to prepare!

Strategy

While this method of choosing threats will require tracking four more attributes on the Faction sheet, it makes for a far more interesting game in terms of acting and reacting  to different threats.  The Autarch player has a tension between acting earlier, giving away strategies, and acting later, while keeping options open.  Although, waiting too long will force the Stronghold players' hands, making an Infiltration mission more and more worthwhile, in order to determine what dark intentions the Autarch has in mind.

Sadly, it's going to take some more strategy game testing in order to get these values roughly balanced, but initial sentiment was pretty lukewarm regarding the way Autarch threats were previously handled, and this way will hopefully fix the biggest concerns (essentially, that there was no way to defend against what the Autarch was up to since they could do everything well).

The Wrath of the Autarch - Endgame

Another part of the game that I'm adding in is a "final Autarch threat" - the victor of which wins the game.  The motivation for this is largely to function as a timer.  I'm calling this threat, appropriately enough, The Wrath of the Autarch.

It will be triggered in two ways: when the Autarch's stability is low enough (down to one or less), or when a certain amount of time has elapsed (the Spring of year nine).  The key point is that the Autarch's power will grow significantly over the eight years, such that it greatly behooves the players to force this threat earlier rather than later.  This threat would probably be handled using Skirmish, with the Autarch unleashing a full arsenal of horrible onto the important people of the Stronghold.

I think adding in a narrative reason for this would be fitting (some long term ritual she's a part of, in order to gain power).

Designing Tabletop Strategy RPGs

Wrath of the Autarch is, for lack of any better terms, a tabletop strategy role-playing game.  Or, alternatively, maybe a tabletop 4X RPG is a good descriptor.  Designing such an uncommon beast has proven very difficult, and I'm now aware of why I couldn't find many such games in the first place.  The difficulty comes from merging competition with long time scales.

When initially designing WotA, I looked at many kingdom building RPGs, like Birthright.  However, I quickly realized those games weren't as useful to me as a designer, because they largely don't address long term strategy.  Rather, the kingdom is more of a framing mechanic for the narrative.

The most useful game that I've read is Houses of the Blooded, since it has competition and long term strategy.  Sadly (to me), competitive RPGs are rare enough (Contenders being one of my favorites), but competitive strategy RPGs are basically non-existent, with Houses of the Blooded being the only one I know of.  If you're reading this and know of another one, please let me know!  The big difference between Houses of the Blooded and Wrath of the Autarch is that, instead of the many vs. many PvP as in Houses, WotA has many vs. one (the Autarch) PvP.

The Incompatibility of GM Fiat and Competition

The first, and most immediate way, in which competition makes RPG design very difficult is it necessitates a certain rules framework in which all the players can operate within.  Rather than the traditional RPG design, where the GM is a facilitator to a story, the GM is instead another competitor.  This is easier at a local tactical level - after all, D&D combat in virtually every edition is a competition between the players and the GM, but it gets much harder when that competition is featured at the strategic level.  Put another way, the biggest tool in the RPG toolbox, GM fiat, is now verboten.

I handled this by providing a mission currency for the players (see the previous post), as well as a threat investment structure for the Autarch player (which I'll discuss some other time).  But, the key point is that strategy RPGs can't have a global GM fiat.  This may seem obvious, but the point is certainly worth mentioning, as it becomes readily apparent just how difficult design becomes when that is removed.

Uncertainty of Victory / Winning From Behind

Other design difficulties come from the mixture of strategy and competition, such as maintaining a level of uncertainty (or not) until the completion of the game.  That is, in a long-term strategy RPG, it's best to try to avoid the derivative state where one side or the other knows the game is over, yet it is quite some time before it actually becomes so.

One way to avoid this in games is to decouple the victory condition from the power source.  Otherwise, as you get further behind - you lose any ability to catch up.  I think another method is perhaps to have a few different options for victory, some of them being more unlikely (but perhaps more final) options.  The Hail Mary play as it were.  Note that many computer strategy games don't do this - but it's a little easier to say "Good Game" and move on earlier than it would be in an RPG, where there are narrative considerations as well.

My strategic playtests have revealed that I was guilty of this problem.  In this first place, stability - the measure of stability in your Stronghold, was both a way to build developments (and hence get power) and was also a win condition.  I decided that population is the way to build developments, with stability being a win condition.  All factions (the Stronghold, the Autarch, the five minor factions) are measured by these two metrics.

I'm still working out some Hail Mary victory conditions.  One of which might be assassinating the Autarch, which is no small feat.  I don't have a good option for the GM, but it might be the alternative: showing up with the Autarch somewhere, and trying to force the issue.  This has to be done with care, though, because a grand strategic advantage shouldn't be easily trumped by a long shot move.  Rather, such missions will at least serve to formally end the campaign when one side realizes it's most likely over.  It's more narratively interesting to go out in a blaze of glory than slowly die a thousand cuts over another four or five sessions of play.

Time Scales

Another difficulty of the genre is handling the time scales that a strategy game needs.  The important people from the kingdom are the lens through which the narrative is told, but this must necessarily be abstract in some measure, otherwise too much time is spent on narrowly focused concerns without moving the narrative forward.

In this, there are some good examples in existing RPGs.  The classic Pendragon accomplishes this by only focusing on the very important considerations for the year, not dealing with adventuring minutae.  This is also the tactic that HotB employs.  Birthright is slightly different, and uses both long term moves (kingdom level actions) as well as 2nd Edition D&D style adventures, intermixed.

I chose to employ actions at the level of the season (like HotB), such that each season the narrative progresses.  However, something like this must be done so that the kingdom itself grows.  It's possible to become even more abstract, where players don't role-play characters anymore, but rather narrate the actions of empires.

Winning!

I could write a great deal more about this topic, but I wanted to try to impress upon any other designers of tabletop RPGs the unique challenges present when competition is part of an RPG at the strategic level.  It turns out there is much to learn from boardgames (naturally - since Civilization was first a boardgame) and videogames, although there are challenges in adapting the form into a game where players assume the roles of important characters in the narrative (most notably time scale becomes an issue).  As well, there are difficulties when looking at kingdom building RPGs and making them strategic (most notably the limiting of GM fiat).