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.