Our Dark Star

[Rhymer]

Interest check for a new nation roleplay set in my homebrew world of Our Dark Star. This time around-no numbers or stats and each player would take control of a 'city-core'. The map would be different and I would flesh out the tech/magic and geography.

[rush99999]

I'm in

[BelatedGamer]

How are things handled without stats?

[Skylar]

As player of the last game, very interested.

[Rhymer]

How are things handled without stats?

@BelatedGamer

I can give you a better answer after I flesh out the tech/magic/world a bit. The easy answer is we would handle things in the least asshole-ish way possible. Talking in OOC and working out what players are intending to do for one-is there something specific like combat you were wondering about?

[BelatedGamer]

<Snipped quote by BelatedGamer>

I can give you a better answer after I flesh out the tech/magic/world a bit. The easy answer is we would handle things in the least asshole-ish way possible. Talking in OOC and working out what players are intending to do for one-is there something specific like combat you were wondering about?

@Rhymer

Yeah combat is mostly what I was getting at, I've never partaken in a NRP without some semi-formal way to handle combat.

[Rhymer]

<Snipped quote by Rhymer>

Yeah combat is mostly what I was getting at, I've never partaken in a NRP without some semi-formal way to handle combat.

@BelatedGamer

Will certainly be something I work out taking into consideration what the players want as well.

[BelatedGamer]

Well I can't guarantee I'll join until that gets figured out, but I'll subscribe to this thread and keep an eye on it.

[The Captain]

I was really interested in the last iteration, I only found it after it was underway however. I'd quite like to get in on a strong reboot/successor.

[Voltus_Ventus]

I'm interested sir!

[ForeverBWFC]

Sounds interesting to me!

[Rhymer]

Well I can't guarantee I'll join until that gets figured out, but I'll subscribe to this thread and keep an eye on it.

@BelatedGamer

Reconsidering using a Magic:the gathering type combat system where units have an attack/defense number and damage resolves simultaneously. I know it's going back to numbers and stats but seriously it would be the most minimal usage of numbers I can think of.

[BelatedGamer]

<Snipped>

@Rhymer

Well, if I were to want to use as little stats as possible I might use some kind of token system.

Like every in-game year or whatever each country gets a certain number of tokens, and each battle we basically "bet" the tokens. Whoever spends the most wins the battle, but no one gets tokens replenished until the next year.

We could PM you the number of tokens we bet, that way there won't be any cheating.

I'm not saying this is a better system than the one you suggested, this is just something off the top of my head.

[Rhymer]

<Snipped quote by Rhymer>

Well, if I were to want to use as little stats as possible I might use some kind of token system.

Like every in-game year or whatever each country gets a certain number of tokens, and each battle we basically "bet" the tokens. Whoever spends the most wins the battle, but no one gets tokens replenished until the next year.

We could PM you the number of tokens we bet, that way there won't be any cheating.

I'm not saying this is a better system than the one you suggested, this is just something off the top of my head.

@BelatedGamer

I love that idea..

[BelatedGamer]

Well I'm definitely interested in joining now that we have a couple of suggestions out there.

[Ashgan]

Yo. As a disclaimer, I hope I can manage to post on a good schedule; I'm not necessarily known to be very fast. Looking forward, you should expect me to post about once a week, rarely twice. That said, I actually looked at the past iteration of this and felt enticed to a degree. Not sure what eventually made my decision to not join (maybe I was late? too many other things going on?) but I might give it a shot this time. I kind of like your style.

And could I ask what you mean with a 'city-core'? I checked your old thread and I didn't see it mentioned on the quick. That was about the council of a pillar.

Also, on a note on the token combat system: while my opinion might have no weight, I don't actually think it's that good of an idea. The two problems I see are that A: frequent battles will get you spent fast even if your victories were very one-sided, which feels a little unfair and B: the system is very punishing towards players with highly favorable victories. Picture someone sending a single token versus someone who sends all of them. Sure the all-in guy might win, but even though most of his army should be unscathed given their overwhelming victory, they are now all spent for a year. Seems kind of crazy. The system works well when two roughly equal sides have one large battle, but that seems like a narrow area of application. To keep stats simple, I imagine an MTG system, as has been suggested, would be more versatile in this regard.

[BelatedGamer]

Considering the time it would take to organize and deploy all of your forces -- not to mention the effect it would have on the citizens of your faction, I'm not sure it's as problematic as you make it out to be.

Using all of your tokens is akin to a very large chunk of your population taking up arms, if not most of it, and something like that would only be done in desperate measures.

Replenishing your tokens gradually, rather than once a year, would make more sense however so I'll give you that.

[Ashgan]

Certainly, drafting an army is not a simple thing and its effect on the citizenry has to be reflected accordingly. And, to be fair, I don't know enough about the setting yet to accurately judge things like deployment speeds, conscription rules and so on. With them regenerating gradually it would certainly alleviate the frequent battle issue, I guess I also have one wonder that would certainly change my perspective on things, and that is how troop permanency/positioning is handled. Say you draft an army, move somewhere, then win to a convincing enough extent that you could keep going. Do your guys get consumed on the spot? Sent home immediately? Or are they allowed to keep going towards perhaps an ultimate objective, somehow? A second question pertaining to the token system is how you would treat different unit types, to balance their worth against one another. What I liked about Rhymer's initial concept is that you could essentially draft an army, give them an appropriate "health" value of sorts, and then have them exist for as long as said value is something above 0 (probably significantly above, considering morale and all). The token system feels a little all-in heavy, unless they were allowed to persist on the map, which essentially turns them into health anyway.

Both systems can work, in the end, but I think one offers more versatility than the other.

Edit: You could pretty much combine the two by just allowing the winner to keep any surplus tokens he had (5 tokens vs 8 tokens = winner keeps 3) in play.

[BelatedGamer]

I think there may be a misunderstanding here, the tokens don't just represent armed forces, they're an abstraction of the factions resources from soldiers to morale to propaganda.

Considering the original plan was to resolve things in the "least-asshole-ish way possible" I'm pitching this as a way to keep things fair and semi-strategic without getting anyone bogged down in keeping track of individual units or stats.

Anyway I'm not saying your idea is bad or anything -- I'd be happy to use it if everyone else wants to -- I just don't think that amount of detail is necessary for this particular thread.

EDIT: Sorry but I'm not sure that your surplus suggestion is in the spirit of the thing. The point is that you're gambling your resources while trying to guess how many your opponents will use, in order to use up as little resources as possible. If you allow the surplus rule than the risk/reward nature of the bet goes out the window.

[Ashgan]

I see. So I can see your train of thought and it fits the bill insofar. I will also agree that the whole risk thing goes out the window, which is a loss, admittedly. My personal concern was for troops disappearing into thin air without justifiable reason other than "well you wanted security, that's the price". It ultimately boils down though to what Rhymer thinks fits best with the intended tone of the setting. I could even see merit in not using stats at all and letting the GM make the call on how a battle goes (or even better, players coming to an agreement).

Just some friendly discussion; I really like talking all things game design, so it's in my nature to bring this stuff up. Maybe we can even come up with a system that allows for an element of risk, as well as an element of gradual attrition/war fatigue in armies.