Anyone interested in a new DI game?

[Bootsiuv]

Ok, after taking a good long break from FfH 2, I started screwing around with the game again over this past weekend.

It got me thinking about the DI game I was involved in right before I took a break, and why it likely failed.

To put it simply, the game was far too ambitious. No one can possibly organize the thoughts, requests, assignments, etc. of over a dozen people....and do so on a large map while interacting with 21 civs.

So, I was thinking of trying to get another similiar game going, but one that is far less ambitious.

Here are my thoughts....

1) No more than 3 gods need apply. One to represent the good gods, one for nuetral, and one for evil. Any additional players should be given the role of a "ruler", and allowed to play a few turns as the ruler, similiar to a PBEM. All involved should be relatively comfortable writing a short story, or at least a simple review.

The gods should probably be better writers still, as they'll move the story along with various quests, rewards, punishments, etc.

Rulers could then write up reviews of their reigns for our reading pleasure.

2) We should play on a smaller world with fewer civs, so even those with sub-par computers can take part if they choose. I was thinking ~10 civs, including our own, so we could represent all of the important races of Erebus with at least 1 civ.

My thoughts are as follows regarding the world, although all of this is certainly open to discussion.

Erebus continents
Low Sea Level
Temperate
Raging Barbs
All unique features
The Double event one, which slips my mind as of right now.
Maybe some I'm forgetting right now...

The exact civs should consist of at least one elf, one dwarf, one orc, a few human, etc. so we have an interesting world.

THE GODS

The players playing the gods should be good writers, and have a good knowledge of Erebus History and Lore, so they can make their stories more interesting.

This is really all I can think of right now, but I did enjoy that last game immensely, but I also saw it falling apart long before it happened. It was simply too much for one person to handle, and Verdian was likely (and understandably) put off by the amount of workload he found himself under.

I'm trying to think of a way to keep it from becoming work, which is also why I was thinking of rotating rulers instead of having 20 people being gods and manipulating the world.

For the record, I would likely take the position as gamemaster. I will create the world and watch over the gods and mortals to make sure they don't break any rules of the game, or take advantage of any exploits that I feel are out-of-character or don't go with the spirit of the game. I would also coordinate saves if need be, as gods and rulers alike would be trading them, and having someone serve as a "hub" to keep track of whats going on might prove useful.

Any thoughts, suggestions, or criticisms are encouraged.


Thanks for your time.

P.S. One last time, I would really like some good writers to go for the gods, as they'll carry the story. If you're not sure about your writing, go for a ruler. Less pressure.

 

[Jarrema]

Sorry but I do not know if I understand You correctly.

I have a "request" (a game that I would LOVE to play): role-playing (not the hard way, but at least some of it) PBEM Game for 4-8 players PLUS 3-5 gods...

How much different is it from Your proposal? is there a possibiliy for You hosting such a game?
(I surely cannot take a role of God, my english is so poor)

 

[Ravus_Sol]

First time i check the FFH sub-forum and this has been posted. obviously i unconciously sensed some kind of God signal.

Yeah the old one fell apart but it was amazing how spectacularly big it got. It would be fun to do it again but try and add some limiting properties. I'm sure all of the gods that were enjoying it have pondered on the same things you have, your thoughts are similer to the ones i had. Let me gather my thoughts...

1) The limiting of the gods:
Makes sense as this is where most of the complications arise. new gods and complicated inter-god diplomacy can play merry hell with the speed of it all.
However i'd say that three gods would be too few. Good Evil and Neutral are fine but i'd recomend 6 gods that split the roles. It adds more dynamics while still limiting it. Simply using the old adage of adding in a lawful-Choatic scale along with the good-evil one.
Lawful Good
Choatic Good
Lawful Neutral
Choatic Neutral
Lawful Evil
Choatic Evil

Six gods should be limiting enough to keep everyone happy. it also nicely uses up all of the religions in the game (leaving out the strange maybe athiest water "messenges from the deep" religion)

Not sure how the ruler thing is handled. Do you mean you would prefer a constantly changing player role? That sounds more like a complication then a simplification. Or are you meaning that writers can come in and write a short story for a computer controlled civilization so as to add character to it. (i suppose they could also do a lesser intervention to change some things as long as they wrote a good story to explain it)

If you do want a changing player-writer role you could allways have the option enabled "high to low" i believe it is... which changes to player to the lowest scored civ once it reaches the highest point. Once the player becomes the best in the world he could then pass on to another player who now writes for the new civ. (this would encourage writers to adopt civilizations as a "ruler" as they could become the main player-protagonist) This happens 3 times before the player then has to win with their new civilzation.

But again that could be come a complication. The whole high to low thing was something i pondered on after the fallout of FFHDI-IV

2) Smaller world:
Definatly something that would be done. Although my reasons for coming to this conclusion was because of the desire to give the gods their own civilzations. I'll explain later, but on your ideas;

Definatly need to have dynamicly chosen civs. Elves, Dwarves and men are needed for any fantasy game. Orcs are basically provided via the barbarians but i think a couple of foils should be chosen for the player civ. i.e. if they play as the bannor then make sure the shiem are on the board. Or they play with the vampire calibam then make sure the Sun loving malakim are there to provide potential stories.

The Raging barbarians is allways fun, the Erubus continents is still the best map to use. We all like the unique features however if the player chooses to start as the Elohoim civ then you should choose no unique features and add them later. Otherwise the player will be confused when the feautures arn't where the map says.

Also the Role-playing online FFH group (that i've never had the time to join unfortunatly) they usually start in a classical era to speed up the slow grind of the first 100 turns. If you have less gods and thus less neccesity to set the scene and introduce characters then it may be good to start classical. The game length after that can be decided via normal or epic speed i guess. (This also fits lore wise as this isn't the first age of man and they had enough skills to harvest fields and make minor wars etc.)

On my thoughts of god-civs; During the DI games all the gods had to basicaly use barbs and AI-civs which made it complicated. If you forcfully add in some civs to play the part of each god aspect you would allow god-wars, real ones with mortal units instead of the gods getting angry with each others edits. It would also easily allow the player to know which units are which. Clarification is key after all.

For example:
Good: Angels (Mercucians)
Evil: Demons (Infernals)
Netural: Independant Cities (Grigori)
Choas: Barbarians

You could stretch it out to 6 i guess if you used the sliding Choas-Law and Good-Evil scale completly. But for a simple Good-Evil scale just 3 added god-controled civs would help wonderfully with keeping track of things in game.

The only complication with this is that you may have to remove the ability for the mercucians and infernals to be summonable. However that would be part of the 'compact' lore so it shouldn't be too much hassle. Also unless the gods add in a bastion city somewhere to keep the god-civs alive then the option of "destory every unit to kill a civilization" could be enabled...

Sorry it's been awhile since i thought of all this so my collection of ideas are still hazy.

3)Gods;
It seems harsh basicaly saying the gods must be good writers and have lots of lore knowledge but it is understandable. I know i had to ask a lot of questions and get clarification on issues when i did my tenure as a god. having half the gods allways needing clarification from the other gods makes things a lot more complicated so while it's harsh i do agree with the idea, per'se

The last game survived quite well, having the God Forum helped immensly i think. otherwise the main story thread gets quickly overloaded with spoilers which are annoying. But the other main reason it survived as long as it did was Dagda playing the part of umpire. unfortunatly when more gods arrived and his authority grew well, i don't think the guy who played him wanted that kind of responsibility. So having someone play the part of 'hub' or gamesmaster as you say would help, although you could allways boost the ego more and give yourself the title of "the one".

-

Anyway those are my response and some inputs of my own ponderings after the fallout. If you do get this up and running well i'm not sure my lore skills were ever good enough so i'd probably end up playing the part of a minor 'ruler' (if you keep that idea)
I'll check this forum more often now to see how this goes...

PS @ Jarrema: This is a special type of role-playing game that is called Divine Intervention. You can find examples of it in the Strategy forum for normal Civ and under the Stories&Tale section for Fall From Heaven Divine Intervention games (yes it's a mouthful of a title)

basic summery would be that gods alter the save games and then write about these changes while tempting the player to glory or ruin via quests, traps and retribution etc. The DI games can end up either being very slapstick action happy and decending into god-wars or they can get into very deep story telling. The break down usually occurs when it isn't clear what type of DI game it is or if the complications of keeping it running get too hard.

 

[Bootsiuv]

Interesting thoughts, Ravus. I agree for the most part, although I'm still a little concerned about the complexity issue.

I'll have to dwell on it further, to think of the best way this could be implemented. Should the seperate "rulers" all control different civs and make it a PBEM-DI hybrid of some sort.

That would allow certain gods to choose certain civs that pleased them (although they could still do this with computer controlled civs as well).

Or, we could just have a ruler play an amount of turns, perhaps 50 or so, and then, instead of the same player going on like the the last one, a different player could pick up the reigns and forge his own path, taking the kingdom to glory or destruction, and pissing off/pleasing different gods than the last.

I'll leave this up for some time, to see if we can get anyone else interested. Any players of our previous game are encouraged to join, or, barring that, at least give me some ideas on how we could make this work, and most importantly, KEEP IT FUN!!

As soon as it turns into a work obligation is when people will start dropping out.

 

[Jarrema]

PS @ Jarrema: This is a special type of role-playing game that is called Divine Intervention. You can find examples of it in the Strategy forum for normal Civ and under the Stories&Tale section for Fall From Heaven Divine Intervention games (yes it's a mouthful of a title)

basic summery would be that gods alter the save games and then write about these changes while tempting the player to glory or ruin via quests, traps and retribution etc. The DI games can end up either being very slapstick action happy and decending into god-wars or they can get into very deep story telling. The break down usually occurs when it isn't clear what type of DI game it is or if the complications of keeping it running get too hard.

yeah, I bunderstand that. But I think about a game tahat is a mix of PBEM and a divine intervention (more than one player, and of course gods altering saves. So players can "compete" for a god favour (for example, who is more zelous)

As Bootsiuv puts it, "seperate "rulers" all control different civs and make it a PBEM-DI hybrid of some sort". I would vote for such an option

 

[Ravus_Sol]

Which was the PBEM game again? Is that the one where you play via emails? Or the one where you play online? or the one where you pass along a single-player save after so many turns?

Sorry i don't really play much but the single player so i've forgotten the acryonm.

 

[Bootsiuv]

PBEM is play by e-mail. I think, more often than not, players choose different civs, play their turns, save, then pass it along. Although a team of players could probably play as one civ if they chose to, switching turns or something would probably work.

I must admit that I frown on the idea at first thought, due to the fact that several player controlled civs will add to the complexity of the entire situation, which is something I'm trying to avoid. Not to mention, it would take weeks for the first few turns and god interventions to take place. I'm not even certain how such a thing would be coordinated.

Personally, I prefer the idea of several players taking turns leading a civ through whatever the gods set them up for.

By the end, we would have some good rulers, evil ones, greedy ones, just plain bad one, etc. so it may make for some more dynamic storytelling.