the REAL rpg... do we want that?

[disorganizer]

now as some already played with that idea... for a long time... i will now post it:

what about having a "real" rpg?
a game completely seperate from any demogame?

it would work somehow along the following lines:

1) government-type in game is emulated in forum
this means:

a) during despotism
a-1) every term, a despot is elected
a-2) this despot is allowed to play out a maximum of 10 turns, 2 times a week at his own will
a-3) the despot can employ advisors helping him with decissions. he can also post public surveys if he wishes. but is not forced to
a-4) the despot can enprison persons at will or do other national decission (for example tax-rate) at will
a-5) all money going to the "black hole" in the rpg is given to the state. the state can use it to pay people or buy things

b) during monarchy
b-1) we suddenly can buy titles. the royal titles are members of an advisory board and are named by the king/queen
b-2) other rules are same as a)

c) during republic
c-1) a senate is elected
c-2) the senate votes on any game decissions

d) communism
d-1) a "populace party" is generated
d-2) the board of the party vote for decissions (max 1/3 of populace)
d-3) all land ownership is "publicized". all noble titles are deleted

e) democracy
e-1) we know that one people decide, ministers, etc. just as now

2) pure rpg!
no need for a demogame to run along with... the rpg should have its own game, so the rpg is explicitly WANTED to influence that game. as such, the difficulty level should be not too hard.

3) ...

now did you get the general idea? i hope so. this is just an idea to play around with.... just like we started the rpg-discussion last game.... so discuss.

 

[Strider]

Sounds more like a whole new Demogame to me.... We already have one Civ3 Demogame with an RPG.... no need for two.

 

[disorganizer]

Well, in fact the above would mean SEPARATING that in 2 games. The original demogame would have no rpg and a completely separated rpg-"demogame" would be opened.

Yes, that was the idea. Just imagine: no more complains on rpg influencing the demogame! And people being able to do rpg-things in the actual game

 

[Padma]

I think the idea here, Strider, is that it would be a Civ3-RPG game. The RPG aspect would dominate, and the rest of the game would be secondary.

 

[disorganizer]

i could even imagine having people actually commanding units, like generals... for example general strider could command a force a 4 knights, so he could tell the "DP" what to do with them.

We could have "real" revolutions... with PTW as base, we could even have separatism etc.... a complete virtual emulation of a civilization.

 

[Strider]

I think I like it the way it is though.... Just won't seem right...

 

[donsig]

Sorry, haven't read the whole thread. Couldn't get past the periodic election of despots. Despots are not elected. They seize power by killing off previous despots.

This is a good idea though. Perhaps if we started out with a tile ownership mechanism and the conflict rules things would be very interesting. We would need a much different economic system though. We need a means for players to become wealthy but without the time and effort that it takes in the current game. We can include the idea of character stats, too, somehow. Perhaps each character we play will have to die off eventually to be replaced by a different one. (Son of the original character or one not even related.) This would allow for characters to be killed off without the players having to leave the game - they could just start a new character. Under certain circumstances all or part of the old character's assets could be transferred. This would also allow players to come and go as they please since players can have more than one character during the course of the game. I guess I have in mind a Kingmaker sort of Game of Castles. Of course this would be derived from a Civ3 game but, as disorganizer, suggested, this would be driven by the Game of Castles.

I'm reading The Minority of Henry III right now and I'm being influenced by the thirteenth century antics of the English and French nobility and such. The greatest line in the book so far reads to the effect that an earl without a castle is almost as bad as a knight without a horse!

To come back to the point, we can't elect despots every term. We can't even have terms until we get a republic or democracy! Under monarchy we'd need kings and queens to have heirs and eventually die off. But despots have to seize power and hold it. We need to define some criteria for being the Despot. I'm not sure what the criteria would be but it would have to be somewhat tangible so that there is the possibility of power changing hands. In a sense the Despot would be the king of the hill and would remain so until he is knocked from his (or her) perch by someone else.

These are ideas. unfortunately I'm not so good at transforming ideas into reality. I think we have a basis already from the RPG and I know there are many out there who are great at turning ideas into fun games.

 

[Grandmaster]

Great idea Dis. I had an idea for creating an evolving gov't. a while back, but it wasn't nearly as detailed as this.

 

[naervod]

I think this is an excellent idea Dis. However, I think we should wait until the neeext DG for this system to be implemented.

 

[disorganizer]

naev: of course! i would not like to have people to decide between systems now...

but until the next DG, we should have evolved some rules and procedures and decided how to run it.

donsig:
i completely agree with you. if we had tile ownership and conflicts from the beginning, we could even omit the opt-out rules for conflicts (wich became more realistic then). it would be mandatory for players to make contracts with others etc.

i also agree for the despot thing... maybe something along those lines:
a) a despot is elected before the start of the game
b) he stays in command until the government is changed to another form.
c) at any time, a putsch can be initiated. a single player must be the sole official "initiator" of this putsch. a poll is placed. the putsch is successful when 2/3 of the citizens approove. if successfull, the old despot is deposed and the initiator of the putsch takes his place.
d) the despot can sentence any citizen to any punishment he decides. this includes death (restart a citizen in the rpg, with new stats, no land etc), prison, etc.

 

[donsig]

I think it would be much more fun to do away with elections during despotism. In the beginning we could have all the characters (players) enter into a single elimination personal combat tournament where the winner gets to be first despot. He plays the first round of turns and continues as despot until he voluntarily steps down or is removed by force. I see this (at least in the very beginning) as a game of individual players/characters/nobles raising followers, allying, backstabbing and having battles. Guess I'm thinking of the later Roman Empire as my model of a despotism. Big power struggles constantly and many different emperors.

What about periods of anarchy? Someone will have to play but perhaps nothing should be done. No peace treaties, etc. If individual players control individual units then they could dictate units moves during anarchy. I'm thinking PTW would be a must for this type of game. The ability to rename indiviual units would allow us to track who owns what units. We could have *dis's 1st knights* or *2nd Imperial Archers*. We could even have units belonging to cities wherein the mayors would control them. All kinds of possibilities.

So, anyone given any thought to what a player would need in order to be emperor/despot?

 

[Cyc]

@ donsig - With your elimination combat plan, you would be relying on the person scripting the tourneyment to actually be choosing the Despot. Probably not what you're looking for. An election is a popularity contest and subject to bribery and scandals.

Why don't you have all the contestants at the begining of the game post a number between 1 and 1000. I'll choose which number it will be and email it to some one trustworthy. Whoever comes closest to the number wins.

 

[disorganizer]

@cyc: i believe this is more like monarchy then. the king and royalty are more or less random. they dont even need to have much money or being popular, they just inherited it.
but going to that point, i like donsigs proposal for despotism. we could/should make up a game where its not easy to find out which attributes are needed to win it . or maybe a game with different possibilities, changing with time? and of course, a putsch will always have better chances in that calculation than the despot in duty at the moment
we should then also define that if a player "dies", he must reuse his old stats on "rebirth", so noone commits suicide to improove his stats. maybe use the "dead" persons stats, cut in halve.

 

[eyrei]

Well, all I can say is Good Luck!

However, this subforum will not be used for this purpose. Feel free to use it to communicate until it gets underway, but once it starts going it will need its own forum, and I have a feeling Thunderfall is not going to give it one. I am sure there are several among you who are capable of setting up their own forum...

 

[Plexus]

We might even be able to go MUD (Multi-user dungeon) I'd have to brush up on my grendel...

 

[donsig]

Originally posted by eyrei
Well, all I can say is Good Luck!

However, this subforum will not be used for this purpose. Feel free to use it to communicate until it gets underway, but once it starts going it will need its own forum, and I have a feeling Thunderfall is not going to give it one. I am sure there are several among you who are capable of setting up their own forum...

Geez, what a party pooper! I think we're talking about a game we'd like to play after this demo game. I can't speak for everyone but the demo game concept is getting rather boring. I doubt I'd be part of demo game 3. I would be interested in playing this kind of game next.

 

[Cyc]

I'm with eyrei on this one. We were lucky enough to get TF to create a new sub-forum for the morphing out of the Demogame into the RPG. Let me rephrase that...We were VERY lucky to get TF to create a new sub-forum. Had I been TF, it probably never would have happened. We all owe a big thank you to TF, Shaitan, and eyrei for putting this together fot us. It probably never would have happened on another site.

That said, if the RPG is going to be morphed out again, into its own sphere of gameplay, it does need its own forum like CT's Game of the Republic. And if that happens, I can see the RPG sub-forum getting revamped into a more useful (by that I mean more useful to the organizational structure of the DG's) sub-forum, which may be a good thing for the Demogame. But I can't see losing one of the sub-forums we have now to a "REAL" RPG, or trying to cram it into this sub-forum, or the possiblity of TF creating a new sub-forum for us RPGers to spam in with no post counts. But, I, like eyrei, wish you the best of luck. Hmmm, maybe it's time for donsig to become a Mod,,,

 

[donsig]

I don't think it is so important how we choose the first despot, excpet that I still think elections are not the way to go. We could use some mechanism based on character stats, use pure chance or a combination of the two. I think it would be more important to allow for the possiblility of many changes in the despot. It shouldn't be that who ever is the emperor can hold the position for ever with only a slim chance of being toppled from power. Being emperor should have advantages towards keeping power but these should not be too great. If a weak player becomes emperor it should be relatively easy to usurp his power.

@ disorganizer: Cyc's proposal doesn't sound like monarchy. The defining aspect of monarchy is that one inherits the kingdom when the king dies. It is precisely this which led me to suggest that characters must be mortal. If the king never dies how will someone inherit the kingdom?

The mortal aspect of characters will be useful in despotism as well. One way to remove the emperor is to kill him.

I think the solution to avoiding suicides in order to get better stats is to not make the stats of over-riding importance. Sure, high stats should give some benefit but not to the point where they control everything. I'm not even sure what the stats would be used for. I know we'd need something like the D&D constitution or a longevity stat. Even though there will be battle deaths, murders, executions and deaths from sickness and disease, some characters may actually live long enough to die of old age! A constitution stat could determine how well wounds are recovered from or how susceptible to disease one is or isn't. Longevity could be the max life of a character. BTW, we could measure characters' ages in game turns. Then if we played a full 450 turn civ game every player would have to go through several incarnations.

 

[naervod]

dis- about the putschs, its easier and shorter to say coup and it means the same thing.

 

[donsig]

Here's an idea worth kicking around. We tie nobility to land ownership and land ownership to the number of civ3 citizens. the Civ3 game starts with a settler, worker and maybe a scout. (Maybe a king in PTW, but we'll leave that from the mix for now). These units all belong to the emperor/despot. When the first city is founded we have one citizen. Let's say the emperor owns the capital city and then he can name another player to be a noble. The noble owns whatever tile is being worked. As the city grows, more land is available. The emperor can create a new noble for each new civ 3 citizen. Perhaps we'd have to allow for nobles or the emperor to own more than one tile? The point is that only tiles being worked by the Civ 3 citizens could be owned. Owned land would generate RPG income (food until currency is developed?) and be the basis for manpower when raising RPG armies. (BTW, no castles until construction is learned.)
We'd need a mechanism for dealing with the building of workers and settlers since these could well reduce the worked land! Say if a settler is built the settler is owned by the noble or nobles who lost land in the creation of the settler. Ownership of the new city would then go to whomever owned the settler thus the nobles wouldn't be disenfranchised.

These are just ideas that have been percolating in the back of my mind. Any discussion on these ideas is welcomed.

We could test run some of these ideas in a succession game or a PTW PBEM in one thread. Playing on a tiny map and using pms for communications might work...