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Old 05-10-2012, 02:24 PM   #11
ShirraWhitefur
 
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Default Re: City Building and Realm Management vs Dice Probability Ranges

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Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen View Post
Say I bid 3 points towards increasing the number of Scribe-Hours output by my Monastery. I've made a deal with you, earlier, that you'll contribute 2 points to it, so that we get the full 5 points necessary for a +1 modifier, but you turn out to be a vicious bastard and instead you bid 1 point against my bid, so that the point total is not 5 but only 2, and now I have both the trouble of scrounging up the remaining 3 points I need (presumably bid-but-unused points deterioate after some years, so I'm in a bit of a hurry), and at the same time I need to get revenge on you, teach you a lesson. And maybe I'm also curious enough to want to know why you backstabbed me. Depends a bit on what disads are written on my character sheet...
:) That's -exactly- how I want to see it used. That's the sort of thing, the diplomatic 'fun' and intrigue withen the system. It's going to either end up with a lot of wars being started.. or a lot more sneaky wheel and deal amongst the players.

So yeah.. a nice, consistent fractional point setup.. later on, I will work out more on how the points are going to be generated overall, but the idea is that they're going to be valuable, rather than 'spend on every single thing in large amounts'.

This definitely could work though, and solves one of the 'hiccups' in my planning.

- Shirra
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Old 05-10-2012, 06:04 PM   #12
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: City Building and Realm Management vs Dice Probability Ranges

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Originally Posted by ShirraWhitefur View Post
:) That's -exactly- how I want to see it used. That's the sort of thing, the diplomatic 'fun' and intrigue withen the system. It's going to either end up with a lot of wars being started.. or a lot more sneaky wheel and deal amongst the players.

So yeah.. a nice, consistent fractional point setup.. later on, I will work out more on how the points are going to be generated overall, but the idea is that they're going to be valuable, rather than 'spend on every single thing in large amounts'.

This definitely could work though, and solves one of the 'hiccups' in my planning.
I still don't understand your system.

Are you going to have multiple kinds of points, like Red Points that can be used for A, B and C, and Blue Points that can be ued for A, B and D, and Green Points that can be used for B, C, and D?

Is it going to be extra expensive, as in diminishing returns, to purchase, during character creation, the ability to generate a few of many differnt kinds of points, being cheaper to specialzie in one or two kinds of points? Or the other way around?

And what is the anti-bid dynamic going to be like? You clearly want points to be precious, so what would your motivation be for bidding against my project, when that costs you points? Especially if you know that I'm roleplaying a vindictive type who will take revenge on you for going back on your promise?

I can envision Spy Agencies generating an income of Sabotage Points, which can only be used for such negative bids, but in that case it should by default be secret where the negative bids come from, only knowable to the victim if the spy fails his skill roll, or if the victim spends precious resources on invegistating. And even then, it's dangerous for your character, in terms of ending up a target for revenge, if my character merely knows that you have the ability to generate anti-bid points.

(More realistically, any lord of a rank equivalent to bishop or count, should have at least a minimal spy/agency capacity, with those who don't being famously saintly exceptions - except that a few of those exceptions actually do have that capability, they just keep it very, very secret - so what's interesting will be which of the lords, PCs or NPCs, have capacity in excess of what's expected for their rank.)
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Old 05-11-2012, 03:28 AM   #13
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Default Re: City Building and Realm Management vs Dice Probability Ranges

There's an interesting anti-bidding/sabotage system in the Battlestar Galactica boardgame. (BTW, that game is pretty good overall despite being a franchise game.)

Here's how it works, iirc:
A task comes up that requires that many positive points contributed by the players. Points come in 5 colors, and 3 of these colors are positive for this task while 2 are negative. (But which is which depends on the task.)
The players play any amount of cards, without revealing them.
Then two more cards are added from a random stack.
Finally, the cards are revealed and if the positive minus the negative points beat the difficulty level of the task, the task succeeds. (There is no roll involved, only the random cards plus the unknown behavior of the others.)

There are some more game-play details:
Every player has one color, which he can get cards from more easily. So if continuously many cards of one color show up when they count as negative ...
The cards themselves have random values, from 1 to 4 or so. Because players can lay down multiple cards, a player can lay a positive 1, another positive 1 and a negative 4, but claim to have contributed a lot, while the -4 could have come from the random stack.
The random stack is only semi-random (it contains N cards of each color), so some card-counting is possible. (Not sure if I like that, though.)

This gives some information about the supporters, but not a lot:
If everything is positive, you know everyone played something positive and the random drawing also came out positive.
If there are more than 2 negative cards, at least one of them must have come from some player.
In between, it could just have been bad luck with the randomly added cards.

It seems like this could easily be transformed into a political context. The different colors represent different areas of expertise (military, money, craft, opinion making, whatever) and different powers gain these at different rates, which seems logical. It also allows players to openly stay out of a task resolution by not playing any card.

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Old 05-11-2012, 03:35 AM   #14
vicky_molokh
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Default Re: City Building and Realm Management vs Dice Probability Ranges

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The random stack is only semi-random (it contains N cards of each color), so some card-counting is possible. (Not sure if I like that, though.)
Scratch that, card-counting is a huge part of the game. The big deal with being Baltar is that if people forget to count his cards too, he can get away with framing pilots by contributing red cards to a stack.

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Originally Posted by Ts_ View Post
This gives some information about the supporters, but not a lot:
If everything is positive, you know everyone played something positive and the random drawing also came out positive.
If there are more than 2 negative cards, at least one of them must have come from some player.
In between, it could just have been bad luck with the randomly added cards.

It seems like this could easily be transformed into a political context. The different colors represent different areas of expertise (military, money, craft, opinion making, whatever) and different powers gain these at different rates, which seems logical. It also allows players to openly stay out of a task resolution by not playing any card.
Another neat way of stealthily sabotaging tasks is contributing more than one needs to on Task A, only to 'rightfully' claim to have no cards on Task B later. Yep, definitely a lot of potential for a complicated political game.
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Old 05-11-2012, 03:42 AM   #15
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Default Re: City Building and Realm Management vs Dice Probability Ranges

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
Scratch that, card-counting is a huge part of the game.
Okay, okay. But I'm not sure if the contents of the random deck must be known in the context of this thread. In an RPG, card-counting should not be the primary way to uncover traitors, methinks.

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
Another neat way of stealthily sabotaging tasks is contributing more than one needs to on Task A, only to 'rightfully' claim to have no cards on Task B later.
Yep, lots of fun. :) But if the competing powers have tasks of their own for which they need the cards, this isn't such a good idea. So I'm not sure how to integrate that option. One could, of course, only use this system for the PCs' tasks, while the rest of the world builds by GM fiat (mostly).

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Old 05-11-2012, 05:18 AM   #16
ShirraWhitefur
 
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Default Re: City Building and Realm Management vs Dice Probability Ranges

Okay, the cards are another great idea I never thought of.
One way that I can avoid counting is, at least for my games, most of the realm turns will be done on computer even if at the gaming table, and most of them will be across email and the web.
I'll admit, I'm debating between a bidding system ala Birthright, wherein you know exactly who's blocking you and for how much, or a half hidden one, where you know how much you've been blocked, but not by who.. or one that's totally hidden, like the cards.
I still lean most towards the first or second, but such is.

As for explaining the system for influence.. Well, I'm still working it out, but influence points will be a commodity generated by appropriate buildings, advantages and actions taken, on a regular basis, usually generated (aside from actions) at the same time as any other resource of the realm during upkeep. It's just a matter of how much, and from what, that has to be worked on there.

- Shirra

Last edited by ShirraWhitefur; 05-11-2012 at 09:34 AM.
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Old 05-11-2012, 07:52 PM   #17
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: City Building and Realm Management vs Dice Probability Ranges

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Originally Posted by ShirraWhitefur View Post
Okay, the cards are another great idea I never thought of.
One way that I can avoid counting is, at least for my games, most of the realm turns will be done on computer even if at the gaming table, and most of them will be across email and the web.
I'll admit, I'm debating between a bidding system ala Birthright, wherein you know exactly who's blocking you and for how much, or a half hidden one, where you know how much you've been blocked, but not by who.. or one that's totally hidden, like the cards.
I still lean most towards the first or second, but such is.

As for explaining the system for influence.. Well, I'm still working it out, but influence points will be a commodity generated by appropriate buildings, advantages and actions taken, on a regular basis, usually generated (aside from actions) at the same time as any other resource of the realm during upkeep. It's just a matter of how much, and from what, that has to be worked on there.
Card-counting means player skill becomes involved, which forces self-play upon the players, and that is the oppostie of role-playing.

Also, why not have most bids be open and above-board, but allow some kind of Spy Agency Facility that can be used for covert bids, bids known only to the GM? In a really complex simulation there'd be several layers of Spy Agency Facilities. The first one is above-board, meaning that everybody knows that the lord owns it (or how many of it he owns), and its actions are above-board too. The second layer is above-board in terms of ownership, but its actions are covert, discoverable only with difficulty. The third layer is a Facility whose ownership (and existen e) is unknown but can be discovered, and its actions are likewise covert. Each deeper layer would either give fewer bid points per time unit, or else cost more character creation currency to purchase during character creation, and require more time and in-world resources to set up during play. Given that bid points will probably be fairly coarse-grained, the second solution seems best to me.
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