Fixing DoW or Rebuilding in FATE

[Raf_Cian]

An interesting exchange of ideas took place in the forum tonight. A lot of people like the DoW games. And I do mean a LOT. The trouble is that the scope of what we want to do is outpacing the rules of DoW system. The DoW system was created to have a setting (RPG, story, or otherwise) created by many chefs that could then be taken and translated into the either a different game or just pure prose. The advancements are vague, some of the commands are vague, and there is little to the conflict resolution other than having armies roll off against each other.

We need something different if we’re going to be constantly going in the direction of playing DoW like a game in and of itself. Two major ideas came up. Snow casually mentioned the Fate system, while I’ve been thinking about improvements to DoW system for awhile now privately. Both approaches have their benefits and drawbacks.

Since this should be a community discussion I’m ending the first post here. The next post will have the meat of my thoughts on the two approaches. Both have their benefits and drawbacks.

[Raf_Cian]

Build things from the ground up with FATE
The good thing about FATE, apparently, is that everything can be build like the characters. They’re called EXTRAS. If we throw enough EXTRAS together we can get a working game that resembles DoW but with actual conflict resolution.

The downside to all this is that the game would be entirely made of EXTRAS. We’d be stealing the basic stat and dice and creating everything ourselves. The bare minimum of what we’d need to create is something like this...

[Extra] Avatars
There is no way to create these on the fly in the game, so every character would have to create one of these. They would essentially be your character in this version of DoW. Avatars can conflict with each other, and the world, so there would need to be rules for that, but in context to this quick discussion, we need to talk about what they could bring into the world. Namely...

[Extra] Mystical Sites/Relics
Yeah. We’re always doing crazy stuff with the land and then spending points to make it pay off later. May as well pay it up front.

[Extra] Races
Races would be like a film across the terrain in this system. I don’t see them doing much on their own. They might provide benefits to the next thing on the block which is... or they might have a stress level we need to keep track of and manage.

[Extra] Organizations
The rules that Snow showed me actually had some promising rules for organizations. We’d need to define what milestones mean in our system, but it has promises to almost be a near direct import.

Organizations meanwhile could create.

[Extra] Cities
A defensive location and needs to provide some resource benefit... which with the stat system could vary greatly city from city.

...and that would be it. We don’t need armies since there are rules for organizations to conflict directly. And we don’t need advancements since everything has stats and could therefore level up... we’d just need to define what a milestone is in the game.

Of course this system in my opinion lacks the flavor. It’s main advantage is that it takes away a lot of questions about conflict resolution, and opens avenues for conflicts that aren’t purely military or catastrophes.

Fixing DoW
Wow... where to begin. Two major points with me, but I’m sure other people will bring other things up.

One, advancements need to do something other than +1 to my armies. There’s so much potential here, and all its doing is making a story telling experience a very army focused endeavor. And yes, armies clashing do make an interesting story. One could say that war is the necessary antagonist in the story of a world to make it an interesting story and not just something that happened... but it could also be more.

Second is races, and subraces... we need to look them over. In some way these two “game elements” exists as folders for us to put our advancements into... while at the same time they are the REAL characters in this world, with our avatars just being the little Navi floating above their shoulders. We should be able to divide sub races more easily when the events or the world demand it,  with create subrace creating TWO subraces if none currently exist for the main race so we cannot only keep track of purities and advancements but also choose to advance one subrace or both by advancing the main race. We also need to consider adding a new advancement folder: civilization. Some qualities should be innate to a people, and some should be innate to a civilization. If a civilzation conquer a race and integrate them into itself, it should gain the advantage of the race (or subrace, or possibly new subrace for the sake of paperwork) advantages and not the civilizations.

Other people will voice other problems they have with the system. For now, this is what I can think of and voice with... semi-coherency.

[Digital Vulpine]

One thing that I think has contributed to DoW being so army-centered (and to being such a chaotic slugfest in general) is a lack of diplomacy.  Sure, you can try to conspire OOC with another player, but generally players don't have much incentive to cooperate with each other.  Generally what happens is everyone just sits in their corner of the world building their sandcastle until someone comes along and kicks it over, then a free-for-all breaks loose.

Though I suppose one problem is it would be hard to add diplomacy without creating even more overhead and slowing the game down.  There's also the question of whether to maintain a single-turn format, or break the turn up into phases.  Phases would increase overhead (as everyone has to complete each phase to advance the turn), but might make it easier for players to read each other as their actions in one phase will give an idea of their intentions in the next.

Basic diplomatic functions that would be useful: Trade, Alliances, formal War status, and Foreign Aid (ie donating tech/troops/points to other players).

Trade: Trade would serve as a predictable source of points, and as an icebreaker for a future Alliance.  A city can support 1 Trade Route, which links it to a city controlled by a different race/civilization (not necessarily the same player, giving multi-race builds more viability).  Each active Trade Route generates 1 point per turn, perhaps modified by the number of different races/civs you are trading with, to encourage Merchant races/civs to cast a wide net.  Though this raises the question of whether we should have a race-specific currency besides Points, since it doesn't make sense for the Dwarves to get a new city because the Elves started trading with the Humans... but that's a whole other can of worms.

Should one of the linked cities be destroyed or their respective races/civs go to War with each other, the trade route is cut.  Conquering a city preserves its trade routes, unless you're at war with their trading partner too.

A city could have its trade capacity increased with Advance City (+1 Trade Route), which would make that move a lot less useless.

Alliances: Allied races/civs have to pay double the normal cost to declare war on each other, as a penalty for breaking the alliance.  They could probably get a bonus to trade between them, like +50% net trade income (rounded down), so that trade encourages alliances and vice versa.  Peaceful diplomatic actions between Allied races/civs (ie Trade and Aid) cost one less point than normal, with the limitation that all actions must cost at least one point.  If your Ally is engaged in a defensive war, you gain a Casus Belli against the aggressor (see War).

War: Making attacks without a formal declaration of war costs double the normal cost and grants a Casus Belli to the defending race/civ.  This cost is doubled again if the race/civ you're attacking is Allied with the attacker.  Declaring War cuts all trade routes between the combatants, as well as their Alliance if they have one.  Using a Catastrophe as a weapon while at peace does not change its cost, but still grants a Casus Belli and immediately breaks any Alliance you may have with the target.  The cost of declaring War cannot be reduced by an Avatar, but only costs 1 point if you have a Casus Belli.  Wars declared with a Casus Belli are still considered defensive wars for the purpose of Alliances. Either player may sue for peace at any time (though terms should probably be negotiated OOC), but you cannot launch an attack and sue for peace in the same turn.  Similarly, you cannot accept a peace offer and launch an attack in the same turn.

Foreign Aid: Quite simply, Foreign Aid allows you to donate Advances, Armies, Cities, or Points to another player.  Note that in the case of Advances, you donate a copy and keep the original. So if Player 1 donates Advance: Pointy Sticks to Player 2, both players now have Advance: Pointy Sticks.  You can make multiple donations with one Foreign Aid action.

DoW would also benefit greatly from a fixed turn order, and having each player resolve their actions as they take them.  Though this has a potential to create a lot of overhead (especially if somehow a person who procrastinates a lot gets the first turn), it would also greatly reduce post-order cheese (ie deliberately posting last so you can pull the rug out from under someone, which I have been guilty of) and edit wars. 

You'd probably have to roll for turn order, though the GM might reserve the right to change someone's turn order if they have a reason (ie "You always take two weeks to post, I'm bumping you to the last turn so everyone else can actually play").

As an example: Player 1 attacks Player 2's city.  They immediately roll for this attack in their post and resolve the results with either an edit or a second post.  Player 2 then takes his turn from where Player 1 left off.

Limiting the number of Avatars is probably a good idea in either case, as me, Donnie, Virmir, and Toast all proved that you can pull off a lot of cheese with sufficient Avatars.

I would like to see Advances do more than just +1 to combat, though (other than the Advance City example) I'm not sure how to make it work in a way that's balanced.

[Raf_Cian]

DoW Talk[/b]
Turn Order
An important decision, but more of a decision to be made by the Game Master each game with input from the players. ...which since the entire reason we’re talking about this is due to us needed a new DoW thread soon, will be needed to be discussed soon.

Avatars
Avatars are power. We’ve learned that since the first game. So yeah, we should probably divorce the cost to create avatars from the turn order and instead make it a scaling cost based on the about of avatars you already have. The real question is what scale?

Additive: 8, 12, 16, 20, 24
Geometric: 8, 16, 24, 32, 40
Exponential: 8, 12, 20, 32, 48

I’m a little partial to Exponential myself. It stops a reasonable player at two but let’s someone save up for three if they REALLY want it, and progressively makes the cost not worth the power beyond that.

Alliances, Race Ownership, and Orders
The real problem with alliances is that race’s aren’t owned by one person. Avatars are definitively owned by one person, and orders are owned by a person but the rules allow other people to command them. I know most people choose/create a pet race, but its people doing that and isn’t fully supported by the rules.

With that in mind I say get rid of the controlling other people’s orders rule that NO ONE ever uses. People own their avatars, and people own their orders. Creating an order in a race puts a stake in that race. Creating subraces gives a race a chance to divide its orders; how depends on the owners of the orders and the person that initiated the subrace action.

What this means for alliances is that having an order in a race, and in turn having that race in a civilization, means you have a vote. Not in the actions done by other people’s orders but in the democratic actions needed to decide civilization membership, alliances, and how to spend those civilizations points that is being earned through trade... and potentially less diplomatic actions we’ll discuss later. I’m not certain if having more orders in a race should give you more votes, there is potentially for and against having more than one vote given this is a game and not a real democracy, but ultimately this line of thought is a good starting point.

Civilizations, Advancements, and Advance City
First thing, here’s a quick diagram for what I’m talking about civilizations. Here.
There you can see Race A stands along with with a subrace of itself, and it’s own little civilization. Race B has two subraces, the first (presumably founder race) of which is part of its founding civilization. The second subrace has joined Race C as part of its Civilization.

Each of these different categories is a potential node for advancements, which all builds up to have a final impact on the civilization as a whole. I personally don’t see a reason to make a cost for adding an advancement to different nodes, though if someone wants to make the argument they are free to do so. To me, where an advancement goes should be measured by what makes the most sense and not tactical decisions... though what advancements you implement is an entire different story.

Concerning advancements... I think we need to have a long talk to build examples to figure out most of the plausible benefits. For instance, in the current game Trask’s Utopians have the advancement Toy-a-forming to represent the ability for Toymancy to slowly convert the organic world into toys. Obviously it would be too powerful (and possibly too weak with poor dice rolls) to just potentially gain a defeated army, but if instead we consider it allowing the Utopians to gain points to its pool of civ points with each victory, which Trask could then potentially spend on new armies of converted soldiers or possibly split off a new subrace of toys from the mother race and fold it into the Utopian civilization.

Advance City I agree should also be made more useful... and potentially cheaper. With the amount of players we work with we do have FAR more cities than anything else but armies, and if advancements are to be something other than a universal plus one to combat we should consider costs across the board. Of course, to spend more time with advancements we need to consider what they do.

One idea that crossed my mind are military ports, both naval and air, making up for armies built there not being made by the first civilization to pop the ship building advancement. Or trade ports to allow the establishments of trade routes unconcerned by geopolitical boarders. I’ve always considered it a strong possibility for advance city to be allowed to upgrade cities to count as an army on the defensive, but if you have mobile flying ships like the Tiatlaca do there is no reason you can’t use advance city to turn the city into an offensive army. Or going back on the trade concerns, advances to make a city profitable for trade or even tourism should be considered, but we should also consider advancements that provide the equivalent of one army protection on at least one of its trade routes per turn.

And yes, protect the trade routes. If we’re going to allow the civilizations who build up and develop it’s cities to live peacefully, we must provide some counterbalance for the aggressors to make being an aggressor a style choice rather than an underdog choice.

[Snow]

Re: DoW, I had fun with it but have petered out due to having so many players that I have little idea what's going on. Minor reforms I propose for the game, besides limiting the number of players, are:
-Change the dice from 2d6 to 3d4. The resulting range is slightly higher but the rolls have a smaller standard deviation, ie. they're more average. Result: less worry about being hurt by the RNG.
-Assume that each city has a city guard, as we did, but that they're always behind any armies you built there. So, if you buy 1 army for city X, X gets two defense rolls. As currently played, that first purchased army is worthless because you get one roll with or without it. It's been suggested that the city guard has a -1 or something as well.
-No recruiting armies from other players' races? I abused that ability to counter an enemy sub-race that copied my race's tech and then greatly increased it.

About Fate, check out the other thread at http://crimsonflagcomic.com/forum/index.php?topic=1729.0 . I basically suggested using the PDF of monster/organization rules to represent groups that exist in a world with roughly even technological footing, so that we're not all inventing radically different kinds of magic/tech, and using the "create advantage" action to represent building cities, armies and so on. If you give everybody multiple actions per turn, ignore milestones, and hand out fate points every so often, my post might look like this:
-The nation of X launches a trade war on Y! Economic ATTACK of +2, and I have the stunt of "Port Bureaucracy" that gives another +2 to attack economically vs. coastal powers.
-Meanwhile, X scientists try to invent a way to OVERCOME OBSTACLE, namely the Oil Shortage imposed on X last turn. That's a +1 Scientific roll and I burn a fate point for +2 because my nation has a Sentient Research AI.
-Lastly, X establishes a new colony on the island at grid G2. That's a CREATE ADVANTAGE action focused on a trade colony, so it's a +3 based on my Economic stat.

So you'd end up having a whole bunch of advantages lying around, some with unused free shots on them.

Don't know whether we'd still do avatars or what in this game, or how we'd handle the "fractal" aspect of Fate where you can have characters within larger structures of aspects. I mean, if for some reason I designed Doctor Y as a named character within my "University" aspect, what does that actually do if anything? Would avatars get one action of their own, which is understood to be smaller-scale than their countries? I could see one side making a James Bond spy and another a genius scientist, but am not sure if/how they'd ever interact. Maybe... give each player three named characters instead of avatars, then give them three actions per turn which can be either nation-scale or individual scale? Two of one, one of the other?

[Raf_Cian]

Re: Fate
I'm personally favoring the improved DoW approach though because Fate's main advantage is improved conflict resolution and increased tactical options. It doesn't create a story in and of itself, though, so you'd need to set the stage before each game. What nation is everyone playing, what are they trying to do, what is the win condition other than be the last man standing. This makes it feel a lot like a Civ game only on paper/forum... which is something I could enjoy but isn't what I'm looking for out of DoW.

That doesn't mean it's bad. It looks to be very good and is certainly tempting otherwise I wouldn't have included it in this thread at all. It's just for me personally you'd need to go above and beyond to make it a substitute for DoW rather than an alternative. It would need to have the magic of growing not just a nation but an entire species out of your imagination and developing it alongside the creations of other people, mixed up having some players modifying other people's toys rather than starting their own brand. As flexible as Fate is as a system, each individual game session is a lot more defined and finite... or maybe I just don't know about it enough.

Re: DoW
Adjusting the dice to something with a lower minimum but same maximum is something I can get behind. Given the scale that we're working on, we need a higher average of points floating about.

The city guard issue is something we need to talk about. Advance City is something that is currently useless outside of flavor but has TONS of potential if given just a little bit of thought. It's biggest use would be to give the city defenses... but are those defenses bonuses to defending armies or an automatic army in and of itself? Option two is way overpriced with the average cost of armies. Option one is only marginally cheaper than creating an advancement that would give bonuses to ALL your armies, with the margin way to low to justify the opportunity cost. Overall response... we need to look at the cost of Advance City in practice.

Honestly... playing with other people's toys is part of the run. The part I'd argue against is just because you created the armies doesn't mean you commanded them. You'd need to have an order amongst the subrace before I'd let you pull off that type of rebellion as the GM, but I wouldn't rule it out. We'll need to create some guidelines about the creation of a subrace is handled.

[Snow]

Both Advance City and Event were pretty much pointless as we played them. One option for making AC relevant is to have conflicts and interactions other than battles to the death, which is something I like about DoW. What if, when we're creating the world, we place resources that have some mechanical benefit instead of pure flavor? They can be anything, but they have a specific mechanical effect: controlling them gives you a pool of points that can only be spent on X. Or, you get a 1-point discount on X. Have an alliance with another race? They get the discount too, due to trade. Where does Advance City come in? You need to do that to get the resource bonus.

Eg. I place a deposit of magic crystals, and later I build a city on or near it. That's useless until I buy a city advance, which I label as a "magic academy" or "crystal mine". In either case, I get a 1-point discount on future tech research because crystals do everything. I then ally with player X, who gets the discount too as long as we're allied.

[Caleb_Lloyd]

General Idea on Advance City/Race:
In the current game, Aeons(elementals) have Teleportation. This has let them go from one side of the world to the other, warping in creatures from other realms, and banishing cities into oblivion. That's cool and also is a solid gameplay they have that also works storywise. Gameplay changing and stronger characterization is what I'm trying to get across here.

I think that both advance city and advance race could rely more on the idea of traits and abilities than solely plus' to combat. So in addition to the added combat bonus, they get a abillity to use. These abillities could let the race build a city on the ocean, armies get +1 rolls in hot weather and -1 in cold, cities blow up after getting conquered. Generally things that can characterize the race more than the just +1 in combat.

Balance would definitely be an issue here as there'd be some way to make some powerful combination to produce an Everything Proof Shield. Not sure how to avoid that other than GM'ing.

Cities really should be advanced more. Either one of these, some of these, or all of these could all be done to make a city stronger and more personallized.
-Trade routes, not being able to trade at the beginning, putting a city advance could open a trade route to another city which would give those 2 Players an extra point each turn. The payback wouldn't be til 4 turns later but gives use to Advance city.
-City Defenses, the standard +1 on defensive rolls.
-Army raising, just not a fan of the idea of a fresh city producing an army right off the bat. I'd say a city would need at least 1 advancement to start raising armies.
-Other stuffs, Research facilities that make advancements easier would add character to the city, as well as Stadiums to have intercity battles/training, levitation panels to make the city fly. The effects would be up to the writer(which would need balancing), but there could be more customization and character.

Resources:
To have resources such as trees, gold, magic crystals and other such stuff be gameplay changing is sort of unnecessary. It's usually in the description of the city that it becomes known that what the city runs on and what kind of characteristics are there. It'd give alot more reason to have a 2nd/3rd age landshift though.

Events:
Seeming as the game is quite army centric, and catastrophes are a way to keep others down. Event's are, as I see as, a not so destructive catastrophe. I'd describe Donnie's rise of Avalon more of an event as opposed to a catastrophe. It just depends on the writing I suppose.

[PrincessHotcakes]

Out anything here on DoW, I can say most of all yeeeees nerf city garrisons.  They keep making my head explode

[Digital Vulpine]

(stuff)
Balance would definitely be an issue here as there'd be some way to make some powerful combination to produce an Everything Proof Shield. Not sure how to avoid that other than GM'ing.
(more stuff)

Resources:
To have resources such as trees, gold, magic crystals and other such stuff be gameplay changing is sort of unnecessary. It's usually in the description of the city that it becomes known that what the city runs on and what kind of characteristics are there. It'd give alot more reason to have a 2nd/3rd age landshift though.

Events:
Seeming as the game is quite army centric, and catastrophes are a way to keep others down. Event's are, as I see as, a not so destructive catastrophe. I'd describe Donnie's rise of Avalon more of an event as opposed to a catastrophe. It just depends on the writing I suppose.

Yeah, one time I had an interesting idea for a Combined Arms advance that gave -1 under normal circumstances, but +1 for each "type" of army (infantry, armor/cavalry, air, navy, artillery) in the stack.  But it would be hard to stop stuff from becoming OP, especially in combination.  Even in the above example, the GM would have to make some calls on what constitutes a "type", to prevent me from stacking ridiculously large bonuses.  Even though the specific functionality in this case just encourages people to nuke the incoming stack if it gets too large.

For example, let's say we have a civilization called the Yuri Dominion.  First, the Yuri Dominion takes a Cloning Vats advancement that gives them two armies for each Raise Army action instead of one.  Alright, a little powerful, but might not seem so bad, especially when there are other ways to get armies on the cheap. 

Then they take the Grinder Universal Recycler advancement, which allows them to disband an army or city to recover the points it would cost to make it.  By itself that's not too bad, it just gives them a little flexibility by letting them "undo" certain moves.

But wait, Cloning Vats gives him two armies for the price of one!  If he dumps his points into armies, then disbands them all with the Grinder, he'll have twice as many points as he started with!  An infinite point loop like this would clearly be OP, and the GM would have to make some sort of call to prevent it.  In this case they'd probably have to use their GM power to say that armies only recover half their cost (rounded down), or that the free army granted by Cloning Vats does not give points when recycled.

Resources would be cool but difficult to implement, since we'd have to build a whole new ruleset around those.  Though I suppose players could be allowed to make up resources and their benefits as they go with GM approval, similar to Advances, but we'd have to establish some limiting factors to keep Resources from becoming a 3-point or 1-point (avatar action) Advance.

Also, Donnie's warship was a Catastrophe because he nuked Trask with it. 

[Raf_Cian]

Resources
Resources are a good idea. It gives a solid foundation for the civilization points concept that can be expanded on by trade and raiding.

My basic suggestion... there are three basic resources that produce civilization points: lumber, minerals, and food. These can be propagated by Shape Land but a civilization won’t benefit for having more than one of each in its territory or trade partners.

Ontop of that I would suggest a new more expensive action, which for the sake of talk we’ll call Advance Land. Advance Land would create a unique resource that a city founded in the same square could take advantage of with an Advance City. Unique is a key word, since there can be many variations of... crystals let’s say... but each is unique onto itself. Advance Land should count as a shape land of only one square that creates a unique resource, and for the sake of sanity scale like avatars. Advance Land cannot be overwritten by Shape Land, and if overwritten by an Advanced Land or Catastrophe it is considered eliminated for the purpose of calculated the original shapers Advance Land cost. Unique recourse brought into existence by Catastrophe’s should also count against Catastrophe’s innovations Advance Land cost.

 With basic resources we get civilization points off the ground, and allows for trade between smaller civilizations. Unique resources allows for the players to both get creative and supplement the civilization points for growing empires.

Advancements
There are many reasonable advancements out there, but there are also far more unreasonable ones. I think the key is that we need to think. Take a look at what I talked about with Toymancy; there are reasonable and unreasonable ways to approach the same advancement without changing its flavor.

Taking a look at the Cloning Vats, I would at least say to limit to the armies created by cities, and at most say that I can’t grant free armies but instead allows for cities to create two armies per turn instead of one. Grinder is a much bigger delimia than you give it due to ownership issues; people don’t own a race, they own order and avatars; if someone creates an order in the Grinder race, they could recycle all the armies into points. Therefore at the very least I would put the caveat that points from Grinder should go to the civilization’s point pool, but at most... I would cast my vote against Grinder even existing in the first place.

The basic solution is to do what I just did BEFORE the game and come up with as many situations as possible and make rulings on them. What bonuses should be completely unique? What bonuses should be unique with allowances for other civilizations to copy on a limited scale with Advance City? What bonuses are as common as dirt (I’m looking at you, +1 to army rolls)?

There are some real common ones that need to addressed first, but before we can get to them I’d like to make another diversity suggestion.

Land, Water, and Air Armies
We’re really treating armies as a hodgepodge unit still, but in reality it’s anything but. They now carry the same amount of flavor as any other creation in this game, and I think it’s time we consider diversifying them. Land can only travel over land routes. Water can only travel over water routes. Air can travel anywhere but can’t take over cities; they can siege but not invade. Transportation is something that needs to be talked about in advancement discussion.

The ship advancement is an early adjacent, and airships are common enough that they need to be addressed as well, but before reaching either one I think we should discuss this potential change.

Ownership
I brought it up before, but no one really responded to it... and I think it’s VERY important given that within other people’s post I see issues with ownership conflicts cropping their heads. We need to take some time to discuss this rather than me ranting about its importance and handing out more examples... I’ll try to tackle Snow or DV next time I see them in chat.

[Raf_Cian]

Right. Meant to update this a week ago, but didn’t. This provoked player’s anxiety issues and he spent the time shivering in a corner rather than doing anything. But, now it’s passed...

...and we find nothing has happened in an entire week. For better or for worse that includes the active DoW thread, but that doesn’t mean we should stop moving.

Simpler Advancement Strategy
As cool as it would be for Teleportation and Self Repairing Armor to give bonuses relative to their flavor, it was pointed out in chat that not everyone drools over RPG books enough to actually WANT to fifty pages worth of examples to customize to your desires.

As such, I came up with a simpler category system. Current proposal is the have four: Military, Industry, Welfare, and Culture. Military obviously does what is already does, +1 to army conflicts. If any of the others do anything is up to debate, but I can easily see Welfare affecting army survival, and Industry affecting city Defense. Culture is a bit tricky to pinpoint a solution to... I have two controversial solutions that I won’t mention, and a third that sums down to there is no harm in having a junk category.

Additionally, I’d like to suggest that Advance City be treated by the same category system.  The decision from there would be scale. Would it affect the entire Civilization, in which case its cost should remain the same since they’re basically Advancements that can be stolen by the enemy. The alternatively their effect could be limited to just the city they advance, in which case we should consider reducing the cost of Advance City.

Orders in Race, Advancements in Civilization
I had my discussion on ownership, and there wasn’t much disagreement on players owning their Avatars and their Orders... of course it was a week ago, so my memory is a bit hazy.

Another related point that I presented to the gathered debaters that at least the one person that was listening at the time responded to positively, was to create the different layering between Race and Civilization. Point? Orders get stored in the Race Node, Advancements gets stored in the Civilization Node. Players don’t gain a mechanical advantage from creating a subrace of someone else’s race late game, while at the same time players don’t get overly penalized with split advancements  if they choose to have two joined races/subraces in their civilization for story reasons.

A little more organization? Yes. Not what I original proposed? Also yes. But I think it would improve things. Just would like the input of more than two people. Obviously a new race would start with its own Civ, but we also might need a create Civ action. Whether if races could be created cheaper if they don’t create their own race is up for debate.

Viable Argument Against Resources
Yeah, resources were fun, and I was really getting into them, but someone pointed out in chat that we don’t want people making decisions for mechanical reasons over story telling reasons. The points exist to keep one person from having too much control over the story of the world, and while we are treating it more as a game than intended it is still more a bizarre roleplaying game than a civilization simulator. I think the best term I can think of right now would be World History RPG.

That’s what it took to convince me, but I know it won’t convince some of the biggest advocates for resources and trade. My argument for you? You want to encourage diplomacy and peaceful actions for the races. Trouble is, people enter this game with a story they want to tell. If that story is that of the huge empire or the raiding barbarians... all the mechanical lures will not deter them. Even with constructing the resources I was thinking of stuff like raiding and cities having strategic advantage... and that really is neither what DoW is or what I want DoW to be.

Of course, I won’t be able to dissuade you until I hear your counter arguments, so go ahead and speak up. Silence will get us nowhere...

The Next Game
We don’t know who is going to be running the game next... or how long this final turn will take with people procrastinating left and right on their final actions... but we need to go ahead and decide what we want to have decided to go into the next game and what we should give further debate.

Decision on the City Guards should be made since it’s an issue dear to the current gamemaster.
Decisions on the Races/Civilization division I feel is simple enough to implement, but others might disagree.
Avatars costs are a bigger decision but one I feel we need to field test to get a final verdict on.
Advancements might require more work, but if only because it’s the issue everyone has an opinion on.
Resources and trade are a major change to the game that we should talk about more before even considering.

Ultimately, I think how far we take all this before starting the next game should be decided by the next game master... who has yet to step forward. Toast? Are you it? Or are you handing the torch to someone else?

[Raf_Cian]

OK. We’ve had more DoW revamp discussion in the chat today, and this time I’m going to write about it while it’s fresh in my brain... by certain definitions of fresh.

Risk Rules for Armies
A somewhat popular suggestion by DV is to use the Risk rules for army creation and apply it to cities. This would essentially mean rather than creating armies you would get a certain amount of armies per turn based on however many cities you owned. One army for one city, and then one more for every three after that, meaning two for three cities, three for six, and four for nine.

I like this in principle, and would like to combine it with the categories for Advancements by making Industry Advancements count as an additional city... but at the same time I can be devil’s advocate and see the possible snowball effect that could be generated from having armies created from the moment your race plops down its first city.

Advance City as Advancement
Basically what I said as an aside in my post above. Whether if we go with the category system of advancement or not, having the advancements created by Advance City count as Advancements that can be stolen by stealing the city. I ran it by people in chat, and at least Toast seemed to like it. Other people have yet to comment.

Shape Wildlife
A suggestion coming in from Draykin. The feral animals running around are just as much a part of the world as races... OK, maybe not as much as them for game purposes. They are certainly as much a part of the world as the land and climate though for story telling purposes, though, and it’s silly to deny players the right to play around with them.

Big point is that it’s a pure story telling tool, and there is no reason we shouldn’t do it.

An Elongated Discussion on the Philosophy of the Game
Yeah... not a very easy to summarize feature. Just game philosophy. And what the point of DoW really is.

Long story short, DoW is world building. It’s story telling with points to keep one person from dictating the entire plot. I titles the thread “Fixing DoW” not because DoW in and of itself is broken but what we’re trying to do with it is like trying to get an entire football team to ride a bicycle at once.  Bike is perfectly fine, but it won’t hold up under the pressure.

DoW is a good toolset, but we aren’t creating a world once and then using it for something else. We’re creating worlds again and again and AGAIN just for the amusement of doing so. If we’re doing it for enjoyment in and of itself, it’s a game. And while DoW is great as a toolset, it falls short as a game. The key mission statement we should keep in mind though is that we all (presumably) WANT DoW to be a storytelling game, not a civilization simulator. Within this very thread I’ve backed down support for things I thought of or got behind because people pointed this very fact out to me.

So it’s something to think about... and preferably talk about.

Advancement Equilibrium
Another idea brought up by Draykin was trading a disadvantage for an advantage. Coming off pumped from the discussion on storytelling I could completely understand the idea of wanting to give your race a disadvantage or weakness for story telling purposes... but I couldn’t think of how all of my categories would function if pushed into the negative.

Then other people starting talking about other forms of stats, DV started talking about Tokens, and finally all seriousness was drained from the conversation by otter labor camps having water slides.

So if anyone has something to add, speak up down here or up in chat... though preferably down here unless you want to create your own minute summary post, because I’m not too sure how accurate this all is.

[Snow]

A point about armies: normally a real civ has limited ability to support large armies. What if you generated armies by owning cities or territory, but had a maximum number at a time? A possible variant is that if you want a huge army, you use some advance to increase the army cap instead of adding another +1 to your effectiveness.

[Draykin]

I just had an idea in my head, so I'll put it here before I forget.

Significant Figures: No, I don't mean those stupid science ones, I mean important figures in history, like great generals and scientists. Sure, you could flavor text in a scientist or something... but why not have a separate investment tat worked differently than a basic advancement somehow?