@Raistlin said in Games we want, but will almost certainly never have:

1: Players who are willing to have characters that “lose” in these political games and who’ll accept consequences. It should still lead to engaging and imaginative RP but, in my experience, most people just want to “win” and don’t like being on the other side.

I have a solution to that, but it always gets waved away - any character can be played by any player. When you log on, there’s a list of characters available, and you select who you want to play that day. Then there’s less connection between one player to one character, and any given character “losing” isn’t going to be devastating to that player.

I am curious how people define Lord’s & Ladies games.

For me, a critical aspect of a L&L game is the pageantry and the scale, which ties into the pageantry. You could have intrigue and politics in a game about a few tribes living on an island or something, but the conflicts will be small scale (we don’t have enough food for our dozens of tribe members for the coming winter season, so we must go raid the tribe next door). The same can be said of a game that focuses on gangs in a city. Sure you have the conflict, politicking, and intrigue, but you don’t have the balls, the dresses, and the, dare I say, romance, both in the passion meaning and the nostalgic romanticism meaning.

I just want there to be actual politicking and intrigue. The set dressing, while enjoyable, becomes just meaningless decoration otherwise and the game stops holding my interest. Then again, I would also be down to play a bunch of tribes on an island fighting each other over the best hunting grounds. I just don’t think many others would be.

@Pyrephox said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

In fact, one of my never-gonna-happen “would love” MU* games is a political game centered around a free city with power split between elected citizens, powerful merchants often from outside the city, crafting guilds, and the mercenary forces the city needs to keep from getting eaten by outside powers.

This is actually one of the things I would like to see, a sort of ancient Roman Republic, Renaissance Florence/Venice game. Have the server focused on the city and the patrician families that run it. Have an Assembly that passes laws and appoints the magistrates and the governors of their conquered lands. The Republic of Rome board game is kind of what I am thinking of as a basis. Maybe a little bit of the Dune setting and the Arcane series.

Appointed bureaucrats (magistrates, governors, ministers, generals, etc.) rather than inheritable bureacrats also gets around the problems of bad players that do nothing having a lot of IC power. They won’t have it for long when the Assembly demands answers for why they aren’t doing anything and appoint a replacement. It also fixes the problem of important characters sitting on a roster for months at a time. Again, the Assembly will just appoint a replacement.

The question is whether the Assembly is elected by the citizenry as a whole or whether it’s more closed off. In ancient Rome, membership in the Senate was given to anyone who had been a magistrate and that was the only way to get a seat. As the Senate was the body that appointed magistrates, it was a closed system. Then again, even with the entire citizenry able to vote, oligarchs will exist, as history and current events demonstrate, so the people that get voted are still likely to be of the patrician class.

@Jumpscare I get a Coup (the card game) vibe from this.

I see PCs at the highest levels of power working under certain circumstances:

1. The power is temporary.
2. The power comes with constraints.

For the first, I point again to Republic of Rome and John Company board games and the themes that they have. Rather than having position be mostly inherited, it is mostly appointed. You want to be one of the two proconsuls over the entire Republic? Sure! But the term is only for two years, you can’t have consecutive terms, and you can always be brought to trial by the Censors for fucking around. You want to be the general of the armies in Bengal? Sure! Better bring in spoils and not lose too many men, or we’re kicking your ass to the curb. No one gets to just be a position because their mommy or daddy had the position, and there are expectations of performance.

For the second, I had thought of game centered around the politics of the fey/divine beings. One attains more power and Prestige by the titles that they posses, such as The Red Count, Lord of the Dead, The Frosted One, The Dweller at the Threshold, etc. When one bests the current possessor of the title, they get it. While each title gives powers and more Prestige, it also comes with taboos. The Red Count can’t touch iron. The Frosted One can’t be in the sun. So on and so forth. Break a taboo and you are greatly weakened, making it easier for someone to steal the title from you.

EDIT: But I will agree that, in general, the top echelons of power should be NPCs who give tasks to the PC underlings.

@Rucket Could you elaborate on what you mean by “basic House development”?

@Gashlycrumb said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

When plot-stuff flows both ways, PC power is constrained by the powerful PC’s need for IC support from the less powerful. If it always flows top-down, well, not so much. Not at all if you let the mighty get away with taking no action/ineffective action/action only involving off-camera NPC minions.

My post was not meant to imply that plot stuff can’t flow both ways. I was arguing that factionheads should be NPCs so that the overall direction and policy-making of that faction can kept on a leash by administration, rather than risking a PC factionhead completely derailing or sinking an entire faction because their player decided the character needed to hold the idiot ball.

Alice, Bob, and Carol, a trio of town guards, could be the ones to come across the zombie horde and report it to their sergeant, the commander of the town guard, or the mayor. However the mayor, assuming they are the head of the faction in the particular scenario where the factions in the setting are the various towns in a kingdom, would then issue a command to the commander of the town guard, a PC, who could handle it themself or delegate it down the chain. But somebody better do it or the mayor is going to be pissed. It may not even need to get to the mayor. Once it reaches the commander of the town guard’s ears, again a PC, they could make a decision and act how they feel would be appropriate. Bit, again, they better be right about the course of action, because, if they kill the zombies when the mayor has a pro-brain eating policy in place the mayor is going to be pissed.

Players get to play US cabinet positions but the President is an NPC. A PC isn’t going to be able to order that we nuke Russia because their player got fired from their real world job and they want to watch the world burn. The players can be representatives in the National Assembly, but the heads of their parties are NPCs. If the players deviate too far from the tenets and positions held by their party, the head of the party can kick them to the curb and they likely won’t be re-elected in the next election cycle without party support. So on and so forth.

@bear_necessities said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

But what happens when Alice, Bob & Carol, a trio of town guards, come across a zombie horde and horde that information to themselves because they want the plot? IDK there’s no real perfect way to ensure everyone gets a bite of the plot cake except to just put the information out there for everyone.

If they fail and die, then the town guards, David, Emily, and Frank will come across a zombie horde that’s three zombies larger and their friends and family curse their names. If they fail and don’t die, the mayor and the captain of the guard are going to be pissed and their friends and family may shun them. If they succeed, good for them. Celebrations and cheers to their names will be had. And the mayor and the captain of thr guard might still be pissed for them acting on their own. That’s the risk you take when you take on such responsibility.

@MisterBoring That’s how I run my D&D campaigns. The BBEG/Apocalypse isn’t going to sit around and wait for the PCs to quit dicking around to finally find the MacGuffins, prove their worth, and rally the allies they made along the way. I am very much a fuck around and find out DM. I keep strict time records as Gary Gygax admonished in the 1e AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide

@bear_necessities said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

But what happens when Alice, Bob & Carol, a trio of town guards, come across a zombie horde and horde that information to themselves because they want the plot? IDK there’s no real perfect way to ensure everyone gets a bite of the plot cake except to just put the information out there for everyone.

If they fail and die, then the town guards, David, Emily, and Frank will come across a zombie horde that’s three zombies larger and their friends and family curse their names. If they fail and don’t die, the mayor and the captain of the guard are going to be pissed and their friends and family may shun them. If they succeed, good for them. Celebrations and cheers to their names will be had. And the mayor and the captain of thr guard might still be pissed for them acting on their own. That’s the risk you take when you take on such responsibility.

@Gashlycrumb said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

When plot-stuff flows both ways, PC power is constrained by the powerful PC’s need for IC support from the less powerful. If it always flows top-down, well, not so much. Not at all if you let the mighty get away with taking no action/ineffective action/action only involving off-camera NPC minions.

My post was not meant to imply that plot stuff can’t flow both ways. I was arguing that factionheads should be NPCs so that the overall direction and policy-making of that faction can kept on a leash by administration, rather than risking a PC factionhead completely derailing or sinking an entire faction because their player decided the character needed to hold the idiot ball.

Alice, Bob, and Carol, a trio of town guards, could be the ones to come across the zombie horde and report it to their sergeant, the commander of the town guard, or the mayor. However the mayor, assuming they are the head of the faction in the particular scenario where the factions in the setting are the various towns in a kingdom, would then issue a command to the commander of the town guard, a PC, who could handle it themself or delegate it down the chain. But somebody better do it or the mayor is going to be pissed. It may not even need to get to the mayor. Once it reaches the commander of the town guard’s ears, again a PC, they could make a decision and act how they feel would be appropriate. Bit, again, they better be right about the course of action, because, if they kill the zombies when the mayor has a pro-brain eating policy in place the mayor is going to be pissed.

Players get to play US cabinet positions but the President is an NPC. A PC isn’t going to be able to order that we nuke Russia because their player got fired from their real world job and they want to watch the world burn. The players can be representatives in the National Assembly, but the heads of their parties are NPCs. If the players deviate too far from the tenets and positions held by their party, the head of the party can kick them to the curb and they likely won’t be re-elected in the next election cycle without party support. So on and so forth.

@Rucket Could you elaborate on what you mean by “basic House development”?

I see PCs at the highest levels of power working under certain circumstances:

1. The power is temporary.
2. The power comes with constraints.

For the first, I point again to Republic of Rome and John Company board games and the themes that they have. Rather than having position be mostly inherited, it is mostly appointed. You want to be one of the two proconsuls over the entire Republic? Sure! But the term is only for two years, you can’t have consecutive terms, and you can always be brought to trial by the Censors for fucking around. You want to be the general of the armies in Bengal? Sure! Better bring in spoils and not lose too many men, or we’re kicking your ass to the curb. No one gets to just be a position because their mommy or daddy had the position, and there are expectations of performance.

For the second, I had thought of game centered around the politics of the fey/divine beings. One attains more power and Prestige by the titles that they posses, such as The Red Count, Lord of the Dead, The Frosted One, The Dweller at the Threshold, etc. When one bests the current possessor of the title, they get it. While each title gives powers and more Prestige, it also comes with taboos. The Red Count can’t touch iron. The Frosted One can’t be in the sun. So on and so forth. Break a taboo and you are greatly weakened, making it easier for someone to steal the title from you.

EDIT: But I will agree that, in general, the top echelons of power should be NPCs who give tasks to the PC underlings.

@Jumpscare I get a Coup (the card game) vibe from this.

@Pyrephox said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

In fact, one of my never-gonna-happen “would love” MU* games is a political game centered around a free city with power split between elected citizens, powerful merchants often from outside the city, crafting guilds, and the mercenary forces the city needs to keep from getting eaten by outside powers.

This is actually one of the things I would like to see, a sort of ancient Roman Republic, Renaissance Florence/Venice game. Have the server focused on the city and the patrician families that run it. Have an Assembly that passes laws and appoints the magistrates and the governors of their conquered lands. The Republic of Rome board game is kind of what I am thinking of as a basis. Maybe a little bit of the Dune setting and the Arcane series.

Appointed bureaucrats (magistrates, governors, ministers, generals, etc.) rather than inheritable bureacrats also gets around the problems of bad players that do nothing having a lot of IC power. They won’t have it for long when the Assembly demands answers for why they aren’t doing anything and appoint a replacement. It also fixes the problem of important characters sitting on a roster for months at a time. Again, the Assembly will just appoint a replacement.

The question is whether the Assembly is elected by the citizenry as a whole or whether it’s more closed off. In ancient Rome, membership in the Senate was given to anyone who had been a magistrate and that was the only way to get a seat. As the Senate was the body that appointed magistrates, it was a closed system. Then again, even with the entire citizenry able to vote, oligarchs will exist, as history and current events demonstrate, so the people that get voted are still likely to be of the patrician class.

I am curious how people define Lord’s & Ladies games.

For me, a critical aspect of a L&L game is the pageantry and the scale, which ties into the pageantry. You could have intrigue and politics in a game about a few tribes living on an island or something, but the conflicts will be small scale (we don’t have enough food for our dozens of tribe members for the coming winter season, so we must go raid the tribe next door). The same can be said of a game that focuses on gangs in a city. Sure you have the conflict, politicking, and intrigue, but you don’t have the balls, the dresses, and the, dare I say, romance, both in the passion meaning and the nostalgic romanticism meaning.

I just want there to be actual politicking and intrigue. The set dressing, while enjoyable, becomes just meaningless decoration otherwise and the game stops holding my interest. Then again, I would also be down to play a bunch of tribes on an island fighting each other over the best hunting grounds. I just don’t think many others would be.

I see another possible design that might work with a one player to each character structure. All of the high-level characters are NPCs but are very active. The players play the lieutenants, sub-lieutenants, drones, etc. Every month or two months, they would get orders from on high to try to accomplish. Depending on how well they do, they get rewarded with better titles, trusted with more responsibility, and publicly acclaimed. A mission might be “Priority one for this month is to obtain 20 units of iron. Of secondary importance is 50 tons of timber. You MUST NOT trade away more than 30 tons of our coal. Our preferred trading partners for this deal would be the Lilliputians and the Lannisters. You MUST NOT do business with the Minbari.” Then leave it up to them to get that done however they can. Then everyone is wheeling and dealing, moving armies and navies around, promising future favors, etc. However. No faction is going to collapse from a player “losing,” because the characters with the ability to cause a faction to completely go down the toilet is controlled by staff, and they can take actions to right a sinking ship before its totally sunk.

@Faraday The original RPG, D&D, was built around players having a stable of characters, not the one character per player paradigm that developed as teens and college kids who had no background in the wargaming culture D&D came out of took up the game. Ars Magica has troupe style play. Collaborative storytelling forums/games on the internet are a thing with probably an equal sized playerbase to the MU* playerbase. Storytelling games are growing in popularity and we are starting to see them overlap with traditional RPGs. Sure, there will be people who decide such a game isn’t for them, but let’s not pretend that the idea is some left-field ramblings of a crazy man. This has been done and was being done longer than one character per player, and the solutions to any issues should be out there already ironed out in the particular spheres mentioned.

You also risk wildly inconsistent characterization, plot holes, dropped threads, and conflicts as multiple players try to steer a character in different directions from one day to the next. I think it would also be harder to make meaningful connections with other players, since you don’t have shared character bonds to latch onto.

It would definitely work better with a smaller group of players on the server, say 10 to 30, not an Arx-sized 100+. Scene logs would be required for any actions to be considered “canon.” If it isn’t in a log on the website/wiki, it didn’t happen. That way everyone knows which characters have done what.

Another option and one that might work for a larger server, is to allow players to have a character or two that only they can play and make these characters the big players in the setting. If it were a fantasy game, I would compare them to the demiurges from KSBD or the patrons from 13th age, nearly-immortal god-queens/kings and their lieutenants or something like that. That way the setbacks in the “Great Game”, while costing hundreds of “lesser” lives are again just setbacks to them rarher than complete ruination. Then make all the sub-lieutenants and drones be playable by anyone. This would be comparable to Ars Magic with players having one magus and custodes and the gross being shared.

Otherwise, I feel like you’re limited to cooperative settings, which somewhat limits the scope of the setting. For instance, Arx’s cooperative nature felt off considering how big and varying the cultures were. The lack of infighting felt off.

On the other hand in the John Company board game, what the houses are vying for is who has the most pensioners in their family living in nice retirement estates. Losing isn’t so much your family being eradicated as it is living in an estate that’s only 200 acres compared to your rivals who got an estate that’s 500 acres. The real loser in that game is India and its people as it gets raped and pillaged by the colonialism (unless the game ends by the company going bankrupt or India driving out the colonizers, resulting in all of the players losing). In Republic of Rome, one of the players is going to end up as Dictator, but that doesn’t mean the losers got culled from society. The only way that happens is if everyone loses because Rome falls to the Carthiginians or the Gauls or the Germans…

So perhaps a server could keep the one or two characters per player structure but the fighting is more over “The Senate gave my family three magistrate positions this term and yours only got two” style stuff. Still the server needs to play that stuff up more, because on most servers it just feels like increasing random numbers that don’t actually mean anything. Firan did a somewhat decent job of that but only somewhat, and it had plenty of other problems.

By all means, if you think a game like that would be fun you should run it.

When I win the lotto, making me indepently wealthy and therefore having the time to dedicate to such a project, I’ll get right on it.