My group loves politics, debating, and diplomacy (not the game), and I was thinking of running a political RPG in which they each act as the head of state or leading body of a nation, and try to live peacefully with each other, or not. Before I begin homebrewing this, is there any such RPG that already exists that does it far more competently than I ever could?
Right now I'm trying to figure out how in depth I want to do this. Too much number crunching will be tedious for the gm, while too much abstraction could lead to having no clear idea as to what actions do what. Maybe have general stats for economics/trade/military/population or something and have perks that affect specific situations, and then just come up with a shitton of random event charts and things? Anyway, hope to hear that there's something else I can use before going headfirst into making this.
I'm more concerned why Alaska is just its own flag, rather than a US flag.
Hudson Turner
Sounds complex, but if you can pull it off, great. There's an RPG floating around called executive decision where you roleplay as members of the president's cabinet. Not quite what youre looking for but might be fun
Gavin Gray
This could probably make a really good legacy style board game. Seafall is coming out soon too, which is kinda in the vein of controlling a country
Robert Jackson
What would be the point to this from a traditional RPG perspective? What are the quests, leveling up, NPCs? I guess NPCs could be other nations but how well would an RPG work where none of the players are on the same side?
Jose Morris
I imagine the GM would be like a UN of sorts, and the world would have a bunch of crises or belligerent nations that need dealing with, maybe have a boss in the form of some other superpower. Might work better as members of a ruling body of a single nation
Liam Lewis
Alaska decided that it'd rather do its own thing for a while. We're bigger than Germany and have the resources to back it, after all!
Chase Roberts
I did something like this before in a fantasy setting, but we had to do a homebrew to do it and it required a fair bit of GM work - I needed to get one of the players to help with design and do some bookkeeping with me.
However, it was a blast, and it was really fun to watch stories unfold and the players interact with each other and their neighbours. The highlight was suddenly one NPC nation winning a lot of fights and turning into a growing empire of doom, and one player using diplomacy to make a coalition to engage in a big battle.
I would say from my experience that random events really help. I also had a chart that could roll up personalities for NPC rulers, and how aggressive they were.
Jackson Torres
Mind going a bit more in depth on what mechanics you used?
Justin King
That actually sounds really fun.
Colton Taylor
Veeky Forums also occasionally runs exactly what this thread describes. Keep an eye out for "nation" or "Empire builders".
Logan Lewis
Those tend to be more free form, almost forum RPGs. If there were one with more in depth mechanics, without being an exercise in bookkeeping, I think it could make a good pnp RPG too
Jackson Howard
Any. Given. Fucking. Nation. Builder.
Currently two are running on Veeky Forums
James Cruz
Today Wheelie is coming back to run his game, which is pretty crunchy for a builder yet very transparent. Thing is - he no longer takes in new nations in it. But the game will be soon over, so he will most likely start another builder
Julian Miller
/builders/ on 8c. And due to summer break, they are also running games on Veeky Forums
Jackson Gomez
Lol. Alaska is just like Texas - it's way too strategically valuable for the US to ever allow it to leave for any reason. Neither of us would ever be allowed out of the Union without total war, because we're just that important.
Andrew Sullivan
>Soon be over
It's hardly even midgame yet; most nations still don't have a real military, those that do have an incomplete one that's skewered towards one brach, most of the map remains unclaimed, and the first few max level technologies have just been discovered. I wouldn't hold your breath; popular games tend to last a couple months, with new nation apps. opening up periodically as people drop out; I wouldn't be surprised if some people dropped out the moment the threads start appearing again.
Also, if I'm not mistaken, there are an unlimited amount of people that can join as factions, and a slot just opened up after whoever was playing that GARM fellow quit and was subsequently subsumed. It's always possible for a faction to viva revolution out of their parent for an brand new independent nation, with the added caveat that you get any technology your parent nation has.
Dominic Young
Link to current thread or archive?
Henry White
The pastebin is kinda defunct ad far as I know. Can't find the rules anywhere else
I recall someone made a summary of all the current nations, but I have lost it.
Ian Miller
Don't know about that, but I do know the last thread started with announcement about no new nations. That also means courtiers, so whoever managed to get one has now solid advantage over the rest.
If you're thinking of it being a fantasy game then REIGN is made for that.
Easton Brown
I was thinking more pseudo 20th century real world, but with made up nations, but I'll check out reign. Worst case, could retrofit some homebrew rules onto it
Levi Cox
Several have elaborate rules etc while others are simpler. They range the gamut.
Jose Lewis
Those that have some rules usually don't last long, due to the extensive crunching on the side of OPs. And Strielok's "Post-Apo Civ Quest" doesn't count to builders, as they are basically quests. Great, well-written and with shitload of crunch in them, but quests.
David Anderson
Related question I suppose, what's a good system for roleplaying nobles or other powerful people controlling land. Sort of CK2 but pen and paper I suppose
Nathaniel Diaz
It was brought up before, but look reign, the designer has a history of good games
Elijah Moore
yeah, saw that, anyone have has a link?
David Turner
Fixed for accuracy.
Xavier Cruz
0D&D. No, really. It was designed to be a baron in the end, so go figure
Juan Garcia
nice trips
you mean the very first version of D&D?
Alexander Gonzalez
Yeah, the ones before AD&D became a thing. Because up until mid 80s it's not even possible to pin-point such thing as "single edition" like it works today - saying 0D&D meand ANYTHNING published before AND alongside AD&D.
Justin Kelly
how are you supposed to play it then? Is everything just compatible and you combine it?
Sebastian Miller
Not him, but the general rules are always compatibile across all editions. He probably meant how before 90s, D&D wasn't just some one, specific edition of 0D&D or one specific edition of AD&D. It was rather a colourful mosaic of few parallel games with slightly different rules, but still makreted as the same game.
Adrian Adams
What changed?
Lucas Thomas
Basically we set up a map kinda like diplomacy, distributing provinces to make nations (giving a bonus in resources to smaller nations to balance). Then we let players pick.
Basically, all the randomization of stuff was done on charts and 2d6s. My more autistic friend made a sort of equation on a spreadsheet that made provinces give out differing resources each turn (Which for that one was a year) based on their terrain). resources could be used to buy armies or upgrade things in the province. We made there a few basic resources like Catan to encourage trading between nations.
For armies fighting, it was resolved mostly through dice rolls with armies adding any bonuses they purchased together - armies were paired up randomly, but the total was used for determining who one - so a force with more armies could lose a lot of guys to more elite forces but still win the battle. Armies that lost but survived had to leave the province.
It was awhile ago, and we tried to do it a second time with a better ruleset but people liked the earlier dumber ruleset apparently and interest kind of died. Problems with the original ruleset was that the really rich nations started getting nearly untrackable amounts of armies, and pretty quickly bought all they needed for provinces - so the tech level everywhere went out of control pretty fast.
The diplomacy part of it was great fun though. One good idea is to have random events happen somewhere in the world each turn - that was most of my work as GM, but it kept it from getting boring. Basic events would be like resources going up or down due to various things, or barbarians armies appearing.
