A while ago, @enfors@ttrpg-hangout.social said he wanted his sandbox generator supplement to have something special. I wasn't exactly sure what he was thinking of, but I started thinking about the things that I feel are under-explored.
A while ago, for example, I wondered: What would be the simplest game that emphasises how many friends you make, that rewards the size of the community you build? Back in 2016 I wrote a game called Best Friends that I never used. It was still an adventure game. Basically, replace your "level" with the number of friends you have. Something like that.
But that still doesn't get into really new territory. Something I would like to see is a system for how to run an intrigue as a party – including everybody at the table, for all the classes and skill profiles. I feel that *A Song of Ice and Fire* attempted to do this but the result wasn’t great, at least at my table.
Quoting my past self:
I’m also not too happy with A Song of Ice and Fire. We’ve only played three times, so I’m willing to give it more time. When I ran one of the sessions I basically split the party to the max since since all characters are so diverse. There is no D&D like party and that also requires me to rethink my adventure design. – 2010-04-08 Spring
I can always switch into a movie director stance, go around the table, point at players, “now you!” and after a bit when the exchange happened and a die was maybe cast, “as we wait for that, we cut to…” and soon enough “in the mean time…” – and I do this aggressively, in small time slots. This results in a somewhat military style of pointing at people to let them know that now is their turn, while simultaneously waving at others to hold their thoughts, or maybe cutting talkative players off when they’re running too long. It’s weird, but when there’s a lot of players, or when there’s no party play to return to, it works well enough. We’ve made these kinds of mistakes in games where there are characters that are well suited for fighting and others that are not, with their players trying to solve problems by fighting, and players do not. This happened to me when I ran a one-shot of *A Song of Ice and Fire*. It worked for a session, but it was exhausting and I don’t want to claim that it’s a good solution. It was simply a short term solution that worked, for me. Next time, however, make sure players create characters that will adventure together. – 2021-02-27 Cohesion
Perhaps the split into combat and intrigue that the game introduced wasn't good game design because it made sense from the perspective of emulating the books but it didn't make sense from the perspective of some people wanting to play a game together. Or maybe it just didn't fit my expectations of what it means to play together. Or maybe we just missed the implied recommendation to focus on either combat or intrigue and everybody having two characters, one for each domain. Or maybe just run either a combat campaign or an intrigue campaign.
So what I'm looking for is a way to get intrigue results, using procedures like we do for combat or exploration, for dungeons or the wilderness. The goal is to bring about a change in leadership of a town, a gang, a castle, an army unit, or to succeed in an act of sabotage, to incite a rebellion – things that are either hand-waved or the party is hired for the dirty work while the non-player characters are the politicians and rabble-rousers. I know this can work. It's OK for the party to do the dirty work, to assassinate a tyrant and the non-player characters then taking the throne and similar things, but I want to go further. I want to involve all the players at the table. I want the players to think about the logistics of war, the organising and preparations of revolutions, the intricacies of marriage politics.
What if B/X D&D went levels 1–3 is for dungeons, 4–6 is for the wilderness and 7–9 is *for politics*. Doesn't that sound fantastic? What sort of rules would you find in that third book? You would not get to name level by being a colonizer and clearing the land but by taking over an existing position of power – through intrigue. Oust the abbot, kick out the bishop, marry into the baron's family, take over the guild. With the help of your friends. Without resorting to combat, but with dice rolling.
The dice rolling and the procedures are important to me because otherwise it all goes in a direction I don’t like: the referee decides everything and that is exhausting.
the referee decides everything and that is exhausting
Not something like Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits but something like social combat for Fate games, like the social combat system in Diaspora, for example. Note @bradjmurray@dice.camp's most recent take on those rules: social combat in diaspora.
social combat system in Diaspora
This space deserves more attention.
#RPG