Post by travislerol on Jun 21, 2016 17:11:37 GMT -5
Alright, the base map is Otosan Uchii and the surrounding nearby area. Waaaay smaller scale than EH. I'm thinking in terms of hexes, still a great deal smaller. Exact dimensions, I leave to whoever is king o' ze map room, and looks nice, but I generally want it compact enough that clans other than immediate neighbors don't feel hopelessly distant.
Generally, city has several ringed walls, and everyone starts outside, two clans per gate(the odd one can be paired with minor clans or other oddball PCs), and explores slowly inward. This allows a tiered difficulty within each ring as well. What all's in there...whatever plot demands. But generally, further in, further built up, more important stuff.
I would suggest against the 0-10 influence system. It's a lot of updating, it mostly isn't visible to players anyways, who only see the colors, and it complicates a great many things. I would suggest a simple color for each hex/square held by a clan. Uncolored if not held by anyone/disputed, etc. In general, land is claimed by going there, clearing out the immediate threats/dealing with the major problems, and sending in a settler unit, which roughly represents your administration of that area. People are likely there already, but to make it yours, you gotta have people involved. Now, this is isn't quite like EH, as we're talking more about "administering this area" than we are "exploring/colonizing", so thematically it's a little different. What challenges each area has/continues to experience is likely to be pretty open ended, I imagine.
Military units provide an advantage in clearing out threats, and can handle some threats without PC assistance, depending, but unit sizes should be much smaller than in EH, and the general scale of combat should be more akin to a skirmish. Bringing a few ashigaru to a bandit fight, for instance, should result in the PCs facing somewhat fewer bandits, with the other narratively described as being handled by the ashigaru, because...running combats stuffed full of NPCs sucks, and bogs down. Not sure of the exact mechanical effects here, but I'm looking for the PCs to be more important than a bog standard unit, generally speaking, but a very strategically minded player could deploy units instead of going himself.
In general, I'd toss area specific challenges into the following categories:
Spiritual: Kami gone amok, or spirits of other realms, or whatever.
Combat: Stab the bandits style stuff.
Puzzle: Investigations, research, smart people plot.
Social: Calm the peasants/talk to the confused people, etc.
Some areas could totally have multiple, but some sort of spread between those for variety seems good. Dunno how exactly to manage this, but I'm envisoning the overarching metaplot, outside city stuff as more ST-driven, whereas the exploration is more player driven. Some might dig greedily and deeply, while others settle cautiously and carefully resolve all problems before going further.
As an aside, if we're giving out at least some resources on an individual level instead of a clan level, individual players might eventually get personal units. I'm okay with this, and think it might be kind of cool. Thoughts?
Generally, city has several ringed walls, and everyone starts outside, two clans per gate(the odd one can be paired with minor clans or other oddball PCs), and explores slowly inward. This allows a tiered difficulty within each ring as well. What all's in there...whatever plot demands. But generally, further in, further built up, more important stuff.
I would suggest against the 0-10 influence system. It's a lot of updating, it mostly isn't visible to players anyways, who only see the colors, and it complicates a great many things. I would suggest a simple color for each hex/square held by a clan. Uncolored if not held by anyone/disputed, etc. In general, land is claimed by going there, clearing out the immediate threats/dealing with the major problems, and sending in a settler unit, which roughly represents your administration of that area. People are likely there already, but to make it yours, you gotta have people involved. Now, this is isn't quite like EH, as we're talking more about "administering this area" than we are "exploring/colonizing", so thematically it's a little different. What challenges each area has/continues to experience is likely to be pretty open ended, I imagine.
Military units provide an advantage in clearing out threats, and can handle some threats without PC assistance, depending, but unit sizes should be much smaller than in EH, and the general scale of combat should be more akin to a skirmish. Bringing a few ashigaru to a bandit fight, for instance, should result in the PCs facing somewhat fewer bandits, with the other narratively described as being handled by the ashigaru, because...running combats stuffed full of NPCs sucks, and bogs down. Not sure of the exact mechanical effects here, but I'm looking for the PCs to be more important than a bog standard unit, generally speaking, but a very strategically minded player could deploy units instead of going himself.
In general, I'd toss area specific challenges into the following categories:
Spiritual: Kami gone amok, or spirits of other realms, or whatever.
Combat: Stab the bandits style stuff.
Puzzle: Investigations, research, smart people plot.
Social: Calm the peasants/talk to the confused people, etc.
Some areas could totally have multiple, but some sort of spread between those for variety seems good. Dunno how exactly to manage this, but I'm envisoning the overarching metaplot, outside city stuff as more ST-driven, whereas the exploration is more player driven. Some might dig greedily and deeply, while others settle cautiously and carefully resolve all problems before going further.
As an aside, if we're giving out at least some resources on an individual level instead of a clan level, individual players might eventually get personal units. I'm okay with this, and think it might be kind of cool. Thoughts?
