As I touched on initially, I'm really keen on exploring what I've come to think of as the second layer of story. This sort of thing is largely ignored in many RPGs, but I've actually dreamed of this many times in the past. For example, a Dark Sun campaign setting is screaming for a game in which players are both the gladiators dealing with flashy arena combats and also at the same time the political manipulators behind the scenes ensuring their candidate(s) win. A recent comment reminded me that there are games that explore these kind of rules, but they may not lend themselves well to an RPG. Even Wizards of the Coast designed a game like this: Lords of Waterdeep.
I've toyed with whether a game like that would better focus on the rules of minions or broader pools of influence. A spymaster game might have each player take the role of spymaster and have a set of agents as their resources. They send agents hither and yon to attempt to do the legwork but ultimate the game could be about those manipulators. For Alexandria, I've decided to keep the focus on the more complex set of rules for abstract influences, but by making backgrounds each represent more concrete aspects of the world, I hope to add in a sense of how an agent-based game would work. Allies, Mentor, and Retainers all do this with the Vampire rules.
But there is something appealing to me still about mixing these two layers. If I had the time and players, I'd see about doing the two layer game, either as a single game or a mixed game. See, in the lower-layer of the game, players take the role of the agents. The traditional party might just be one "agent" from one spymaster, or the party might be made up of agents from multiple spymasters. Then, the upper layer could either be the same set of players (essentially each portraying a potential villain), or an entirely separate group playing an influence game all on its own. There's something really interesting about this idea, and it's been percolating ever since I wanted to do a gladiator game in Dark Sun. I can see how it could apply to an Al-Qadim campaign that's brewing in my mind, as well as games like Fading Suns (and, of course, Vampire).
Now, there are some things where this wouldn't work. When I decided to try to keep running a game with a very similar set of rules and setting (i.e. some form of Vampire), I thought about a lot of different options. Ultimately I decided it would be rough to add in a bunch of different supernaturals, because they'd need their powers coded for augments like vampires, and wouldn't access the feeding rules, or would feed in a different way, etc. But there were ideas besides Alexandria. Some of them weren't good because I wanted to "closed" setting, where it would be harder to bring in lots of outside NPCs. But for some I just couldn't think how the influence might work well without thinking on the scale of large cities. So my idea of a small game of a couple vampires in the Atlantic with influences call Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria might work for a game of a couple characters, but it seems more like an agents sort of game than an abstract influence one. I also wanted to revive an old idea of an Occult war on the planet Gwyneth in Fading Suns, but I didn't want to change the rules to adapt it for a new setting/system quite yet. Same logic nixed a Demon: The Fallen game. The only other set of rules I reasonably considered was the newer Vampire: The Requiem game, but that was mostly because I think that game does factions better and would largely keep the same rules elements (retainers, contacts, influence, disciplines, blood and feeding, etc.). As for settings, Wild West might work in a boom town, but I was less excited with that idea. A roaring 20s game of influence between vampires in Minneapolis and St. Paul seemed my best other option, but it wasn't clear how to avoid the conspicuous violence that one expects to inevitably erupt in a game like this. Obviously another Dark Ages game is what I decided on, though it occurs 900 years before the start of the official Dark Ages: Vampire setting.
I'm looking at the new Mind's Eye Theatre rules for some inspiration, as they simply the influence game into just two categories (Elite and Underworld) plus add a bit more concreteness to the influences you control (each dot is one group within that category). So I'm interested in seeing how something like this turns out. It may be that agents would ultimately mesh better with other games (followers in D&D, Retainers in Vampire, etc) to model a set of contacts and underlings. We just have to test a few things out and see how it goes.
I've toyed with whether a game like that would better focus on the rules of minions or broader pools of influence. A spymaster game might have each player take the role of spymaster and have a set of agents as their resources. They send agents hither and yon to attempt to do the legwork but ultimate the game could be about those manipulators. For Alexandria, I've decided to keep the focus on the more complex set of rules for abstract influences, but by making backgrounds each represent more concrete aspects of the world, I hope to add in a sense of how an agent-based game would work. Allies, Mentor, and Retainers all do this with the Vampire rules.
But there is something appealing to me still about mixing these two layers. If I had the time and players, I'd see about doing the two layer game, either as a single game or a mixed game. See, in the lower-layer of the game, players take the role of the agents. The traditional party might just be one "agent" from one spymaster, or the party might be made up of agents from multiple spymasters. Then, the upper layer could either be the same set of players (essentially each portraying a potential villain), or an entirely separate group playing an influence game all on its own. There's something really interesting about this idea, and it's been percolating ever since I wanted to do a gladiator game in Dark Sun. I can see how it could apply to an Al-Qadim campaign that's brewing in my mind, as well as games like Fading Suns (and, of course, Vampire).
Now, there are some things where this wouldn't work. When I decided to try to keep running a game with a very similar set of rules and setting (i.e. some form of Vampire), I thought about a lot of different options. Ultimately I decided it would be rough to add in a bunch of different supernaturals, because they'd need their powers coded for augments like vampires, and wouldn't access the feeding rules, or would feed in a different way, etc. But there were ideas besides Alexandria. Some of them weren't good because I wanted to "closed" setting, where it would be harder to bring in lots of outside NPCs. But for some I just couldn't think how the influence might work well without thinking on the scale of large cities. So my idea of a small game of a couple vampires in the Atlantic with influences call Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria might work for a game of a couple characters, but it seems more like an agents sort of game than an abstract influence one. I also wanted to revive an old idea of an Occult war on the planet Gwyneth in Fading Suns, but I didn't want to change the rules to adapt it for a new setting/system quite yet. Same logic nixed a Demon: The Fallen game. The only other set of rules I reasonably considered was the newer Vampire: The Requiem game, but that was mostly because I think that game does factions better and would largely keep the same rules elements (retainers, contacts, influence, disciplines, blood and feeding, etc.). As for settings, Wild West might work in a boom town, but I was less excited with that idea. A roaring 20s game of influence between vampires in Minneapolis and St. Paul seemed my best other option, but it wasn't clear how to avoid the conspicuous violence that one expects to inevitably erupt in a game like this. Obviously another Dark Ages game is what I decided on, though it occurs 900 years before the start of the official Dark Ages: Vampire setting.
I'm looking at the new Mind's Eye Theatre rules for some inspiration, as they simply the influence game into just two categories (Elite and Underworld) plus add a bit more concreteness to the influences you control (each dot is one group within that category). So I'm interested in seeing how something like this turns out. It may be that agents would ultimately mesh better with other games (followers in D&D, Retainers in Vampire, etc) to model a set of contacts and underlings. We just have to test a few things out and see how it goes.
I think that you can ever completely remove violence from a game, the world isn't that kind of place. Especially if you do ultimately have the setting in Alexandria where the Pagan and Christian religions reach their breaking point. Even if the game doesn't progress to that point in history, there is always violence. I'm just saying that sometime influence can't always accomplish what you want to happen. But perhaps with your gladiators supplying some guaranteed violence it would ebb the need for it ^_^
ReplyDeleteIn RPGs its usual to just kill your enemies. What I'm thinking about doing here is making the factions and roads discourage outright killing, because Vampire is a game where we have stats which penalize you for doing that. Maybe I'll write a murderizing post soon. I agree that there will be violence, but maybe that'll be kept among mortal pawns.
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