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Diplomacy: The North discussion topic


Leonardo

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Without any ado, I am finally capable once more of hosting a round of gaming. This topic is to discuss whether or not another Diplomacy game is on the table or if people prefer to try and launch a new game like the nation building one I am working on(ASOIAF nations of course). Both have players creating their own houses in the ASOIAF setting and the idea of both is to try and simulate Westeros and the thrill of the game of thrones.

Either way, we will be playing on a map of the North; one of the issues arising from the last game was the sheer size of the map and lack of forethought on my part in terms of the original economic system. Now is the time to present a list of any proposed ideas for a new game or changes to the old. I have also considered hosting the board game if people want to play, but we already have thronemaster for that.

What I already have on the docket for Diplomacy should we go with that:

1. Simultaneous order reveal

2. Redux of trading rules

3. Tweaking the prices of some of the wonders and likely removing 2-3 or changing them

4. Army size from 500 troops to 100 for realism and purdiness

5. Rules on how house traits can interact and tweaking some of the traits

Aside from those, there is one more big change I am planning on. Either

The Watch and wildlings will be part of the game, with one player taking the wall and one or more players taking control of the kings beyond the wall. Both will function differently than standard player houses and will set the tone of the game. The wall's job is to hold and keep out the wildlings, while the wildlings themselves want to invade the North. Player houses will be able to interact with the wall, but only the Night's Watch itself will be able to venture north beyond the wall. There are other special rules regarding the castles of the watch and how the two sides armies' will interact, to be fleshed out more once we decide the route we take.

The other option is a global event system. The events will be randomly drawn from a pool and will range from wildling attacks to crop failures, and things like bandit rings. We'll work on these together and develop the concept further.

The idea is to give the game more of a theme and pacing, as well as add new dimensions and other things to fight against than just the other players.

A different idea I had from either nation building or Diplomacy is that the game starts with a kingdom already formed. There will be a randomly chosen king and the other players form his vassal houses, and the game starts in peacetime by default. A system will be in place tracking the 'chaos' of the game, which will eventually erupt into open war. Once certain conditions have been fulfilled (i.e. all players swearing fealty to the king again, and a ceasing of hostilities) the wars will end and the peacetime phase of the game begins again. I came up with the idea when working on the nation game; if Diplomacy is A Clash of Kings, this would be A Game of Thrones and rely more on court intrigue and such.

Just some stuff to mull over and some ideas about how to proceed. I am thinking of a bi-weekly update schedule, or possibly even weekly. It depends on how things go in discussion and what kind of game people feel like playing ;D

So what do people feel is the best course and what are your ideas? Some of these are very much just broadstroke notions, but I wanted to give some options of things that maybe hadn't come up before.

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I've been chatting with dobromir about it; the wildlings have a sort of counter that increases every turn which represents their armies. Their territories can't be sacked or built on, but they can be garrisoned by the watch to decrease the rate of the counter. When the counter reaches a certain point or a certain roll comes up, the wildlings make an attack upon the wall or one of the territories beyond the wall the watch has garrisoned.

At first the troops of the wall will be far more disciplined than the wildlings, and this is reflected in their troops counting for a lot more; as the game goes on though, the watch experiences the decline we see in the series and their men become less and less effective, so things will naturally build to a breaking point. Their income is also fixed and quite low, to represent the maintenance of the wall, and their number of men have to be sustained by food just as in winter.

Another big kicker is that the only real ways to bolster the strength of the wall are to go on recruiting missions throughout the kingdom which have a semi random result, or to have the players send nobles to the wall. The watch and wildlings will both have their own generals as well, but obviously no house traits. There always has to be a Lord commander, or the watch is no longer functioning and the wildlings can pass into the north freely.

The castles of the watch can't be sacked, but the gift and new gift can. They remain in possession of the watch though and will recover as normal.

I need to run some numbers on it to figure out any balancing quirks and there are still things to flesh out; another issue may be that no one wants either of those roles, though the wildlings will definitely be simpler in comparison as you don't have to work with other players and your whole goal is to kill the watch and then everyone else.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Shooting for March, the WBT should be over by then. I'm also of the mind this will be a smaller scale game. I was dishing out territory and there weren't more than ten spots open even in the big map, and then 2 more for wilds and NW if we add them. I think i may do away with colonization all together as well, and have all land start owned, should accelerate things a fair bit.

Dragons have been replaced with an alchemists guild wonder, and armies can now be garrisoned in castles.

Also I'll have different limits for family size; I don't think anyone needs more than 7. It makes them easier to track and move, as well as helping balance the nw mechanic of sending men to the wall.

I figure it'll be better to start around spring, people are sluggish during winter

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

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