Reference The Game Group

ooc: Three questions about this one. It is a rough, unfinshed draft and a lot is to do, but it also is wildly ambitious of myself to try something like that I think.

1. Can this work?
2. Should I use the system or not?
3. Is it too strange in it´s current form?


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The Desert

Who brought you to the desert?

I have. Obviously.

Who am I?

In time, my friend. In time.

Questions? Oh, I am certain you have questions.

Who are you? Where you come from? Why are you in the desert? Truth to be told, you won´t know and probably you will never learn the truth how you got there. The thing is, you are there. You are there and you will have to deal with the fact you are there.
Me? I don´t have answers for you. Not yet.


Some things might be familiar to you. Some things might be strange and even disturbing in the empty village you wake up in. Memories . . . you have nothing you could call memories, but fragments of a life before you got there remain. Some things you remember. Some things you can still do. You think I was unable to wipe you clean? Don´t betray yourself by challenging or doubting my power. I can do whatever I please. I had my reasons. I most of them time have my reasons for things to happen. But they say I have a temper, too. Unreliability is probably my only weakness.

So what is your purpose? What is your goal?
You ask me?

Be whatever you choose to be. You can try, you can make it comfortable or hard for you down there. But be assured, in this world you can become everything you want. A hero or a villain, a monster or a healer, a King? Sure. Emperor? Ruler? Tyrant? Yes, if you can gather enough power. A rebel? A searcher of truth? A magician? A sorcerer? An archeologist? A drifter? A clown? A lover? A husband or a wife? A craftsman or a rogue, an occultist or a demonologist? A scientist? An architect? An explorer? Oh, there is plenty to explore, I can assure you that. A dungeon crawler? A warrior? A soldier? A sage? A servant? A slave? A dealer? A trader? A cook? A player or a conman? Banker? Yes, yes you can be any of that, it all or none of it. I won´t interfere. This is your world now. I will only . . . let´s say I play a game, too. And I intend to win.
You too? Together or divided? With friends or against enemies? How you play this game is up to you. But be aware, there is competition. There always is.

And the only thing you can not choose is to be anything but part of my game.

Good luck out there. You will need it.

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The Scenario

You wake up in a desert, near a small town that seems to be deserted and next to several other figures, as featureless and clothed in yellow robes just as you are. Some are male, some are female. What do you have on you? Ten coins in a small pocket in your robes. What do you know? Little. Only vague memories of what you might once have known. From there you shall be free to do whatever you want, but be aware this world is a playground, a sandbox (pretty much in the literal sense), but it is not yours alone. Other players, other powers, disasters and even those who visit it from afar may influence you or might be influenced by you. So be careful what you wish.
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Characters

Every character is based on a system of stats, I call it the desert-system. It is rather simple. You got attributes and you got skills. One attribute and one skill together are your stat. When you perform a task, you will roll 1 ten sided dice on top of your stat and that will determine failure or success.
You will start with 7 points to divide among your three attributes as you wish and with 5 points on skills of your choice. You beginner health is always your physical stat +2.

The Attributes:
Physical:
Mind:
Willpower:

The Skills: [the usual range of skills from Melee, over Crafts, perception, tracking, survival, athletic, bows, brawl, some more exotic ones probably too like insight, alchemy and such things]




So you equally divide those points and as you see fit, but there are not many points on your character sheet. That is intentional, as you are only a shade of who you once were and who you could become at this point. But every ten days you will gain new points to buy better skills, attributes and so on, making you better, more powerful and more ready to survive the desert.
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The Check

Once you deal with another player (pvp) or the GM demands you to make a check you have to take your stat (or if you have no skill only the attribute) and add one ten sided dice (1d10) to the result. There is a difficulty and if you are above it you will succeed and if you are below it you shall fail.
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Death

Oh well, maybe you are dead already, are you? One thing you are not, so much I can tell you. You´re not as mortal as you might think you are. If you die you lose part of your stability, certainly. But you will be reborn within a day. For 24 hours you are dead though. Unable to influence the doings of the world. Also dying leaves traces and damages that might lead to the loss of what you gained before. Oh and all your equipment, obviously, is gone. But nothing you cannot buy or learn again.
Unless you die the final death, of course. Permadeath, as I call it. It happens. Not often, but it happens.
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Time

Well in game time is a relative concept, as the desert seem to have no fixed day or night cycle. Sometimes the sun doesn´t seem to set for weeks, sometimes there comes a short night and sometimes darkness seems to never end. Therefore you should eat, sleep when you see fit.
But my time is something different. Real time, if you want to call it that. And I tell you, realtime will be your friend, your enemy and your greatest theat.

Time will also allow you to collect experience points and every ten days you can spend them, heightening the skills and abilities of your character.

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The Crown

What is the crown you´ll ask? The crown is power. It is not something you have on your head, some stupid piece of jewelry, no. It is something much more useful. The crown gives the possessor the ability to do the unthinkable, to overcome obstacles he usually could never overcome. [the nature of THE CROWN is right now under intense discussion, the ideas ranging from immortality to access to abilities otherwise impossible to access or massive boosts in skills and attributes. Maybe pushing all attributes to maximum?] And whoever holds the Crown, he holds it for ten days.

So how do you get the Crown? Quite simple, you are given it by your fellow players. In the library thread every one of you will post his character with one post. Then all other players can like or unlike your post. Whoever got most of the likes after ten days (all players alive are counted) will get the crown. What if to got the equal amount of likes? Nobody gets it. And you will have to make it through ten days without anybody holding that power. There better won´t be any danger that is too big for you to handle, then.

The holder of the crown keeps the power for ten days, no matter how active or inactive he plays. No matter how he got those votes, what for he got them and how he uses that power.

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What will happen when:

Ten Days

Every ten days the votes for THE CROWN will be counted. You can change your vote at any time, but only where your like is or not will count at the end of every ten days. There is another event that will happen every ten days. Which one is that you ask? I will tell you every ten days. Because it will be randomly chosen from a tableau of a hundred events that bring their blessings and that can be your curse. What could such an event be? A sandstorm, a message from the Gods through their oracle that a weapon has been unearthed that can permakill or a portion that brings invincibility, an event that forwards a metaplot (several events tied to each other) or a monster unleashed, or a whole army of undead on their way, or simply . . . nothing at all. It could be anything. The list will have 100 events and the dice will decide what is gonna happen.
Within ten days you will also have to have eaten and drunk or you will loose 1d10 of health.


Thirty Days

Every thirty days there will appear two NPC´s in the settlement. One will be THE TRADER with whom you can trade goods against the games currency or other goods you wish to exchange. The other one is THE ORACLE, who will reveal truth to you, not available otherwise.



Hundred Days

All hundred days comes a day, a single day, at which you can kill other players from the game permanently. At the same day players will usually get a chance to resurrect fallen characters who have been killed a hundred days before.


Thousand Days

After a thousand days the game ends. Why and how will probably be revealed over the course of the thousand days.

Rules:
Well, those will probably be extensive and very different from what I do usually.

[To clear this, I will use minimum intervention and have most events and plot-points decided by dices who make me trigger certain events. To assure absolute neutrality even think about taking a new friend of mine to play any NPC´s around, so no preferences from my side influence the game. The game would basically develop a rhythm of it´s own, with the players alone dictating if it is a battle against each other, or together against the external threads or even such a productive collaboration, that they build a save haven and dwell in the simulation of markets and such . . . ]

Wars amongst players? A sandbox - literally.

I'd join in a heartbeat.

I've brought up the idea of a game like this before (okay, so I've brought up transferring the game I play off-site), and it didn't get much interest. This one looks interesting though. If my time gets a little more free I might join.

Well . . . well . . . .WELL.

The Good:

You create our own RPing system, streamlining and simplifying the whole idea about using systems and then you add the like button, make it sandbox and basically make the first game about character-progress in the TFN since I was around here. Draco, leave some quests of GMing to the rest of us, will ya? Seruiously, the system, the world, the idea, the sandbox. It all works fine in my head.

The game is certainly interesting. Taking the story out of the equasion and replace it with random events and player interaction is awesome. I love how the likes will "empower" players and make heroes through democratic decision. I can imagine how thrilling it is for all those involved to see a date coming and not knowing what it will be. And what you promise there? Immortality? Weapons? Experience points? Of cpourse everyone wants those. I see what you got going there and I begin to develop a strategy how to make my way in your game. It is certainyl having the potential of being very addictive. The setting is mysterious and unique enough (as long as Peng keeps on worshipping non-existent sandworms) and I imagine a player ruled game could lead to all kinds of conflict, really. Death and rsurrection and hte dreaded idea of permadeath are horrible, too. It could work. That is what I want to say, it could really work and despite you having put a lot of energy and thought into the very beginning, hell from there it will probably GM itself, really.

Even in failing this could be so interesting. Imagine 90 percent of your players leave and keep their like on one player who suddenly cannot be robbed of the grown. How players could work to restrain him, kill him, trick the system, you know? Imagine how a player who misuses the CROWN will be blamed and outlawed once he looses it. Imagine how "resurrection" could be used to "teleport" and imagine how scary permadeath-day will be to all! Oh my God, I would run if I knew I had a rival and permadeath-day approached.

There is potential. A lot of it. But . . .

But . . .

The BAD:

You need players. A lot of them, first. I don´t know but this might work well with twenty players? 15 would be a minimum, I´d say. Under 10? 5? Five yould probably not be enough. You need a story to keep such a group hooked, because character dynamics will wear down. I think you would need a mcheanism to deal with joining and dropping out players, with player absence and all that. But anyway, you need a big and stable group of players to make this work. And I mean reliable players, not those tourists who stay for a post or two, but people dedicated to development of characters, who accept slow speed and the story-absence for the chance to play in a competitive environment. Sounds to me, like you need a lot of special players and let´s face it . . . those might be hard to find. Usually a game can consider itself blassed to have four or five players it can rely on for a year or two. that is amazing. You need not only that, but a bit extra. Tough call. And that might not be a good time to try.

Another thing I see is that you force people into competition, while that might be your intend, you should consider leaving more peaceful cooperation possibilities.


The Ugly:

Dying and loosing skills? You mean my enemies can beat me into a [stupid] form of myself? But I cannot die? Horrible idea.

Well, I see that problem. Yet, make no mistake, it won´t work with too many people. 30 would be too many, as my 100 events would simply not be enough to include that many players. But if I start below ten that might indeed be a problem and ten is quite an ambitious number nowadays. I mean, The Forever War attracted such numbers, but it was pretty mainstream compared to this. It could be interesting with few players I am certain. Survivors, so to say. New players could join any day and every player joining would automatically shift the balance. That could be just as interesting.

I planned for several mechanisms to allow players to drop out and return. Like prolonged states of death, before resurrection. Or stasis in which you cannot be hurt.


So the idea is indeed to allow people to progress over time, build up a character. To make things a bit more personal than nowadays. Yet, have a strict authority to avoid any breach of rules.

And as you showed in your post, Fin. All kind of real life things could actually create stories in the game. Like what happens, if real life events concerning players do influence events in the game. Somebody leaves and his vote makes someone king? He got one permanent vote, because the person is no longer around to change that! Campainging. I would not forbid campaigning in real life to get votes inside the game! Not at all.

Well, it all depends on getting players who will feel more drawn into the game and more committed over time BECAUSE they stayed with it for so long. Instead of loosing interest, what is usually the case. I am not say "don´t do it", I am saying you´ll need a good portion of luck and good crew you can rely on pretty blindly and which is at the same time able to create the necessary tension.

I mean 1000 days. That thing could become legendary. Imagine you really fought and failed, united and dropped out of alliances again for a thousand days and then you suddenly come to the endgame? If you did not die too often you´re stats will be damned near godhead by then, but your history will justify it. I like the idea so much. But how many of those players will you need?

I certainly see your point, but seriously . . . if I ever decide to bind myself to a porject of htese proportions, I´d be willing to make a leap of faith and see who joins. I´ask around my circle of friends, certainly, have a few people from outside these boards come along and we got plenty of great players here. Not everybody would stay, but I am willing to take my chances . . . I think I could get enough.

I just hope my first run won´t fail because of balancing issues. I wonder what will happen to the game if "events" come in an order unbalancing the game. Will players take it as a challenge or simply . . . leave?

It is an amazing concept, kinda revolutionizing GMing, if you look hard at it. This would be very different, leaving many decisions to chance that usually resided with the GM. I love that element of surprise that is inherent and the possibility that chance unbalances the game and balances it again. It´s truly a game in which a character could become the Sauron or King Arthur of his time. Ruling the game cruely or just until the end of it. But Fin´s remarks were not totally wrong. What kind of player do you need to play such a game and how many? How do you treat drop outs? I mean The forever War had about the most stable kick off in recent history of RPing, but I assume you cannot take it as a given that is gonna happen twice! If you wanna pursue it, you need a mechanism to deal with such things.

I also miss newbie and entry rules. Reenetry you mentioned, but can I not join on day 150?

Okay, me and my two critics above have taken the discussion off-site by now. And it´s becoming interesting. Nevertheless, the floor is open.

I'm kind of iffy on the requiring of dice in a forum setting like this, even if its for character building. Maybe a point buy systen?

Sent from my C5155 using Tapatalk 2

Well, there's always the forum dice roller, inelegant though it is. Alternatively, www.invisiblecastle.com provides stored webpage results for dice rollers.

Its still a pretty bad deterrence to require an external resource from people wanting to join the game. A point buy system solves all these issues, and removes a luck based system. In my opinion, luck based stat generation is pretty stupid, as it never accounts for player skill. Sure, a skilled role player is quite capable of creating an excellent character with gimped stats, but at what cost?

The plan was, seven points on attributes and five on skills to create a character. No dices for character creation. Only skill-tests have dices and they would need a random element. Otherwise its to boring to fight. Anyway, I think it was an idea but with TFW having a healthy run so far, I'd say this project is a far future thing by now.

Really struggling for free time at the moment. If anyone wants to discuss a topic, please go ahead.

So, I have a topic. I'm not a "geeky nerd" by any stretch; if the computer turns on, I can use it. If you ask me to do that code stuff, yea, I get lost. So, below is my first video. From a promotional point of view, how did the announcement of Intervention: Allegiance go? FYI, YouTube is stating that Germany refuses to air the video due to the song "Blurry" used (stating copyright; but everything is cleared in the USA).

I'm trying to judge how attractive this looks to fellow RPers here who would be looking for a new game to join (whether it's Intervention or not is a mute point; the point is the appeal to people of our RPing nature to join a new game).

I can confirm it does not work in Germany.

Thanks to DarkLordoftheFins I could see it now. Thanks to the miracle that is the proxy.

Trailers are always awesome! That one is no exception. Also I must confess I would have liked classical store a lot more. My question now would be, what are you aiming at? Get some more players from the regular crowd? Attract newbies? A trailer always makes a game attractive, but it certainly will not help if other factors are not right. I feel a good OP is still the most effective tool of player recruitment there is. A trailer like htis might help any OP to be a good one though. It shows your passion and readiness to invest time, certainly.

I totally agree. It will get people to read your OP and what they read there will decide if you get their CSes or not.

Thanks to both of you. I'm posting bits and pieces of the prologue of Allegiance over in the Rocketjock for player review before it's finalized (since I'm using other players' characters as a GM, I want to make sure I have their stamp of approval before it's final). The prologue is designed to introduce players into a world (Intervention) that feels familiar as it should with a game that's been running for over 3 years now (4 years in June, 2013).

Who do I hope to attract? I would like to see more of the regular crowd join for the upcoming sequel, since the next game will be more focused in terms of a closer-knit storyline that will require lots of patience and detail to individual actions and character storylines. However, Intervention has always been a port of call for newbies and pop-in-and-pop-out type of players as well, so the staff and veteran players now are well versed in creating a game geared to all involved.

Well, newbies usually like accessible games and every game going on for such a long time obviously must make an extra effort to stay accessible. I know that problem all too well, so I hope you find a good way to do so.


Concerning the "crowd" . . . that might be an altogether different matter. You advertised your game in the past and probably most people will have had a look at some point and decided to join or not to join. The question is why did those who did not join last time not join? If those reasons stay valid, it is highly unlikely they will change their minds because of any advertisment measures. Intervention always was a special game in which things were done differently (something I appreciate about it also it is not my type of game is, that it got "character"). It is not very mainstream compared to other games.There you might have the old decision of art vs. mainstream. I have seen you already opened up to force-users, which might offer new perspectives to players. But how much do you wanna change to attract players? That´s the question, is it? A question every GM has to ask himself at some point. I seriously always decided against mainstream, but that´s really more a matter of personal taste. You got a loyal crowd there, you certainly don´t need new blood. Everybody likes to have some, though. No question.


There is the third group of user. Those who probably thought it was simply too advanced to join and sure . . . some of those might join the game when a sequel comes out, certainly. That little trailer might very well grab their attention.

Thanks Fins. I was thinking today I may want to do a "recap" video of the old game, a short of catch-up for everyone. A video that, without having to read through a super long and complex Game Summary, can get the primary points of the first game, as to feel reasonably well informed for the start of the second game.

And I do like your point of why players didn't want to join the first time around. That is a complex question. I'm hoping that a new, fresh, not so "massive game, been around forever," will attract some of those players who had said no at first to give the second game a shot.

Certainty, Intervention has been through a rough patch the last year. A lot of storylines I started, I had to drop due to various personal life changes. But I hope those shortcomings, if their perceived as such by others, can be forgiven for the start of a fresh, second game.

And maybe I'll actually have time to stick around this time

I think at some point you simplky should talk to the users you wanna have. "Hey, have a look at my game. You like it? Because I think you are the right type of player for a certain role I have!" usually makes people consider. My experience. A GM secret around here, but many GMs are guilty of "casting"