Civilization - D&D Style!

[imp_fireball]

Who ever thought of playing a game akin to civilization (either PbP or IM), but with D&D flavor.

There'd be three things and multiple victory conditions - technology isn't the only big player here, there's also psionics and magic! All three require research.

The game is also a bit different - you don't necessarily need to begin with a founding city surrounded by barbarians. You can start as a tribe of barbarians yourself, and then cultivate a civilization - either by conquoring some hapless NPC city with your tribal union or through self discovery yourself. Or you could be Genghis Khan, and dominate everyone without necessarily propagating any rooted society at all (constantly on the move, leaving only NPCs to govern townships and cities in your name).

Since it's always set in a fantasy universe - the land forms could change, the name of the planet would differ each time. You could have a custom name for your tribe/country and a custom culture. You could also have a custom species! Each species would have distinct advantages.

Go over it with the GM first though.

Since this is meant to be so heavily rooted in D&D, the races would abide by D&D standards of level adjustment and advantages - naturally this would translate over to societal development.

Of course, some races are innately superior. Dragons and vampires would probably rule the universe before humans. Then again, that's why LA exists.

Each civilization could also attempt to attract their own adventurers (if your society is 'evil', which in this case means it is ruled by 'evil' means, it may attract evils rather then goods, etc. - and if it is a relatively diverse society with plenty of business opportunities it could attract multiple adventurers from multiple species) - but depending on the world, their quantity and quality vary.

A lot of this would be roleplayed like standard PbP strategy games on these boards, but there'd be a few rules imposed by the GM too.
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Here's my take:

- Most civilians are level 1 commoners (likely the women/gatherers of a tribe). As tribes of hunter gatherers, they are usually skilled in survival and/or knowledge: geography/profession (cooking)/craft (flint)/etc. Hunters could be level 1 warriors. Depending on the challenges your tribe overcomes, some notable members could level up. Every so often, the GM would reward a player with the ability to 'ordain' a civilian/soldier with a PC class the next time they level up.

- Skills depend on both logic and education. Logic dictates that hunter gatherers would mostly be schooled in the skills I listed in the dash above. However, depending on the challenges they overcame, they could adapt to learn new things. This is called 'education' - education results in new skills being available such as 'profession: farmer'. Skills that aren't available can't have ranks in them period. Skills are essential to a productive society. Note however, that even unskilled people are useful as they can still make checks with certain skills listed as possible to be used untrained in the SRD. Creatures with less then 3 int are also of course useful, perhaps as cattle, hauling herds, or say, hunting dogs.

- This is all very fluff dependent. Ordaining a given civilian depends entirely on your education. A barbarian is the most likely result of hunter gatherers. Note that even the other 'natural' PC classes such as ranger and druid might be unavailable if your society has zero knowledge of magic or is mostly used to dwelling in caves and communicating with nothing more then cave lichen(although the mystical wis dependent things like cleric, etc., can be obtained by whatever means the GM allows - depending on the world too; sorcerors and psions may be easier to come across then druids or rangers for all you know).

- The game could extend into the realm of science fiction, which is the result of one of the goals in the regular game of civilization - reaching alpha centauri. Alpha centauri doesn't have to exist in your fantasy world (you could specify some other star or perhaps give a list of stars - or even remove the win condition entirely and simply broaden the game into interstellar/galactic civilization; or god sparring in a magic/psionics win-condition) and nor does your world have to have technology either.

- Win conditions can be specified by the GM. One could be exploration (make it to alpha centauri), religious (commune and hold intelligible conversation with greater deities before anyone else and gain allegiance of all the beings of a specific plane), divine (accend to godhood via magic/psionics or technology), military (conquer the world, durr), or cultural (convince every being in the universe that your society is more hip then anyone else so that they open up their borders to you and make any aggitated declaration of war against you seem preposterous). To make things interesting, if your evil you could bring about destruction of the universe as a win condition, or perhaps summoning beings of incalculable evil to devour all mortals and allow for blissful insanity to take hold.
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Any other ideas?

[Flickerdart]

You'd have to direct a portion of your WBL to wizards researching tech, because that costs money. The more money you give them, the better soldiers you can train but there's less money left over to buy shinies for yourself.

[TheYoungKing]

The players should have some "presence"- a sort of Molyneux-esque God That Grows, around which your tribes identity could be based.

[Emmerask]

I would not say that dragons are inherently superior to humans (as a civilization) because faster reproduction rate is much better then being intelligent(er)/stronger/ longer life expectancy.

In fact theoretically the longer the life expectancy and the fewer the birthrate the more stagnant a civilization becomes and the less adaptable.

on a completely unrelated note I would love to see a Total War - Faerun game ^^

[2xMachina]

Look into Fall from heaven.

Got your magic spells, angels (kinda), demons, orcs, elves, evil elves...

EDIT: Umm, yeah, probably not what you want.

Still, FFH is a great Civ4 mod pack.

[Bibliomancer]

I would not say that dragons are inherently superior to humans (as a civilization) because faster reproduction rate is much better then being intelligent(er)/stronger/ longer life expectancy.

In fact theoretically the longer the life expectancy and the fewer the birthrate the more stagnant a civilization becomes and the less adaptable

Not really. The main weakness Dragons have is that they aren't a civilization. That said, an individual (mature) dragon can often take on a city state, even in Faerun. A great wyrm dragon can defeat an indeterminate nature of hunter-gatherers (since they wouldn't have magic). Even in Faerun, where humanoids have a very high average level, the dragons were a major power in the world until the elves managed to pull off a magical hail-mary with the rage-storms.

In Eberron, the dragons are a civilization that defeated the local outsiders and are the uncontested shadow rulers of the world.


on a completely unrelated note I would love to see a Total War - Faerun game ^^

That would be very fun.

Elminster's command rating would be >9000.

[imp_fireball]

The players should have some "presence"- a sort of Molyneux-esque God That Grows, around which your tribes identity could be based.

That would be part of the culture aspect of the game. Not every culture needs a deity or religion after all (and of course some would take it more seriously then others).

There'd be plenty of ways to keep up morale, both military and domestic. If domestic morale lowers too much (or loyalty sways; loyalty would govern both domestic and military while morale is separate for each), you could face revolutions, boycotts, civil war, military mutinies resulting in NPC war bands, etc.

The players themselves could take up the identity of a leader, or they could simply play the role of several influential characters within their society.


You'd have to direct a portion of your WBL to wizards researching tech, because that costs money. The more money you give them, the better soldiers you can train but there's less money left over to buy shinies for yourself.

Starting off, your appointed leader wouldn't have much time to adventure. He'd stay with the people in the dominion to keep up their loyalty (AKA faith in his leadership).

If you don't want to appoint an heir, you can use magic/technology/psionics to make him immortal dictator for eternity. :smallbiggrin:


Look into Fall from heaven.

Got your magic spells, angels (kinda), demons, orcs, elves, evil elves...

EDIT: Umm, yeah, probably not what you want.

Still, FFH is a great Civ4 mod pack.

This an idea for tabletop based on D&D and all its source books (mainly 3rd ed, since I follow that), not VGs.

[Benejeseret]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Magic

Master of Magic

By far, without equal, the best game I have played in terms of fantasy strategies. When I was 12 years old and discovered this game it practically raised me for the next three years.

Basically it is a Civ style game only with an alternate Plane, fantasy races, and heroes that level. "You" are a powerful caster that can add your spells to combat (which is tactical!!) or to the overmap.

If I could find this game again I would play it without end.

[Eldariel]

If I could find this game again I would play it without end.

It should be available as Abandonware quite easily. So yeah, if interested, you should be able to find it. I don't think the licenses are an obstacle anymore either. And yeah, best such game evar.

[imp_fireball]

Does anyone wanna start a turn based game (with each turn representing a week) involving this concept?

I already have a map so I could host a first campaign.

Mostly free form except for a few rules which I've got to flesh out first, if you guys are fine with waiting.


http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q206/SilverCrusader/HeshirolFin.png?t=1263954639
There isn't more then one continent, however, so others would have to be drawn (this one was drawn by apollo (http://forums.starcraft.org/member.php?u=37880), who used a photoshop technique; it took him about a month although he was doing it on and off; I've got no clue how much effort it really takes).

Another option is to have multiple players controlling the affairs of one tribe/nation and facing off against NPC nations that would need to explored once the players explore and colonize other continents (and in that sense, other continents can be drawn while the game is being played).

[Volkov]

You must no forget the most important element, a phalanx unit must be able to defeat a armored tank regiment by exploiting the defensive bonus rules.

[imp_fireball]

You must no forget the most important element, a phalanx unit must be able to defeat a armored tank regiment by exploiting the defensive bonus rules.

Um... no, just no. Tanks have hardness. Also, treads for trample damage. And cannons that make things explode (I don't think phalanx boosts reflex saves). And turrets to ruin a flanker's day.

Not to mention they're size huge (excluding the fact that they have no reach due to lack of limbs).

Don't even joke about that sorta thing. Man.

[Volkov]

Um... no, just no. Tanks have hardness. Also, treads for trample damage. And cannons that make things explode. And turrets to ruin a flanker's day.

Not to mention they're size huge (excluding the fact that they have no reach due to lack of limbs).

Do you not know your Civilization memes? :smallbiggrin: And by mass, tanks are gargantuan.

[imp_fireball]

Do you not know your Civilization memes? :smallbiggrin: And by mass, tanks are gargantuan.

Only in Modern's screwy size rules (is a tank 40 ft. long? still huge unless it happens to be 8ft. high as well). Note that modern still uses cover in fractions.

I'd say gargantuan is nothing less then a double/full trailer truck.

Also, I haven't played civ all that much. :P

[Volkov]

Only in Modern's screwy size rules (is a tank 40 ft. long? still huge unless it happens to be 8ft. high as well). Note that modern still uses cover in fractions.

I'd say gargantuan is nothing less then a double/full trailer truck.

Also, I haven't played civ all that much. :P

If you abuse the terrain rules (Fortify a phalanx in a fortress atop a mountain) he has a good shot at defeating an attacking tank.

[imp_fireball]

If you abuse the terrain rules (Fortify a phalanx in a fortress atop a mountain) he has a good shot at defeating an attacking tank.

Hilariously, that makes no sense.

Unless your phalanx has 1km + reach and high powered grenades attached to their spears. :smallwink:

[Emmerask]

You must no forget the most important element, a phalanx unit must be able to defeat a armored tank regiment by exploiting the defensive bonus rules.

An engineer on mountain terrain killed my battleship....(for the record an engineer is practically a none combatant in civ2 and there for improving stuff and building new cities etc)

but maybe it was rambo or even chuck norris in disguise :smallwink:

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Hilariously, that makes no sense.

Unless your phalanx has 1km + reach and high powered grenades attached to their spears. :smallwink:

Hey, man... if they are Rogues with Evasion, the AE tank blasts don't do a hell of a lot of good, so it's got to melee. Then they flank and use Wands of Golemstrike to be able to sneak-attack it! It could TOTALLY work! A phalanx is what, 100 guys? All sneak-attacking due to having reach weapons? Yea, I could see it happening...

[imp_fireball]

Alright here it is...

Tribe

Rules for Running a Tribe

Typical Round

Player declares all actions that they are to carry out in a week. When posting their actions they must also post all the skill summary of their tribe in a spoiler below (the sum of the allocated modifiers of the skills of each tribe member). Players cannot post the outcome of their actions or work - that's the GM's job.

GM then rolls a d20 and determines the degree of success of each action according to difficulty and skill summary.

In-game week ends. There is no initiative, so players can post in any order and after a certain period of time, the GM declares the round over and a new round begun.

Creating a Tribe

Due to the game's largely free form nature, creating a tribe can involve anything from culture, to species, to ideals, religion, practices, etc.

A player begins with 10 tribe members. The gender of each member is up to the player (note that male to female ratio is important for reproductive purposes although their are much faster methods of growing a tribe too, of course, since reproduction can take decades to form productive civilians). Alternatively, the GM and the players can all agree on skipping ahead a number of years.

The player then selects one of these members to be a 'hero'. The hero is a 1st level member of a PC class - with zero knowledge, it's mostly limited to fighter or barbarian - sorcerer, druid or ranger can be ordained by referring to the formula below.

As convenient measurement -

- Players begin with 10 1st level commoners with average stats (that are tweak able via point buy rules for redistribution; most will opt for duplicate commoners to lower book keeping) and 5 points to invest in improving any one of these creatures.
- Replace commoner level with PC class (barbarian or fighter) = -3 points
- Replace commoner level with PC class (sorcerer, druid, cleric, psion or ranger) = -5 points
- Replace commoner level with Warrior = -1 point
- Replace commoner level with Adept = -2 points
- Sacrifice a creature = +1 point
- Advance any NPC one level = -1 point
- Advance a PC one level = -3 points

PCs have character sheets and are treated like PCs in normal adventures - thus, they have class features, feats, etc. The point formula only applies to at the beginning.

NPCs fuel the society. Commoners are cheap (virtually everything is a commoner before training to become something else) and depend entirely on population influx. Other NPC classes need to be trained (experts and warriors) or appointed (aristocrats for the latter). The only train-able NPC that doesn't need education to be trained is the warrior. Adepts can be acquired easily with the aid of other adepts, usually as the result of mystic rights or prayer, however this depends on the GM's die roll.

All NPCs use their skills, which are applied to various tasks that they are assigned.

A player's tribe has a population counter to keep track of, which is divided thus (and listed near skills summary; subject to modification by GM as everything is):

Demographic
Population of (Race X):
Population of (Race Y):
Male Populaton:
Female Population:
Neutral/Other Gender Population:
Population of (NPC X; listed by class):
Total Population:

If a player has zero of something, then it doesn't need to be listed.

The GM determines passive outcomes (such as the results of lucky rolls or other neutral, inevitable things that require no action on the part of the player), such as population influx (except this depends a little on hero/leader reputation in the beginning).

Ordaining PCs after tribe creation

Usually the GM must award players for this to occur. When ordained, a given creature spends a little while training among associated NPCs (warriors if martial, adepts if casters, both if gishes, experts if skill monkeys or studious bookies like wizards, etc.; usually a month) and then the PC class level is given the next time they level up. Any other roleplaying means that applies for multi-classing in a normal adventure could apply to this too.

Education

Education is granted by both passive rolls (rolls that determine certain 'inevitable' outcomes regardless of any player action, such as a flood ruining crops) and outcome rolls (rolls resulting from player decisiveness to determine the outcome of a decision). Both require a degree of luck. Role playing is encouraged to make discoveries and inventions more plausible. Education also bestows new skills to become available. When made available, the skills can have ranks put in them, assuming any given creature has ranks available.

New House rule

An NPC can select any skill to become their given class skill (as long as their society meets the education standards), as long as it does not exceed the number of class skills they are given in their SRD listing (ie. the warrior has 6 class skills, meaning they can choose 6 skills to become class skills).

Typical Life in the Tribe

Depending on the race(s) of your tribe, they will need to survive. Survival is paramount, and as hunter/gatherers, you will need food and water. You will also need other things like shelter, healers to prevent disease and other basic necessities - otherwise all sorts of passive rolls will kill you. The ultimate inevitability is starvation.

Stock Pile

Stock pile is another listing - it lists all of the items of your tribe - weapons, food, etc. Weapons are detailed, while food is not - the GM merely determines if you have enough food and how long it will last for (which takes into factor, preservation, consumption rate, etc.). The same goes for weapons - the GM determines if there are any weapons left over to defend yourself, or lead an assault and so no numbers are needed.

However the exact weapon itself is paramount. Instead of listing the number of flint knives you have, ie., a player should state how many of his tribesmen he wishes to have wielding flint knives in battle, or simply using them to defend themselves. A tribesmen can carry multiple weapons as well. Tribesmen must be divided in the army section according to what weapons and armor they are equipped with.

Combat

When leading an assault, there are multiple factors.

- Troop strength - determined by weapon type, level of troops, number of troops, and troop training. Note that troops can also be trained for certain roles. A spear man can have weapon focus (spear) and hold the line. Again, troops trained in a specific way can be divided into sections. The contents of a player's army is listed in spoiler.

- Rations. Rations are separate from your tribe's stockpile, and they take away from the food in regards to amount before expiration. 7 days of rations, ie., takes 7 days away from the food stock pile.

- Morale. Morale reflects the confidence of troopers. It is determined by the GM's d20 passive roll. Morale can be boosted with the presence of a PC, superior numbers, and smart tactics - in most cases, it is awarded by the GM. Morale is a strong determiner, usually making or breaking most otherwise evenly matched combat encounters. Morale can also determine other things like combat speed, and can prevent mutinies. Morale takes affect in a tribe as 'loyalty' - however this only comes into play in especially nasty situations such as a very unlucky passive roll or exceedingly poor leadership. Most cases result in tribal assassination, divided tribes, etc.

- Speed of travel. Speed uses the usual rules for travel in D&D 3.5.

- Stealth. Stealth is important for hiding a player's army from the enemy. It can also come into play in the case of espionage (however that is often rare for a tribe without education to procure the appropriate skills). When a player's army is revealed (usually an outcome roll on behalf of either player), they can no longer list their army via spoiler... or, they may list part of their army which is detailed via GM PM.


Civilization

Rules for Running a Civilization

A civilization, whether consisting of a small town ship, a large city, or an entire continent spanning empire, differs a bit from the rules for running a tribe.

- Population must still be tracked.
- Military must still be tracked.
- Skills summary is no longer tracked. Now, assigning roles is a matter of pure time consumption and training. Anybody can be procured, from settlers, to explorers, etc.

- Stock pile is listed in terms of resources (which is a flat number) although fundamental resources such as food are separate from misc. (listed as misc.).
Food is still listed as it was previously. Content of misc. resources is role played and can affect outcome somewhat. Alternatively, resource content is listed as a percentage by the GM for that player's stock pile as determined by the number of workers they assign to gather a specific resource.

- Loyalty is more important now (still listed as a flat number from 1 to 100) and passive unlucky rolls can result in unfortunate civil wars and assassination attempts despite very high loyalty. Measures must be taken to keep loyalty up such as laws that ensure civilian sanity, ensure satisfaction, etc., work to keep people alive, and religion and propaganda to tell people why they should trust your leader.

- Without the induction of currency, everything depends on resource stock pile, invested population to certain tasks and military to keep things running.

Advancement

Advancement of a society changes the way your civilization runs with each 'age' (note that age is just a classification and not something to be achieved; schizo tech societies are still possible). Feudal societies usually depend entirely upon leader decision, resources, population, and military to accomplish tasks. Post feudal societies are capable of having NPCs accomplish their own independent tasks that the leader has no control over via business phenomena (this can be done by giving civilians a reason to live close together in tight knit cities rather then farm) and are not really tracked. Imperial societies must depend on imports/exports for colony management.

Modern societies (assuming the game amounts to that point) are highly complex and depend on economy and currency value (although every country could just agree on continuing the gold standard), active research as well as political clout depending on system of governance and it is at this point in the game where you can very easily invest into any aspect such as culture, technology, magic, psionics, or military and see what happens (usually, your leader has appointees entrusted to see where the money goes). Production depends on the number of factories you have. The economy is a simple formula of supply and demand. Create lots of demand (whether employment or consumer level), and the corporations of other players will erect factories in your state territory (this is determined by GM; if a player allows privatized companies, then they automatically become NPC controlled; hence, GM controlled... the advantage here is that privatized companies are inevitably more numerous then state owned ones).

Finance

Finance is money. Most modern societies depend on currency, hence money is important. It can be obtained by any means, taxes being the most obvious (although misc. resource and food taxes technically exist before this if the player doesn't depend entirely on 'expropriate when I want to'). Money is a flat number of a named minted currency (name given by the player), separate from food, or misc. resources.

Health

Health depends mostly on how much you invest into health care. It also depends on other things like water purification, quarantines against biological warfare, etc.

Education

No, not education as it is referred to in tribal play (advancement replaced this term for civilizations). Education replaces the need for a skills summary. It determines how many specialized employees can be made. It also increases loyalty, and encourages population growth among other things. Lucky rolls can also result in more discoveries and inventions made as the result of education, leading to increases in standard of living (which increases loyalty and diplomatic clout) and advancement.

Diplomacy

Diplomacy is important for international relations, usually stemming from imperial to modern age. Most of it is roleplayed, however the GM can reward you with more NPCs siding with you.

Standard of Living

In tribal play, this is practically a non-existent statistic, whereas in pre-modern civilizations it can be raised every now and then with comforting (where the ruler decides to hold a holiday, moment of prayer, compulsory tax return, etc.). It is tracked entirely by the GM (the player cannot see it), and results in increased loyalty and NPC diplomacy as it raises (although comforting only affects loyalty and not diplomacy, which takes affect around imperial level advancement and onwards).

Time

- Each round is now an in-game month instead of a week.

Managing Multiple Cities

- Each city has its own stock pile, and it takes time and population to export/import resources between each city. Merchants can encourage trade and private industry, which is usually a good thing when active production doesn't come fully out of the player's own pocket.

- Military must be garrisoned at specific cities. When garrisoned, they will defend that city. In order to make an assault, troops must mobilize and come out of garrison. When mobilized, they are free to travel anywhere and also more vulnerable to the GM's passive rolls.