Nation game

[8wGremlin]

So how do you set up and run a nation game?
Does anyone have any advice?
Does anyone have any links?

Thanks

[Ravens_cry]

Pathfinder had the Kingmaker module with kingdom building and running rules I rather enjoyed, and if you don't want to shell out for the whole module, the rules were brought out on their own and expanded upon (http://www.rpgnow.com/product/91084/Book-of-the-River-Nations%3A-Complete-Player%27s-Reference-for-Kingdom-Building-%28PFRPG%29?manufacturers_id=2542&filters=0_0_0_44235) by a third party developer.
The mass combat rules, at least in the module, were a little iffy, but everything else I liked a lot.

[The Dark Fiddler]

Don't use 3.5 would be my advice. The game isn't made for that, and while I haven't looked at the Kingmaker rules for PF, I can't help but think that other systems would do it better.

Unfortunately, I also can't think of any systems made for this sort of thing. If you can wait until Fate Core comes out, I think it might work swimmingly if you change up the skills (the aspects working well to define what exactly your nation is like). Past editions of Fate might work as well, but I'm not familiar with them.

[8wGremlin]

It's more of a E6 Towns game than a nations game...
Your character is a level 6 character...
Who is the village elder of a village of 100 commoners
(racial make up 80% one race, 20% other race, or 100% one race)

[Silverbit]

Hmmm... This wouldn't involve floating islands, would it :smallamused:?
My advise: kingmaker. It makes vague sense, more so than other nation things.

[8wGremlin]

Hmmm... This wouldn't involve floating islands, would it :smallamused:?
My advise: kingmaker. It makes vague sense, more so than other nation things.

It might, with some changes to the overall environment - no subjective gravity!
If you fall, you FALL! down, everyones down, not your own variation of down, and who knows what lies in the darkness beneath...

You can literally fall of the edge of your world..(island)

[8wGremlin]

Pathfinder had the Kingmaker module with kingdom building and running rules I rather enjoyed, and if you don't want to shell out for the whole module, the rules were brought out on their own and expanded upon (http://www.rpgnow.com/product/91084/Book-of-the-River-Nations%3A-Complete-Player%27s-Reference-for-Kingdom-Building-%28PFRPG%29?manufacturers_id=2542&filters=0_0_0_44235) by a third party developer.
The mass combat rules, at least in the module, were a little iffy, but everything else I liked a lot.

I'll take a look at that thanks...

[ArcturusV]

I usually homebrew it on a case by case basis. A friend and me in high school made a decent enough homebrewed Tactical Game which we liked for mass combat aspects. I came up with a decent one for peacetime management and such. It's been such a long time though I wouldn't hazard a guess at how we actually did it. Well, I might guess but it wouldn't look like what we had originally. You're talking about something like 20 years and 12 moves for me to lose stuff and have my memory glossed over.

I kind of remember that we broke the Armys into scaling units. Instead of having just massive stat block units like I typically see in DnD based mass combat (Where you just act like 50 archers are a single unit with some abstracted stats), it ran more akin to something you'd see in say, Advanced Wars, where Units would be weaker as they suffered damage, and each unit represented a squad/company. Based on the size of the combat in question. Stats were more abstracted out than they were in DnD. And rather than linear progression for army units it was a big upswing with a level 3 Unit being 4 times more powerful than a level 1 Unit, a level 4 unit was 16 times more powerful than a level 1 unit, etc. Due to the scaling nature of units however it was really, really hard to level up units. As you replenished losses you lost XP for doing so. So if your level 3 unit only had 10% survivors, you ended up losing about 45% of your XP if I remember (Half of your losses, as the veteran core helps bring new recruits up to speed faster but they still aren't as good as the men you lost). So a level 4 unit would be nigh legendary, like the Cataphracts of Byzantine fighting against a peasant rabble armed with clubs, woodcutting axes, and maybe a pitchfork.

It made things far more interesting. Singular characters weren't really interested in or able to take on mass armies in that system because of all their stacking bonuses and scaling levels. So instead of some singular level 10 druid wrecking an entire army with no contest it'd be more like the singular level 10 Druid trying to take on a team of 10 appropriately WBLed level 30 martial characters. Which is probably the best thing I can suggest. In order to keep someone who did one of your spellcaster tricks 8wGremlin in E6 to end up with something like level 7 spells, Quadradic Army Stats/abilities could be the equalizer, where suddenly due to high skills and mass you effectively have a level 3 military unit having True Sight due to the large number of honed scout eyes (Up to ranges like 2 miles), the ability to negate miss chances through volume, Formation Tactics and Teamwork bonuses overcoming AoE doom use, etc.

Might get the spellcaster in question raging because it's BS. But then again the point of a game like that is to actually have the army matter and not just be about a single spellcaster wrecking the world. Whole reason it seems people play things like E6 or E10.

[8wGremlin]

I usually homebrew it on a case by case basis. A friend and me in high school made a decent enough homebrewed Tactical Game which we liked for mass combat aspects. I came up with a decent one for peacetime management and such. It's been such a long time though I wouldn't hazard a guess at how we actually did it. Well, I might guess but it wouldn't look like what we had originally. You're talking about something like 20 years and 12 moves for me to lose stuff and have my memory glossed over.

I kind of remember that we broke the Armys into scaling units. Instead of having just massive stat block units like I typically see in DnD based mass combat (Where you just act like 50 archers are a single unit with some abstracted stats), it ran more akin to something you'd see in say, Advanced Wars, where Units would be weaker as they suffered damage, and each unit represented a squad/company. Based on the size of the combat in question. Stats were more abstracted out than they were in DnD. And rather than linear progression for army units it was a big upswing with a level 3 Unit being 4 times more powerful than a level 1 Unit, a level 4 unit was 16 times more powerful than a level 1 unit, etc. Due to the scaling nature of units however it was really, really hard to level up units. As you replenished losses you lost XP for doing so. So if your level 3 unit only had 10% survivors, you ended up losing about 45% of your XP if I remember (Half of your losses, as the veteran core helps bring new recruits up to speed faster but they still aren't as good as the men you lost). So a level 4 unit would be nigh legendary, like the Cataphracts of Byzantine fighting against a peasant rabble armed with clubs, woodcutting axes, and maybe a pitchfork.

It made things far more interesting. Singular characters weren't really interested in or able to take on mass armies in that system because of all their stacking bonuses and scaling levels. So instead of some singular level 10 druid wrecking an entire army with no contest it'd be more like the singular level 10 Druid trying to take on a team of 10 appropriately WBLed level 30 martial characters. Which is probably the best thing I can suggest. In order to keep someone who did one of your spellcaster tricks 8wGremlin in E6 to end up with something like level 7 spells, Quadradic Army Stats/abilities could be the equalizer, where suddenly due to high skills and mass you effectively have a level 3 military unit having True Sight due to the large number of honed scout eyes (Up to ranges like 2 miles), the ability to negate miss chances through volume, Formation Tactics and Teamwork bonuses overcoming AoE doom use, etc.

Might get the spellcaster in question raging because it's BS. But then again the point of a game like that is to actually have the army matter and not just be about a single spellcaster wrecking the world. Whole reason it seems people play things like E6 or E10.

Interesting system, I like it.

oh and I totally agree with you about my optimised/TO optimised builds.
I think if the participants all knew how we were going to handle tactical battles upfront, and all agreed then should be fine...

Perhaps you should put up your system in the homebrew section, or online some place (I have wiki if your interested)

[ArcturusV]

I'd have to recreate it. But if I get a wild hair I might take a stab at it.