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Altairius
2008-09-02, 03:03 PM
A while back, I ran a forum based play-by-post game wherein the various players were colonists of a newly-created island/continent, and each one was a regent of the given group of colonists, managing the operations and economy/military of their nation. For this, I had acquired the Fields of Blood supplement, hopeful that it would give me a good basis of rules and guidelines for economic development, diplomatic agreements (the rules behind the established RP agreements, and, when it came to it, military conflict.

It continued for a time, and actually worked very well, but as the game grew, there were obvious... problems. The FoB supplement quite clearly favored military combat to the detriment of the other elements of empire-ruling, and even then its rules for combat were strange, occasionally thick, and poorly worded, leading to some disagreement among interpretations. Also given the poor attention to the basics of economic growth, frequently the players felt that the rules unrealistically restricted them or, on the other hand, allowed them to cheat the system. Although at first these were handled individually, eventually the holes in the rule system became far too numerous.

In order to continue, I gave thought to making my own system, but I am wary, because I'm no mathematician. So, I'm curious as to whether the collective consciousness of this forum would have a better suggestion for rules.

Quite simply, I'm looking for some rules toward empire-building. If you want further information, I'd be happy to provide it, in order to get a good system.

Frosty
2008-09-02, 03:25 PM
Age of Empires/Civilization, DnD style?

Altairius
2008-09-02, 03:31 PM
Closer to Civilization, given how even with the heavy combat leanings of FoB the players still followed the phases of a "4X" game (exploration, expansion, exploit, and might have gotten around to exterminate if the rules hadn't collapsed), but yeah. The idea was to use FoB's ability to create unique military units and other RP elements introduced by me to allow the players to form their own distinct Nation, with widely divergent personalities, goals, behaviors and stories. Unfortunately, the rules system broke down.

Prometheus
2008-09-02, 04:39 PM
Age of Empires/Civilization, DnD style?
In this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=89234) I suggested what it would take.

Crow
2008-09-03, 01:33 AM
At www.birthright.net you can download some 3e Birthright rules in .pdf form.

Hallavast
2008-09-03, 02:18 AM
At www.birthright.net you can download some 3e Birthright rules in .pdf form.

Seconded.

While this site is, of course, geared toward supporting 3e Birthright, you can find a decent set of rules for kingdom building. Further, the flavor of that setting is rather compelling if you're interested.

sciencemile
2008-09-03, 03:23 AM
A while back, I ran a forum based play-by-post game wherein the various players were colonists of a newly-created island/continent, and each one was a regent of the given group of colonists, managing the operations and economy/military of their nation. For this, I had acquired the Fields of Blood supplement, hopeful that it would give me a good basis of rules and guidelines for economic development, diplomatic agreements (the rules behind the established RP agreements, and, when it came to it, military conflict.


Roleplay Online, was it? :smallbiggrin:

Too bad it got too tough to manage, I was going to make a wicked Gnome settlement ;)

bosssmiley
2008-09-03, 04:06 AM
At www.birthright.net you can download some 3e Birthright rules in .pdf form.

Thirded.

Alternatives include "Power of Faerun" - the 'high level = social power and influence' sourcebook for Forgotten Realms. Or there was a third party OGL book called simply "Empire" that (fittingly enough) had a lot of stuff on empire-building.