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Another good CoC session. I'm really enjoying this group of players and the game itself. Happily low stress. In other news, still no ORC. This makes me sad. And, of course, other ideas are percolating. Namely for a SF RP/Strategy game over journals. I'm interested in integrating the media into the game more fully, and utilizing the capabilities of the journals to do more characters-with-personal-blogs. I'm thinking three or four alien races, and twelve independent governments (it flies in the face of observed history to assume that just because people are the same species, they're going to form a big, happy racial government, or that a government is going to be composed all of people of one species) spread out over a defined habitable region of space. The PCs are ambassadors and staff who, owing to the difficulties of interstellar travel, are instead linked to a 'virtual council hall' where each one has its own login name and posting board (the journal). Instead of being a personal blog, the journals are the primary methods of communication and negotiation. Characters would be able to lock posts for private deals, design trade treaties, and make recommendations about military movements to their governments. Instead of the threat of personal harm or character death, you'd instead have to deal with the threat of your character screwing up (or getting screwed) and being divested of his Ambassadorial status, as the mods play the actual governments, heads of state, etc. A few things that would have to be ground rules:
1. The ambassador /is/ the voice of the government at the council. What they say, what they do, will reflect on the entire nation. What they sign their name to in an official capacity is, 99 times out of 100, going to be ratified by the nation they represent. It looks bad to reneg on an agreement your ambassador has signed. However, signing a disastrous agreement may result in a character being removed from the game, unless they can turn lemons into some very tasty lemonade.
2. Not all nations are created equal. When it comes to a council vote, some nations will have more heft, and the smaller nations will have to gang together if they want to overturn a motion that the big nations support. Possibly each nation will have a certain number of votes, based on the economic might of the nation. Motions can be submitted to mods, who can then post them to the community journal for debate and voting. Possibly each motion has a set time for allowable debate.
3. A starmap needs to be laid out, with owned stars, unclaimed territories, and trade routes. Also, a dossier needs to be drawn up for each government, with a summary of species, culture, default political situation, and military capability (and deployment priorities). Level of crunchiness needs to be determined, although we're never going to get down to the fighting-battles-one-by-one level of tactical simulation.
4. The question of minor diplomatic staff. Attaches, assistants, etc. Having them available as PCs has both virtues and drawbacks. It allows more people to play, brings new dynamics within cultures as well as between cultures, and allows for the possibility of political plays that allow the ambassadors to claim plausible deniability. However, it may bog the game down, and RPers often aren't very good at playing subordinate characters. So, it bears thought.
Augh. Where is that Projects Anonymous meeting?
1. The ambassador /is/ the voice of the government at the council. What they say, what they do, will reflect on the entire nation. What they sign their name to in an official capacity is, 99 times out of 100, going to be ratified by the nation they represent. It looks bad to reneg on an agreement your ambassador has signed. However, signing a disastrous agreement may result in a character being removed from the game, unless they can turn lemons into some very tasty lemonade.
2. Not all nations are created equal. When it comes to a council vote, some nations will have more heft, and the smaller nations will have to gang together if they want to overturn a motion that the big nations support. Possibly each nation will have a certain number of votes, based on the economic might of the nation. Motions can be submitted to mods, who can then post them to the community journal for debate and voting. Possibly each motion has a set time for allowable debate.
3. A starmap needs to be laid out, with owned stars, unclaimed territories, and trade routes. Also, a dossier needs to be drawn up for each government, with a summary of species, culture, default political situation, and military capability (and deployment priorities). Level of crunchiness needs to be determined, although we're never going to get down to the fighting-battles-one-by-one level of tactical simulation.
4. The question of minor diplomatic staff. Attaches, assistants, etc. Having them available as PCs has both virtues and drawbacks. It allows more people to play, brings new dynamics within cultures as well as between cultures, and allows for the possibility of political plays that allow the ambassadors to claim plausible deniability. However, it may bog the game down, and RPers often aren't very good at playing subordinate characters. So, it bears thought.
Augh. Where is that Projects Anonymous meeting?