5111 replies to this topic

[Judge Alex Humva]

Nothing that says you can't be the producer and the seller. A bit more paperwork but that's buried by the mechanics.

A bit of an important note, real food or lab food? Real food has the advantage of being tasty and, once you reach critical population levels, very sustainable. Lab food is cheaper to make, lasts longer through extended trips, and generally is capable of being mass produced. Real food has the problem that you have actual meat that can be stolen alive and crops that can be struck by plague, whereas lab grown food isn't that great of a taste and requires raw materials and some interesting machines to produce, increasing your costs initially.

[Lord of Adders Black]

Oh hey, you could make the food and hire my guys to ship it for you. A mutually beneficial arrangement

[Basilisk]

And then my glorious freedom fighters can liberate it.

[thelonewander]

and if that happens, I'll still be shipping with my own hauler, just as a plan B incase of Rover or Basilisk attack my food.

[Judge Alex Humva]

Just remember, plan Bs are always expensive. You can't live without them, but they're still expensive.

I think Power's business model might work pretty well actually. When presented between the choice of dutifully saving up funds for a ship or paying a surely generous fee for transport services, I'm sure many will choose the later.

Of course, the amount of rogue groups here is baiscally equal to the honest ones, so there's not going be that much PC business.

[Lord of Adders Black]

I think Power's business model might work pretty well actually. When presented between the choice of dutifully saving up funds for a ship or paying a surely generous fee for transport services, I'm sure many will choose the later

Thats what I'm hoping for. People going "well, I could save up for a transport of my own, but they do look really expensive and I'm not sure how much I'd use it...oh look here's a business that will ship my stuff for a fraction of the price. I'll just contact them"

[Judge Alex Humva]

Alright, so I have a question for your guys.

This RTS-RPG is definitely going have a greater focus on the RPing side of things as we've already seen. At the same time though it is still at its heart an RTS; people are still running a group of people, be it two or five hundred, managing budgets, buying equipment, doing stuff we're use to in RTS-RPGs of old.

Because of that, there is a need for accelerated time. RPG time as we all know is wonky at the best of times and utterly maddening at others. Time zones mean that it can sometimes take a week for a full in-game meeting to take place, and we all know how frustrating the three hours in-game and one week out-of-game battles could get.

So even with a reduced time acceleration, like one IRL day equals one IG week, would leave many people in the dust. Someone could be negotiating with Power for trade rights, and by the time its been worked out it's been several months in-game. A meeting that took an hour in-game wouldn't take effect until months later, which would be pretty bad. Or someone could be fighting my Comanche raiders and then I pull one of my patented vanish for a few days tricks and then someone's left not knowing if their farm has been razed or not.

Point being after all that rambling is that there's two sides of the coin here; on one side you have the fact that if time isn't accelerated, people are going to toss up their hands in frustration when they realize they can't earn ten million dollars in a week, and on the other side there needs to be slow enough time for RPing to take place without being left in the dust.

So I ask you guys, what do you think? Any compromises that can be thought of? I did consider stripping out the heavier RTS portions and making this more purely an RPG, but then I realized that it'd stop being a somewhat new idea and become the Star Wars RPG in a different universe.

[Ymper Trymon]

My vote goes for a certain minimization of the standardized temporal acceleration, because when you get onto this sort of smaller scale, it's not about what you do with the ten million dollars so much as it is about whose throat you cut to get the money, or whatever other shenanigans you pull in order to get from point A to the point where you have money.

To put it more bluntly, I think the RTS element breaks down at smaller scales, something like how Newtonian physics quietly slips out of the door once you get onto a quantum scale. RTSes are quite specifically meant to allow you to control large-scale events - that's the whole point of them. Once you're on a small-scale, it's hard to retain enough RTS to make it qualify as one without making it the awkwardest thing on twenty-three legs.

[Judge Alex Humva]

So, would you be in favor of something close to a 1:1 time ratio, or more a case-by-case time skipping? Or some point somewhere in the middle?

Edited by Void Prophet Alex Humva, Nov 20 2012 - 03:17 PM.

[Ymper Trymon]

Probably a combination of the two, yeah, although even 1:1 might speed things up too much for some things, what with time zones and all.

[Judge Alex Humva]

Well, the thought is that with a 1:1 ratio the effect of time zones is far less and far more understandable. If it takes you a week to conduct a one hour meeting, travel times and processing can handwave it enough that it's understandable the crime lord you negotiated a deal with didn't get around to it until then.

I suppose if I'm going go about the mechanics properly, I have to stop thinking of it as a scaled down tactics game and more like EVE Online. On the plus side, assuming people go along with your suggestion, it means a lot less work for my mechanics wise. Instead of needing to write an essay on the concepts I can just do a few paragraphs on common sense and be done with it.

[Basilisk]

I swear if it takes me four out of game years to research something....

[Ymper Trymon]

I get the feeling that technological research is quite unlikely to pay a large role here, especially considering that you don't have the budget of a nation.

[Judge Alex Humva]

In real life, research is a long, mundane, and often drab job. Sure, curing cancer is a noble cause, and many big scientists can go on TV and say all the amazing and important things they're doing, but what it ultimately boils down to is a lab intern somewhere watching a machine spin a bunch of vials for a month and then e-mailing the computer's findings to a professor.

Not to say science is all drab and dull, I mean, if my gig as a mechanical engineer later on in life fails I'll probably go into the sciences, but research isn't the vast paced through more money at it and get it done Strith portrayed it as. Many great inventions came about by sheer accident; even more took decades in the making simply because you can't come up with the Theory of Relativity overnight.

In other words, even with the time scale I was originally looking at (1 IRL day=1 IG week), research is far from an important factor. One could even call it a nonfactor. The combination of money, manpower, and time equals to a recipe that doesn't smile upon the status of the players. Maybe if you one day take over a nation sure, but time is still a factor, and you can't just say "I want to be an immortal energy being who's ascended to a higher dimension. Get it to me on Tuesday."

[Ymper Trymon]

A correction: You can indeed say that, and one of my people probably will say it, but there's a difference between saying something and it meaning anything.

[BenLuke]

Applied sciences are going to be useful, on the other hand. Using discovery other people have made to accomplish things and such.

[Lord of Adders Black]

I think any discrepancies in how time is managed could be handwaved aside by the fact that we're in space. Place is pretty big especially since we're on the low end of the galaxy's technology and can't instantly poof ourselves or information around the place

[Ymper Trymon]

I find that handwaving tends to make things messier, compounding the existing problem with vagueness, until you wake up one morning and you've been completely buried in all these twitching hands and you have no idea what time it is or where your ship is because you substituted an appendage for both a clock and a map.

[BenLuke]

I think any discrepancies in how time is managed could be handwaved aside by the fact that we're in space. Place is pretty big especially since we're on the low end of the galaxy's technology and can't instantly poof ourselves or information around the place

Since with relativity isn't there no real way to compare name in places as far apart as different stars? So the eccentricities of time in most TRPGs would make a bit more sense, wouldn't it?

[Judge Alex Humva]

I'm enforcing newtonian mechanics. Probably general relativity. Special relativity gives me headaches.

Space is, however, big, and with the FTL system I have planned, communication lag is to be expected.

Speaking of which, I should probably confirm something; in all the drafts I've had, FTL comms are either nonexistent or extremely short ranged in a galactic scale of things. Is anyone going scream bloody murder if I completely axe FTL comms? I assure you this isn't to further justify meta-issues, seeing as I've never had any intersystem communication planned since the very beginning of this. I just think having a time delay in-system would add to the atmosphere some.

Edited by Void Prophet Alex Humva, Nov 20 2012 - 07:35 PM.

[Kaitholas Cage]

FTL comms make no sense unless you handle it by attaching a physical message chip to a hyperdrive.

[The Zytrix]

Axilus and I are currently planning another Transformers RPG. Who would be interested in an RPG that allowed you to create a character from any of the continuities (G1, Aligned, Movie, Unicron Trilogy, etc.), and possibly take control of some canon characters?

[Judge Alex Humva]

I wouldn't go so far as to say they make no sense. Entangled matter for instance offers an IRL possibility for FTL comms. Einstein hated the idea because it threw his theories of relativity into a loop though.

But communications from system to system would have to be physical information/data anyways, regardless of which draft I was using. I never wanted nor put in intersystem FTL comms; axing the in-system FTL comms is just because I think it's bloody hilarious that two people saying hi from Earth and Mars would take between thirty minutes to three hours.

[Lloyd: the White Wolf]

I don't know if I'll be playing this--can we see some drafts of forms we'd fill out and mechanics and such? Maybe a map?

[Judge Alex Humva]

Still working on it. It's a somewhat tedious process getting it all written out, and I admittedly keep getting sidetracked with life.

I can say right now though that it's likely there's not going be all that much in the way of cold mechanics or forms. More likely I'll be playing the costs and such by ear and just keeping track of my previous decisions so as to keep myself consistent.

[Toast of Awesomeness]

Now perhaps this is me just enjoying the movie I just watched. But...

Twilight-inspired RPG?

Please keep your nooses to yourself.

[BenLuke]

HERESY!

[Judge Alex Humva]

I don't know, are Twilight vampires warded off by holy water and crosses?

[Toast of Awesomeness]

No.

But they're very, very flammable.

[Kaitholas Cage]

Uh, I don't know about much transformers stuff, but I'd be willing to help.

If I wasn't already doing Mass Effect Division I would do a quadrail rpg. If you have never heard of that, you're missing one of Zahn's greater series.

[BenLuke]

"Quadrail RPG".


. . .
I'd, um, want to help with that.

[Kaitholas Cage]

Uh, since Division is on hold, I'd be willing to do most of the work.

Of course, I could only be the Co-Host. Already being the main host of Division. So if anyone else wants to fill that gap...

[Ymper Trymon]

Now perhaps this is me just enjoying the movie I just watched. But...

Twilight-inspired RPG?

Please keep your nooses to yourself.

Only if you add in a vampire mosquito fairy-hunting Teddy Roosevelt riding a raptor.

Speaking of Teddy Roosevelt, I've been talking things over with my co-host, and a number of things have been decided about the human government in the Dreamlands. (The RPG won't be coming out until I have certain key descriptions from the person with a sourcebook on the setting, which won't happen until he gets some kind of break from college)

-King Kuranes is more of an adventurer than a proper ruler, and consequently is seen by many of the more educated human residents of the Dreamlands as a Quixotic fool. He has decent publicity with the general population, because his adventures tend to get published in pulp novels, but he will be, overall, fairly unimportant.
-Otto von Bismarck serves as the king's regent. He was selected for this, by Basilisk, because of his tolerant attitude towards monarchs, and his competence. The result is that the main human settlements will be somewhat fortified, and they will definitely be prepared for war.
-Theodore Roosevelt and Genghis Khan will serve as important commanders for the human military.
-Nikola Tesla (who was completely right about electricity in this world) and Leonardo da Vinci will handle much of the science and engineering for the human government.
-Niccolo Machiavelli won't appear much, won't be affiliated with the government, but will be in the world. Read all of his works (notably excepting The Prince, unless you are prepared to think past taking it at face value) to see what he thinks of the monarchy. Alternatively I could just tell you that he was a strong proponent of free republics and was being sarcastic when he wrote The Prince, as shown by the stark contrast between everything that he wrote before and after that, and The Prince itself.

[Toast of Awesomeness]

Well I'd like to expand the universe if I was to go with that idea. I just don't see how one tribe gets amazing powers, doesn't make enough sense. I'd like to bring other things in, including true werewolves.

[Judge Alex Humva]

Does Andrew Jackson show up? The man may of been, ah, slightly off his rocker, but he was an expert duelist and competes quite well with ol' Roosevelt on the whole military expertise and general bad***ness area.

Edited by Void Prophet Alex Humva, Nov 21 2012 - 03:21 PM.

[Ymper Trymon]

He may show up, but it's unlikely he'll be in any kind of leadership position, on account of being completely nuts by the time he died. Point of fact, he's the sort of fellow who'd get himself killed in the Dreamlands, on account of picking a fight with a Gug.

[Brief explanation of Gugs: The way I'm putting it, unless Basilisk finds something that renders this unfeasible, is that, in the distant past, they lived on the surface, were enslaved by another race, rebelled, lost the war, got punted into the Underworld, tried to rebuild their old, old civilization, got kicked while they were down by the people of Yig, kicking off a war that left both races much worse off. They're very bitter, very touchy, and looked down upon by pretty much everybody. They're also hairy, about four meters tall, and have four arms, which is bad for anyone who decides to pick a one-on-one fight with a Gug.]

[Judge Alex Humva]

I suppose his record against humans wouldn't work so well against beings of supernatural nature. I'd argue differently but I don't think I'll get anywhere. I just figured that a man who fought in the Revolutionary war at the tender age of 12, survived diseased British jail cells that killed his brothers and mother but not him, fought in the War of 1812 and then invaded Florida in the War of 1818, only stopping with Florida and not moving onto Cuba because he came down with a bad case of jungle disease, would hold some merit. Also being shot numerous times and surviving plenty, as well as beating his would-be assassin nearly to death-

Ok I'm harping, I just always find it buggersome when Theodore Roosevelt gets pulled into these things and not Andrew Jackson. I suppose there might be actual reasons for bringing Roosevelt in other than "he was just such a bad***. And had some military experience.<sub>"

Not insinuating you guys picked him for that reason, just saying, that's what I usually see.</sub>

Edited by Void Prophet Alex Humva, Nov 21 2012 - 04:23 PM.

[Basilisk]

Roosevelt was picked because he had a colonial mindset, didn't have qualms about using giant guns to enforce that mindset and wasn't shy about leading a charge. Bismarck didn't like colonial adventures and we needed someone high up who would support them and knew how to defend them. Roosevelt came to mind.

I wouldn't be interested in a Twilight RPG. The Vampires are walking mary sues and darn near impossible to kill. Doesn't make for a fun and balanced setting. Unless something was changed.

Edited by Basilisk, Nov 21 2012 - 04:56 PM.

[Judge Alex Humva]

Whereas Andrew Jackson was just crazy. Gotcha.

I could see him as a representative of the people though.

[Basilisk]

I kinda want to keep historical figures restricted. At a certain point it becomes less of an RPG and more historical fan fiction.