Your vision of ideal play

[kgauck]

This may be problematic, since tyrants are just as iconic to the game, IMO, as benevolent monarchs, perhaps even moreso. Therefore, the benevolent monarch should not have great advantages over a tyrant whose provinces are typically unhappy. This adjustment would also affect the definition of RP gain, making it based more on approval ratings. Perhaps having a one time RP penalty each time a province's attitude drops might work, though.

Why would one suppose that tyrants have lower loyalty? My estimation would be the reverse. Tyrants have tighter control over the people, so the people are often functionally more loyal, even if they are "unhappy". Happiness not being a part of the loyalty system.

Would I would say is that tyrant realms have a more brittle loyalty situation. Meaning its better until it goes bad, then it breaks and the tyrant has to flee to a friendly court. I would also say that tyrants are more frequently at the "indifferent" location, at least functionally. Good King Andrew might enjoy the love of his people in good years, and suffer some unhappiness from time to time, but one thing he knows for sure, is the mood of the people. The tyrant doesn't benefit from high loyalty ratings (since they are purchased by fear) or suffer from moderately poor ones until one day the people are dancing in the streets having overthrown the tyrant.

[irdeggman]

In my experience, however, they are fairly rare, largely because of what these things cost in the game, and what game effect the actions will have. Diplomacy is too limited by the rules, since its standard application involves communication with only one realm. To encourage diplomacy, most PBEMs eliminate the standard action, requiring just Court actions to ratify alliances and such. I think that's a better approach.

What set of rules are these DMs using?

The BRCS is very open ended on what Diplomacy encompases - including the variant rule from the Book of regency about establishing embassies (which moves things to court actions).


I don't have my 2nd ed books with me at the moment, but IIRC those rules were also fairly open on what Diplomacy can encompass. In fact I believe the 2nd ed rules were pretty broad in their description of most domain actions making them more of guidelines than absolutes.

I don't recall any rule making Diplomacy an action that cannot involve more than one group at a time. In fact the 2nd ed rules on Investiture (from Book of Priestcraft) shows how several distinct actions can be combined into a single one.

I routinely had a large "party" where multiple regents used a Diplomacy action but could establish several different "deals" with mutliple regents.

[irdeggman]

[quote=Rowan;48597]

Agitate isn't that necessary until your attitude levels drop enough to penalize your actions. Otherwise, chucking in another GB or RP to increase your success chance is usually more worthwhile than spending the precious Standard or Realm action and associated resources to do it. Agitating down against an enemy requires you to have a holding in the same province, which provokes reactions, and costs a lot of RP in bidding wars. It might be used during or before a war, but otherwise Contest tends to be a more direct, less-military-based way of affecting your opponents.

Perhaps. It depends on whether you are using BRCS or 2nd ed rules. 2nd ed rules agitate was very, very useful (and a free action {as in bonus not no-cost} for priests).

Contest isn't often used, however, because of the huge bidding wars it causes. It's just too costly. Better to spend your resources Ruling and helping province holders Rule. The return on income is much better without generating enemies.

What kind of game have you been playing in? This is one of (and always has been) the most common and useful actions around.

Once you factor in source regents ruling up a province is totally counterproductive.

Espionage is also very costly and chews up actions for fairly limited results (when limited to single provinces and not nation-wide). Again, it may be used prior to war, to do an occasional assassination, or to discover the terms of an alliance, but its routine use is just too costly--largely because when it IS used offensively, the originating regent is likely devoting tons of resources to it to make it successful, so that a defending regent must spend tons of resources to ensure that a "no info" result didn't just fail because he was outbid. It is often cheaper to spend money in reaction to an Espionage-caused event than to spend it up front continually to try to avoid them.

Espionage also has a lot of other potential uses that need to be factored in.

Based on these observations, the four actions that should likely be among the most frequent in the game are often in fact the least frequent, due to a discouragement in how the rules are set up.

Does anyone else perceive this problem?

No.

It appears to me that your point of reference are games where the players are trying to dominate the world in a year or two instead of playing a long lasting (and more realistic) approach. Things are supposed to be slow and painful in a domain level game not fast and a single die roll resolved.

[Rowan]

I play mainly in PBEMs, or perhaps more accurately, PBF's (Play by Forum). I've played 5 of them under 4 different DMs. These types of games are focused primarily on domain level play, because with a large number of players (10+, usually 15+), and without the time and detail possible at a gaming table, adventure-level intrigues are less possible. Typically, players control quite a number of different characters, bringing to life a broader world with many simultaneous events going on. Also, turns take longer to resolve (typically a month or more, meaning that covering 3 years of story in 1 year of game play is doing pretty well), and even if you break the curse and have a longer running game, you can't expect to cover 10 years or more of game time through the traditional seasonal turns.

Kgauck and Irdeggman, have you played in any PBEMs?

I have been relating my experience in those games and in one short tabletop game. In all of them, including the tabletop game, a slow, nasty slog with few real domain gains in the short run has not been what characters have gone looking for. Rather, they tend to form truces and coalitions quickly (eliminating a good chunk of Contestation, Agitation, and Espionage right there) and focus on building up so that they have a decent income to spend to bring about greater plans. Those three actions in particular just haven't seemed to play much of a part in the games I have played.

I have hypothesized that the high cost, in terms both of RP and of number of actions it takes (domain actions being the most precious currency in the game) to regularly utilize Contest, Agitate, and Espionage encourages those truces and discourages their use in favor of the much better return on investment Rule and Create actions. That's what I'm pointing out here.

[AndrewTall]

I think that the 'grand coalition' is a major part of the d4-1 curse - if there is no real diplomacy or inter-regent bickering then much of the fun of the game vanishes and along with it, the players. Players who are frozen out of the big coalition are particularly likely to leave, as they can't win because the coalition partners are meta-gaming a victory that their medieval PC's would never considered - or whose domains would certainly never have countenanced being a submissive part of.

I understand that 10 turns a year - more likely than 1/month when factoring in holidays and illness - means that a moderate plan taking a year and long term plan in 2-3 years is the longest players can wait in a PBEM, as opposed to their characters who would think 1-3 years fairly short term, and 20-60 years as a long term plan - but the downside of 'victory in 10 turns or less' game play is that it requires rapid victory swings which mean that one bad roll in the early game can screw up a player for the rest of the game - meaning they often give up.

Not every player will quit a losing role - Tim Paroz surprised (and impressed the hell out of) me in Rjurik Winds by sticking on despite losing 100% of his holdings - and went on to win others through diplomacy and chutzpah - but quite a few players seem to think 'to hell with it, go for broke to win in 1/2/3 turns, if the long shot fails I'll just chuck it in and restart in another game' and that attitude cripples the game they leave behind.

And yes, I know that new players can be recruited, and some players will help a DM to restore playability to the game at their regent's expense - but rapid player turnover seems to cause a lot of damage to the durability of the game.

[kgauck]

I dislike PBeM's. I've tried several. Always been disappointed.

[AndrewTall]

I've enjoyed pbems immensely - and been equally frustrated at times. Some of that is learning curve - all groups build up group-think on how to play, you only find out other ways when you meet another group who 'do it wrong' - and pbem players are as diverse as they come. Some of it is player issues - you know who you will tabletop with whereas pbem's can easily get wrecker-players, but I've met some very good pbem'ers and been glad to have had the chance to do so.

It is worth realising though that pbem is very different to tabletop - even with a virtual tabletop for adventures and messenger for chatting. Some of the rule comments follow from the differences. The key to a good game though will, imho, always be a dedicated gm and positive players.


Oh, I missed a point earlier. My thought on diplomacy is that the people expect rule to be by 'the king' - if it is always the cardinal / the lord chancellor / etc who negotiates for the king, then you have a great captain in the making even more so than if your general wins battle after battle and crosses the maesil demanding recognition. A role effect, not a rule effect.

[kgauck]

There is certainly some of that, but I've played other PBeM's games (Diplomacy) and text based on-line games with total strangers, so these issues are only partly to blame.

Part of it is the breath-takingly slow pace of the game. The current game I'm playing (www.hyw.com) is managing four seasons a week. I've played Diplomacy PBeM's that handled a turn per day.

Then there is the complexity of the rules and the basic nature of the end product. For a stand alone game, the domain system is a very complex way to produce a very basic result. As an add on to an RPG, its fine. For domain only play, I'd use systems designed for games like this.

The domain system by itself will produce goofy results. One can house rule the game extensively, or just use a system designed to play this kind of game.

Taking Cerilia and converting it to one's favorite board game, say, Machiavelli, but also Axis and Allies, Risk, and other games not normally over in d4-1 turns would seem to be the way to go.

My favorite Cerilian, Birthright conversions, Machiavelli and Kingmaker, require other players who know those games. I could sit down with nearly anyone up for two hours of board gaming and play Risk with a Cerilian map. You can get your family to play that. Any school age kid can be induced to play Risk.

So, mostly, I blame the system.

For the record, I don't like the game system in HYW, either, but the opportunity to role play is better, because of the pace of the game, the information available to the players, and the possibility to doing things in the game besides fighting the Hundred Years War.

[irdeggman]

Kgauck and Irdeggman, have you played in any PBEMs?

Equating PBEM and PBP as being roughly equivalent (usually a PBP game involves a lot of PBEMing too).

I have tried to play in one BR PBP (and that one ended fairly quickly).

I have played in several PBP games (not BR) and mostly they were very rewarding. Two of them were Alternity games - the GM ws outstanding in storytelling. Three others were D&D games - 2 died quickly and the other one I had huge problems with how the DM was adjudicating the rules (mostly randomly without any heads up).

I have been relating my experience in those games and in one short tabletop game. In all of them, including the tabletop game, a slow, nasty slog with few real domain gains in the short run has not been what characters have gone looking for. Rather, they tend to form truces and coalitions quickly (eliminating a good chunk of Contestation, Agitation, and Espionage right there) and focus on building up so that they have a decent income to spend to bring about greater plans. Those three actions in particular just haven't seemed to play much of a part in the games I have played.

I have hypothesized that the high cost, in terms both of RP and of number of actions it takes (domain actions being the most precious currency in the game) to regularly utilize Contest, Agitate, and Espionage encourages those truces and discourages their use in favor of the much better return on investment Rule and Create actions. That's what I'm pointing out here.

So the games are what I have postulated - trying to take over the world quickly.

Note that you have based your hypothesis on the fact that Diplomacy is the most commonly used action.

Also it appears that in the games you have played in that there is minimal NPC regent involvement. This can definitely cloud the playing field.

[Rowan]

So the games are what I have postulated - trying to take over the world quickly.

Note that you have based your hypothesis on the fact that Diplomacy is the most commonly used action.

Also it appears that in the games you have played in that there is minimal NPC regent involvement. This can definitely cloud the playing field.

Some players tend to take that approach (of trying to gain the Iron Throne quickly), but this has been diminishing in each successive PBEM I've played. One was just a greater southern coast area, so it did not have that pressure at all, and another had Avanil and Boeruine as NPCs, which also removed a lot of the pressure.

I don't think it's so much that players want to take over quickly as the pace of the game is such that players want to see some progress in their monthly or bi-weekly turns. There's a ton of roleplaying that goes on in Imperial Forum assemblies, tournaments and balls, and diplomacy. The coalition-forming that AT speaks of is, I think, also encouraged by the major imbalances in the default setting among different PC realms--lesser realms try to gain useful alliances, while the big ones are always looking for an advantage over their foes or advancement towards the throne, so this just escalates. A more balanced distribution of player domain power might help prevent coalition-forming, but seeing some progress in peoples' own actions is also important. If you don't see much of the fruits of your labor, but rather a slow and nasty slog through contestation and agitation that leaves you constantly drained and little able to advance, you're going to seek a way out--through diplomacy, non-aggression pacts, and coalition-forming. That's just the nature of things.