SKM Development: The Ruler part 2, the Fisher King

The issue with having stats for your leader, and having those stats affect the kingdom, is again, the spreadsheet.

We’ve already figured out two modifiers to incomes, specifically to resource income. One is raising too many people. One is potentially our leader and his proposed Ministry stat.

Now, in case you can’t see yesterday’s posts, I decided on the following stats.

Thew:  How physically tough is your leader?

Craft:  How magically tough is your leader?

Shrewd: How cagey are you / how good are you at doing roguish things?

Ministry:  How good are you at managing things?

Allure: What is your personal charisma?

Now, how do we actually apply those, without making this into a book keeping nightmare?

Well, firstly, I don’t think the addition of a third sheet for ‘ruler’ would be particularly daunting for a PC. Alternatively, we can make a ruler section on the spreadsheet. It’s just five stats (and maybe a class).

Secondly, what should each apply to?

Well, Allure might tie to morale. We haven’t figured out that mechanic yet though.

Craft, Thew  and Shrewd are direct combat scores, really representative of the ruler’s own capability for putting the hurt on people. Keep in mind that count intrigue, attacks by owlbears, demonic pleromas attacking are all events or adventures. So they can be dealt with on a case by case. Thew is not CK2’s martial, it’s not representative of how you’re both a badass and a tactical genius. The whole ‘tactical genius’ thing is really up to the player.

That leaves us with Ministry and Allure. Allure ironically could tie into military matters, but I think for simplicity it’s better that we don’t. Ministry however, Ministry should be pretty darn useful for Kingdom stuff.  I figure Ministry should be good for cutting down set costs and drawbacks (or increasing them if it’s too low).  Maybe let it increase your range on how far your troops can travel before incurring Subsistence drawbacks, maybe it decreases spoilage, maybe having it over a threshold means you can get away with a higher tax. 

And that’s the thought process I had. Thresholds. The ‘problem’ with thresholds is that if we make the cut off 10, then a guy with an 11 ministry is only better on paper from a guy with 10, but since we’re trying to keep our stats low, well, that shouldn’t be a problem.

Where this also ties in, is with the class system. Even in CK2, there are classes. They’re hidden, but they’re there, in the form of a character’s education background. Theologian, Failed Warrior, Grey Eminence, and so on. Each one a focus on a specific stat. Since we’re a fantasy RPG, lets instead have our classes modify the base 1d6 rolls of the players.

So let’s start with the “Holy Four,” as a thought experiment.

Fighter: +2 thew, -1 craft, +1 allure   

He’s a tougher guy. Not really focused on magic and spells. And peasants generally like a strong warrior king. After all, wizards are weird.

Wizard: +2 craft, -1 thew, +1 shrewd

Same mechanic. Same aiming for the ‘net increase.’ Not really focused on physical stuff. And he’s not so much a person people look up to, as someone cagey, partially for book learning.

Rogue:  +2 shrewd, -1 thew, +1 craft

All cage. Not super into muscle, and a little magical know-how there.

Priest: +2 ministry,  -1 thew, +1 allure

Knows how to administrate and take care of people. Still, somewhat bookish. And well, people respect a man of the cloth. King-priests are a thing after all.

Just an idea for the moment.

Might add on a barbarian/ranger type style thing later. I don't want too many different types. 

SKM Development: The Ruler

Now this is one where I didn’t even really bother in the old system. To the consternation of one of my players.

Since ACKs intends for you to earn a Stronghold as part of its high level end-game. It assumes you have a player character already built, and nice doughty rules on how to create successors, use money, gain xp, and so forth.

Ultimately, this was more then was needed for a top-down kingdom management game, except ACKs requires /adventures/. You’re expected to go on four of the damn things a year. Also, while off adventuring, you’re not at home administrating. This meant that I, the DM, had to carry a lot of admin weight as the PCs didn’t hear about their decisions from a month prior to adventuring, until they got back from the adventure. Meaning they missed out on events and administration.

Also, PCs had  a hard time figuring out what it was they were really good at.

Now, being an RPG, and an OSR RPG at that, ACKs is very well built, but ultimately, we don’t need all of it.

Now, a major inspiration for this game, was a video game called Crusader Kings 2.  CK2, as it’s known, is a game where you take on the role of a dynasty of rulers and see how they thrive, or die, throughout the rough time period of roughly the 8^th through 15^th centuries.  Your various rulers have a series of traits, and five stats. These five states determine how well you deal with your subjects and others (diplomacy), how good you are at plotting (Intrigue), how good you are at war (martial), how smart you are (learning) and how good your guy is at basic management (stewardship). The traits modify these five stats, and each of these stats has different effects on other factors (size of your army, how well people like you, how big of a kingdom you can manage, how many vassals you have, and so on).  A high enough martial, or certain traits would also grant a ‘personal combat score’ meaning that your ruler himself was a force to be reckoned with.

For us, I think a set of similar stats would be useful. A base idea of class, and then ratings for more adventurer-y things.

I find myself thinking of stuff like say..

Thew:  How physically tough is your leader?

Craft:  How magically tough is your leader?

Shrewd: How cagey are you / how good are you at doing roguish things?

Ministry:  How good are you at managing things?

Allure: What is your personal charisma?

It’s kind of like the classic four classes (and the bard) , although every ruler would a rating in each of these. It would basically let management of disasters come down to a die roll when adjudication is needed.

I think the scale would work best on a 6-tier system. This also makes generation of courtiers and successors easier (roll a 1d6 down the line).

As an example. Let’s say I’ve got Conan.

He’d be say

Thew: 6, because he’s relentlessly beefy.

Craft: 1, because magic is damn near alien to the guy.

Shrewd: 4, he used to be a thief, he’s also pretty damn clever.

Ministry: 3, Conan means well, and 3 here is average. He’s not precisely a master steward, but neither is he an incompetent.

Allure: 5, he’s apparently spectacularly charismatic and people immediately fall in behind him.   

Compared against say, Grima Wormtongue

Thew: 2, because he is a man of Rohan, even if he’s the weediest.

Craft 3: He actually knows his way around magical shenanigans.

Shrewd: 6, honeyed words and sneaky git.

Ministry: 1, if this guy was managing the Sahara, they’d run out of sand.

Allure 1: He’s repugnant to even his own ostensible supporters.

I might modify the ratings, or make the scale wider, but I like this system. Especially for conflict resolution stuff. I think I’m going to eliminate the ‘must adventure’ stuff and the ‘lose out on administration’ stuff, for the most part. If you’re going on a journey that takes a few months, you will have to go into ‘regency.’

Also, I’ll need to automate what the ruler stats do to spreadsheet elements, if anything. Ministry might affect Subsistence spoilage for example.

What is best in life? Not spreadsheets.

I’ve been running an ACKs campaign of a sort for a few months now. A few months because it takes a considerable amount of time to resolve each turn.

In general, I really like the ACKs system, its smooth, its crunchy. Choices matter and things you do with it are well, fun and enjoyable.

However, we’ve started to discover it might not be the best for running a multiple player kingdom management game.

See the issue is that the weight of the complexity is making it impossible to really manage the turns and the decisions, and in the lack of automation, the players have been forced to rely on ever increasingly complex spreadsheets. This is because ACKs was never intended for tabletop Civilization style play. The kingdom management stuff in ACKs was intended primarily as backdrop, and I still think the complexity was designed for the express purposes of making players realize why Conan felt that settling down in a kingdom was so much of a sea change from his previous adventurer lifestyle.

The weight of managing Hexes, land values, populations, garrisons, strongholds, events, etc, quickly became too much, and I was building an increasing framework of house rules around the already overbuilt ACKs superstructure that made things somewhat overtaxed. See, again, ACKs doesn’t expect you to have to be dealing with MULTIPLE domains.

And thus, I’ve started building the system I’ve dubbed SKM (Spook’s Kingdom Manager). Since we don’t really care about the on the ground framework, I’m less worried about some of the issues ACKs is. However, there were some elements that had to be immediately addressed.

·         ACKs grants a hex a land value, service value and tax value. Ultimately, all of these turn into money (gp). Service value can be adjusted the easiest off of morale. Tax is adjusted by the ruler. Land is typically not adjusted at all. It all forms the foundation of a single resource (gold) which is used for damn near everything. This simplicity is based on the fact that ACKs uses gp at its xp granting mechanic. This game though doesn’t care about xp. So..at the moment I’ve actually added complexity in the form of eliminating these  values and replacing them with Subsistence, Resource and Tax (Well I kept tax). Subsistence represents the hex’s capability for feeding its people. Subsistence is a straight up ‘can you feed your people,’ Resource is a fungible thing I intend to be able to be used for various purposes (decreasing construction costs, research costs, conversion into gold or subsistence) and tax provides just straight up gold.  I’ll discuss this stuff more in depth in another post. It’s all WIP.

·         In ACKS, there was a ‘stronghold’ requirement for a demense. I felt this was unnecessary for a hex-based kingdom management game and opted instead for a ‘Defense Value’ or ‘Security value’ that could be provided by either a single output on a stronghold or an ongoing output on garrison forces (think hired guards).

·         In ACKS, the “Garrison” is based on the demesne. I believe that ACKs intended for a demense to encompass the entire held territory of a player, however, we added on a hex framework to provide a reason for exploration and more fun for management. I decided to ditch individual hex garrison and stronghold requirements earlier (last bullet point) and then further decided to just have a garrison for the entire territory. Each hex still has its overall requirement, but now the garrison is considered to be on patrol, out and about and checking up on the area.  

·         The stronghold requirements are still difficult. Representing the stronghold, with all of its delicious side things (drawbridges, parapets, etc) is somewhat necessary. As is the upkeep costs for the same. Particularly as one of the kingdoms in the game is in bad financial straights because of the overbuilt defenses they have. However, with the Security or Defense Value mechanic I’m working on, now all of those perks give a benefit. Whereas in ACKs they were just expenditures that didn’t give a specific mechanical benefit.

·         Raising an army and operating it was a freaking nightmare from a spreadsheet / management perspective previously. Everything in ACKs affects everything else, so the sheer level of IF/THEN statements I’d need to code would make things impossible to manage. I decided to simplify the army system, even if it lost a bit of its crunch.

·         At the core, as I continue working on SKM, I’m trying to keep to the following goals.

o   Player choices have to matter and events and decisions should have meaning. Players should worry about things like their people starving if they misappropriate resources.

o   Exploration is very important, and the players shouldn’t feel like they need relentless subsystems to handle ‘on foot’ mechanics.

o   Income and costs should be able to be easily apprehended. If a spreadsheet is required (and it likely will be) it should be simple and not require modification of dozens of secondary sheets.

o   Making decisions shouldn’t feel like one is filing tax returns.