SKM Development: The Turn part 3!

Morale..

ACKS had a doughty morale system with something like 9 tiers to it. Each of these tiers affected production.

That’s great for them. I guess it’s important to know if a group is Stalwart or Loyal, or Apathetic. In SKM we want some simplicity, especially when we have to build our spreadsheet at the end of the day. And I don’t want to have to create subsheets for tracking a thousand subcategories on different areas.

Therefore, this one’s going to be a simple system.

First, we only have four categories instead of nine. Loyal, Stable, Unstable, Rebellious.

Loyal Hexes are hexes that will stand by their leader through thick and thin (at least for a while). The capital always starts off Loyal. Loyalty’s mechanical effect is that you can call on the hex to grant you a major boon. Essentially, they’ll work overtime and give you quadruple their output for a turn.  Cashing in this boon however, knocks them down to Stable.   You can only get hexes TO Loyal by event, or by having 24 months with only positively resolved events for the hex, during which you cannot raise troops from the hex, and the hex must remain fed.

Stable hexes are, well, what you want your hexes to be. They don’t cause trouble. They produce their material. They pay taxes.

Unstable hexes are a problem. Every month, the hex gets a roll on the DM’s ‘unstable hex’ table. This means increased chances for bandit activity, insurrection, accidents, crime, and so on. Stuff that makes the hex a pain in the butt. You become unstable if you go unfed, if your troops are raised for too long, if the ruler is being a jerk to you, or based on event. Being unfed for six months or having disadvantageous event resolution, incurs a cumulative chance for the hex sinking into rebellion.

Rebellious hexes are no longer under the ruler’s control and are in open rebellion against him. You get no resources from them until you bring them back to heel.  A hex that’s conquered and brought back from rebellious, remains unstable for 24 months.

 You don’t need to survey the morale. You just know. It’s a simplification. Deal with it.

SKM Development: The Turn Part 2!

Alright.

Last time we discussed agricultural investments.

I’d like to polish off Research, but I need to figure out stronghold component costs for that first. I’m pretty sure I’m going to need to do some in-game course correction on pricing as this game plays out. Assuming we can get the game going again after the hiatus we had to go on.

So, let’s pound out some easy mechanics.

Send out explorers.

Really easy. Sending out a group has a chance for people to detect stuff in the hex (usually threats).

The ability to discover could be over complicated by adding a time mechanic, but the assumption is that dedicated units spend a month exploring and report back at the beginning of the next month. So, for simplicity’s sake, let’s assume discovering things is broken into three categories.

Obvious: This represents like a city, major features, or something that can’t be missed (herds of buffalo, a lizardman city) and so on. Infantry has a 100% chance of spotting obvious features, and so does Cavalry. Peasants have a 80%. Since Peasants occasionally malinger.

Obscure: This represents small villages, hidden tunnels, weird caves or odd rare creatures. Stuff like that. Infantry has a 75% chance to spot it, because they’re on foot and since they’re moving more slowly are more likely to spot the stuff. Cavalry has a 60% chance. Peasants a 40%.

Hidden: Places intentionally hidden, put aside, or obscured. Infantry has a 50%. Cavalry a 40% and Peasants 20%. This is for stuff like a forgotten temple. A hidden fairy village. Or a secret den of thieves. And in most cases discovery in this case means ‘we know it’s there’ not ‘we know where it is.’ If the explorers beat the search roll by 20% (rolling a 30 or lower for infantry, 20 or lower for cavalry or 1 for peasants) they do locate the feature.

Of course, discovering a location risks being discovered, and so the locals will respond in kind. That I’ll handle by an off-screen combat roll between the two groups involved. The ruler can give his exploration teams basic orders however..

Passive Exploration: Observe and Break Contact On Discovery.

Diplomatic Exploration: Observe and attempt to open communications. Flee if attacked.

Aggressive Exploration: Observe. On event of hostile contact, attempt to destroy.

I do plan on adding the complexity of the people leading the group having personalities that may conflict with their orders from time to time. They aren’t robots after all.

The other half of this coin is Surveyors. Finding out the land value and subsistence value of a hex. These guys also take a month, but they cost cash. About 500gp for a month’s effort. They’ll also have to deal with the locals (and always take the option to run if they can get away with it), but don’t give their cash back if say they weren’t able to finish their job because lizardmen attacked them. So the player is behooved to clear, or at least remove threats, from a hex before sending in a survey team. This fellow, if successful and uneaten, will tell them the Resource and Subsistence value of the hex.

The better version of a Surveyor is an Explorer. The Explorer is also better, arguably then the patrol exploration. This guy has a price tag of 2000gp. He has a 100% chance of discovery in the hex however, and comes back with information on the Subsistence and Resource value, all in one month.  He might even clear a threat. The problem is that the Explorer gets paid up front, and some of them are charlatans, and some of them might not come back if the stuff in the hex is dangerous enough.

SKM Development: The Turn

SKM’s development is nearing its end, but the last climb to the top isn’t going to be an easy one. It gets steeper, not milder, the higher this mountain goes. So, I decided to take some time to figure out what’s left.

I need..

• Initial “purchase” costs for troops.
• Stronghold component costs, upkeeps and AR/DR ratings.
• Detailed research trees.
• More mechanics...

When I say ‘mechanics’ I mean a revision of a post I made ages ago for the ACKs group called ‘what can you do in a turn.’

See, the idea was to balance out the month with what could be done, without giving a player choice paralysis by giving him too much to do.  Primarily, what you could do was:

• Resolve Events
• Go on Adventurer (this used your whole turn though)
• Send Explorers Out (using your garrison)
• Send surveyors out (costing money to get detail on hexes)
• Initiate building projects
• Survey the morale of a single hex
• Spend Money on Your Research
• Do agricultural investments.

Let’s table Events and Adventuring for now and go down the list in order of importance, so..

Alright, the primary, and most used turn option in the old system was ‘agricultural investment.’ This was ACK’s way of getting you more families. Blow 1k gold and get a 1d10 roll to add that many fams. Works well enough in ACKs, except in SKM kingdoms aren’t drowning in gold anymore. Since we have Tax, Resource and Subsistence now as income, only Tax actually generates gold (at about 2gp/fam) and based on my evil math, that’s barely enough to keep body and soul together for security requirements (again assuming our 100 fam territories), at least at the start. 

Blowing resource on it doesn’t seem sensible. Tossing around chairs, furs, and fancy metals doesn’t seem like the ideal way to lure more people in, which means our only real choice is subsistence. This makes non-mechanical sense as well since the idea is ‘that place has a lot of food.’ So instead of throwing 1k gp on the fire for a 1d10 roll, let’s go with letting the players buy themselves a 2d6 roll for 35 subsistence.  2d6 because the expenditure of 35 sub is a bit more then 1k gp, and because this way we don’t have the player tossing quite as many resources away and just ending up with ‘1. It also results in a more bell curve distribution and a less janky feast or famine (ha ha) response.

Since Subsistence isn’t something that the player wants to waste, this means that the “investment” for growth arises from actually, well, focusing on growth by dedicating more people to it as opposed to just tossing cash away. However, because I’m a jerk.. While the new families are attracted by food, they gravitate towards wealth. So new families generated through agricultural investment (buying them with 35 sub) end up in areas that have the highest resource value. So you don’t get to pick which hexes you’re trying to improve anymore, just your ‘realm’ as a whole.

In addition, ACKs used a relatively complex table for determining normal population growth. The smaller your realm was, the faster it grew, the larger, the slower, and so on.  Since this game is about managing populations and the like, we’ll do away with that and keep things simple, by again ripping off another part of ACK’s system. ACKs had you roll 1d10 for every 1000 people in your realm, and then another 1d10 for every 1000 people. One was your growth, one was your loss. I kind of like this mechanic, but I’m going to mess with it a bit. Instead of gaining 1-10 family across the entire realm (remember, unlike ACKs, we’ve got multiple hexes in a ‘realm’), I’m going to have the player roll a number of D6s according to the total number of hexes they have, for up and down. So 7 hexes is 7d6 growth and 7d6 decrease, and then let the player allocate loss and gain as they see fit. So at worst you lose 35 families, and at best you gain 35 families every turn.

Ok, that’s another bit of mechanics shored up.. I hope I’m not making horrible errors.