Thirty Lords For Thirty Houses
Since my last Mount & Blade post four weeks ago, I’ve been thinking about populating rosters of Lords for players to rob . . . swindle . . . exploit . . . take advantage of Who am I kidding? A bunch of NPCs with land, money, and power.
I was trying to figure the best number of lords to generate.
And then I thought of thirty. ‘Cause why not, right?
My concern at that point was making sure they had enough land and intrigue to satisfy players. But not too much intrigue, I mean players want to get up to their own shenanigans. Can’t be upstaged by any uppity nobles, knowwhatimsaying?
That’s actually where I was about four weeks ago when I wrote up that original post. I’ve been thinking about the land portion ever since.
Since my current group is adventuring in the Nentir Vale and the-land-on-the-other-side-of-the-mountains, I figured I’d use that as a starting point.
Break it down into 6-mile hexes.
And then, I started playing a lot of Alpha Centauri.
There’s things I want to do. Certain effects I want to achieve. Last week I posted my attributes for rolling up random regions.
Link: Rolling a Region in Broad Strokes
What I figure is this — one region, thirty Lords (or Ladies). I’ll work out how many hexes are in the region, and then it’ll be up to the PCs whether they back one or more of the lords to be like, a king or something — or forge their own kingdom.
I mean, I can guess what a lot of players would prefer.
I’m still negotiating how much land is represented by a region. I have a feeling that it will have to be variable to accommodate some oddly-shaped landmasses, but I don’t know how to organize that kind of information yet.
Another thing I’m admittedly still trying to work out, is the percentage of settled peoples to nomadic peoples in a given region. I mean, until the last couple hundred years, the vast majority of people lived in rural communities.
I’m just not comfortable cloning the Civilization city systems under those kinds of circumstances. There’s an important “rural community” concept that I think is eluding the genre in general. Not to mention “barbarians.”
Oh, and nomads. I mean, orcs don’t just settle down. They horde. And rove.
Seriously, what if a player wants to command a nomadic orc tribe? That kind of thing just isn’t represented, and it seems like a basic idea. If the players don’t have rules for it, the Dungeon Master has to just . . . make stuff up.
I’d like to take a load off, for DMs everywhere.
I suppose if one looks at barbarism as the antithesis of Civilization, it’s no surprise it doesn’t account for it particularly well, though a Civ style game that actually modeled non-sedentary cultures in a way beyond “these guys will attack your city and destroy your granary” would be fascinating.
I’m interested in creating a closed system where the peasants who’re angered by the taxes being too high, or the granary running low actually BECOME the barbarians that raid your cities.
Because, you know, history.
In my earlier discussion about Growth, Longevity, and Mortality, I’m interested in maintaining Growth as a distinct attribute in part because I want Growth to regularly and continuously outpace administrative capabilities, so that players are constantly struggling with disease and unrest.
AT LEAST, until I’ve had an opportunity to test it. I think it should be something of a “relief” to player a slower-breeding, longer-lived race like elves, dwarves, or halflings, if only because you don’t have to find something for everyone to DO in your society.
Playing as orcs, goblins, or kobolds would be positively NIGHTMARISH. Can you imagine trying to maintain a stable government when your population turnover occurs in less than ten years? O_O
Anyway, I’m not trying to make it difficult on purpose, just enough that I can tease out some good mechanics to differentiate races. Consider it a ‘stepping stone’ to a better iteration of the game.
Though I’ve never seen it directly attributed, I’ve always assumed that the reason that greenskin races were so prone to migratory raiding was because their high growth rates forced tribal splits every few years; while one competent strong-man in the tribe could hold things together on a smaller scale, unless there was a great warchief, other tough members of the tribe would be inclined to strike out on their own in search of better forage/hunting grounds.
Exactly. Of course, greenskins in this case are a metaphor for something humans do.
My aim is to bring that element into play to create/explain the abundance of human bandits, barbarians, berserkers, pirates, etc,
As we all know, bandits are people too (as are barbarian hordes), so I want my system to model nomadic societies as well. In essence, when your peasants revolt because their taxes are too high, some may emigrate to seek greener pastures — some of these will settle and form new factions.
So, the bandits that raid your farms might be the very peasants you starved out of their homes. :)