Lords and Ladies Game Design
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@Pyrephox said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
“Good” leadership is actually not great for the game part of the game. Leaders who try to make friends, decrease tensions, and set up long-term successes push things towards stagnation. PC leaders who lean into creating thematically-appropriate conflict often catch whole loads of shit from other players. NPC leaders only have to make decisions that are aimed at making the game fun/exciting/tense for everyone - PC leaders often make decisions based on what they feel will make other players like them, or just get off their back.
This is a much more eloquent way of expressing what’s been in my gut for a while.
NPC leaders can make the seemingly irrational decisions that are sometimes necessary on a MUSH and make stories fun. They can demote someone for apparently no reason (they’re idle <.<) or fall for the enemy’s (omg so obvious) ploy when it heightens the danger in a plot.
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I see PCs at the highest levels of power working under certain circumstances:
- The power is temporary.
- The power comes with constraints.
For the first, I point again to Republic of Rome and John Company board games and the themes that they have. Rather than having position be mostly inherited, it is mostly appointed. You want to be one of the two proconsuls over the entire Republic? Sure! But the term is only for two years, you can’t have consecutive terms, and you can always be brought to trial by the Censors for fucking around. You want to be the general of the armies in Bengal? Sure! Better bring in spoils and not lose too many men, or we’re kicking your ass to the curb. No one gets to just be a position because their mommy or daddy had the position, and there are expectations of performance.
For the second, I had thought of game centered around the politics of the fey/divine beings. One attains more power and Prestige by the titles that they posses, such as The Red Count, Lord of the Dead, The Frosted One, The Dweller at the Threshold, etc. When one bests the current possessor of the title, they get it. While each title gives powers and more Prestige, it also comes with taboos. The Red Count can’t touch iron. The Frosted One can’t be in the sun. So on and so forth. Break a taboo and you are greatly weakened, making it easier for someone to steal the title from you.
EDIT: But I will agree that, in general, the top echelons of power should be NPCs who give tasks to the PC underlings.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam
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Political systems this, intrigue systems that. Honestly I liked that Arx had some basic House development stuff. I would have liked to have seen it expanded and would like any L&L game to have something similar.
Anyway, someone let me know if a new game comes out! I am feeling some fantasy vibes as evidenced by these High Elf minis I’ve been slowly working on
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@Rucket Could you elaborate on what you mean by “basic House development”?
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam
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Oh yeah. Also a Wheel of Time game.
Weird no one mentioned it in all this L&L talk. Seems like a freebie.
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The version of WoT I want isn’t an L&L game but idk what other people would want.
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@KarmaBum said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
Oh yeah. Also a Wheel of Time game.
Weird no one mentioned it in all this L&L talk. Seems like a freebie.
@Third-Eye said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
The version of WoT I want isn’t an L&L game but idk what other people would want.
I thought I mentioned it. May have been another thread. 4th age, Dragon’s Peace politics.
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@Ominous said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
in general, the top echelons of power should be NPCs who give tasks to the PC underlings.
When a plot is delivered to the IC-world via a ‘power gives tasks to underlings’ route, it doesn’t matter if the top PC power is the Galactic Emperor or the Assistant Manager.
GM, to King: There are reports of zombie coyotes around the villages west of the city.
King, to Lord Mayor: There are reports of zombie coyotes around the villages west of the city. Get somebody to deal with it.
Lord Mayor, to City Watch Commander: There are reports of zombie coyotes around the villages west of the city. Go deal with it.
City Watch Commander, to Abelard, Bridget and Camille: There are reports of zombie coyotes around the villages west of the city. Let’s all go deal with it.
Okay, but how about:
GM, to Squire Manfred and Lady Ophelia: You’re riding past the villages west of the city, singing ‘The Ballad of Brave Sir Robin’ and practicing the lute, when you spot some zombie coyotes.
Well shit. What will Manfred and Ophelia do? Tell the watch? Tell the mayor? Tell the king? Try to take out the coyotes themselves? If they tell the watch but not the mayor, does that reduce the mayor’s standing and power? If they tell the mayor and he deals with it without consulting the king, does that undermine the king’s power?
When plot-stuff flows both ways, PC power is constrained by the powerful PC’s need for IC support from the less powerful. If it always flows top-down, well, not so much. Not at all if you let the mighty get away with taking no action/ineffective action/action only involving off-camera NPC minions.
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In my experience the PC with the most power, or the first player to hear about it handles it using their NPC minions. It ends up as:
GM, to King: There are reports of zombie coyotes around the villages west of the city.
King, to GM: I move my personal army to go take care of it, and my best friend Danielle can go bless the land.
Abelard, Bridget, and Camille: How can we get involved?
King: Fuck off, it’s handled.
Later, some political rival: Why didn’t the City Watch Commander do anything about those zombie coyotes? They’re inactive and lazy!
This is why I’m a fan of the bottom-up version where Squire Manfred and Lady Ophelia get looped in. The scenario is more immediate and if they end up needing backup they can kick it up the chain of command. But the best way is for the GM to directly loop in as many people as possible because if you’re relying on players to involve other players… they fucking won’t.
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@Juniper said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
In my experience the PC with the most power, or the first player to hear about it handles it using their NPC minions.
Is there some way to have the typical Lords and Ladies experience people desire whilst also removing the reliance on/availability of NPCs?
NPCs are for doing the boring stuff, like paying taxes and being poor, not the exciting stuff like fighting and feasting.
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@Pavel said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
Is there some way to have the typical Lords and Ladies experience people desire whilst also removing the reliance on/availability of NPCs?
I guess it depends on the scope of your game and what kinds of characters are included. Like you said, NPCs are for the boring bits. If every character is nobility I think it’s probably fine to send your lackeys. If your L&L game has a population of commoners and lower nobility, people really need to think about who’s missing out when they delegate to NPCs.
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@Juniper said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
If your L&L game has a population of commoners and lower nobility, people really need to think about who’s missing out when they delegate to NPCs.
Agreed. I think, like in @Ominous’ original point, people like the King, the Duke of Westmorland, or the Grandpoobah de Doink should be NPCs, with the PCs being the lackeys. Either lower nobility or commoners.
In a WWII game, for instance, one would presumably want to be a Ranger or a Tanker or a Spitfire pilot, not King George VI or General Eisenhower.
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I agree with the idea that NPCs should just be for boring bits, or set dressing at the most. Plot stuff should be handled 100% by the PCs.
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@Gashlycrumb said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
When plot-stuff flows both ways, PC power is constrained by the powerful PC’s need for IC support from the less powerful. If it always flows top-down, well, not so much. Not at all if you let the mighty get away with taking no action/ineffective action/action only involving off-camera NPC minions.
My post was not meant to imply that plot stuff can’t flow both ways. I was arguing that factionheads should be NPCs so that the overall direction and policy-making of that faction can kept on a leash by administration, rather than risking a PC factionhead completely derailing or sinking an entire faction because their player decided the character needed to hold the idiot ball.
Alice, Bob, and Carol, a trio of town guards, could be the ones to come across the zombie horde and report it to their sergeant, the commander of the town guard, or the mayor. However the mayor, assuming they are the head of the faction in the particular scenario where the factions in the setting are the various towns in a kingdom, would then issue a command to the commander of the town guard, a PC, who could handle it themself or delegate it down the chain. But somebody better do it or the mayor is going to be pissed. It may not even need to get to the mayor. Once it reaches the commander of the town guard’s ears, again a PC, they could make a decision and act how they feel would be appropriate. Bit, again, they better be right about the course of action, because, if they kill the zombies when the mayor has a pro-brain eating policy in place the mayor is going to be pissed.
Players get to play US cabinet positions but the President is an NPC. A PC isn’t going to be able to order that we nuke Russia because their player got fired from their real world job and they want to watch the world burn. The players can be representatives in the National Assembly, but the heads of their parties are NPCs. If the players deviate too far from the tenets and positions held by their party, the head of the party can kick them to the curb and they likely won’t be re-elected in the next election cycle without party support. So on and so forth.
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@Ominous said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
Alice, Bob, and Carol, a trio of town guards, could be the ones to come across the zombie horde and report it to their sergeant, the commander of the town guard, or the mayor.
But what happens when Alice, Bob & Carol, a trio of town guards, come across a zombie horde and horde that information to themselves because they want the plot? IDK there’s no real perfect way to ensure everyone gets a bite of the plot cake except to just put the information out there for everyone.
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@bear_necessities said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
@Ominous said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
Alice, Bob, and Carol, a trio of town guards, could be the ones to come across the zombie horde and report it to their sergeant, the commander of the town guard, or the mayor.
But what happens when Alice, Bob & Carol, a trio of town guards, come across a zombie horde and horde that information to themselves because they want the plot? IDK there’s no real perfect way to ensure everyone gets a bite of the plot cake except to just put the information out there for everyone.
They probably die trying to fight it, new mystery where did they go?
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@bear_necessities said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
But what happens when Alice, Bob & Carol, a trio of town guards, come across a zombie horde and horde that information to themselves because they want the plot? IDK there’s no real perfect way to ensure everyone gets a bite of the plot cake except to just put the information out there for everyone.
If they fail and die, then the town guards, David, Emily, and Frank will come across a zombie horde that’s three zombies larger and their friends and family curse their names. If they fail and don’t die, the mayor and the captain of the guard are going to be pissed and their friends and family may shun them. If they succeed, good for them. Celebrations and cheers to their names will be had. And the mayor and the captain of thr guard might still be pissed for them acting on their own. That’s the risk you take when you take on such responsibility.
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@Juniper said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
In my experience the PC with the most power, or the first player to hear about it handles it using their NPC minions. It ends up as:
GM, to King: There are reports of zombie coyotes around the villages west of the city.
King, to GM: I move my personal army to go take care of it, and my best friend Danielle can go bless the land.
Abelard, Bridget, and Camille: How can we get involved?
King: Fuck off, it’s handled.
Later, some political rival: Why didn’t the City Watch Commander do anything about those zombie coyotes? They’re inactive and lazy!
This is why I’m a fan of the bottom-up version where Squire Manfred and Lady Ophelia get looped in. The scenario is more immediate and if they end up needing backup they can kick it up the chain of command. But the best way is for the GM to directly loop in as many people as possible because if you’re relying on players to involve other players… they fucking won’t.
Just fucking so. Perhaps even followed by:
bbpost or IC event announcing that there were zombie coyotes in the Western Wood, but the King’s men have gloriously destroyed them and burned the wood where they were hiding, Huzzah!
Ophelia pages Manfred: Everybody knows we go hawking or lute-playing there three times a week, but we didn’t see a thing, ffs, GM. is such a dick.
Sir Wacko, Landed Knight of the Western Wood: I realise my keep doesn’t have windows, but WTF, I ragequit.
@Ominous said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
My post was not meant to imply that plot stuff can’t flow both ways.
Didn’t mean to sound as if it did. I’m just saying, trickle-down-plot-economics has this peril. It works best in settings where the chain-of-command is almost invariably played by the book, like in a Star Trek or military game. (And still needs some shaking up in those.)
If you’re doing politics and intrique where players who are ostensibly lower on the chain of command are nevertheless trying to command, it just can’t work.
The question about NPC lackeys is something I’d strongly advise having a plan about. Lords and Ladies have lackeys, but how much can you do with them? If I was building an L&L game again I’d have clear rules about it, and a caveat that your NPCs are always kinda gonna suck against PCs, because. GoB had a couple of McGuffins that people used NPCs to steal and it was so boring and dissapointing to whoever lost it to just find it gone because NPCs rolled okay.
GoB’s set up had all the top (King, heads of major houses and almost all minor ones) as not only NPCs but not in the city. It was pretty much a bunch of non-heirs sent to the kingdom’s premier-but-not-the-capital city.
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What about plots with invisible timers for this particular conundrum?
Example:
A horde of zombie llamas is coming down from the mountain pass and threatens the noble kingdom of Kinwoodie because they are attracted to the location of the legendary Golden Interspace Toothbrush. Lord Hampsterplanet and Lady Puremanse discover the horde and become the first players to interface with the plot. The staff keeps an eye on their activity to check for a few things, namely whether they are spreading the news among the players, and also what activities they are taking to thwart the raving hordes. If they immediately offer some solution to the staff that would effectively thwart the horde, well, alright. That can happen. It doesn’t mean they didn’t want to share the plot necessarily, just that they, as their characters decided immediate action was necessary. Can’t hold that against them. If they shuffle off and tell the other PCs about the horde, that’s great! Then the PCs can work together to discover that llamas of the zombie variety can be particularly thwarted by a healthy application of Whizzo Butter. Plot gets to the majority of players that want to see plots, and everyone is happy. If they do the naughty thing and conceal the plot from other players on purpose and don’t go with the “immediate danger needs immediate responses” option, staff waits a specific amount of time and then has NPCs inject the plot as random serfs and peasants come screaming into Kinwoodie yelling about llamas and potentially also the blancmange that ate their children after challenging them to a table tennis match.
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@MisterBoring That’s how I run my D&D campaigns. The BBEG/Apocalypse isn’t going to sit around and wait for the PCs to quit dicking around to finally find the MacGuffins, prove their worth, and rally the allies they made along the way. I am very much a fuck around and find out DM. I keep strict time records as Gary Gygax admonished in the 1e AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide
