Itinerant Royalty Errands

What?

cf https://joshg.itch.io/interstellar-errands

Summary

• There's a hexmap with a half-dozen countries and different terrains
• There's a pool of like 30 zodiac signs/tarot cards
• Characters have like 30-40 skills that go 1-100
• Characters have a couple ongoing projects (maybe two slots, they can choose how many to fill and what type they are)
• Characters have a current job
• Each round is a season, you get 20 turns
• A turn is a draw from a deck
• You get a deck made up of: cards based on your job x hex (work events), cards based on your hex (travel events), cards based just on your job (lifepath events)
• Card encounters are like threats at http://apocalypse-world.com/ApocalypseWorldBasicRefbook2ndEd.pdf I think
  • You encounter a MAZE in the FOREST (nature: to trap, to frustrate passage). Signifiers: HOUND, SCORPION. Default skill: STRENGTH
    • The player can decide what it means and pick a skill (or spend an extra turn to skip it) to roll and then there's a space to write some commentary about the encounter. If they roll, win or lose, they get +1 xp of the default skill. If they win they get some reward based on difficulty and if they lose they have a penalty based on same.
    • The player can pay an intervention to explain why they can use a different skill here
• At the end of the season you can write a letter to somebody else in the game (you get +5 skill or project xp for that).
• Rewards:
  • skill xp: 1 xp normally = +1 skill point - if it's a key skill for the current job, it's +3 skill points (can be targeted at one skill, at a skill, or totally free)
  • project xp: advance within the current project stage
  • project resource A, B, C: get some resource needed for current project (need to pay these to advance the stage)
  • money: this is basically another currency (heh), there are probably ways to exchange it
  • job meter refill: add points up to max in a meter associated with current job
  • job meter increase: increase the max in a meter
  • job tool: tool you can use in your current job
  • travel points (if you're traveling)
  • artifact
  • royalty
  • leaders only:
    • +morale
    • +people
    • +training
  • a fragment of any of the above: fragments can be traded in for the thing when you accumulate enough
  • a quest start for any of the above: quests are multi-card sequences that eventually give a particular reward
• Penalties:
  • Opposite of any of those rewards
  • Incur a debt
  • Forced job switch
  • Forced movement
  • Death
    • In this game you get a couple lives, if you lose one you incur a "scar" which you describe and it's a permanent marker on your sheet, but it's not death death until you're out of lives
• interventions: players get, I dunno, 2 a season (old ones are lost). there are places they can pay an intervention, where they say what they want to happen and why and it gets handed off to another player for final arbitration. stuff you can ask for interventions is like to swap a skill in the check, get a particular quest or other reward, do extra work on a project, resolve a project, convert resources at a different rate, travel at a different rate. you can offer to pay additional stuff if it helps - anything you can take as a penalty. the person acting as GM sees your stuff, sets the difficulty and makes the roll for you, then selects and writes up what happens
• signifiers: there are these 30-40 zodiac signs or whatever (everway has 36). which initially have a name and a number. over time people can add additional signifiers/commentary to them - associating them with events or characters or places or organizations or artifacts or whatever

Turns

On your turn you can pick from a couple actions: Job, Project, Travel, Camp. Each of those actions has an associated metadeck that you draw from and tells you what actual deck to draw. All decks in the game, meta and otherwise, start out empty; when you try to draw from an empty deck, you shuffle the discard pile and make that the deck, then discard 2 cards.

• Job metadeck: JOB x16, HEX x4, LIFEPATH x4
• Project metadeck: PROJECT x16, HEX x4, LIFEPATH x4
• Travel metadeck: TRAVEL x12, HEX x8, LIFEPATH x4
  • When you pick the travel action, you select a hex, then you do the card, then it's determined whether you end up in the hex you wanted or not
• Camp metadeck: CAMP x12, HEX x4, LIFEPATH x8

For the actual decks:

• Job cards are challenges about doing your job (robbing merchants as a bandit or whatever), they can be simple or tactical
  • Simple look like "You encounter a MAZE in the FOREST (nature: to trap, to frustrate passage). Signifiers: HOUND, SCORPION. Default skill: STRENGTH" as above
  • Tactical have tags on the challenges and the area and you can do stuff with it somehow
• Hex cards are challenges about the area (hex type + country) and look like job cards otherwise
• Project cards are challenges, choices, and inevitable things about one of your current projects
• Lifepath cards are opportunities to shift jobs, challenges weighted to morale, or chances to promote/demote in your current hierarchy (something like, "if you have at least 30 morale, you become senior bandit")
• Travel cards are challenges, choices, and inevitable things about traveling
• Camp cards are things set at camp, mostly not challenges; chances to train, swap resources, get resources

Challenges

Challenges are rated easy, medium, hard, very hard. Based on skill + difficulty + randomness, the outcome is like failure, partial success, success, extra success. Those translate in most cases into full penalty, half penalty and full reward, full reward, extra reward, where the size of the penalty and reward are based on the difficulty.

• Difficulty for job challenges is based on your job
• Difficulty for hex challenges is based on the hex - countries have a base difficulty, then some specific hexes have modifiers.
• Difficulty for project challenges depends on the phase (?)
• The default skill for a job challenge is picked randomly from the skills for the job (weighted x6), the skills on the card (weighted x6, weights added if also a job skill), all other skills (weighted x1)
• The default skill for a hex challenge is picked randomly from the skills for the hex type (weighted x6), the skills on the card (weighted x6), all other skills (weighted x1)
• The default skill for a project challenge is picked randomly from the skills for the project type (weighted x6), the skills on the card (weighted x6), all other skills (weighted x1)

Game Setup

• Use pre-built world or do world setup
• Players pick name, description, and birthplace for their character. They also pick two patron zodiac signs and for each they set one skill to 20 or two skills to 10 each; other skills start at 1.
• Players pick a random hex and their character starts there, with initial starting job of whatever the punishment job is for the hex's country

World Setup

• Generate a map
• Pick a number of countries, roughly num players + 2, and place a capital city for each on the map
• Grow each country out from its capital city, an unclaimed hex at a time (land hexes only), until it can't grow any more (countries should be 50-70 hexes each or so). Note that the system assumes jobs can be worked anywhere within the country, so countries should have roughly continuous terrain - if there's an area that's deserts next to forests, it's better to make that two countries.
• Name each country (and decide on the adjective for things from that country), set its initial challenge level to medium, and assign one or more of these traits (don't assign the same item to multiple countries):
  • This country is steeped in ancient evil (+1 challenge level in every hex, +2 cities)
  • Bountiful resources make this the most populous country in the region (+3 cities)
  • This is a land of rogues and traders (+1 city)
  • This country prizes art, beauty, and culture (+1 city, place a landmark that's a big statue or whatever)
  • This country has a long military tradition (+1 city, place a landmark that's a battlefield)
  • The nobles of this country glory in the Great Game (+1 city)
  • This country has a university that is the envy of the world (+1 city, place it)
  • This country has a City of the Dead (place it, +1 challenge in this hex and all surrounding hexes)
• Overall, we should end up with most countries are medium difficulty with 2-3 cities and 2-3 landmarks, with maybe one easy difficulty, one hard, and one very hard country, and probably 6-10 jobs per country.

Jobs

• Punishment Jobs
  • Beggar
  • Servant
  • Slave
  • Adrift/Lost/Marooned
  • Scavenger
  • Peasant
• Pirate -> Pirate Captain
• Thief -> Guildmaster
• Sailor -> Merchant Captain
• Merchant
• Soldier -> Captain
• Mercenary -> Condottiero
• Noble
• Barbarian -> Warlord
• Forest Bandit -> Bandit Chief
• Nomad/Desert Raider -> Desert Chieftain
• Spy
• Guard -> Guard Captain
• Druid
• Wizard/Alchemist
• Smuggler
• Ranger
• Cultist -> Cult Leader
• Explorer
• Assassin
• Tomb Raider
• Bounty Hunter
• Monster Hunter
• Scout
• Cutpurse
• Burglar
• Gigolo/Companion
• Guide
• Bard
• Messenger
• Con Artist
• Pickpocket
• Hunter
• Witch
• Priest