Itinerant Royalty Errands

What?

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

TODO

Itinerant Royalty Errands/TODO

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
• There are a couple decks - for your job, for the current hex, for projects you're working on, etc
• 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).
• 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 (based on the hex you're traveling to), then it's determined whether you end up in the hex you wanted or not
  • Cards in the metadeck have an base speed on them (1-6, evenly distributed), the card you draw modifies that speed, then at the end you compare the speed to the cost of the hex type and if it's equal/higher you can keep going (I guess you can keep going until your speed is below the hex cost)
• 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 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; some challenges with morale rewards/penalties

Crossing the Border

In most cases, jobs can only be worked in their home country. When a character crosses the border into another country, their job deck is disabled. When you select the camp action and your job deck is disabled, CAMP cards are treated as LIFEPATH cards (which should allow for a faster switch to a local job).

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)

Rewards

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 group, 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

Stamina

I think we might want to have a loop where the character explores a couple turns, then they camp, and stuff happens when camping as a result (eg, morale changes). It's also good to have an easily-regenerated resource. So let's drop the job meter stuff and have stamina. It's something like, you have six stamina; on a success, you lose one (or zero or one?) stamina and get a reward, on a partial you lose 1d4 stamina and get a reward, on a failure you lose 1d6+difficulty stamina. If you drop to negative stamina, you take a penalty based on how negative you are (not sure whether this then resets stamina, I'm thinking not). If you camp, you reset your stamina, then do a camp encounter. Sometimes rewards might restore your stamina.

Balance

Another way to look at this is the metaphor that the PC is running across a balance beam. If they make it to the other end in time, they can jump to a higher balance beam (ie, advance to a better job). If they fall, they drop to a lower balance beam (worse job or some other penalty). Then when you get rewarded for a skill check, the difficulty (rank of the reward) determines how far you go; the quality of the result determines how your stability changes (great success = move and stability increases; success = move and stability stays the same; poor success = move and stability worsens; fail = no move, stability worsens, and immediately check for a fall). Thus to advance you must participate in high-difficulty challenges or you won't get enough distance in the time limit, but if you repeatedly do challenges that are too difficult for you, you're likely to get poor successes, lose stability, and ultimately fall.

How to translate this? Well, we could take stamina from before. Great success restores one stamina, poor success loses one stamina, failure loses two stamina and does a check on stamina. None of this (including the check) necessarily needs to be scaled to the rank, since in theory that's already taken into account by the success quality. Then how to map distance and the time limit? Well, it seems like you start by having a reputation score, and you get promoted when you hit a certain reputation level. Why does reputation get you promoted but (lack of) stamina gets you demoted? I guess lack of stamina means being injured or captured or whatever. Time limit? Well, you can also model the time limit by lowering your reputation each turn at a certain rate - if you don't gain at least X/turn you'll never make it to Y. The difficulty could also be ramped up over time to model the accumulation of enemies and opposition (the king of whoever tires of the kozacks raiding his caravans and sends out the army to drive them off), which would also be a forcing function for up-or-out, but that feels blunter and hard to do gradually (since there's only a small range of difficulties).

How does, say, gold fit into this? Losing gold could be an alternative to falling to a lower bar, and gaining gold could be an alternative to raising reputation.

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

Terrain

Xanathar's Guide to Everything has a nice list of terrains that might be a good starting point. The current idea has Forest and Heavy Forest or whatever, but it might be better to just have single terrain types, and then maybe a tag for "this hex is more dangerous than typical" that bumps it up a level. Anyway, terrain list:

• Arctic
• Coastal
• Desert
• Forest
• Grassland
• Hill
• Mountain
• Swamp
• Underdark (don't have this, but Ruins/Dungeon seems relevant)
• Underwater
• Urban

Advanced Stuff

Ok, so this is all well and good for the "default" stuff PCs do (ie, exploring around and working for leadership roles in their job). But this game also needs to have a functional system for other kinds of actions and other goals.

Examples

• Wizard wants to create an army of the dead to conquer some city
• Raider wants to break somebody else out of jail (either a PC or an NPC)
• An invading army is threatening these countries and PCs want to convince various countries to rally together against them
• Two PCs want to explore an ancient ruin to recover some artifact

Observations

• Some of these trips are going to require moving a fair distance - is movement priced appropriately if people potentially want to move around a lot? (A season is 3 months = 12 weeks, so each turn could be 2-3 days, although we're pretty loose about it)
• Probably needs to be some notion of resources which various people are accumulating and trading around or whatever
• It's probably ok in this system to say there are some things you need a group (or even a large group) to accomplish, end of story (like the wizard needs some junior wizards to help manage their skeletal army)
• Similarly another way to gate the wizard is to say they have to have specific skills learned to certain levels, which might lead them to, I dunno, get a job that has mesmerism as a core skill - fictionally they might need to learn certain specific rites or whatever from a cult, which you could model as accumulating some resource and/or learning the skill
• Relative resolution is tricky - if the raiders want to break out the prisoner, 1) you have to be able to take multiple turns without doing GM intervention on each (it seems like the beginning and end of the sequence is when you'd do that) 2) there ideally would be some way to coordinate the work of the person in the jail breaking out (if they're a PC) and the person breaking in (you can do the latter by managing some shared resource/project they're both contributing to, perhaps)
• I keep wavering on whether projects go on in the background or need to be actively worked on - it might have to be a combo, since there are some things like "let's build a siege engine" where it just takes time (but also regular input of materials and direction), and other things like "let's do the raid" where you can't really do other things while this is happening

Project ideas

• Let's say projects have types, as above, and some number of stages. Each stage requires A units of resource 1, B units of resource 2, and C units of resource 3, plus X maturity. When you've paid the resource cost for the current stage, it's unlocked, which means you can make the skill check. If you pass the skill check, once the maturity has counted down to zero, you pass the stage and the next stage is up (or the project is finished).
  • Bonuses for passing the skill check can involve reducing the maturity of the current stage, or reducing the resource costs of the next stage
  • Penalties for failing the skill check can be just not passing (ie, wasting the turn), increasing the resource cost for the current or future stages, increasing the maturity for the current stage (ie, delaying it), or ending the project early (so it's not worth as many points) and starting a new project of a different type to finish it out
  • There might be two basic kinds of projects, direct and growth - direct projects have, say, 5 stages, while growth have 2-3 stages, but direct project stages have a base maturity of 0 whereas growth project stages have a maturity of 2d4.
  • As a separate axis, projects can be required or optional - required projects put their skill check cards into the job deck directly (on top, I guess), whereas optional projects are someplace else and you choose when to do the check.
  • Projects have some point value when completed, based on number of stages and difficulty
• There are meta-projects to allow for working on stuff in parallel - the army of the dead metaproject might be "ok, you need 100 points in projects, including a blood sacrifice worth 30+ points, opening a portal to the netherworld for 30+ points, rites and rituals for 30+ points; also a thaumaturgy skill of at least rank 3 and an artifact of control". This is basically just pre-agreement for your overarching goals (oh, but I guess it's also helpful to turn in all the projects together and get them handled by the same DM)
  • Sometimes when a project dead-ends due to check failure, we can auto-create a meta-project for it like "finish up the siege engines" and then create a second project of random type under that meta project
  • I guess players can create metaprojects and move stuff into and out of them freely, but there's some separate DM-only line that gets filled in if they want to have the point agreements
  • We can simplify things by saying projects only belong to one person, but projects from multiple people can belong to a single metaproject. Who can redeem the metaproject? Maybe anyone (and rely on GM ruling to keep it sensible - if the junior wizard wants to secretly twist the spell to take it over, they should run their own project to do that, not just do it at resolution time).

Resources

There are, let's say, 7 resource types (rare woods, mystic jewels, peculiar spices, that kind of thing), scattered around the map such that every country has two or three resource nodes. Nodes produce at some rate (2 units a season, say, or 50% chance of being exhausted each time a unit is mined). You don't actually have to be on the node to mine it - it's more like, if you're in a nearby hex, you have some chance of getting the resource as a reward. Projects tend to require resources. You can trade units of a resource for coins on city tiles. You can transfer resources to other players when you're on the same hex. You can probably increase the production rate of or create new nodes with projects. New resources can be created as the game goes along - you can imagine in the army of the dead project it might call for ten units of necromantic energy.

Note that resources can be found as loot, traded between players, and so on, so there's some assumption these are tangible physical goods. Stuff like "this dungeon is half explored" is probably better tracked with a clock instead of resources.

Features

Monuments and factories and small towns and dungeons and stuff are all modelled as features. You can do an action when you're on a feature - I guess usually this costs an intervention.

Playtesting

So in practice this is too random. There's a random skill picked to resolve on a test of random difficulty and you move to a random hex. In Interstellar Errands it's fine for it to be random because it trends up and it's also a single point of randomness (and then the game isn't really anything else). This game feels like it has a lot of choices and control but it's all fake. I think the success numbers may be too low, though part of that may be the setup where all the skills start at 1 but the default difficulty is 2 most places.

Switching things up a bit, I pulled out a base competence stat, and skills just add +1 to it if you have the skill. I playtested with competence = 2, so most of the fights were at 0 advantage, a few were at +1, and a few at -1. The overall success rate seemed acceptable - basically an even split between failure, mixed, and success (no great successes, but whatever). It's still not very choice-y, though, and it seems like there's enough system here that there has to be more opportunity for strategy. Presumably it's like if you're trained in endurance you should stick to the desert whereas if you're trained in climb you stick to the mountains because this lets you punch above your weight. But then this doesn't work with the current system either because you don't get that many hex-specific encounters when you work your job (looks like 6/20 in this last one), so most of the time it doesn't actually matter where you're working your job. I don't think I can plausibly design separate job decks for different hex types, though, or for other splits like different kinds of raider-ing. Unless it's re-used across jobs, I guess. We could of course work in the hex base skills to the job encounters, but it seems like this doesn't quite happen enough to make it worth it. And, I mean, in any case, just getting a +1 to the roll is kind of not very knob-y - people expect to be able to interact a little more. I guess the tools aren't implemented yet and might help a bit with this.

Speculation

(ie, not playtesting) Could do the thing where you flip up three cards and choose one, then I guess draw to replace it. That doesn't really make sense in-story but it's probably fine as a mechanic. Separately, I'm wondering about a thing where rewards are weighted towards influence, wealth, or skill. Does that make sense? In KoL apparently you typically earn X xp in your prime stat and X/2 xp in your secondaries, but the thing is influence and wealth aren't directly relevant in winning skill checks, so it's in some sense always a sucker bet to pick those until you've sort of maxed out for this job. An alternative is princes of florence style thing where you get X skill xp and Y reward, where you choose at the time whether to take Y as cash or influence. There's also a bit of tension here between "characters should succeed a lot of the time" and "characters should always be advancing, failing and falling, then advancing to try again" or the general notion of your position being a little unstable.