Itinerant Princes

See also Itinerant Princes Picaro.

Overview

Ok, so the pitch/big idea here is this is a mixed automated/PBP game. The players play wandering adventurers who travel the galaxy (I'm thinking this is set in the Agents of Empire universe, although it doesn't have to be) and they fall in with pirates, fight with mercenary bands, study under magicians, explore weird places, etc. That stuff is handled in a KoL-esque way, with a fixed number of daily turns that you spend doing stuff that is mostly resolved automatically. Mostly is important, though - it's possible for a player to call for GM judgement to do something outside the system (like "I know it says I have to lead my troops against the opponent, but I'm going to sneak in and assassinate their general instead") and then custom stuff can happen. It's also the case that the players do some contributory writing to the system. This comes in two parts - there are portions of the game that are basically "the role-playing part", like there might be a party the characters are at chatting to each other; and there are places where the player is asked to provide some writing (I'm not quite sure what form this comes in, but I think it might be like "you discover a treasure, what is it?") which then goes into a general pool for re-use. It's also possible the players might provide this writing for other players instead of for themselves.

Characters and Setting

The intent here is these are a bunch of, well, itinerant princes - they wander around and have adventures, and sometimes they bump into each other and have a big adventure and sometimes (mostly) they go off by themselves. They gain things and lose them, like they might be pirate captain for a while and then there's a big storm and they're shipwrecked and find themselves inducted into a weird cult and then the cult is crushed by some army and they're sold into slavery and they lead a slave revolt and seize the estate and then they play politics for a while and then ... Because of the perpetual gaining and losing, the characters can't be defined by their social class or job (eg, wealthy merchant), although since skills and affinities and so on are static there is an equivalent (eg, perpetual wheeler-dealer).

This implies the setting is small enough they can bump into each other occasionally but large enough they can get lost or imprisoned or whatever and other people can't necessarily find them. If it's the Agents of Empire setting, maybe it's a single solar system; if it's some Conan setting maybe it's some half-dozen nations; if it's steampunk maybe it's Western Europe.

Per other things the characters are all members of an extended family of some kind or otherwise members of the chosen few (genetic mutation, special birthmark, whatever) with some set of magic powers. The magic powers are good enough to help them out and let them meet up with each other and stuff, but it's usually not enough for them to tell someone else "hey, teleport me out of prison" unless it's a super emergency. I'm toying with a thing where they have some magical reserve they can expend which is refreshed at intervals (like at the solstice or whatever), so you can talk telepathically but it's kind of a big deal and you save it for emergencies.

General Mechanics

So the real question is what the players are trying for. Like, as a freelance mercenary they're probably looking for money; as the leader of a company they're looking to conquer some territory (?); as the owner of an estate they're looking for political power. Or whatever. None of this is xp as such, note - is there really no skill gain? That's generally an easy reward but it's hard to figure if it fits here. In books generally they're out for some overarching story purpose or they're stranded and trying to struggle out.

Arenas

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Rewards

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Writing

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Characters

The intent here is these are a bunch of, well, itinerant princes - they wander around and have adventures, and sometimes they bump into each other and have a big adventure and sometimes (mostly) they go off by themselves. They gain things and lose them, like they might be pirate captain for a while and then there's a big storm and they're shipwrecked and find themselves inducted into a weird cult and then the cult is crushed by some army and they're sold into slavery and they lead a slave revolt and seize the estate and then they play politics for a while and then ... Because of the perpetual gaining and losing, the characters can't be defined by their social class or job (eg, wealthy merchant), although since skills and affinities and so on are static there is an equivalent (eg, perpetual wheeler-dealer).

I think per other things the characters are all members of an extended family of some kind or otherwise members of the chosen few with this set of magic powers: telepathy (with other group members) and teleportation (to other group members) for minimum, I guess.

System and Tokens

I think there's some trick here where different token sets will be active depending on what arena you're in, but the overall system stays the same. Like, if you're currently a mercenary captain, then you have skills like swordplay and spot ambush and command, and you have stats like health and fatigue and troop morale and training, whereas if you're a wizard then you have skills like decipher tome and hypnotic gaze and stats like willpower and corruption. But in either case maybe the deal is skills go 1-5 and you roll 2d6+skill and try to get whatever.

There's also going to be a cycle where you accumulate fractional bits which eventually assemble into larger things, some of which require GM judgement. Like maybe you get coins from fighting goblins, and 10 coins is a treasure, and when you appraise the treasure the GM tells you what you found.

Oracles

I feel like oracles are going to be important in this game, in the sense of "some random image or word provided to help generate some text". It's important to not have to write too much text in this game, or it'll become unmanageable to create, and yet it needs to be suggestive enough to be able to be seen repeatedly.

Inspirations

Nine Princes in Amber is a good touchstone here, I think - note that series allows the characters to talk to each other from wherever and even travel to each other if they want, but they spend a lot of time doing their own thing.

Freebooting Venus kicked this off most recently, although I dunno how similar they'll really end up being.