Itinerant Royalty Errands/Engine

Overview

Stuff about the game engine (excluding data).

Map

The map is a collection of hexes.

Hexes

A hex is a location on the map. A hex has coordinates, an associated region, an associated country, a terrain type, and an additional difficulty rating. Regions and countries are groupings of hexes.

Terrain

Terrain is what the hex is composed of. A terrain has name, some base danger rating, some base movement rating, and an encounter deck.

Tokens

Tokens are things tracked on the map (they can be players, NPCs, artifacts, small locations, etc). Tokens are located in a particular hex, carried by another token, or in limbo. Tokens can support zero or more custom interactions.

Character

Each player has a character in the game (NPCs are tracked as tokens or fronts). Characters have a job (they always have exactly one) and a level within that job and a rarity adjustment for the encounters in the job deck, a collection of stats (in particular, counters for each resource, health, royalty, plus data for their current job), a collection of skills (skills + xp total, which then gets mapped to a rank, probably 20/25/25/25/30), a collection of talents, and a collection of projects.

Jobs

Jobs have a name, a rank (used mostly for switching across job trees), zero or more promotion jobs, zero or more demotion jobs, a base encounter difficulty, an encounter deck. Jobs have a default encounter deck rarity (eg, 4xA, 2xB, 2xC, 1xE-H) but this can change for a particular character over time.

Projects

Projects are an ongoing thing the character is working on (building something, organizing something, researching something, searching for something). Projects have a name, approach type (this determines skills used for the project), xp, resources devoted (these two together determine rank), and a status (ongoing, completed, canceled).

Actions

Actions are individual mechanical changes - Token X moves to hex A3, Player Foo's health increases by 10, etc. Actions are grouped into events.

Events

An event is a thing that happened in the game. An event is a name plus a list of associated actions.

Proposals

A proposal is a suggested event (this is the main mechanic for GM/player interaction). Proposals have to be accepted by somebody; once they do, the event is created and takes effect. Proposals can be active or accepted or rejected.

Decks

Decks are collections of cards. When empty, they're refilled from one or more template decks (in some cases with adjustment, per the job encounter deck rarity thing as above).

Tableau

In some cases there's a face-up tableau of cards which the player can choose from instead of drawing directly from the deck. When cards from the tableau are drawn they are refilled from the deck. Cards in the tableau will age out after a certain number of turns. Cards in the tableau are partly visible to players - they're only fully visible when selected.

Encounter Cards

Encounter cards are the typical card. They consist of one or more checks, where each is with a particular skill against a particular difficulty with a particular reward and penalty.

Other Cards

Other cards don't have checks but offer choices between items, or just an event, or a single check that's not an encounter as such.

Seasons

A round of the game is called a season. The season consists of three phases. Each player does each phase in order, but they don't have to wait for other players to finish the first two phases before advancing to the next one (then everyone remains in the third phase until the season is over).

Play Phase

In the play phase, the players have 20 turns to spend doing normal play (drawing and resolving cards, doing custom interactions, traveling, etc).

Rumor Phase

In the rumor phase, each player is given another player to write. They give an update on what has happened this season (during the play phase), and pass on any rumors they have about upcoming events. In addition, there are two mechanical pieces. The player is given a change in their own circumstances (eg, a change in the rarity of various encounters), and must pick between a few fronts and advancing them in some way.

GM Phase

In the GM phase, players can make GM-level corrections to the mechanical state of the world (eg, move a character around, whatever). These are all proposals.

Season Ending

The season ends when everyone marks the GM phase as completed, or a certain amount of time has elapsed from the start of the season. If someone has not completed the play phase when the season ends, any in-progress encounters are considered fled (or failed, if they can't be fled). If someone has not completed the rumor phase when the season ends, no letter is sent, their circumstances change still occurs, and a front change is randomly decided on and occurs. If there are proposals still open in the GM phase when the season ends, they are automatically cancelled.

Fronts

Fronts are the mechanic/story interface for ongoing NPC activity (eg, the western empire invades, the skeleton king gathers an army in the desert, the cult of the snake god is replacing leaders in governments everywhere). Fronts can exist at the region level, at the kingdom level, or at the empire (ie, global) level. Fronts have xp, which maps to level. They have a variety of talents which apply effects to the area they cover (eg, make all hexes more dangerous).