Low Fantasy World -Magic, feudalism, etc. Individuals Matter -Each player plays a small handfull of heroes -need a mechanism to determine number of heroes per player -contribute the most to the game, get another hero -Heroes don't die easily. -players may find themselves in situations where dying is the narrative choice that is attractive (captured, feeble, etc.) and can then choose to die in some heroic manner (escape, battle, etc.) -NPC units don't directly initiate action against heroes. Time Passes Quickly -Each (bi)weekly turn represents a large hunk of time, allowing heroes to live, grow old and die within the span of a real year Balance against the need to be able to react to others and not be overrun by a carefully planned strike. -one turn == one year, so 52 years go by each real year, or 104 years go by, if turns are biweekly -one turn == one season, so one month of RT == one year or or one year RT == 12 years or 24 in double-time. Orders Are Fuzzy -Orders do not feel programmatic, if possible -May not be totally possible. Uniquely identifying things would be difficult with no realtime feedback. -Examples: "Travel north." "Find tradegood for sale in Ghent." "Find market for ink." "Duel with Lord Golham." -Perhaps players are restricted to some total of orders per turn, or maybe some artificial action points are spent,w hich are also limited. Reports Are Narrative -Reports shove the boring statistic-laden tables to the bottom and keep the interesting narrative stuff at the top. -Players gain points towards heroes for making their narrative turn section public. Realistic -minimal offenses against reality THE NITTY-GRITTY DETAILS --- ------------ ------- Randomness should be restricted to pass/fail situations. It should never take a random number of days to accomplish or fail to accomplish an action. Actions should either succeed, fail immediately, or fail after a set number of days. Perhaps one's initial hero may be issued commands that work now, while others have some sort of time lag in their orders. A man travelling fast on a horse can do 50 miles/ day, easily. So maybe 16 regions in a season? Map divided into regions that take at least a week to cross, so a noble might travel 32 regions per year at most. Travel is as non-detailed as possible. Maybe the idea of square regions should be scrapped in favour of something more fuzzy, like terrain blocks or something. The map is toroidal in nature. The weather is approximately the same everywhere at the same time. Major (navigable) rivers fall along the edges between regions. A river region may have some impassable barrier, such as falls or rapids. Some rivers are more forable than others and have a reduced crossing penalty. Movement penalties work exponentially with a cap. Each turn/year divided into four sections, each with two months: Spring Spring1 Spring2 Summer Summer1 Summer2 Fall Fall1 Fall2 Winter Winter1 Winter2 It would be nice for there to be several races, perhaps my standard human, elveri, duor and golba. 001 Knave 010 Cleric 011 Trader 100 Ranger 101 Sailor 110 Noble 111 Mage,Warrior Human Elveri Duor Golba Cleric yes no yes no Knave yes no no yes Noble yes yes yes no Mage yes yes yes yes Ranger yes yes no no Sailor yes yes no yes Trader yes no yes yes Warrior yes yes yes yes -- Lifespan 50 100 50 50 Height (ft) 6 6 4 4 Settlements yes no yes no Remarry yes no no yes Human: The generalist and third. Elveri: The spirit and second. Elveri generally advance slowly, but living twice as long as average gives them an advantage. Duor: The body and first. Golba: The mind and fourth. The Duor were raised out of the matter of the universe by the Creator. The came from Outside. The humans were the first attempt of the Elveri. The Golba were the second. Humans have the Many Gods, but the Duor worship only the Creator.