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Knight
 
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Last Login: Thursday, October 18, 2007 3:10 PM
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So, I have an idea for a system I'd like to run. In relation to this I'm going to lay out some of my ideas and what I want to achieve.
1) Dynastic
I'd like to run a dynastic system. One of the most frustrating aspects of most LRP events from a dynastic POV is that waiting for your children to grow up will rarely happen IC. I'd like to run/play a game which has the Pendragon feel to it.
So, what I propose is this - events with 20 year 'downtimes' - the exact format is a little... hazy but basically for each Character (not player per se) their life exists in a 4-'phase' cycle.
Phase 1 - Young (about 20)
Phase 2 - Prime (35-45)
Phase 3 - Old (55+)
Phase 4 - Retainer
Any children you have would happen in the downtime between 1 and 2, and would be in their Phase 1 in your Phase 3. The actions you take during your life would benefit your house.
During Phase 4 you take a 'time out' from your house and play a retainer in either someone elses house (usually allied) or as directed. You can, obiously, skip this phase, but lose any benefit.
Your character doesn't really get anymore powerful (and in fact, may get less powerful) but the House can. Also, as a retainer you share in the power of the house you are allied to - which increases the 'power' of your character.
An example, I think
Tom and Mary are playing in a game with four different Houses Alpha , Beta, Gamma and Theta
1) Tom is playing in Phase 1 in House Alpha, and Mary is a Retainer in House Gamma.
In downtime, Tom's character has a child (Daughter)
2) Tom is playing in Phase 2 in Alpha, and Mary is now in Phase 1 in Alpha (playing Tom's daughter) Mary's character is created based on the increase in power of House Gamma during the previous downtime. In the next down time, Mary's character has a child (3 actually)
3)Tom is now in Phase 3, Mary is in Phase 2. Others are playing her children (or not - they may have died)
4)Tom now and goes and plays a retainer for House Gamma, and Mary is in Phase 3.
Next phase, they start the cycle again.
So, characters are transitory - only the family survives. You can (mostly) trust your retainers as their future character is linked to your success.
2)Mystical
There are mystics, who use and tap the power of magic and the spirits. They are outside of the Cycle and have different objectives and concern. The most important things about the Mystics? They don't age and they don't have a family.
They don't go through the Phases cycle - they play the same character throughout the events. until they die or the campaign ends. Mostly, they get to watch their friends and allies age and die.
3) Format
This is what I'm mostly wavering over.
I have sort of 3 ideas
a) 3 Phases per event - event is one day.
Real quick and fast paced... but maybe to fast
b) 3 Phases per event - event is 3 days
Much closer to the 'standard' event concept ... but 3 days is longer than I want to run it
c) 1 phase per event - event is 1 day
This would have to be run often or the dynastic feel would be lost - weekly or monthly.
d) 1 phase per event - event is 3 days
Dilutes the dynastic feel too much as you can't run 3 day events regularly enought (weekly is out, monthly is hard work)
Also, there would be a set time for the Campaign to run before I start a new one - 20 phases (about 400 years) and the timescale will have interesting ramifications.
Final Note.
It's the situation I'm interested in - not the setting. The setting could be Fantasy, could be Modern, could be Futuristic. It all would work. Fantasy may be the default, but it's not assumed.
Ok, comments?
Perdo Vim 200?
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Heroic Knight
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Last Login: Thursday, September 04, 2008 11:23 AM
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Sounds pretty cool to me - but in order to generate a rich set of inter-character relationships and conflicts (rather than inter-family) you might have to do a lot of character briefing.
eg '10 years ago you were imprisoned by X after a duel went wrong... 2 years ago you staged a grand robbery of Y, and you think Z knows you were responsible...' (although a lot more detailed and literate than that, see Grand Design for examples)
It might be hard to prevent down-time roleplaying having a huge influence, unless you can come up with a persuasive reason for families having limited contact in the intervening years.
Unless you market it right, I would expect a disproportionate number of players to be uninterested in the generational game, and to play mystics instead for the continuity of character.
(chris)
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Heroic Knight
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| I'd find it interesting to play as a dynastic character, though I think you're right, it would have to be pretty frequent to maintain interest - I'd say once everyone month or two at the outside (to give yourself time to write it, while keeping it still regular). Frequency often (though not always) means the vast majority of your player base would have to be local and/or not playing many other systems. Hmm. Have you considered one phase an event, events as an evening "pub meet" sort of thing? You can hire a room in a pub/hall/whatever, and playing on a weekday cuts down the number of other games it would clash with. You'd need a downtime in order to cover what's happened between games, but there's so many different ways to run that that I'd leave it up to you. Having uptime being arguably less important than downtime doesn't necessarily make a system unpopular - look at Maelstrom, but may well not be what you want to run. As for timeperiod, I'd quite like the idea of starting in the current year with each dynasty involved in some business/enterprise/government/whatever which needs to progress in order to keep alive, and then run the game until the end of the timeperiod, with technological advances largely extrapolated from what the dynasties achieve. By the end of the game, we could be teleporting psychics on the moon, or we could be post apocalyptic survivialists wondering where it all went wrong.
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- LT - Captain Iolanthe Swan
- Riftworld - Jenna Neraid, Clan Sceptre
- Brighton Below - Drizzle
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Heroic Knight
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Last Login: Thursday, September 04, 2008 2:56 PM
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| One thing I would be sure to do is standardize the length of time between each phase. Ten years? Twenty years? Twenty years lets you play someone who is 20, then 40, then 60 (or 30, 50, and 70, etc. depending or your starting age). I'd say a two/three day event is one phase, each event two/three months apart. Gives you long enough at the event to get into trouble and back out, but also long enough time inbetween to figure what's been going on the last 20 years.
crazy yank
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