Logistics and Dragons [No Kaeliks]

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 3:09 pm

So while I haven't committed to running one yet, there is some definite interest in the Den on running a Kobold Fortress type game. I've stated my preference with a group of PCs exploring/clearing out an existing ruin while looking to occupy and expand for <insert_purpose_here>, which is easy enough to do by Play-by-Post.

The hard part comes after the initial survey and clearance - the day-by-day of running a dungeon and the macro-level stuff of interacting with surrounding areas. I could probably fluff all of that, but I've been looking at some possible hex-level tools like Frank's ACKS-inspired Domain rules. This can be pretty system-agnostic, but does anybody else have any thoughts on playing Logistics & Dragons at this level?

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 3:35 pm

Personally I really enjoy logistics and (if I had time) would be pretty disappointed if a Kobold Fortress game I was in wasn't crunchy as fuck. I feel like fluffing "all of that" would defeat the entire purpose of the game.

I unfortunately don't have any specific tool/rule suggestions (beyond having enjoyed reading Frank's Domain rules, yes); I'm just firmly against the fluff option you mentioned.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 5:35 pm

In a computer game like Divinity: Dragon Commander, you can get away with shifting between different granularity levels. Tabletop makes that more challenging. If you're going to have adventurer PCs dungeon-delving, base managers customizing the stronghold, AND rulers issuing mandates for what the lands they control outside the stronghold should be doing, there are two challenges to consider.

1. Players will have different levels of interest in different arenas. If 2 of 4 players don't care to spend half an hour debating whether to install acid or fire jets in the trapped hallway, then there should probably be a way to handle base development quickly.

2. The more meaningfully distinct things the players can focus on, the simpler at least some of them have to be. There's only so much complexity players can absorb.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 7:18 pm

Yeah, it's an issue for how detailed the players want logistics to be, I agree. Stronghold Builder's Guide is a reasonable starting point, but the question is whether the PCs want to go beyond that level of detail. Major factors in logistics might include: food sources, sources of fresh water, sources of income for goods that the dungeon residents cannot produce, trading and information links...

In a Dungeon Keeper scenario, there are certain resources provided or exploitable, and you work within the limitations of what you've got - there's no logistical game (or resources) beyond the immediate dungeon. In a Dwarf Fortress type scenario, there might be additional resources available based on trade, as well as random events. And unlike all of those, we're looking at a game where the PC-level dungeon delvers, the base managers, and the rulers issuing mandates are essentially the same characters. Much like rulers historically have been.

For our hypothetical Kobold Fortress game, I'm still looking at the reclaim model, but once the PCs have "reclaimed" and occupied the dungeon, they get into renovating, expanding, and base management - which means less a focus on individual character actions on a minute-by-minute schedule and more on a day-by-day (or even week-by-week) schedule, dropping down into "real time" whenever there's an event (heroes invading the dungeon, Urd Local #63 goes on strike, food supplies critically low, breakthrough into the local underdark while mining, etc.)

The trick being, natch, a system that can emulate random event + base management. I mean, random events can just be a table or something, or I could plan out some events in advance to see how the PCs handle them. But what do y'all hypothetical players think?

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 9:53 pm

Well, for one I am looking forward to a crunchless system for use in other games. But as far as being a player I like the idea of tables mixed with AH's brain. As in:

Adversary Table wrote:roll of 4, Umber Hulks

Event Table wrote:roll of 12, establish a competing dungeon right next to yours

Consequence Table wrote:roll of 7, causing a coup attempt among your soldiers.

Then the MC takes over extrapolating these results into fluff like backstory, new characters, etc. and crunch that affects whatever resource system ends up being used.

I suppose the drawback there is that someone has to fill the tables.

It's time to fill the tables.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 10:11 pm

I like koku as an abstract mechanic supplies. Because it's a great and immediately easy-to-grok unit of quantity.

So the basic thing is that once you reclaim the dungeon, you exit day-to-day adventures (except when there's an Elf thief or whatever), and you have forces that consume X koku and resources which produce Y koku in the area you control.

That's the bottom-line mechanic.

Hopefully, Y > X, and you have surplus you can use to buy improvements on your dungeon and recruit more dudes.

If Y < X, you need to stage raids or something or else you start losing dudes.

In addition, your dudes produce ($GOLD) worth of goods, represented by your currency of choice - let's just say gold for right now - and if you have skilled dudes (Expert [Carpenter], Expert [Blacksmith]) some improvements might cost less than others.

Random event tables would effect koku production, as well as things that affect your dude population (disease, recruitment, great success at the Goblin fertility rite, etc.)

Now, you also need a Notoriety or Rep mechanic. Which determines not only how often you attract adventurers, and their level, but how much attention you get from rival dungeons/evil tribes/kingdoms/city-states. We're probably looking at some sort of exponential function, so at low levels you want to send kobolds out with flyers to surrounding towns advertising the new dungeon to attract low-level adventurers, but a couple years down the road you're really affecting trade in the region and the locally-elected Doge of the Republic starts putting together a mercenary army to deal with your Kobold Fortress.

Anyway. I don't know if we need to break it down beyond gold & koku.

Because gold can buy pretty much any magic, and koku can be converted into gold at some level.

(And gold can be converted into koku, and at high enough levels magic might make gold or koku directly.)

I suppose some research costs and shit could be thrown in there.

JigokuBastaru wrote:I suppose the drawback there is that someone has to fill the tables.

Tables are just a content-generation exercise. This is easy, and fun. This is indeed why people like Shitmuffin are very fond of random tables, because they remember going through them in old D&D books and they liked the zaniness and unexpectedness of the whole thing. They are not always entirely helpful, but then that is the point: they are there to stop your Kobold Keep game from degenerating into Team Civilization on Easy, where the AI is still trying to bang two rocks together while now you have a Musketman, ho-ho-ho.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 10:14 pm

Wasn't there a game that dealt with that notoriety mechanic- Tecmo's Deception, I think?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 10:28 pm

Wouldn't the entire point of this game be based off of D&D? And wouldn't therefore the player characters have abilities? And wouldn't even the concept of koku be meaningless because the players can use Create Food and Water and Minor Creation to feed carnivores and herbivore's?

Wouldn't the players be able to make their own improvements to the dungeon because they have ranks in Engineering and wall of stone and stone shape?

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 10:41 pm

Still talking with Frank on this one, and if we went for a Tome-style cap on how much you could spent on magic items per turn - I'd guess it would be weekly - then you would see major magic items and artifacts be paid for over multiple turns. So you could pay for/build magic walls in installments, but the enchantments won't be active until they're up; artifacts would be the equivalent of Wonders in Civlization.

Kaelik wrote:Wouldn't the entire point of this game be based off of D&D? And wouldn't therefore the player characters have abilities? And wouldn't even the concept of koku be meaningless because the players can use Create Food and Water and Minor Creation to feed carnivores and herbivore's?

Wouldn't the players be able to make their own improvements to the dungeon because they have ranks in Engineering and wall of stone and stone shape?

Sure. And PC abilities by themselves might be substantial. But if we start the game at around 6th level - where the Leadership feat comes into play - your abilities are going to be limited. We're looking at starter dungeons leading into higher-level play, not necessarily PC archliches looking to build a nice retirement crypt.

But yeah, there would have to be issues set aside for being able to make walls of iron or skeleton workforces that don't consume koku, and PCs themselves might be able to do some of the work of planning and engineering and fabricating that speeds things up. There were whole strategies with the Stronghold Builder's Guide that amounted to that. But likely your Nascent Patrician Kobolds (NPKs) are going to want toilet paper or wyvern eggs or something that they can't fabricate on their own. So it's still going to be something of a resource management game, however you slice it.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 11:33 pm

Kaelik wrote:Wouldn't the entire point of this game be based off of D&D? And wouldn't therefore the player characters have abilities? And wouldn't even the concept of koku be meaningless because the players can use Create Food and Water and Minor Creation to feed carnivores and herbivore's?

Wouldn't the players be able to make their own improvements to the dungeon because they have ranks in Engineering and wall of stone and stone shape?

No. Create Food and Water can feed anything, but not very many things. A fifth level Cleric can sustain 15 people for one day per spell slot. That's enough that an adventuring party (although not their horses) can persist indefinitely in the desert or whatever, but it's pretty much meaningless on the Logistics and Dragons scale. It's basically the koku output of one family farm.

Player characters have abilities, but the ability of clerics to act as extra farms or whatever is nearly meaningless. Plant Growth is a much bigger deal.

-Username17

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 11:37 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:No. Create Food and Water can feed anything, but not very many things. A fifth level Cleric can sustain 15 people for one day per spell slot. That's enough that an adventuring party (although not their horses) can persist indefinitely in the desert or whatever, but it's pretty much meaningless on the Logistics and Dragons scale. It's basically the koku output of one family farm.

Player characters have abilities, but the ability of clerics to act as extra farms or whatever is nearly meaningless. Plant Growth is a much bigger deal.

-Username17

Create Food and Water is for carnivores. 7 Cubic feat of Rice seems like kind of a fucking lot for one spell.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Mon Sep 28, 2015 11:53 pm

7 cubic feet of rice is 9725lbs of rice. That's 2431 man-days of food in terms of raw calories. Your major obstacle isn't going to be how much food you can generate with minor creation, but rather your organization's ability to cook, distribute, eat and digest it all within the 7 hours it will exist for. Now, obviously you could do it, but it ends up being a full time job for a cleric of at least 9th level.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Sep 29, 2015 12:16 am

Grek wrote:7 cubic feet of rice is 9725lbs of rice. That's 2431 man-days of food in terms of raw calories. Your major obstacle isn't going to be how much food you can generate with minor creation, but rather your organization's ability to cook, distribute, eat and digest it all within the 7 hours it will exist for. Now, obviously you could do it, but it ends up being a full time job for a cleric of at least 9th level.

But no one is talking about running a kingdom. We are talking about a dungeon. It takes very little work to distribute to an entire dungeon, and can feed literally everyone in the dungeon (and some cows left over) in the 7-12 hours that it lasts depending on duration system.

I mean, I don't understand why you are saying "digest" once it has been eaten, sure damn seems like you stop worrying about the timing. If it can magically disappear from the stomach, why can't it magically disappear the glycogen in your cells?

You feed however many people you have in the dungeon with a single casting and you move the fuck on to plan "use stoneshape and wall of stone to build dungeon" and "craft craft craft the undead." And yeah like 200 people out of 2000 have to be involved in distributing the food, or you build an elaborate distribution system.

But since it takes 2000 people to feed 200 people not farming, having 2000 people in my dungeon none of whom farm seems like a way better idea than having 2200 people in my dungeon with 9/10s of the area devoted to farming inside a dungeon for some reason, and only having 200 people to do anything else.

spongeknight · Post by **spongeknight** » Tue Sep 29, 2015 12:25 am

Also, quite obviously, making resetting traps or wondrous items of create food and water solves all problems of supply instantly. So... there's that.

RelentlessImp · Post by **RelentlessImp** » Tue Sep 29, 2015 1:17 am

Starting to veer a bit into Tippyverse territory with magically resetting traps of create food and water here.

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Tue Sep 29, 2015 1:17 am

Ancient History wrote: so at low levels you want to send kobolds out with flyers to surrounding towns advertising the new dungeon to attract low-level adventurers, but a couple years down the road you're really affecting trade in the region and the locally-elected Doge of the Republic starts putting together a mercenary army to deal with your Kobold Fortress.

I quite like this scenario, in such one, I think I would want to try and establish an negotiation with the Republic. Where we do as we do, attracting adventurers & like to our dungeons, while I guess they're getting business via Adventuring expenses, population control, or some other political reason to keep having "an enemy" to face.

I'm not sure how "Big" the Logistics & Dragons would be, but I do like the idea of your random tables. So I'd say I'd be interested in your game, so long as you got the room, and not more "economic-savvy" players have priority I guess.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Tue Sep 29, 2015 2:13 am

http://www.somethingawful.com/feature-a ... ngeon-faq/
http://www.somethingawful.com/news/diab ... on-barrel/

Dungeon HR notices would be fun to write.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Sep 29, 2015 2:26 am

So would the internal memos.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Tue Sep 29, 2015 4:23 am

I'm sure no one wants to hear it, but this sounds a great deal like the base management aspects of my own work with mousetrap and a far better fit for the sorts of methodology I used in that rather than accounting heavy peasant management on hexes.

You want some fairly significant "short cuts" to be taken when it comes to things like maintenance costs, build times, troop supply, troop training and equipping. In general flat out removal of maintenance or anything that requires multiple turns of tracking until the completion, or tracking large sets of highly variable numbers hex by hex or room by room, is desirable in every field you can simplify. Which is most of them, because in the end the single main goal of your system is simply to output interesting dungeon encounter maps, and not to accurately represent primitive agrarian economies in motion.

Meanwhile you need some better excuses to build seemingly useless but cool things in your bases. Things which don't produce fucking "koku", or anything really. Which I do with luxury as a character power resource, or which you could do with any system that SOMEHOW ties character power or magical item power directly to owning an ornamental fountain or a sword collecting vault.

And when you spend a large amount of time in your base being attacked, you need excuses to have player characters and other major characters turn up in various interesting places doing things OTHER than "being ready for the attack", which means you want something like my drift mechanic that randomly assigns characters to a regular or daily activity (with potential equipment limitations) to be interrupted by invasions. In turn further motivating interesting rooms like private bedrooms or private dining halls so they can better control their locations, equipment sets, access to nearby armories, and how many fortifications are between them and invaders on common drift outcomes they want to manipulate.

If you are going to go with regional domination you want reasons to care about specific sites and specific resources OTHER than their basic yield in your primitive fantasy themed GDP unit. My own solutions were limiting large regular income sources (in EXCEEDINGLY coarse granularity) almost exclusively to taxation only available to unchallenged rulers with the right facilities, making religion a population limited resource that cults again with the right facilities would have to compete over, and making special resources like adamantium mines a simple one time "you need access by ownership, treaty or expensive temporary contract to an adamantium resource to make cool adamantium things".

You don't have to do the things I did they way they did them, but you kind of need SOME sort of solution. Simply going with the ACKS style plans of basically "Do a big fucking spreadsheet of income, expenditure, savings, etc... in medieval GDP units no one understands" is (barely) workable for some groups, and if you can round such a group up anywhere you would probably do it here, but anything that requires you to start tracking all that stuff in multiple hexes possibly for multiple factions is a LOT of actually entirely needless work for system that actual only requires really very simple and largely unrelated outcomes more suitable for actual RPG scale play.

And without a lot of extra stuff it doesn't ever give you reason to build an ornamental flower atrium, much less to put a heated bathtub in it, or a way for your characters to find themselves there during encounters, and you really need reasons for that sort of thing, and SOME sort of solutions that provide them are vital.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Sep 29, 2015 11:29 pm

I'm blanking on dungeons that traditionally include ornamental flower atriums. Which doesn't negate any of the points you've made re: the dungeon as a living and working space. What is does bring to mind is a more fundamental question of the dungeon as a center of activity. Most of the dungeons that player character adventures delve into are some combination of living space for X monsters and either abandoned from their original purpose, purpose-built and in use, or purpose-built and subsequently repurposed.

Cases in point...

The Sunless Citadel from the adventure of the same name is predominantly a ruin, which has become a haven for kobolds and some other entities.

The Tomb of Horrors is, as mentioned, a tomb, and purpose-built as trap-filled adventure-bait.

A lot of dungeons don't give the logistics a serious go-over. Let's take the Sunless Citadel for example, because it's a much more accessible site with a living contingent. The kobolds have an ecological impact - they need so many calories per day per kobold just to exist, plus auxiliary material needs as far as clothing, fire, fresh water, etc. So the Sunless Citadel is primarily a base of operations for them - and because these aren't farmer kobolds, they have to be getting their food from somewhere, either hunting and gathering or more likely raids on passing traffic and nearby settlements (outlying farms, small villages, etc.), some of which might be a day or two away. Depending on the number of kobolds, that could mean that every town within the hex loses a couple sheep, a cow, and any unattended children every week - or if the keep is located at the border or vertex, the raids might be spread out to multiple hexes.

You add bigger monsters to the dungeon, the issue increases. Dragons, magical critters that they are, probably need a lot of calories to keep going and their depredations are spread out over many hexes - which is easy for them, because they can fly. They probably do this for the same reason kobolds: the lair provides protection and a base of operations, a place to store their stuff, and it gives them access to a wide variety of food sources (as opposed to, say, a dragon that just eats a village and moves on, never carrying more than it can). At the upper end of implausibility you get Illithid villages, which with their special dietary requirements really have significant problems on basic logistics.

So there is something, I think, to Frank's idea of koku requirements based on how many and what kind of monsters are in your dungeon - and where you get that food and supplies as well. But then there are the ornamental atriums.

Because while we all have the image in our heads of the procedurally-generated random dungeon, where the orc waits quivering with anticipation in his 10' x 10' room, guarding a chest, we rarely ask ourselves what the orc is doing there in the first place. Because a dungeon isn't always just a monster squatting ground, where everybody occupies their niche and preys on passing traffic - you'd have to have a lot of foot traffic through a dungeon to meet the basic caloric requirements, unless you staff everything with molds, slimes, and the undead. Especially when you have the notion of a kind of boss or Dungeon Keeper-like figure in the dungeon. Then, it's usually note just a matter of "ruin acting as a convenient base of opertions" - the dungeon might be custom-built for a given purpose, or repurposed to suit a specific goal.

So for example, Orthanc and Minas Morgul were not built as Lairs of Evil. They were built for their specific purpose, fell into ruin or were conquered, and then repurposed as a Wizard Tower and Nazgul HQ respectively. Similarly, the Necromancer's fortress in Mirkwood was there pretty much specifically so that Sauron could corrupt the spiders and keep an eye on things outside up north.

So PCs need to decide not just that they're going to be running a dungeon, but what kind of dungeon they're going to run and what the purpose (if any) is - because that effects the tone and style of the campaign.

You might, for example, be a drow colony that is trying to start fresh on the surface because the Underdark is getting crowded - you strike air in a dark, shady grove and plunder a nearby Elven cemetery for dressed stone as a cheap building material. You're out there for long-term survival, which means you pay close attention to food sources, waste disposal, fortifications and the like - you probably build slower, but more like a keep than a bunch of orcs squatting in a ruin.

Or you might be a cabal of shadowmancers, looking to pursue your illegal studies far from prying eyes - in which case you might take pains to avoid attracting attention, including establishing covert trading links for food or keeping a discreet herd of rothe or something, and the "dungeon" starts out as an outgrowth of the labs proper where you repurpose failed experiments as guardians.

Or you might be a band of enterprising kobolds who, finding an old outpost of the fallen Dark Empire, decide to set up shop - building some traps, attracting bigger monsters and adventurers to prey on.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Wed Sep 30, 2015 12:28 am

A Morale mechianic might be a way to incentive atriums. If your dungeon is purely utilitarian, then your monsters won't like it, they won't be invested in it, and they'll have low morale.

This has two effects.

1) It increases your upkeep costs, because the monsters aren't going to care enough to not trash the place, so basic maintenance issues crop up faster. Think Cabrini Green but with umber hulks.

2)It makes it more difficult to retain monsters. As soon as they have to put in effort or take risks you'll start hemoraging population, because they don't care enough to put their necks on the line for your shitty little dungeon.

Building thinks like flower atriums and public torture chambers increases morale and prevents these problems. If your dungeon is luxurious enough, it even gives you large bonuses to recruitment and retention.

Of course, not everyone appreciates every luxury. The best stocked braineteria in the country is probably only going to be appealing to Ilthids.

Shady314 · Post by **Shady314** » Wed Sep 30, 2015 1:22 am

Flower atriums are crucial. Where else do you put the assassin vines and poisoned water fountains! What sort of dungeon are you running here?!

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Wed Sep 30, 2015 2:01 am

hyzmarca wrote:A Morale mechianic might be a way to incentive atriums.

Staff morale is only workable to incentivize useless buildings intended for broad access by staff, it doesn't help much for your personal private zen gardens, bed chambers and sword vaults. It also is a poor way of making sword vaults period compared to something where they actually somehow profitably store cool swords in them or similar.

Aside from that managing staff morale in the way you suggested is... an accounting issue. maintenance of any sort is a problematic accounting/tracking issue and a simplified system with one off up front costs for your staff is by far preferable. Taking a maintenance mechanic AND then modifying it by morale for discounts/expense blow outs AND then including a check for and calculate morale attrition phase is resulting in some pretty complex stuff. Then making that ALSO dependent on specific staff subtypes while hard to conceptually avoid is a further multiplying of your accounting costs.

Personally I did implement some pretty hacky staff morale boosting buildings and such, with a Happiness/Fear loyalty split, and a resulting morale mechanic that uses that... buuut "mechanic" is a very broad stretch to describe it because when faced with "and what the fuck does morale/loyalty DO?" I couldn't get a better answer than "bullshit circumstantial bonus to borderline fairy tea party loyalty checks".

Staff service provision buildings in my system, and I think conceptually in most also would, perform a much more important role in simply keeping your staff on site. There is nothing formal you can do with a loyalty bonus that should ever really get you to the point that your mere minions will have the ability to directly resist the social trickery of your arch nemesis trying to get information or convert an agent or something. But simply arranging it so there aren't regularly vulnerable base guardian minions wandering around a nearby insecure town because it's the only place they can get lunch certainly helps. Even tracking that could get stupid complex without some sort of restraint so I would suggest a very short list of basic needs that if met will let you safely keep your minions on site 24-7 indefinitely if you wanted to.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Wed Sep 30, 2015 2:56 am

Ancient History wrote:A lot of dungeons don't give the logistics a serious go-over.

While I think that any game focusing on dungeon or base management similar to my own or what you are proposing certainly should give logistics a more serious go-over than "Orc in room guards chest forever", I think there are limits beyond which tracking the logistics are not beneficial.

Specifically for instance while food and supplies are something your base/dungeon will need, simply securing a source, any source, and paying once off fees for constructing staff housing is the end of tracking it as far as I am concerned.

Basically I'm fine with "Well you guys COULD build your fortress on this here cool rock in the middle of this barren desert, but that means you WILL need to set up a trade route to a nearby location that has food or you will need to build an actual farm on site.

But I'm not particularly fine with "well you guys just hired another 50 humans and 5 ogres and that puts you over your food supply limit which means you need to build another 2 small farms, or 1 large farm to produce either 50 or 100 food units to cover the 45 food unit short fall..." because in a heavy base management scenario just tracking those 50 extra humans and 5 extra ogres and their gear and their skills and their postings within the dungeon (and their morale, and potential off duty meandering) is enough work as is, and a higher priority for relevance to an actual RPG game, and of more interest to most players.

Shrieking Banshee · Post by **Shrieking Banshee** » Wed Sep 30, 2015 3:22 am

Did somebody say Dungeon Logistics?
http://mangafox.me/manga/dungeon_meshi/

Check out this manga called Dungeon Meshi. Fundamentally its about cooking and eating monsters in a D&D style multilevel dungeon facility. But it also goes into physiology of the monsters, and the logic that keeps the dungeon working renewably.