Logistics and Dragons [No Kaeliks]

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Tue Oct 06, 2015 9:46 pm

Well, I'm sure it's no surprise. But I don't like it.

At a basic level the plan appears to be to take an incomplete tack on and throw it in with heavy amounts of bullshit as basically a pile of character power/D&D action irrelevant motivation and rewards for a D&D campaign. That could work. It's messy fairy tea party melt down territory, but it's pretty much fine.

But the actual details revealed so far are a LOT of currencies, phases, and needless accounting to achieve that outcome. After all if at the moment this material basially just does ? and interacts with your D&D raiding of stuff by means of ? and incursions are handled in D&D terms of ? and the map dungeon generates D&D encounters of ? then why the hell do you have to use multiple currency units and track income, expenditure and savings across multiple phases with multiple undefined numbers of both reactive and active strategic turn actions per player per turn in order to generate... ?

I know it's bare bones, but the first bare bones need to be some sort of link to the actual D&D campaign. Once again, integration is the most important foundation, what does this all MEAN for players of a D&D game. Your FIRST material should have been things like "this is what an incursion looks like in D&D terms" or "if you bring your minions to raid one of those caravans this is how it is handled as an addition to a D&D encounter OR as a substitution for one" or "this is why the hell you hoard "Gil" instead of spending it on better magic swords". I mean, ideally it actually would have been simpler things like ""this is how a basic minion interacts with D&D combat" or "here is a basic example of a strategic player action and it's value in D&D terms", but your structure doesn't really seem to allow for something as sensible as that. Still, you needed something, anything to establish your points of reference. Instead you are establishing foundations of a rather complex entirely unconnected game, and the more you define and elaborate on that the harder it will be to tie it back down to any sort of relation to the D&D aspect.

I mean unless the intention is to entirely drop the D&D rules set and transition entirely to the new rules set as of the foundation of dungeon keeper koku kingdoms. But that isn't the impression I'd gotten.

Also the starvation thing where the weak critters that eat the least starve before the strong critters that eat the most seems weird, and the denizens thing seems like a largely needless level of differentiation that could instead be covered perfectly fine by transitioning some incursions to minions instead. Your Gill unit exchange rate seems low in terms of 3.x wealth by level guidelines. And why the fuck do you think adding to the cluster fuck by actually using the stronghold builders guide is a good idea?

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Oct 06, 2015 10:01 pm

PhoneLobster wrote:I know it's bare bones, but the first bare bones need to be some sort of link to the actual D&D campaign.

Uh-uh. Bottom-up design is the exact wrong approach for this. The idea is that you want to manage your level of abstraction - we know that building and running a dungeon using D&D3.x rules is just about plausible, with enough mindcaulk and magic teapartying - we don't need a proof of concept for that. What you need is a system to manage building and running a dungeon abstractly without completely thumbing your nose at the rules, and for that you need a top-down design principle, one where players can get a feel for it. You're fucking about with gil and koku because it's less paperwork than measuring how much rice, bacon, and copper pieces you have on hand (gil being a working unit of wealth, I'm not married to it by any means).

You're right, I still need to muck about with what constitutes an incursion and how combat works at an abstract level - and let's be honest, 3.x lacks a good set of mass combat rules, so that's going to take some thinking. I just wanted to get the bare bones of the economy set forward first, because that's your primary logistical concern, the backbone that attracting minions and feeding your troops and building a dungeon comes out of.

As for Stronghold Builder's Guidebook...I'll be honest, I don't like reinventing the wheel any more than I have to. This is the RPG equivalent of being able to zoom from Adventurer Mode to Fortress Mode and back again in Dwarf Fortress; the less rewriting I have to do the better. I'm also not going to re-stat any critters or reformulate any spells or magic items while I'm at it.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Oct 06, 2015 10:10 pm

I don't see the reason for gil. Having your gold economy currency trade 1:1 with gold seems a total no brainer to me.

-Username17

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Oct 06, 2015 10:14 pm

I'm not sold on gil either, but I felt like it might be important to make the distinction between "money/goods with value denoted in gold" and "actual yellow metal you can dig out of the ground."

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Tue Oct 06, 2015 10:16 pm

Ancient History wrote:Uh-uh. Bottom-up design is the exact wrong approach for this. The idea is that you want to manage your level of abstraction

I don't see "managed abstraction" happening here. What I see is a blow out in the "management" side of things with rapidly exploding complexity as you fail to abstract and instead try and represent every little detail realistically and accurately instead of you know, resorting to some managed abstraction. And all that again, without any actual connection to D&D, or more importantly any kind of integrated goal of even sharing the same game space with even the concept of a D&D style game, let alone the 3.x rules set specifically.

As for Stronghold Builder's Guidebook...I'll be honest, I don't like reinventing the wheel any more than I have to. This is the RPG equivalent of being able to zoom from Adventurer Mode to Fortress Mode and back again in Dwarf Fortress; the less rewriting I have to do the better. I'm also not going to re-stat any critters or reformulate any spells or magic items while I'm at it.

So you plan to take D&D 3.x, not suited to the game you want to play. Then instead of "just" making necessary hacky changes and tacking on your system you intend to ALSO take the failed clusterfuck that is the stronghold builders guide and now your hacky changes need to be made to accomodate it as well as a base system not suited to your goals? It isn't not reinventing the wheel, it's adding more obstacles between you and your goal.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Tue Oct 06, 2015 11:40 pm

I have enjoyed playing in AH's game and would love to play more. The very first question that comes to my mind is what rules would you want regarding crafting traps. By DMG rules any 6th level cleric with craft wondrous items could make a Create Food and Water trap that would supply tens of thousands of people with food. I'm fine with that but does that bother you?

The resetting trap of X seems like it would be a common feature and something which should be thought about early

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 1:29 am

I can say with absolute certainty that I would never play in any game using that garbage system.

I mean, fuck, you start by assuming maximum exploitation of a hexes fucking KOKU that bullshit that doesn't even make sense, regardless of if anyone actually fucking farms or even lives on the fucking hex. Basically the optimal move is to move a single undead to every unclaimed hex and the shore up your borders with a big ass dragon, and nevermind that one undead can't farm, and big ass dragon also can't farm, who gives a shit because you still get all the sweet fucking KOKU from every single hex that you are for some reason supposed to care about. The dungeon itself seems basically fucking worthless and useless, and meaningless, and won't be involved in the game at all, because you aren't actually playing dungeon keeper where you get resources by investing resources int he dungeon, instead you are playing, a really really really really really really really really dumb version of Dominions, where rapid expansion with no infrastructure actually gets you more resources.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 1:38 am

Kaelik wrote:I can say with absolute certainty that I would never play in any game using that garbage system.

That's fair. Not that I would ever let you in any of my games, but it is very much an extremely rough sketch of a system just to get some ideas down, and certainly needs much more thought and effort before it's anywhere near to playable.

you start by assuming maximum exploitation of a hexes fucking KOKU

...no. Although now that you've said that, I suppose I should make it clear that this isn't a "conquer the hexes" kind of game. I meant it more along the lines of "the hex your dungeon is in determines your base koku." So if you start out in a rainforest, you've got more food available than, say, in a desert. But obviously that needs to be spelled out a little better.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 1:53 am

But why even have hexes at that point? Why not just make it site based, and have a sliding scale of Site Desirability (possibly on several axes such as Food Supply, Water Supply, Minerals, Distance to Civilization, etc.) vs Site Hazards (again, also on several axes, with each one being a possible enemy type who would like to chase us out of our new digs). The basic principle is that all low-hanging fruit has already been taken up by civilization, so if you want a desirable site you either have to go off into the wilderness alone and fend for yourself, or you have to pick a place which everyone else has decided isn't worth trying to claim due to how dangerous it is. Think less ACKS and more Dwarf Fortress + Dominions Scales.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 1:55 am

Because hexes help give sites relative locations. And you can build and operate holdings in hexes with sufficient resources and minion power.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 2:19 am

You can also do that with an ordinary map. Better, even, since locations don't have to be fixed distances from each other.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 2:24 am

Hexes or grids or more amorphous custom shaped abstract regions, or a simple to scale map where you just measure the damn distances makes for a relatively cosmetic choice if the related scale and granularity choices you make are going to remain pretty much the same.

At least for hopefully broadly abstracted strategic holdings and travel rules, which is about all that level of positioning detail should be handling.

I do however feel that hexes are a terrible cosmetic choice that will make your game look like it comes from the 1980s. But it is just a minor cosmetic thing.

flare22 · Post by **flare22** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 4:33 am

Just letting you know I'm interested in joining this game i can likewise commit to 2 or three posts a day more on weekends hope its not to late to join

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 5:28 am

The argument that hexes can look pretty ugly is a fair point. I run MTP fantasy strategy games for my friends sometimes, and nowadays we usually use a Dominions-style map and divide things into provinces.

In a game where you're playing Dungeon Lord, I figure that trying to totally dominate the surface might not always be a significant objective. Maybe you just want to place dungeons you control in different provinces by building or capturing sites. By making terrain blocks bigger, it's not

Right now, I'm running a game where one PC has taken over a magical college in a jungle. The Weepwood is divided into three provinces, one of which has the Azure College, another has a pirate village next to a concealed harbor, and the last has particularly rough terrain where a wizard hermit lived. But since the jungle is pretty huge, I can just make up new stuff to add into one of the three provinces when I roll for random events. With hexes, it'd be more difficult to seamlessly retcon a river, village, or dungeon into the map.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 6:42 am

If the players are doing things on a kingdom scale, I would say the inability to retcon a river is a good thing. The players should probably be able to plan around whatever rivers their kingdom has.

But the main argument for hexes is that they make assigning zones of control easy. You can do that kind of thing on a freehand map with a ruler and a compass, but that is bullshit and I don't want to do it. Fundamentally, in a game where you control amounts of territory, it should be possible to get more territory. And that means that from a playability standpoint you need to have discreet units of territory on the map to acquire.

Now one possibility is to have arbitrary counties on the map like Crusader Kings. But the truth is, those are hexes that happen to not be the same size or shape. And in Crusader Kings that's actually defensible because "Derbyshire" or "Jerusalem" are places that have real meaning to people. But in a fantasy setting, the county of "Falgorh" or whatever doesn't mean shit to anyone, so you might as well make your land units be something that has consistent in game meaning - like having a fixed number that a pegasus rider can effectively patrol or whatever. And the qualities that give you that are to have the hexes be of roughly equal land area.

-Username17

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 7:04 am

But isn't the premise of this thread that you will be taking control of a single dungeon, rather than several provinces, or even all of a single province? Hexes make sense if you're concerned with who controls which tracks of land, but for the purposes of a Kobold Fortress campaign you probably don't care. While you might have farms or herds or something, you're not representing an entire country of kobolds and you probably couldn't cultivate even 1% of the hex without the game turning from Kobold Fortress to Kings of Koboldonia.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 7:10 am

Grek wrote:But isn't the premise of this thread that you will be taking control of a single dungeon, rather than several provinces, or even all of a single province? Hexes make sense if you're concerned with who controls which tracks of land, but for the purposes of a Kobold Fortress campaign you probably don't care. While you might have farms or herds or something, you're not representing an entire country of kobolds and you probably couldn't cultivate even 1% of the hex without the game turning from Kobold Fortress to Kings of Koboldonia.

They long ago gave up any actual desire to run a Kobold Fortress campaign. They just want to play Dominions while lying about playing Kobold Fortress, because after all, you can't dig bigger holes underground to make more mushroom farms for your dungeon to support more soldiers, you have to conquer the neighboring hexes to produce more PRECIOUS KOKU in order to get more creatures in your dungeon.

Which of course, immediately breaks down because to farm that PRECIOUS KOKU you would have to actually have people outside the dungeon in those hexes farming, which is of course, why the system allows you to farm hexes without having anyone actually present farming, so that they can trick the players into thinking they are still running Kobold Fortress while they spend all their time and effort conquering the countryside.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 7:21 am

@Frank

Put that way, I can definitely see the value of making land units a consistent size. My game's not focused on tracking specific units of wealth and supplies, but if it was then having some consistency to the outcome of conquering a settlement to boost an empire's income would be nice.

I am still attached to the idea of continued exploration of a territory unit potentially revealing new features. Sometimes when you send a bunch of dudes hacking through the jungle with machetes, they really do find a lake nobody had heard of before that drains to the bay. Or maybe taking out a dragon opens up significant trade routes that have strategic implications for the rest of the game. But not all games happen on uncharted frontiers, and if you're in a relatively civilized area, then starting off with a reliable understanding of the local geography pretty reasonable.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 9:22 am

Avoraciopoctules wrote:I am still attached to the idea of continued exploration of a territory unit potentially revealing new features.

While there is a lot to be said about not shifting the foundations of the universe from underneath the players whenever you feel like it there is absolutely ZERO about any specific map drawing methodology or unit of area that in ANY way prevent the map from being wrong.

Undiscovered, recently changed, or deliberately hidden map details COULD still emerge regardless of whether you are using open plan maps, grids, hexes, custom shaped regions or make believe word of mouth that never hits paper.

Hexes neither prevent you from creating brand new rivers when you want to, nor save players from you creating brand new rivers when they don't want you to.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 9:44 am

Dean wrote:I have enjoyed playing in AH's game and would love to play more. The very first question that comes to my mind is what rules would you want regarding crafting traps. By DMG rules any 6th level cleric with craft wondrous items could make a Create Food and Water trap that would supply tens of thousands of people with food. I'm fine with that but does that bother you?

The resetting trap of X seems like it would be a common feature and something which should be thought about early

I gotta admit, it's an issue I haven't looked at yet.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 12:35 pm

What is a player expected to do in one turn?

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 3:06 pm

Having looked at the create food and water issue, I'm kind of disinclined to ban it directly - it's basically just the equivalent of creating a wondrous item - which leaves either living with it (i.e. if you have your cornucopia trap, koku becomes a non-issue) or glossing it: i.e. a rule is made that create food and water doesn't actually create food and water, but draws it from the surrounding environment. In that case, while convenient, it wouldn't actually increase the koku of the hex, since you're drawing on already-existing sources and materials.

OgreBattle wrote:What is a player expected to do in one turn?

Deal with events (like incursions by adventurers and newly arrived denizens), order or modify existing Projects, give or modify scripts to minions, give or modify scripts for their characters (research, drilling troops, crafting, etc.), sort out who gets what equipment, decide who or what to try and recruit (based on availability), cast any spells they don't want to script, answer communications from neighboring rulers/dungeons/contacts, etc.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 4:04 pm

Ancient History wrote:glossing it: i.e. a rule is made that create food and water doesn't actually create food and water, but draws it from the surrounding environment. In that case, while convenient, it wouldn't actually increase the koku of the hex, since you're drawing on already-existing sources and materials.

If you feel need nerf create food and water, you probably just don't want to play Logistics and Dragons. Well I mean, you obviously don't, because you immediately come up with a "solution" to the problem of create food and water that involves forcing people to continue to conquer the world to obtain PRECIOUS KOKU to get more soldiers for your dungeon.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 6:23 pm

Kaelik wrote: If you feel need nerf create food and water, you probably just don't want to play Logistics and Dragons. Well I mean, you obviously don't, because you immediately come up with a "solution" to the problem of create food and water that involves forcing people to continue to conquer the world to obtain PRECIOUS KOKU to get more soldiers for your dungeon.

I would never ask you to stop being an asshole all the time, but I'd like you to not be a dishonest asshole. No one is suggesting the nerfage of create food and water, because create food and water is a very minor spell that has very minor effects. A 5th level Cleric who casts create food and water with one of his two 3rd level non-domain slots every day for an entire year will have contributed... fifteen koku to the war effort. That is a very small number, and represents something you would only do in extreme situations. Only after you've already taken a severe hit to your food reserves would you even consider cashing your second tier clerics out for fifteen koku.

What's being suggested as problematic is the idea of abusing the trap creation guidelines to create prayer stones that generate the magic output of over seven thousand clerics. On account of that being something that doesn't pass the smell test and never has.

Let's be honest here, the suggestion had been made to use a set of guidelines whose own authors admit do not work that was intended to create defensive triggered attacks in order to get 14,400 castings every day of creation spells that can be repeated for credit. It's absurd. The cost guidelines were intended to be for something that would hit an enemy once or twice and then delay them by forcing them to work around it somehow. Not to give a repeated cumulative tangible benefit fourteen thousand times a day, every day, for the rest of your life.

Create Food and Water is not on the block for nerfing. You know that, and you claiming otherwise is just you being an asshole.

-Username17

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 6:42 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Create Food and Water is not on the block for nerfing. You know that, and you claiming otherwise is just you being an asshole.

Except instead of saying "You can't make a reset trap of Create Food and Water" he specifically said "Maybe create Food and Water doesn't Create food, it just farms the food that you already automatically farm without any actions from your PRECIOUS KOKU numbers." Which does in fact nerf Create food and water.