The Campaign Builder's Guild

I often have more enthusiasm than ability to properly establish these sorts of things, so I thought I would come to all of you for help! I want to run a new forum game. I recognize that my last effort in this regard was insufficient and generally not good. My bad. So, I am attempting to create a game that is more manageable and enjoyable in theme, scope, and of course in gameplay. The game will take place in the pseudo-Chinese land of Quoyo, and the technology level will be dawn of the twentieth century in some respects, but completely fantastical in others. Quoyo is in the middle of a crisis, and the once-monolithic Empire is fractured and weak. The players, and of course the various NPC powers, will be taking advantage of this situation. Here's a brief intro.

[ic=The Mandate of Heaven]It is the 178th year of the Seng Dynasty, yet no Emperor graces the Celestial Throne. Great Quoyo has fallen to the wrack and ruin of war and strife. In his madness the Imperial Magician, Huen Zho, has murdered the Honwen Emperor and the Imperial Family. In collusion with greedy and envious Generals he strives to cast down the Seng. From their ashes, he says, he will build a new and glorious dynasty to humble all those that have come before. Prince Guoh, the seventh and last son of the Honwen Emperor, resists Huen Zho and the Red Banner Army from the fortress city of Jinjiao. He has vowed to restore the dynasty, and when Huen Zho's head decorates a pike above the Imperial Palace in Anseng, he will mount the Celestial Throne. The Lords of Jai, long subject to Imperial Quoyo, have cast off the bonds of vassalage. With the Emperor's death and chaos on the mainland, there is no longer reason to pay the exorbitant tributes. Jainese pirates run wild on the Sea of Sen, raiding up and down the coasts as far as Set. For Jai to be bound again to Quoyo, the Lords say, the earth must split asunder and their isles must be drowned in blood. The Tiao and the Vet, subject peoples long oppressed, rise up to take back their homelands from the encroaching Yua. Foreigners from the West arrive like the irresistible tide, their strange ships sailing into the harbour cities of the south unopposed. Their ferocity in battle is matched only by their barbarism, and they carve new lands for themselves from the ailing body of Quoyo. Order has fled like smoke on the wind, and any man might seize the Mandate of Heaven as his own.[/ic]

Players will play as a the leader of a rising minor power, with every opportunity for expansion, and perhaps even a chance to take the Celestial Throne. Your options are intended to be those written below, but if you want to play something else, and if that something else is suitable, I will allow it!

A Jainese Sojai, pirate lord of a haven on the coast of Quoyo. Though the Osojai of the League refuse to recognize your authority or right, wary as they are of what may come when either the Prince or the Magician triumphs in the North, you may yet convince them with your growing wealth and power.

- The Jainese traditionally fight with shiveraxe and the quoyo-nu - a repeating crossbow firing bolts laden with explosive charge to drive the head of the bolt into the target on contact.
They eagerly adopt the breech-loading rifles of the Angals, and rumours spread that the Osojai seek to emulate the awesome power of the Anglic ships, raising steel hulks laden with cannon in their harbours. On land, the Sojai wade into battle ensconced within their colossal suits of armour - oyoro. Animated by ritual magic, and fueled by the energy of Keresic, the Earth's Red Blood, they are nigh unstoppable.

An Anglic Duke or Count, enfiefed by right of conquest in this foreign land. You, and all the Anglic nobility, were exiled decades ago from your former home across the Sea. The vile Republic triumphed, and the nobles of Angaland fled, or lost their heads on the block. The Angals have since wandered the world, and have become known in many places as adventurers and fierce mercenaries. Your people flock to Quoyo as word spreads of rich lands for the taking.

- Science and reason rule in Angaland, and the exiled Angals maintain this tradition, and their fearsome technological weapons. Their common infantry fight with the breech-loading rifle, or man rotary guns to reduce their enemies in seconds. Their Lords and Knights rule the battlefield with their treads - metal machines armed with cannon and armoured against it - or afoot, immovable when entrenched and encased in steel, wielding gruesome heatblades. Anglic dreadnaughts, though few in number, are feared on the Sea of Sen, and not even the Jainese dare challenge them.

A rogue Yua General or Governor. The realm has been shattered, and you seek either to preserve your dominion from the spreading chaos, or to profit by it, and have the men and women of Quoyo submit to your will.

- The Yua engage their enemies with innumerable masses of troops armed with shiverpikes, shiverswords and the quoyo-nu. The sheer human mass of a Quoyese army is often sufficient to overwhelm its opponent. Like the Jainese, Yua nobles make use of great animated armours in battle. Taking the form of the wolf, the langshia are rightly feared for their ability to tear apart enemy formations single-handedly. Afoot, the nobles of Quoyo fight deftly with the solar lance, scouring their enemies from the Earth with beams of light.  

A King of the Tiao or the Vet (or another ethnic group that you are free to think of!) Minorities who have been oppressed by and subject to the Yua of Quoyo for centuries. The Tiao raid the lands of the Yua from their fastnesses in the mountains and valleys of the western coast, and return home singing of their victories, heavily laden with plunder. The Vet, people of the southeastern jungles, contend with Yua settlers and the invading Men of Sekh for control of their ancestral homeland.

-----

I have a basic map here: http://kreuzer.pbworks.com/w/page/61882761/Mandate%20of%20Heaven

The borders are of course very rough, and subject to change based on where a player wants to establish their state (within reason). I will also fill the map out with various other minor NPC states when and if players express interest and develop their own states.

If you think this game sounds fun, post in this thread with some of your ideas, or come up with a character and nation to play as! I encourage suggestions, criticism, and as many comments as you care to make. I'm still working on gameplay, and hope to have a post on that up soon.

(PS: if you want to see the flags of the major NPC powers, they are here: http://kreuzer.pbworks.com/w/page/61884038/Your%20Adversaries )

Definitely interested in this game. Going to ponder about what I'd like to play in here and edit this post.

EDIT: So I have a few questions, ideas and whatnot.

First, it might not strike some as important, but I think the main geographical features in the map should be revealed. Also, where are the resource-rich regions?

It begs the question, is it first come first served, and thus in order of "subscription" to the game we will choose the land we want in the vast white areas?

Second, how, exactly, is magic? Is it a sort of High Magic setting or is Magic still a somewhat minor thing with some remarkable people capable of making greater use of it?

Personally, I'd be interested in playing the King of a resource-rich country that would lay somewhere east of Huen Zhuo's region, along the coast or right in the vast mainland. Would that be possible?

I will participate in pretty much anything with your name attached to it so count me in.  Would I be wrong in getting a bit of an Escaflowne vibe, albeit less with the catgirls and dragons?

A few character ideas - let me know if any of these sound particularly promising/suitable:

- A half-Anglic, half-Quoyese bastard warlord-poet with a foreign education who leads a ragtag band of Anglic deserters, bandits, and Vet tribesmen who worship him as a deity.  Mad, brilliant, capricious, cruel.

- A Jainese she-pirate and fox-witch renowned for her trickery and cunning.  Skilled with magic, very enigmatic and inscrutable.  Some of her troops are thought to not be fully human, though this may just be rumour.

- A Grand Duke or Minister of War or other General of whoever the Russians are in this world out to advance the imperialist ambitions of the Tsar or his equivalent.  Grim, brutal, old-fashioned, patriotic.  Maybe you'd have some suggestions about what kind of forces he'd have?

Alrighty, time to answer some questions.

Firstly, Pym, you will notice I have updated the map to include major river systems draining into the Sea of Sen. I will work on finding a non-jarring way of representing mountains tomorrow, but the major ranges are around the far western coast, with a branch going over to around the origin of the tributary river that joins the Huaihan river (that is the river that flows past Senhan going towards the Sea). The second major range separates Velam (that being the region where the Vet are from) from the largely desertified land of Set (that being the land that the House of Sekh holds as a kingdom).

I am going to attempt to distribute starting lands in manner that is fair to all players. I don't expect to have any major conflicts. Quoyo and most of its environs are fairly resource rich, and I don't intend to disadvantage any one player over another when it comes to resources. A general rule of thumb, though. In the western regions there are richer metal deposits, in the southeast there are richer keresic deposits (that is the earth's blood, petroleum equivalent for the Angals, and alchemical compound for the peoples of Quoyo), and the closer you are to the centre of Quoyo the denser the population, and the more silver taels to be had from trade and taxation. There are exceptions to these rules, and every player will have at least a semi-adequate amount of each of these resources, and potentially others.

This is not what I would consider a High Magic setting. Magic is relatively rare and powerful, and functionally unknown to some peoples (i.e. the Angals, and some other Westerners). Rituals to create constructs of war, and other advanced eastern weapons are somewhat well dispersed, but they are functionally just initiators, and the energy to maintain them is obtained from keresic. Certain individuals may have a talent for magic, but those with truly great power are basically unheard of. This is something I still have to work out gameplay-wise.

Steerpike: I like all of your character ideas! Though I kind of lean towards the Jainese pirate of the two firm ideas. Entirely up to you which to play, obviously. As far as Russian analogues are concerned, this setting's Russians are known as Baasks, and live far away to the West (though contiguously by land) in Roukedon. There are some trappers and settlers at the very northwestern edge of the map, who have some contact with the Tiao, but this is not yet anywhere near equivalent to the full diplomatic relationship and geo-political contest between Imperial Russia and the Qing Dynasty. I am very hesitant to allow anyone to play as part of an off-map entity, but I could certainly allow a fledgling settler nation of Baasks established by a Graf and his boyars, sort of like the Republics of Texas or California. Except longer lasting, owing to your astute leadership, and not a republic. I will admit that I have not thought about the Baasks too much, but they would certainly have breech-loading rifles, and perhaps some sort of horrible and unwieldy tread (that is, a tank). As far as unique weapons are concerned, I don't know, but if you could think of something cool and appropriate I would probably allow it.

Okay, cool.  I didn't know how closely the world reflected real-world political history and geography, so I won't go for a Baask then (I'd assumed that like the Russian Empire their borders were a stonesthrow away).

I'll keep brainstorming - those were just the first off the top of my head.  But a creepy pirate queen with excessively long fingernails whose ships and troops hold an unsavoury and mysterious reputation does sound fun.  Does the fox thing fit or is it too blatantly Japanese?

What exactly does "shiver" denote?  Vibration?

A shiversword or axe is indeed like a vibroblade. The fox thing isn't really a big deal, though I can't help but think of Horo from Spice and Wolf :p The Jainese are already pretty blatantly based on the Japanese, so I don't think a little more would hurt. I of course always appreciate additional character ideas, at the least, they provide me with some NPCs.

Cool.  Another idea:

- A highly contemplative monk who has formed a brotherhood of peasant-warriors, training them in self-defense and ritualistic martial arts.  The Crimson Knives Society was formed to protect farms and villages against bandits, pirates, and other assailants, but the aspirations of the monk may be somewhat higher, his spirituality masking decidedly earthly ambitions.  A fanatic, mystic public face concealing a coldly calculating mind beneath.

For Mandate of Heaven, I want to keep the game relatively simple. The foundation of the expansion and maintenance of your realm will obviously ultimately be based upon its economy, or more relevantly, your personal economy.

The basic unit of monetary value in Quoyo is the tael. A Quoyese tael is a unit of silver weighing roughly 100 grams, and is not itself currency, but a representation of value. Your taels will not all be silver, but for the purposes of the game each tael is of absolute equality. I will subdivide taels up to fractions of one tenth, if necessary.

Income

Quoyo and its environs are largely agrarian, though it is an incredibly populous region, and thus possesses many large urban centres. Though in reality urban populations and agrarian populations would produce differing revenues for your realm, I am not going to bother distinguishing in this case.

The base measure of tax income for any state is 1 tael per 1000 of population per season.

Depending on the provenance of your realm, there are certain tax modifiers you will experience at the start of the game.

Angals have an incompatible bureaucracy modifier, and receive only half the base tax income from the native population. However, their tenancy modifier allows them to collect twice the base tax income from the Anglic population with no penalty.

the Jainese have the fukushu tribute modifier, and receive an additional 1% of tax income for every thousand men maintained under arms by the state, up to 20%.

There are several other methods of producing income for your realm. Plunder may be gained in war or through piracy, trade agreements for specific resources may be established with other players or NPCs, or you may gain incidental income through the production of resources, in addition to the raw resource itself.

To produce a resource, you must first build an appropriate improvement within the bounds of your realm, and maintain control of this improvement to continue availing yourself of its benefits. There will be limits on the number of improvements you may construct, but I have to give this matter further consideration. An initial list of economic and resource oriented improvements follows:

Vital Resources include metal and keresic. Metal is required for the construction of ships, weaponry, vehicles, constructs, and for certain improvements. Keresic is required for the construction of certain improvements, and the construction and operation of constructs, vehicles, ships, and certain weapons. Vital resources are maintained in reserve, and continue to aggregate over the seasons. Indeed, building up just such a reserve may be vital (ha ha) to your success.

Metal: Low Capacity Mine (Construction cost: 100 taels / Production per season: 25 units of metal and 2 taels) -> Expanded Mine (Construction cost: 400 taels and 10 metal /Production per season: 70 units of metal and 5 taels) -> Mining Complex (Construction cost: 1000 taels, 50 metal and 10 keresic / Production per season: 150 units of metal and 10 taels)

Keresic: Keresic Well (Construction cost: 125 taels and 5 metal / Production per season: 20 units of keresic and 5 taels) -> Tall Derrick (Construction cost: 450 taels, 15 metal and 5 keresic / Production per season: 60 units of keresic and 15 taels) -> Keresic Field (Construction cost: 1200 taels, 55 metal, 20 keresic / Production per season: 120 units of keresic and 25 taels)

Trade resources include textiles, tea, spices, ceramics and precious stones. The amount of each of these resources produced and imported to your realm will result in positive effects for your state, depending on your overall population. These resources do not aggregate, and what is produced each season is used each season.

Income may also be modified through the construction of improvements, and an incomplete list follows.

Tax offices (Construction cost: 250 taels. Increases tax revenue by 3%) -> Established bureaucracy (Construction cost: 600 taels. Increases tax revenue by a further 5%) -> Centralized tax authority (Construction cost: 2000 taels. Increases tax revenue by a further 10%)

National Bank (Construction cost: 2500 taels. Increases total realm revenue by 5%)

Note: Bear with me while I flesh this out. Two further posts on society and the military will also be made in the coming days.

Quote from: TheMeanestGuest"...The second major range separates Velam (that being the region where the Vet are from) from the largely desertified land of Set (that being the land that the House of Sekh holds as a kingdom)."

Where, exactly, is Velam? Their realm doesn't seem to be shown on the currently available map.

Still on geography, the waterway in the eastern part of the map, between the region Huen Zho controls and the Kingdom of Sekh, that ends in a delta; are there valleys there or is it pretty much flat, non-accident-ed, terrain.

Here is an idea of where I want my land, and here are questions relating to that:



1. Does the size of the region I added correspond to what each player would be allowed to have? Is it too small, or too big perhaps? I remember saying we would have a "minor kingdom".
2. May I take this region?
3. Is the region I added mostly rainforest?
4. Is this region keresic rich?

Am I right if I say that, if I would be given this region, I could be playing as a King?

May I come up with a name for these people if you have none? I do have a good idea in mind that would perfectly fit the context of "Mandate of Heaven", the historic one, superstitious and all. (I just reread some information you already wrote and pondered; maybe that's exactly where you intended the Vet to be. If I am given this region, may I still rename it?)

I've got another question which I think is critical. How are you going to handle the submission of "orders"? In Republic Reborn, we're allies, mostly. In this game, I might just be another player's sword enemy. Obviously, we cannot NOT post orders at the same time, or one may take advantage of OOC knowledge. We can always submit our "orders" via PM, and then when you have em' all you could post them, all in a single post. Or you may even keep them entirely secret! But then it begs the question; how about updates? Will we have individual updates? I see this game could be a semi-PbP, semi-PbPM thing.

Velam is basically the area you have indicated on the map, and by some definitions extends all the way up the Mung river. There are certainly valleys. In that area the terrain generally becomes rougher as you go south, and flatter going north. However, it is not prairie country, and there is variation to the terrain throughout the region.

The size that you've indicated is generally larger than I would allow. A more ideal size would be between one third and one half of the territory you have indicated. It is a heavily forested area, and, owing to the climate, this forest would indeed be classified as rainforest. It is a region richer in keresic than any other save Set, and I could guarantee anyone starting in the region would have at least one rich keresic deposit available to them. At this point I can say with certainty that the territory is yours if you want it. If anyone else wants to start in the region I am sure it would be entirely possible to accommodate them. There will be several nearby NPC states in any case.

You would have the title of king, but that doesn't mean you are the only king in the area. Indeed, it is entirely possible that someone else might also claim the same title as you. While the wider region will still be referred to as Velam, you are entirely free to create your own name for your state and the land that your state occupies. Your people do not have to be the Vet, and could easily be another people entirely, should you desire it.

I think people can absolutely post orders at the same time. I have a very high opinion of everyone on the CBG, and I don't think anyone here would use out of character knowledge to their advantage in the game. Certainly, some matters should indeed be handled secretly by PM, at the least to maintain the pleasure of surprise. Everyone will receive their individual updates, but I fully intend to post these updates in the game thread.

Would that be more appropriate? If it is, I'll take it and start making up a story.



Alright, then I guess we can make use of the Spoiler feature. This comment is concerning the handling of orders.

That is fairly appropriate, yes. When I add your nation to the map it won't be exactly like that, but fairly close. It may also change ever so slightly again when I add any other players or NPC minors in the region.

Ok, well the main thing is; I want control of the delta region. If another player wants it too, though, well then I guess you can separate it. It can make for nice competitiveness.

This is certainly interesting; around the time you were running your sci-fi space opera game I had been considering setting up a game like Polycarps! but set in the world of Exalted where all the players had special powers as Solars, Sidereals, etc. and also effected the world- I never got around to finishing the rules though. So yes, I am interested in this, but I am a bit unclear as to how you see it playing?

Polycarp is to some degree bound by history in deciding events. Are you making up your events on the fly as a usual GM or are you rolling on a table or did you generate all the world with resources, etc. and base conclusions on those types of maps?

As magnus mentions, it would be very useful to know the terrain- e.g. hills, mountains, choke points in passages, villages; and the economics- wheat country, etc. and the statistics for various portions of the world. When I was trying to create my exalted world, I studied the books to try to figure out where to place this information so that the players could plan.

A weakness I personally saw at the beginning of Polycarp's game was that I wanted to figure out trade routes, etc. for planning- until he gave me that information, I didn't have much to build upon.

Also re your building chart; how do you plan to keep track of all the numbers? Do you have an excel formula? I once created a game similar to that aspect of your game and the game's number crunching was absurd. I ended up writing a computer program to enter turn information and to keep track of everything.

Speaking for myself, I'd be just as happy with a slightly more "impressionistic" type of PbP wargame as opposed to one with hundreds of stats and numbers requiring herculean record-keeping efforts.  Though certainly terrain information, trade routes, and economic information would be welcome, though I imagine they're probably forthcoming (I'm aware that this is still several weeks from beginning).

EDIT: Question - are there any flying vehicles (planes, zeppelins, flying mecha, etc) or is this a pre-flight world?