Tideland Empire Campaign Goals

Theories on Intrigue campaigns

The Tideland Empire has its first Reichstag session today. So it's high time I delve into the specifics of the campaign itself. What I want to learn from the game, what concessions I am making to attempt to achieve those goals (or fail spectacularly).

Whence the idea

The seeds for this campaign were planted after participating in the Broriental Adventures campaign and witnessing its collapse first hand. That campaign was an eye-opening experience in several respects, but the most important one is the nature of Patron Play vs Domain Play. Patron Play is not a game so much as a framework for generating game material. Meanwhile, Domain Play is a game in its own right. The players participating in Domain Play are still fundamentally players, bound by the same rules as someone starting at level 1. This is not the case in Patron play, and leads to some inconsistencies if and when players in a patron play environment reach a high enough level to being domain play.

What do I want?

I want to run a game that eliminates some, if not all, of the inconsistencies of produced by the Patron Play style. Specifically, the interaction of lower level characters and players with the high level ones. Secondarily, I am looking to start codifying Domain Play procedure. This procedure, termed an intrigue by Arbrethil, needs to codify the various actions players can take in a time frame, determine which of those actions require additional game play and which can happen with a single dice roll. The hope is to get a better grasp on what sorts of actions need codification, and put that information into some sort of documented form.

How will I get it?

This is the hard part. I had to design an intrigue campaign, without having any idea how to run an intrigue. The first step was to determining system. That ended up being pretty easy, ACKS II was the clear front runner as the only system with actual domain play rules to begin with. ACKS II can do a lot of heavy lifting for me that other systems simply can not, especially in the realm of actual economic rules. Next, I had to design the actual campaign and recruit players. These steps happened simultaneously, as the players I trust the most helped me refine some of the rules and modes of engagement. Notably, this morphed from a competitive game to cooperative-competitive. This change happened as the nature of competitive play gave more incentive to cheesing other players out of their high level characters, which was undesirable.

Mechanics

Speaking of rules, it's time to talk mechanics. For this game, I have adapted the Senatorial Domain rules of ACKS II to allow for player characters to act as leading senators, with their own influence scores. In the milieu, they are known as Higher Electors and interact directly with the Imperial Court or Reichstag, and vote on matters that affect the Coalition Empire as a whole. Mechanically, the characters are members of the Coalition Empire domain, while running their own domains. This means the emperor may demand duties of them, or the other leading senators, and they may bring things before the court to be voted upon. Minor senators are known as Lower Electors, and are members of the court who have not yet earned the right to bring matters before it. A Lower Elector may be a character of level 7 who controls a domain of 1 six mile hex. Higher Electors must be at least level 9 and control at least 1 twenty-four mile hex, or achieve some notable feat and be awarded the rank by the court. The Reichstag places few restrictions on domains under it, but wars between two domains in the Empire must be approved by the Reichstag, and any chosen successors must also be so approved. Beyond that, the Senators are allowed to run their domains as they wish. Including changing their domain to a senatorial domain as well.

Secondarily I am also using a form of 1:1 time. though to prevent burnout and allow for game scheduling it is 1 month to 1 month. With individual days and weeks only coming into effect if absolutely necessary. This will allow for a cadence of 1 Reichstag session a month, where the characters are at Court, and time for me to schedule any resulting sessions for them.

Initial Conditions

With the mechanics and setting in place, it was time for me to set the stage. The first order of business was to allow the players to chose their domain locations. They each got a domain of 3 twenty-four mile hexes. Which is massive. They are all also using the advanced character generation rules from ACKS to made characters around level 9. This means they will be far below the personal authority threshold for their domains. This is intentional to stir up reasons for them to get levels and do things to maintain their domains. They do have a short grace period, as the fluff is they have recently become the rulers of these domains for one reason of another, and the populace is still settling into place.
Once the domains were picked, the players got busy building their strongholds and other domain aspects. The Venturer his trade routes, the Mage a dungeon, the Fighter a massive army, and the Crusader a massive wall and debt to the church. Since these were pr-existing domains in a relatively stable spot, I calculated the minimum stronghold value for it's domain type and allowed them to use up to 175 % of that amount on designing their capital, dungeon, or other domain infrastructure. This is on top of their starting gold from character generation. The infrastructure gold is lost if not used however, while anything leftover from character generation goes into their treasury.
While that was happening, I built out the leading senator's domains. They got less love than each of the players domains, as most of them are simply ambassadors from a people. I did note the domain type, stronghold values, and locations, and domain loyalty.
Finally, I had to determine the overall internal goal for the campaign, I.e. what are the players up against. In this case there are a few major obstacles. The first is the existence of the Beastlands, a massive badlands of dead coral, rotting kelp, and muck left behind from the sea's recession. Here live and spawn all manner of beastmen. Worse still, they are starting to coalesce under the banner of Sameaul, Phophet of He Who Walks With Us. A wild man of immense divine power, granted him by the beastmen's so called Chief Deity. So goal one is putting a stop to that. On the political side, the Empire is roughly split into two factions, the Condensares and the Expansares. Condensares see the population widening and expsanion to follow the sea as a reckless and foolhardy move, as they believe the sea will inevitably rise again, repeating the tragedy of the First Flood. Expansares are the opposite, and believe that huddling inland will lead to far more death than a possible second Flood. The infighting between the two is currently only minor political squabbling; but has the capacity to grow more violent. Lastly, the players all came up with their own goals which I will go over when I write up their domain articles in the future. There is an embargo on them of three months at the moment, to protect the fog of war, as these goals may be in conflict with each other.

Looking Ahead

As I said, the first Reichstag session is tonight. This will be the first time the players interact with the Court system and get a taste of their power over the empire, and their political rivals and allies. There has actually already been a few sessions of low level adventuring in the setting, but they are a long way for interacting with the wider political sphere right now. Looking forward to what happens, and I will be posting updates as appropriate.

Sail On!
-ShockTohp