Scroll of the Lands discussion

[dmoonfire]

Apparently, some people over on the White Wolf forum got interested in my Scroll of the Lands, my Mandate of Heaven rewrite. I thought, since it looks like I'm in the second round of features and editing, I'd point out that I'm getting some good questions and feedback over on my forum.


http://forum.mfgames.com/index.php/board,18.0.html


I think this will work for the PDF download.


Scroll of the Lands 0.11.0

 

[Sherwood]

A quick glance at it was impressive.  I had not thought of designing a city as a large version of a character, giving it 'skills' to represent its ability to perform various tasks.  Nice approach.

 

[dmoonfire]

A quick glance at it was impressive.  I had not thought of designing a city as a large version of a character, giving it 'skills' to represent its ability to perform various tasks.  Nice approach.

Thank you. Basically, I took the Mandate of Heaven rules and tries to rewrite them to fit more with the concepts of the main book.  Somewhere in there, I started adding the equiv of Charms for Dominions called Constructions because it just seemed like a cool idea. I know I have a lot of work to do on this, but as people comment, I want to work on it.

 

[Gylthinel]

Sorry to dig up an old (ancient) post, but I was wondering if anybody has actually used Scroll of the Lands?


I got a little lost when reading about child dominions, and I dont' really understand how/why the tick system exists. For instance, why would anybody take a 5 tick administrative action when such things as "down time" exist for a dominion? When do you start/stop counting ticks?

 

[dmoonfire]

Sorry to dig up an old (ancient) post, but I was wondering if anybody has actually used Scroll of the Lands?
I got a little lost when reading about child dominions, and I dont' really understand how/why the tick system exists. For instance, why would anybody take a 5 tick administrative action when such things as "down time" exist for a dominion? When do you start/stop counting ticks?

Down time was basically the same as "Inactive" in the normal combat. It was less of what you choose to do and more of what you are forced to do. Some of it came around the entire revolt thing (when you run out of Willpower).


Mostly the tick system is the same as the combat in 2E. You use it in the same way with everyone getting initiative and everyone's actions taking X number of ticks.


As for working on it, I ended up taking a year off for social reasons (moving to Iowa, got a new job, finishing up my masters), but I'm planning on getting back on this in a few months and maybe starting up a PBeM campaign to really test/iron out the rules.

 

[Gylthinel]

I guess what has me confused is that, with combat of any sort, you roll join battle, and the battle progresses. But, I get the impression that in SotL, you're supposed to count all 60 ticks of a year, and fill them with some sort of action... which means there'd never be a join-anything roll, since tick time would be continuous. If it isn't continuous, then when does it start/end? What can you accomplish in between?

 

[dmoonfire]

I guess what has me confused is that, with combat of any sort, you roll join battle, and the battle progresses. But, I get the impression that in SotL, you're supposed to count all 60 ticks of a year, and fill them with some sort of action... which means there'd never be a join-anything roll, since tick time would be continuous. If it isn't continuous, then when does it start/end? What can you accomplish in between?

Hrm, I don't have the book with me at the moment. When I get home, I'll try to check.


In general, you only use the tick system when there is something significant going on. Much like you don't use combat ticks walking across the street (well, in *most* places you won't). I'm using the sidebar on social combat for dominions. Everyone "knows" when you are doing something serious with dominions (i.e. ticks start) just like everyone "knows" when social combat starts. Otherwise, everyone just does their little things that aren't interesting to the plot (i.e. maintenance or long term projects).


As for the time between, I'd say building actions probably could be glossed over along with non dramatic situations. "I finish establishing the dragon-blooded family." "Okay, nothing else serious goes on. So, a few years later..." I wouldn't allow anything I wouldn't let a player do with their character. I've allowed the game to take 20 years off to "train" and I would say a dominion could spend 20 years to build up Constructions or train their army. They can't actually wage war without moving to ticks, but if no one is opposing them, you can use it to build up the dominion, establish trade routes, policies, etc.


There should be a Join Politics action somewhere in the guide. If there isn't, I missed it. That is the Join Battle version of dominions.

 

[Gylthinel]

As for the time between, I'd say building actions probably could be glossed over along with non dramatic situations. "I finish establishing the dragon-blooded family." "Okay, nothing else serious goes on. So, a few years later..." I wouldn't allow anything I wouldn't let a player do with their character. I've allowed the game to take 20 years off to "train" and I would say a dominion could spend 20 years to build up Constructions or train their army. They can't actually wage war without moving to ticks, but if no one is opposing them, you can use it to build up the dominion, establish trade routes, policies, etc.

I guess maybe this is the crux of my confusion, and that stems partially from my utter disdane for long-term XP awards. Getting a load of XP for doing nothing is pretty much the antithesis of what RPGing is supposed to be, IMO. It seems like a dominion building up during dramatic action would have an essentially similar feel.

 

[dmoonfire]

As for the time between, I'd say building actions probably could be glossed over along with non dramatic situations. "I finish establishing the dragon-blooded family." "Okay, nothing else serious goes on. So, a few years later..." I wouldn't allow anything I wouldn't let a player do with their character. I've allowed the game to take 20 years off to "train" and I would say a dominion could spend 20 years to build up Constructions or train their army. They can't actually wage war without moving to ticks, but if no one is opposing them, you can use it to build up the dominion, establish trade routes, policies, etc.

I guess maybe this is the crux of my confusion, and that stems partially from my utter disdane for long-term XP awards. Getting a load of XP for doing nothing is pretty much the antithesis of what RPGing is supposed to be, IMO. It seems like a dominion building up during dramatic action would have an essentially similar feel.

I could see that. The problem I had in my games is when I didn't use long-term gain, they would have so many adventures in a matter of months or days. In my first game, with the healing rates and unfortunate use of the teleporting spells, they managed to get a ton of adventures done in a matter of a year of game time. With their thousand year or more life span, I wanted to spread out some of those adventures so it takes them 20, 30, or even 50 years until they are ready to invade Yu-Shan. Not a year and a half of solid adventuring. So, I see the long-term XP as a way of having long periods of silence between the blind panic of adventuring.


Using that idea, having dominions work with downtimes lets you have periods of rest and golden years, then a flurry (i.e. ticks) of events with a war, plague, whathave you, then let it slow down into another "century of peace" as it were.


Now, there is a problem of the players just taking ten centuries off to create the uber-dominion, but there are a few things that stop them. One, there is only so much you can expand your dominion until you encounter someone else who wants the lands (i.e. war and ticks). You also hit the limits of your resources and Magnitude before you have to expand, which means you eventually get into a war. And, a good storyteller will only give you a few decades or centuries before slamming you with another group doing the same thing. RPG's abhor "good times" and golden years.


Now, there is nothing that says you can't disallow long-term XP gain. I find it a good encouragement to have those long downtimes to do things like have children (a very popular thing with my Exalted game, I have no clue why), pick up spells, or spend that 10 years getting Essence 5. Overusing long-term, will burn you though, and I'm pretty picky on what the players are allowed to spend it on. I'll probably frame the dominion long-term using similiar rules, including a 42:1 breakdown to avoid min/maxing. And not giving as much for dominion improvement.


The main part is, given the life spans of Exalted, I want to encourage time to pass. I want decades and centuries between the wars, not a matter of months (except for specific reasons, of course).


Depends on the gaming style. I mean, you could use the Scroll of the Lands to simply have every tick played out, with no 'downtime' and that would be perfectly fine. In some games, I think that would be perfect. Mixing it in with adventures and wars, you never have to abstract out the time. My group never really got to that point, so we used the downtime rules.