If you push someone out of power and just leave the city in your wake, *somebody* is going to step up to power where the last tyrant/mayor/crimelord left off.

If you fill the slot *with* someone (maybe even yourself) well then there's thate.

Maybe you could try to "expand" your empire by doing the same thing over multiple cities...though that opens a whole new can of worms.

And this entire motif would expand/alter the game concept to a considerable degree I bet.

But there be my thoughts. =)

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Original post by Bincho Second, a larger entity such as a corporation sees an opportunity, and goes to make the best of it, using whatever means necessary as long as the cost doesn't outweigh the benefits. So if a crooked Mayor is removed by you, and the town has some sort of resource that corporation A would like a lot of, corporation A would make a move to take control of the town to gain access to the resource (assuming that was necessary).

I like this example a lot because it makes the world come alive. However, it calls into question just how much you're expected to know of in terms of consequences.

If you didn't know that a huge megacorp was waiting in the wings after you depose the evil dictator, and then you go away and come back to find the town taken, would you receive this as a twist in the story-line?

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Original post by overflowed_ What if you had to secure and build up the area after defeating it. An invading army can destroy an enemy city, but someone has to build it back up. It could make for some interesting power struggles between factions trying to control a city/area. It would also be a great boost to a player when they finally manage to secure and unify the city under their leadership.

This is definitely a possibility and would be satisfying, but unfortunately doesn't really answer the question: Shoudl the territory you've secured (however you do it) stand forever unchanged, or should it be possible that it might fall even after you've invested lots of time in it?

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Original post by onyxflame Also, consider that NPC's could run around killing leaders too. Say you killed an evil leader and a good one arose to take his place, then quite some time later another NPC killed your nice little leader and took over instead. Or maybe you're just about to go kill some leader when you find out an NPC did it for you. This could even give you an excuse to team up with various NPC's and/or factions, temporarily or permanently. There could be all sorts of political hijinks...doublecrossing, blackmail, etc.

Exactly what I had in mind so that it would feel more like a living world, but it's really hard to gauge how you'd feel if the guys you keep helping to get set up as leaders keep getting assassinated. Will you feel frustrated, or will you become emotionally attached and go after that assassins guild?

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Overall, I'd say it should be possible to make permanent progress now and then, but if you can turn the whole universe into a happy little playground, how do you have fun after that?

Yes, this is the heart of the matter. With a sense of progress you'd have to keep moving outward to get interesting gameplay, and the center area of the map would become increasingly lifeless, which I think is very bad. However, with the see-saw approach (even with variety) you might get a run of the same three or four types (tyrants, for example) which would make the dynamic story you're following seem to meander pointlessly.


Maybe it comes down to half "see-saw" and half "winnable" areas?

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Original post by solinear Matters on whether the game is multiplayer or single player. Single player, there should be a certain amount of 'power vacuum', whereby the player can, if they move quickly, take reins of the power left behind in the vacuum. Only if it furthers the storyline though.

I still envision single player or multiplayer co-op. This would be part of the freeform gameplay that exists in many open-ended RPGs (hey, see leader, kill him), so other than the dynamic storyline that arises as factions and key NPCs respond favorably or unfavorably, this shouldn't impact the storyline at all.

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Original post by kseh Could the player maybe bring in someone with apropriate skills to fill the void?

I want to give you a crew and networks you can establish with them, so yes, it would work to groom an NPC and place him in the slot. But then what happens? Should he be able to be assassinated, bribed, kidnapped or extorted as other leaders could be? You see, it matters when you've invested alot of time in an asset versus if the game story assigned them to you. I am paranoid that as a player you may feel that the game is unfairly bullying you if this happens to a treasured NPC you've left behind.

I guess the question should be "what do you need to know in order to evaluate whether or not you can leave an NPC ally behind to run things."

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Original post by xtrmntr Like Sta7ic mentioned in his post, I think it would be cool to add the element of elections. If the current leadership has been killed off or dies or maybe even "retired" you could signal that your town/city/kingdom requires new leadership.

If I did this it would have to be dirt simple, maybe based on reputation, money and personality stats with little interactivity. I like the idea, but there are too many higher priority features to implement before I could do this justice.

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Original post by Pxtl If it was an RTS hybrid where you have officers and suchlike (I think Suikoden was like this or some game like that) then it would be kind of cool to appoint a party member or lieutenant to regent... and then watch him be swarmed with insurgents, Iraqi-style.

I guess having a crew does give it some RTS aspects (actually, empire game really because RTS implies mass control over multiple units in real time battles).

Still, you'd certainly be motivated to deal with the situation, but you'd need to somehow know this could possibly happen.

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Original post by serratemplar If you push someone out of power and just leave the city in your wake, *somebody* is going to step up to power where the last tyrant/mayor/crimelord left off. If you fill the slot *with* someone (maybe even yourself) well then there's thate. Maybe you could try to "expand" your empire by doing the same thing over multiple cities...though that opens a whole new can of worms. And this entire motif would expand/alter the game concept to a considerable degree I bet.

Well, I'm already sinning by stretching the concept of the RPG into empire game territory, so FWIW growth over multiple "networks" is already a strong element.

If NPCs act behind the scenes to undermine your growth I can see you either having fun constantly or getting really irritated that you can't nail anything down. This problem increases over multiple properties: If one town sounds dodgy, try 10 that are in various states of intrigue, revolt or some resource shortfall.

You won't get bored, but you could easily feel ineffectual.

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A motif that *might* work is this: As you level up, you attract allies of a certain rank (either hirelings or just friendly NPCs). These guys can be used to fill a void, but there are never enough of them. So if there are 10 locations in possible flux, you could never have more than 6 or 7. This way, you might have to choose which areas you want to be hotspots and which areas you want to be dull but reliable.

Wavinator, it's not like I'm complaining or anything, but I think you ignored my post :P I think it makes a really good point on how to control this balance of whether a faction has a new leader or disappears completely.

A couple other things I just thought of: If you're destroying factions, it would help even things if it's also possible for new ones to pop up sometimes. A new pirate group can show up on the scene, take control of a few stations and rise in power so it's just as good as any of the starting pirate groups. If new factions are created in random time intervals, increasing the probability the bigger the void in power is, those peaceful areas will feel more alive. Also, since it might be in the player's interest to protect the new leader he just put in charge, it's in the spirit of the game to have the tools to do that. Like chosing a leader who is loyal enough so he doesn't stab you in the back, and organizing/equiping the group so someone else doesn't take over easily.

Excerpt of Bincho post here...

"I like this example a lot because it makes the world come alive. However, it calls into question just how much you're expected to know of in terms of consequences.

If you didn't know that a huge megacorp was waiting in the wings after you depose the evil dictator, and then you go away and come back to find the town taken, would you receive this as a twist in the story-line?"

-Wavinator

Well, if the only two powerful AI entities in the game were the megacorp and the dictator, then no, thats not a suprise- its expected. A player could even use this fact to manipulate the game system; if they're fighting the megacorp, then perhaps they want the megacorp to come to them. They kick the dictator out of the town/country, and wait for the megacorp to take over. Then they fight the megacorp on their home ground (or at least not the home ground of the megacorp), and fight a battle of attrition. Thats just one way you can manipulate that game mechanic as a player or (scenario) designer.

What would be more interesting is more groups, some of which the player does not suspect would take over the town/country or some that the player doesn't even know about. If the rules of the game are consistant, and the AI is programmed to act within the constraints of the setting, even more interesting gameplay occurs. The players depose the dictator and/or the megacorp, and they find that the seemingly harmless Lady's Temperance Association or the PTA come in and take over- if it works within the gameworld's plot, its a big suprise to the player. Such a thing would only work if in retrospect and/or with more information, that event seems possible/logical to the player in the context of the game's setting.

The second use of the mechanic is far more interesting, and gives the players far more to explore.

Now I can imagine a game with multiple human entities, as well as AI entities, all competing in such a way. That would be some gaming goodness.

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Original post by Jotaf Wavinator, it's not like I'm complaining or anything, but I think you ignored my post :P

?! That's weird, I was sure I made a post talking about your idea and one I had about command staff and large factions... (Spooky... maybe I just didn't post it, since I compose in notepad) Lemme try again:

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Original post by Jotaf every time a leader is killed, a portion of his or her subordinates are lost (because they do not agree with the new leader, and it also represents a loss in power of that faction); if the faction is small enough, it disappears. It's really easy to see this working with an example. There's the typical tyrant, who is the leader of a group of guards, and the poor peasants are their slaves. You have 2 factions here, one of them with a leader. If the tyrant is killed, part of the guards are lost in the process of the assassination, another part goes away due to demoralization and fights to chose a new leader, and one of the best guards steps up to take the place of the former leader. You should handle the case when the number of guards now is not enough to handle a peasant revolt if the new leader is as ruthless as the other one :) There's also the case when the new leader is a good one, so now the guards are on the right track. You might have to kill a number of leaders before a powerful association is completely shattered (makes sense) but if you kill the biggest bully in a small group of rogues, they all go seperate ways.

I think this could work well for lawless, authoritarian factions that are small (town sized)-- and it would be a great way to weaken them, especially if you had a good chance of causing the faction to eat itself alive through infighting.
But I'd like to see it be more organic, so that guards may or may not be lost based on the type of attack (poisoning, for instance, just takes out the tyrant and any hapless food tasters.) Otherwise, yes, creating that change and seeing who steps into the vacuum (or helping control this)
would be a way of leaving your mark on the world.

The trouble comes when the faction is very large, say maybe national size. Here you need some convention of rolling them up quickly. I'm thinking now that the larger the faction, the more likely it depends on a large command / control staff. If you get the leader AND these guys, then you've temporarily destabelized the faction, but you can never destroy it (otherwise you'd have to hack through tons of NPCs).

When you don't have lawless, authoritarian factions like pirates or dictators, though, this needs to work differently. Corporations have chairmen and boards of directors and select new leaders. Democratic towns have vice-mayors to step in for them. So the splintering process wouldn't be as logical or expected. (
It might be easier to take out a dictatorship, then).

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A couple other things I just thought of: If you're destroying factions, it would help even things if it's also possible for new ones to pop up sometimes.

The sometimes rate is what I'm most interested in. How long of a delay do you think would make you feel like progress? Should the fact that a new faction is coming in be called out (not by cutscenes, but some other out-of-game official notice, like prologues)? How long do you get a breather, on average?

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Also, since it might be in the player's interest to protect the new leader he just put in charge, it's in the spirit of the game to have the tools to do that. Like chosing a leader who is loyal enough so he doesn't stab you in the back, and organizing/equiping the group so someone else doesn't take over easily.

There's stuff about Perceived Loyalty and personality traits that actually should make this possible. [smile]

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Original post by SteevR What would be more interesting is more groups, some of which the player does not suspect would take over the town/country or some that the player doesn't even know about. If the rules of the game are consistant, and the AI is programmed to act within the constraints of the setting, even more interesting gameplay occurs.

Okay, so you're voting more in favor of surprise than control (which I finally figured out is the whole point of this post... d'oh!)

In such an RPG you'd get more of a kick out of constantly clashing sides that create new challenges than feeling like you "conquered" or accomplished pacifying an area.

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Now I can imagine a game with multiple human entities, as well as AI entities, all competing in such a way. That would be some gaming goodness.

[smile] I think this would be very interesting, though I think competition requires a constrained map so as to ensure interactions. The larger your world, the harder it is for humans to have fun competing.

I may have a solution for you.

This is also part RPG, right? Why not have variables that affect who takes control where, modified by what's currently going on in the RPG plot? In a time when the plot is relatively calm, modify the variables for a more violent faction struggle thingy, and during parts of the plot that involve a lot of really fast action, swing the variables around to promote the player's pet territories remaining more or less peaceful. This doesn't mean "everyone attacks you when the plot is slow, no one attacks you when the plot is full of action". It just means things are influenced somewhat in that direction.

You could also have plot segments that require the player to have at least one town under his belt. Nothing that's absolutely needed to finish the game, but if the player does manage to reach a certain level of political power, new plot options should open up that make the story even deeper. Exactly what opens up could even depend on which area the player controlled.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Overall, I'd say it should be possible to make permanent progress now and then, but if you can turn the whole universe into a happy little playground, how do you have fun after that? Yes, this is the heart of the matter. With a sense of progress you'd have to keep moving outward to get interesting gameplay, and the center area of the map would become increasingly lifeless, which I think is very bad. However, with the see-saw approach (even with variety) you might get a run of the same three or four types (tyrants, for example) which would make the dynamic story you're following seem to meander pointlessly. Maybe it comes down to half "see-saw" and half "winnable" areas?

Or just don't let important allies and enemies "really die" the first time around; have them escape w/ a teleportation charm, three of their buddies drop in and keep you at bay while they run, or if you're not there, they just "headed to the hills" in the confusion. Kinda cliche after the fourth time, but encourages really mean grudges, and provides a stock of "bad guys" to drop in every now and then.