An SDNW Proposal
Posted: 2010-04-19 11:40am
Due to some requests by those I've approached, I figured I'd broach this idea publicly to gauge response and to determine viability of the proposal (and the extent of "game fatigue").
So far SDNW has had three incarnations. One barely lasted a quarter, but that was because the players made the mistake of giving Shep nuclear weapons. The second lasted an entire year (surviving yet another Shep attempt to kill everyone through common refusal to accept his final story posts), though it went through a number of low-activity phases punctuated by major upswings in posting as the result of some situation or another. Eventually it suffered from the polarization of the world between MESS and CATO - neither side could do much without risking nuclear war - and people were ready to try something new.
SDNW3 was conceived as an attempt to address remaining inequities and problems with the SDNW system. The old power tiers were done away with - everyone would start on equal footing. A point distribution ruleset for country generation was proposed by Czechmate and myself and accepted by the players. New rules regulating unit construction cost and time were instituted, as well as rules for improving one's country, research, etc.
Unfortunately, SDNW3 didn't live up to its expectations in some ways. Though it remained active for months, and still has proponents keeping it going, it has bled away players month by month, lost due to disinterest, lack of time, or some combination thereof. The historical setting concept, conceived to deal once and for all with the Damocles Sword of nukes, has proven to be a limitation on other aspects as well. Problems with the ruleset caused confusion over how to perform specific actions, and fixes to it in turn required compensation to players to make up for wasted efforts.
So now inevitably the question is turning to SDNW4. To ponder the issue, I re-read SDNW2 as well. SDNW3 was afflicted by a perfect storm of player inactivity, clunky ruleset, and setting limitations. SDNW2, OTOH, kept an active core of players until near the very end, only becoming terribly inactive after a whole year (one could ponder if this was the result of exhaustion from the rather intense debating and arguing between MESS and CATO players from that August over Stas' "Shep is alive!" revelation).
How?
For one thing, I think the historical time period hurt us. Players who were active in SDNW2 found their styles didn't work as well in SDNW3. Losing PeZook and Shroom didn't help matters, as they both had a tendency to help drive interactions. Some still kept things going (Thanas in particular has been very prolific and productive, writing with him is a pleasure) but it's clear that not only has the limitations of travel in the time period had effects (witness my character's European tour being a massive, politically sensitive affair because he had to be away from home for months, and only got to visit five capitals for his trouble - a modern day setting, or even 1970s-1980s one, would've permitted him to visit every European Capital) but that the sense of our world being more "historic" has limited the creativity that allowed more... peculiar societies to arise in SDNW2 (yes, that includes the insane glory that was SHROOMANIA).
Then we get to the rulesets. SDNW2 had rules for drawing up starting forces and that was it. SDNW3 introduced a stronger ruleset, more widely quantifying things, and it also suffered from some clunkiness due to various mechanics (Tech research, improvement of industry, economy, and infrastructure) not being determined for some time. Some of us have been punctual about maintaining OrBats and construction queues, but I think it was clearly a turnoff for others. Such things are key for hardcore geopoli sims but, for a game like SDNW that is more round-robin fiction, I now ponder if we went too far toward the game mechanic side at the expense of keeping things easy to do and permitting freedom.
Of course, if one does away with a quantified mechanics ruleset, it puts more pressure on the mods. Sure, you can draw up "rule of thumb" general limitations everyone knows beforehand (yearly military expansion cannot exceed 10% of your starting military as a general idea, for instance), but everything is up to mod judgement on whether someone is being a munchkin or is justified. That can cause problems if there are disagreements as to whether a mod's ruling, or lack of one, is appropriate and/or fair.
Ah, but now I digress. You're not reading this to hear my lamentations on SDNW3's difficulties and musings of how to fix it. You're curious as to what SDNW4 would entail under my proposal. Well, gentlemen (And, potentially, ladies), allow me to explain.
SDNW2 worked in part because we felt more freedom to craft societies as we wanted them. SDNW3 caused Rogue to have the US of A instead of Shinra, Beo to be "Manchuria" instead of Tian Xia, and of course completely eliminated the prospect of Shroomania. During this consideration I came to believe any game that used Earth as a basis would inevitably see people try to follow history in some way instead of doing as they pleased; a fake Earth like the first two games, OTOH, leaves the issue of placing around and can also see things like SDNW2 being too small a world or having too much ocean at game start (our attempt to redraw the map for more islands and even subcontinents kinda fizzled).
As for setting... modern day has been done twice. Near-modern has the same issues of arcane miltech systems, nuclear weapons, and while we don't have to worry about running out of established or projected new technologies as quickly as modern day, it's still close enough to today that we're just repeating what's been done twice. Nevertheless I was going to propose a modern day game, perhaps 2000-2010 in start date, when I had an idea.
Why fight the inevitable speculative tech issue when you can embrace it?
If my proposal becomes accepted.... welcome to SDN Worlds, gentlemen (and ladies).
My proposal is as follows. We adopt an interstellar setting. We each get an interstellar nation-state of some sort, with 13-15 "sectors" apiece, each sector has one natural Earth-like planet, and depending on if the sector is a core sector, mid-range, or colonial sector, it has near-Earth like worlds that have either completed terraforming, are in the later stages of it, or have just begun it (Effecting their population capacity and reliance on technology for survival). To deal with the inevitable issue of certain players having a penchant toward a "Nuke 'em until they glow and shoot 'em in the dark", Earth-like worlds are relatively rare (hence the one per sector rule) and if you wreck one it takes centuries to repair it, so mass nukey-nukey on planets is something of a universal no-no.
To avoid techwank issues, tech capabilities are abstracted and made generally universal in function, and certain types may be disallowed (no Kearny-Fuchida point-to-point instantaneous jump drives, hyperspace and warp being the norms, etc.) to avoid issues of innate function difference. The mods are employed to keep everything fair, but to avoid the issue of constant OrBat and construction queue updates there are no IBPs, no "spend such and such to get such and such" rules. Players determine their military expansion/replacement rate with moderatorial oversight - if we say you're overdoing it, be prepared to suffer negative economic repercussions if you don't cut back. New tech is vetoed or approved by the mods and, if approved, abstract benefits are applied.
The goal is to make a setting that permits people to craft societies completely from the ground up, to tell fun stories easily, and without the issues that afflicted the prior games. Nations like Shroomania and Canissia can make their triumphant return without effecting suspension of disbelief or anything. The return to a very free-form ruleset is to eliminate the issues of calculating IBPs and ship tonnages and such that delayed or even disinterested people in SDNW3, while the existence of mods ensures there won't be any "ass-pulling" as sometimes plagued SDNW2 (I'm reminded of the Costa de la los Muertas air battle on that issue). A regularly updated national OrBat can keep everyone's expansion/replacement rate "clear" and open for review even without a ruleset - letting players determine expansion rate without building mechanics eliminates a lot of math even if it does give the mods more work - that can be helped by adding a pair of "alternate" mods to ensure we have constant mod coverage (if a mod is inactive due to IRL issues or has a conflict of interest, an alt steps into place). So long as players understand that mod rulings can be appealed once, to the other mods, and that a mod vote is final, things should be fine.
I would prefer, of course, if players react to this mechanic-less system with appropriate behavior. Don't go overboard on building your spaceships of whupass, try to RP things realistically, etc. But experience has shown you lot can be an aggressive, even bloodthirsty band of little bastards (:p), so we have to be prepared for that.
Note this is only a proposal. There are no rules at all as of yet, merely suggestions - as it is I'd probably maintain a form of country generation by points rules, with an X + 1dX system (that is, a base point allocation plus the result of a dice roll) to give some variety in exact power without returning to the steep capability curves that plagued SDNW1 and SDNW2 (whether to also adopt the Great Power/Regional Power tier dichtomy revolving around playstyle I intended to propose for a different game on another board is also in the air). Nor should this be construed as a "let's start a new game now!" thread; I am posting it to gauge two things: interest in the setting proposal and the extent of "gamer fatigue" I've detected in the SDNW players this past month or so. So far I know of one SDNWer who is ready for a new game, I want to see the extent of everyone's willingness after having circulated this concept via MSN and AIM to a few people over the past three weeks.
If in the next week or two I see sufficient interest in the proposal or a new game at all, we'll continue from there with proposals for map format, more exact rules, permissibility of aliens, etc.
So far SDNW has had three incarnations. One barely lasted a quarter, but that was because the players made the mistake of giving Shep nuclear weapons. The second lasted an entire year (surviving yet another Shep attempt to kill everyone through common refusal to accept his final story posts), though it went through a number of low-activity phases punctuated by major upswings in posting as the result of some situation or another. Eventually it suffered from the polarization of the world between MESS and CATO - neither side could do much without risking nuclear war - and people were ready to try something new.
SDNW3 was conceived as an attempt to address remaining inequities and problems with the SDNW system. The old power tiers were done away with - everyone would start on equal footing. A point distribution ruleset for country generation was proposed by Czechmate and myself and accepted by the players. New rules regulating unit construction cost and time were instituted, as well as rules for improving one's country, research, etc.
Unfortunately, SDNW3 didn't live up to its expectations in some ways. Though it remained active for months, and still has proponents keeping it going, it has bled away players month by month, lost due to disinterest, lack of time, or some combination thereof. The historical setting concept, conceived to deal once and for all with the Damocles Sword of nukes, has proven to be a limitation on other aspects as well. Problems with the ruleset caused confusion over how to perform specific actions, and fixes to it in turn required compensation to players to make up for wasted efforts.
So now inevitably the question is turning to SDNW4. To ponder the issue, I re-read SDNW2 as well. SDNW3 was afflicted by a perfect storm of player inactivity, clunky ruleset, and setting limitations. SDNW2, OTOH, kept an active core of players until near the very end, only becoming terribly inactive after a whole year (one could ponder if this was the result of exhaustion from the rather intense debating and arguing between MESS and CATO players from that August over Stas' "Shep is alive!" revelation).
How?
For one thing, I think the historical time period hurt us. Players who were active in SDNW2 found their styles didn't work as well in SDNW3. Losing PeZook and Shroom didn't help matters, as they both had a tendency to help drive interactions. Some still kept things going (Thanas in particular has been very prolific and productive, writing with him is a pleasure) but it's clear that not only has the limitations of travel in the time period had effects (witness my character's European tour being a massive, politically sensitive affair because he had to be away from home for months, and only got to visit five capitals for his trouble - a modern day setting, or even 1970s-1980s one, would've permitted him to visit every European Capital) but that the sense of our world being more "historic" has limited the creativity that allowed more... peculiar societies to arise in SDNW2 (yes, that includes the insane glory that was SHROOMANIA).
Then we get to the rulesets. SDNW2 had rules for drawing up starting forces and that was it. SDNW3 introduced a stronger ruleset, more widely quantifying things, and it also suffered from some clunkiness due to various mechanics (Tech research, improvement of industry, economy, and infrastructure) not being determined for some time. Some of us have been punctual about maintaining OrBats and construction queues, but I think it was clearly a turnoff for others. Such things are key for hardcore geopoli sims but, for a game like SDNW that is more round-robin fiction, I now ponder if we went too far toward the game mechanic side at the expense of keeping things easy to do and permitting freedom.
Of course, if one does away with a quantified mechanics ruleset, it puts more pressure on the mods. Sure, you can draw up "rule of thumb" general limitations everyone knows beforehand (yearly military expansion cannot exceed 10% of your starting military as a general idea, for instance), but everything is up to mod judgement on whether someone is being a munchkin or is justified. That can cause problems if there are disagreements as to whether a mod's ruling, or lack of one, is appropriate and/or fair.
Ah, but now I digress. You're not reading this to hear my lamentations on SDNW3's difficulties and musings of how to fix it. You're curious as to what SDNW4 would entail under my proposal. Well, gentlemen (And, potentially, ladies), allow me to explain.
SDNW2 worked in part because we felt more freedom to craft societies as we wanted them. SDNW3 caused Rogue to have the US of A instead of Shinra, Beo to be "Manchuria" instead of Tian Xia, and of course completely eliminated the prospect of Shroomania. During this consideration I came to believe any game that used Earth as a basis would inevitably see people try to follow history in some way instead of doing as they pleased; a fake Earth like the first two games, OTOH, leaves the issue of placing around and can also see things like SDNW2 being too small a world or having too much ocean at game start (our attempt to redraw the map for more islands and even subcontinents kinda fizzled).
As for setting... modern day has been done twice. Near-modern has the same issues of arcane miltech systems, nuclear weapons, and while we don't have to worry about running out of established or projected new technologies as quickly as modern day, it's still close enough to today that we're just repeating what's been done twice. Nevertheless I was going to propose a modern day game, perhaps 2000-2010 in start date, when I had an idea.
Why fight the inevitable speculative tech issue when you can embrace it?
If my proposal becomes accepted.... welcome to SDN Worlds, gentlemen (and ladies).
My proposal is as follows. We adopt an interstellar setting. We each get an interstellar nation-state of some sort, with 13-15 "sectors" apiece, each sector has one natural Earth-like planet, and depending on if the sector is a core sector, mid-range, or colonial sector, it has near-Earth like worlds that have either completed terraforming, are in the later stages of it, or have just begun it (Effecting their population capacity and reliance on technology for survival). To deal with the inevitable issue of certain players having a penchant toward a "Nuke 'em until they glow and shoot 'em in the dark", Earth-like worlds are relatively rare (hence the one per sector rule) and if you wreck one it takes centuries to repair it, so mass nukey-nukey on planets is something of a universal no-no.
To avoid techwank issues, tech capabilities are abstracted and made generally universal in function, and certain types may be disallowed (no Kearny-Fuchida point-to-point instantaneous jump drives, hyperspace and warp being the norms, etc.) to avoid issues of innate function difference. The mods are employed to keep everything fair, but to avoid the issue of constant OrBat and construction queue updates there are no IBPs, no "spend such and such to get such and such" rules. Players determine their military expansion/replacement rate with moderatorial oversight - if we say you're overdoing it, be prepared to suffer negative economic repercussions if you don't cut back. New tech is vetoed or approved by the mods and, if approved, abstract benefits are applied.
The goal is to make a setting that permits people to craft societies completely from the ground up, to tell fun stories easily, and without the issues that afflicted the prior games. Nations like Shroomania and Canissia can make their triumphant return without effecting suspension of disbelief or anything. The return to a very free-form ruleset is to eliminate the issues of calculating IBPs and ship tonnages and such that delayed or even disinterested people in SDNW3, while the existence of mods ensures there won't be any "ass-pulling" as sometimes plagued SDNW2 (I'm reminded of the Costa de la los Muertas air battle on that issue). A regularly updated national OrBat can keep everyone's expansion/replacement rate "clear" and open for review even without a ruleset - letting players determine expansion rate without building mechanics eliminates a lot of math even if it does give the mods more work - that can be helped by adding a pair of "alternate" mods to ensure we have constant mod coverage (if a mod is inactive due to IRL issues or has a conflict of interest, an alt steps into place). So long as players understand that mod rulings can be appealed once, to the other mods, and that a mod vote is final, things should be fine.
I would prefer, of course, if players react to this mechanic-less system with appropriate behavior. Don't go overboard on building your spaceships of whupass, try to RP things realistically, etc. But experience has shown you lot can be an aggressive, even bloodthirsty band of little bastards (:p), so we have to be prepared for that.
Note this is only a proposal. There are no rules at all as of yet, merely suggestions - as it is I'd probably maintain a form of country generation by points rules, with an X + 1dX system (that is, a base point allocation plus the result of a dice roll) to give some variety in exact power without returning to the steep capability curves that plagued SDNW1 and SDNW2 (whether to also adopt the Great Power/Regional Power tier dichtomy revolving around playstyle I intended to propose for a different game on another board is also in the air). Nor should this be construed as a "let's start a new game now!" thread; I am posting it to gauge two things: interest in the setting proposal and the extent of "gamer fatigue" I've detected in the SDNW players this past month or so. So far I know of one SDNWer who is ready for a new game, I want to see the extent of everyone's willingness after having circulated this concept via MSN and AIM to a few people over the past three weeks.
If in the next week or two I see sufficient interest in the proposal or a new game at all, we'll continue from there with proposals for map format, more exact rules, permissibility of aliens, etc.
.
