When do the NPC ruled army attack?

In my new campaign there are a couple of city states at war with each other. I wonder when they will strike at each other, vs when the war will be "cold"? When will they launch spy missions against each other, when will they launch full scale attacks, when will they try to intercept each others fleets etc? Some of the city states change allegiance from time to time… I'm trying to figure out when that happens?

When the NPCs are meeting one NPC, talking to her or fighting her, it's pretty easy to figure out what she's going to do. But it feels a little weird to just decide when a particular government strikes on another government.

Also, does "D@W — campaigns" have navy fights? All of the city states are coastal. (Am basing the campaign on Corsairs of the Great Sea from (2e of unnamed game).)

Am thinking something similar to "Vagaries of Recruitment" but for politics. The PC:s have the local ruler's ear so they could influence / try to stop (or, conversely, try to hurry) any action undertaken by their city's ruler (a council). But the enemy city they don't have the same influence over. But can imagine awesome games where they try to enter there and try to manipulate the goings-on there.

In the original CotGS box, the NPCs are the stars and they yank the players around on various spy missions for one side and then the other and then the one side again etc etc. And it says in the book that the various generals and emirs etc just start these missions when the story-writer wants them to… it's pretty scripted. Instead, I want rolls and tables to drive what the NPCs are doing on a macro level and whether or not the PCs get rumors of  what's going on and can decide to interfere.

BTW, great work with the Campaigns battle system with heroic forays etc. Will try to figure out some sorta quick formula from population → battle rating for those battles on the other side of the country that the PCs can't really influence.

OTHER DUST has a system to model some of the background interactions of NPC groups, though there’s obviously a lot of interpretation necessary.

I don't have any good suggestions for figuring what you're asking for out based on a table, I mostly just couldn't figure out what CotGS stood for.

ok, fine, let me take a loose stab at this:

At their most basic, wars are predicated on trying to take land from someone else, right? But you can only take land easily from someone who is weaker than you.  Strength is generally measuring by a combination of ruler level and size of army, neither of which is necessarily known by their would-be opponents.


So maybe you do something like keep track of how much each ruler knows about another ruler's army.  Maybe keep a slider with increments like so:

100,000
50,000
25,000
10,000
5,000
2,500
1,000
etc.

Every time one ruler successfully spies on another ruler, they know to the next best increment how big the enemy army is.  So if their foe has an army of 135,000 troops, first they'll know there are between 100k-200k troops, then they'll know there's 100k-150k, then they'll know there's 125k-150k, then they'll know there's 130k-140k etc. etc. etc.

So then once a month, have each ruler roll a reaction roll against the opposing realm, subtracting that ruler's charisma modifier.  Apply these modifiers (and anything else you might think of)

Ruler's army is bigger than targets: +1
Ruler's army is 150% the size: +2
Ruler's army is 200% the size or more: +3
Ruler's army is smaller: -1
Ruler's Army is 75% the size: -2
Ruler's Army is 50% or smaller: -3

Result:
2: Seek to form an alliance.
3-5: Seek to improve relations
6-7: Tenuous peace.
9-11: Prepare for war, +1 to future rolls and spend month recruiting more troops.
12+: To war! 

[quote="Jard"] At their most basic, wars are predicated on trying to take land from someone else, right? [/quote]

Well, not always. Sometimes you just want to sack a few cities, get some revenge, maybe stop someone from preying on your trade routes...

That aside, your table's a pretty cool - I like the way it implies small power groups are more likely to avoid war by paying tribute or seeking the protection of larger powers, with the consequence that most wars are fought between opponents of nearly-equal strength.

I suspect checking for war once a month might be a little too frequent, though; Since campaigns can potentially drag on for months, it implies that everyone's at war with at least one of their neighbours at any given time. Maybe check once a year (perhaps during midwinter, when people have time to reassess) for the most hated foe only, and roll 2d6 to determine how many months later war takes place if the 'To War' result comes up?

Hmm, yes, Sine Nomine games. Thanks Hardrada. The original SWN, and Silent Legions, has XP rules for these factions that guide what they want to do to each other and to the PCs group. I haven't found similar goals in Other Dust and Red Tide/AER. I kinda wish the same thing existed in a fantasy setting. Something similar to page 139 in Silent Legions or p 115 in Stars Without Number. They're also kinda tied to the that particular system, referring to its stats etc. Maybe that's just what I'll do, port over Force Cunning Wealth from SWN. I've used Silent Legions' system for a more sorcerous and insidious D&D campaign but here I'm more after "fantasy Traveller", with island hopping, mercantile ventures from ACKS etc.

I was wondering if there was sort of an Autarch/ACKS best practice for this? For figuring out which army strikes first and which is just biding its time. And, first and foremost, to take some decision weight off the referee's shoulders.

In the campaign, ten years ago, Qudra tried to attack and destroy Hawa but suffered great losses in a very one-sided battle on Hawa's home turf. Now both sides want revenge against each other. But it's been bubbling for a decade. And the other city states nearby have forces too.

I am relatively confident, being somebody who (perhaps to an unhealthy degree) follows ACKs products, that such a set of guidelines has not been published.

Big thanks, Jard! I was reading through Campaigns over and over.

No, I have never written any rules like this. I tend to run the strategic aspects of my campaigns like wargames, with the NPCs actively played either by me or by a friend unaffiliated with the campaign. 

A Vagaries of Politics table might be interesting, though; for each neighbor you roll, 1d40 for allied, 1d60+40 if allied, and 10d10 for neutrals. Maybe with different tables for different types of nations. 

Here's an essay I wrote on running adversaries that might be of interest:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/tabletop/checkfortraps/7666-Adversaries-Are-Made-of-People

 

Yeah… we have some PCs on the Hawa side and some on the Qudra side. And I'm not sure when the leaders of Hawa vs the leaders of Qudra will strike, and who will strike first at the other. To run the other council members (corsair council on the Hawa side, mamluk council on the Qudra side) and to call for missions, attacks etc. That's a lot of power over the game world that I'm not sure I want to put in my own hands as DM.

Thanks for the article, which I promptly read carefully. It strikes me that if I can be that subjective, like determine on my own whether the I.V. party has gotten ahead of the party to a particular dungeon, or not, why do I need any rules? I'm not trying to be rhetorical or pointed or provocative, I'm trying to understand the sandbox mindset. I come from an impro background but have started to run my games more and more sandboxy since I first discovered OSR games five, six years ago.

I really appreciate all the advice. I've implemented a lot of it in my game already and we play often. (Just to make sure I don't come across as someone who just asks and asks and never plays.)

[quote="2097"]

Yeah… we have some PCs on the Hawa side and some on the Qudra side. And I'm not sure when the leaders of Hawa vs the leaders of Qudra will strike, and who will strike first at the other. To run the other council members (corsair council on the Hawa side, mamluk council on the Qudra side) and to call for missions, attacks etc. That's a lot of power over the game world that I'm not sure I want to put in my own hands as DM.

Thanks for the article, which I promptly read carefully. It strikes me that if I can be that subjective, like determine on my own whether the I.V. party has gotten ahead of the party to a particular dungeon, or not, why do I need any rules? I'm not trying to be rhetorical or pointed or provocative, I'm trying to understand the sandbox mindset. I come from an impro background but have started to run my games more and more sandboxy since I first discovered OSR games five, six years ago.

[/quote]

Your query about subjectivity is an interesting one.

ACKS is designed to allow players to engage in self-directed strategic choice or agency within the game world. It tries never to put the player into a position of making a decision "because the story would be more interesting if I did this".  The reason the design is done this way is explained here, in my essay on the Agency Theory of Fun:  http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/tabletop/checkfortraps/7485-Judging-the-Game

Strategic choice requires that some things be known, and other things unknown. If everything is unknown, there can be no strategy as all decisions are unfounded, and if everything is known there can be no strategy because the outcome is clear.

The causes of the known are (1) laws of nature, casuality, history, geography, etc. The need to have knowns is why I reject "quantum ogres" and retroactive continuity adjustments for the sake of "the story". (Side note: Since I believe in the Agency Theory of Fun, I feel that story games which compromise player agency are going down a dead-end design path. They require you to purposefully put obstacles in your character's own path, or purposefully abandon the objectivity of the game world, for the sake of making the character's path more interesting.)

The causes of the unknown are (2) complexity, (3) chance, and (4) free will. Complexity means deterministic causal outcomes that cannot be predicted in advance (e.g. weather). Chance is true randomness. Free will is human choice. You can think of this in a video game as game physics, a virtual die roll, and a menu selection by the player. 

ACKS provides rules for (1) known factors, (2) complexity, and (3) chance. It does not provide rules for free will in most cases as the players and Judge are assumed to be bringing those elements to the table. In those cases where it does have rules for free will, they tend to be for cases where emotion dominates over reasoned judgment, such as morale breaking or being seduced.

Hence, you should be subjective where subjectivity is required, e.g., in making choices about what the NPCs whose free wills you simulate, have chosen.

 

 

Alex, this discussion is very interesting to me. Mind if we continue it for a while? Either way, thanks for taking your time so far. I really appreciate it.

The causes of the known are (1) laws of nature, casuality, history, geography, etc. The need to have knowns is why I reject "quantum ogres" and retroactive continuity adjustments for the sake of "the story"

Oh, me too, that's to me the most interesting thing about sandboxyness and why ACKS is even more appealing than Lab Lord, S&W etc with its more detailed systems for thieves' guilds, domains etc.

That's why this felt so shocking because to me it felt like it went against that. Or did you use some dice system, simplified delving mechanics etc to simulate the I.V.'s progress? I.e. you placed them on the hex map, rolled navigation / movement rolls for them, used a simplified skirmish system for them (Zak suggests 1d4+HD, one-hit-kills, for off-screen battles and that's something I usually use) etc? Or did you just determine by feel which dungeons I.V. had cleared? That can be fine but that feels to me like a bit of a retroactive continuitiy adjustment; or at least it's hard for me with my current perspective / capacity to distinguish it from other forms of quantum ogre. (Am familiar with Courtney's texts on that topic.)

(Side note: Since I believe in the Agency Theory of Fun, I feel that story games which compromise player agency are going down a dead-end design path. They require you to purposefully put obstacles in your character's own path, or purposefully abandon the objectivity of the game world, for the sake of making the character's path more interesting.)

Fascinated by the unabashed objectivism even for this :D

Yeah, we play a mix where the "physics layer" is a hard landscape of rules&consequences (and here, I want the game world to be very objective even though that's so difficult), but the "decision layer" are sometimes made with considerations other than "what would bring the greatest chance of low-risk, high-reward success for the character". "Flashlight dropping", it's refered to here in Europe, when you let your characters be cowardly, incompetent, emotional, messed up etc even though it brings them and their friends more pain than pleasure. For example two of the characters are a divorced couple who still have their hooks in each other, and another two are siblings who are rivals. There definitely is a "play to lose"-mentality. A combination of story gamers' goals in the hard landscape of the sandbox. Sometimes the combination is synergistic, sometimes dysergergistic.

You may be right that it's a dead end, design wise. My game design philosophy is to test various design paths with a detached mindset and see what sort of play it produces and what sort of play it hinders.

Hence, you should be subjective where subjectivity is required, e.g., in making choices about what the NPCs whose free wills you simulate, have chosen.
This trips me up because of all the power I have. If I understand you correctly, I can pretty much decide that all the rulers of Utaqa, Hafayah, Qadim, Muluk, Umara and Liham join forces with either Hawa or Qudra and make a joint strike against the other. That definitely does not sit right with me.

For me, one of several stumbling blocks / mental locks I had to untangle on my way to the sandbox mentality was that I needed separate hats between "prepper/world-builder" and "referee". If we've pressed play and I've got my referee hat on and the players enter a room with one dozen orcs. Then it's my job as referee to push the pedal to the metal wrt those orcs, to not pull any punches. The same Sandra that put those orcs in the room (either on my own volition, or through a stocking algorithm, or through choosing a module) -- that was "prepper Sandra", and now I'm "referee Sandra", the players have chosen to entered that room and now it's all action.

Same for humans with secrets in the cities, the players are interrogating some NPC in order for them to reveal the location of a spy the players want to capture. I can do it, I've got lots of practice at doing those sort of scenes as objectively as I can.

But when we zoom out to a macro level, that's where it breaks down for me. Portraying one dozen orcs -- in a room the players have voluntarily entered -- cruelly and skillfully, going for the casters first etc, doing guerilla tactics, ambushing the party in the dungeon etc -- I don't mess around, the gloves are off once we've put play. (My DM in the Lab Lord game, which was pretty lethal, ran a 5e campaign and noone died. In mine, it's been... pretty extreme. Even though we've run the exact same modules with the exact same monster counts etc. I just don't pull any punches).

But on the whole "world" level... if I decide that 10 000 orcs happen to march on the player's little inn (they own The Inn of the Billowing Sails in Hawa)... at that point I'm just one step away from being a "Rocks fall, everyone dies"-DM, amn't I? If I'm right, then it can't be the referee's free will entirely.

The players are controlling one character each. Even their lackeys, vassals etc (when they get any), they have to roll for on various tables, vagaries etc. The referee is controlling the rest of the world. Yes, army sizes etc are derived from population, realm sizes etc but if I basically have a Mindslaver helmet on all of Zakhara and they do my bidding, it's not going to be a fair fight. Hence the word "referee" rather than "adversary".

I always tell the players: "It's you vs the world, and I'm the referee". My monsters -- or rather, my pretties -- fight dirty AF. They hit downed PCs to kill them, they go for squishies, they hit the party where it hurts, they're cowardly and efficient. But I don't send all the monsters in the world against the party at once.

I've tried explaining my mental lock / stumbling block in a couple of ways here. Maybe it's subtle and hard to get.

(As a similar example of one that I did eventually get past was... the rules for jumping over chasms in some games are pretty complicated. But as GM, I can just put in any chasm width I want. That felt unfair. The metaphors of the two separate hats, and using different rules for myself in prep time vs myself "after we've pushed the 'play' button", have helped me a lot there.)

Hence, you should be subjective where subjectivity is required, e.g., in making choices about what the NPCs whose free wills you simulate, have chosen.

I mean, on page 131 on the core book there's a table for whether or not some NPC:s rebel against the players. Where's the line?

Controlling one or a handful of NPC:s that the PC:s run into in the slums and backwater inns are fine but when those NPC:s are the commanders of thousands?

At an individual level in the short term, human behavior follows nothing but free will. But despite free will, over the long term at large scales human behavior follow deterministic economic laws. And deterministic laws of sufficient complexity have effectively random outcomes (from our human scale point of view) so it does arguably make sense to model mass behavior,or certain geopolitical events, or so on, in a random way. 

And so I think it definitely is hard to know where to draw the lines. 

[quote="Alex"]

At an individual level in the short term, human behavior follows nothing but free will. But despite free will, over the long term at large scales human behavior follow deterministic economic laws. And deterministic laws of sufficient complexity have effectively random outcomes (from our human scale point of view) so it does arguably make sense to model mass behavior,or certain geopolitical events, or so on, in a random way. 

And so I think it definitely is hard to know where to draw the lines. 

[/quote]

 

I think things like what you wrote for Senatus are probably a good middleground.  They give vague, general directions but ultimately it's up to the judge to add context and turn it into an actual set of actions by NPCs. 

 

Also, to go back a couple of threads of thought: in defense of doing retcons "for the story".  There are a couple of reasons I do such things.  Most often is when I have a player with an irregular schedule who can't make a session that's already inside a dungeon/event they wouldn't reasonably be expected to just *poof* dissappear from.  The other is when I've failed to adequately explain the rules of the world and/or a player has a character concept they are pursuing but lacked enough mechanical understanding to do some thing X back at town that their character would have reasonably done.  I often err on the side of "yeah we can pretend you did that".

When I read that you sometimes do retcons, Jard, I thought "well, I certainly never do that" and then you wrote the exact same circumstance where I always do that. :) When PCs come and go because they're players have been absent. And when a PC dies and the replacement PC arrives.

The mechanical understanding thing hasn't happened yet but I guess I can understand you there, too.

 

Alex, you have one good reason — how large scale changes psychology to sociology — and the other reason is that... they have one person each — and their hirelings they have to wrangle with morale rolls and the like — and I have… 12 orcs? If it's a battle of wills, me bringing more wills (12) than them (1 each) doesn't feel fair. Ofc I also have some mechanics on my side, such as morale rolls… looking for mechanics such as that on the macro level. Something that can harness / temper my will, not replace it completely. I dunno. It's a tricky question.

Forgive me for butting in, but...

[quote="2097"] The players are controlling one character each. Even their lackeys, vassals etc (when they get any), they have to roll for on various tables, vagaries etc. The referee is controlling the rest of the world. Yes, army sizes etc are derived from population, realm sizes etc but if I basically have a Mindslaver helmet on all of Zakhara and they do my bidding, it's not going to be a fair fight. Hence the word "referee" rather than "adversary". [/quote]

That sounds like your problem, right there? It sounds like you're conflating your role as "the person who decides what NPCs decide to do with their free will" with your role as "the person who controls the forces that oppose the players."

The former is about building a coherent world that seems to make sense, so that players can make reasonable assumptions and make reasoned decisions based on those assumptions. The latter is about providing the players with a challenge. You need to do both.

So, when working out whether and how the Empire of X provides a millitary response to the players' provocations, it's very unlikely they'll send their entire millitary force to the players' doorstep. That would be overkill, expensive, and would leave their home territories completely undefended. Plus, it's unlikely that an empire is that coherent; There's a reason why mustering troops from vassals is only done when necessary.

Yes, it makes sense for opponents to try and kill the adventurers - but that doesn't necessarily mean they should devote 100% of their effort and resources to it; That's just not how people work. NPCs with free will should have other stuff going on in their lives, and generally only kill people in service of some other goal, be it revenge, honour, chivalry, greed, anger, fear, enlightened self-interest, bloodlust, hunger, or what-have-you. Going all out should only happen when they have a very good reason, and "a bunch of level five guys keep stealing my McGuffins" is rarely a reason that good.

I guess another way of putting it is that you shouldn't confuse your goal of "having that guy's forces attack the players" with that guy's goal of "preventing those adventurers from interfereing with my ongoing plan to take over the island via millitary force."

...If I've misunderstood your issue, I apologise; I suspect I may have, given how it can be hard to define and pinpoint this kind of problem.

You're right, it's tricky. Not sure we understand each other — it's possible you understand me but that I don't understand your proposed solution, GMJoe.

Alex suggested a wargame perspective — hence the hypotheticals from my part of what I fear would maybe happen if I became "the person who controls the forces that oppose the players" (or, for that matter, that oppose the players' enemy — the problem is the same regardless of whether it's Hawa or Qudra that gets the hammer dropped on them). As for free will… my brain is only big enough for maybe… 100, 200 consciousnesses? I can't hold millions of people (all of Zakhara) in there. (Am not sarcastic or rhetorical.)

[quote="2097"] Alex suggested a wargame perspective — hence the hypotheticals from my part of what I fear would maybe happen if I became "the person who controls the forces that oppose the players" (or, for that matter, that oppose the players' enemy — the problem is the same regardless of whether it's Hawa or Qudra that gets the hammer dropped on them). As for free will… my brain is only big enough for maybe… 100, 200 consciousnesses? I can't hold millions of people (all of Zakhara) in there. (Am not sarcastic or rhetorical.) [/quote]

Hmm. Have you tried thinking to yourself "So when I think about this course of action, does it seem like something that would happen in reality? And if not, why not?" You don't need to simultaneously simulate all those conciousnesses so much as recognise that there are multiple conciousnesses, and it's unlikely they all want the same thing.

For example, for your siotuation where ten thousand orcs decend upon the adventurers... Ignoring the fact that they're orcs and not humans, under what situation would someone send an army ten thousand strong just to defeat ten or so adventurers? Is a 1000:1 numbers advantage really that much better than a 100:1 or 10:1 advantage? What would it take to get that many orcs to work together in the first place?

I guess I don't really understand how the kinds of situations you're worried about could arise in the first place. Could you perhaps provide some more examples and the thought processes that you believe would bring you to them?