Game Overview and Discussion

[TLS]

Broken Brotherhood E20 Overview

After a year-long hiatus, I am ready to step back into moderating this fun little pastime of ours and have been mulling over this idea for a couple months. One of the main issues we've continually faced is simply scale and size; people get lost in hours of pouring over spreadsheets, calculating interest, and crunching numbers rather than really role-playing or doing what they want. It is also incredibly taxing on me, as a moderator, to run all these calculations and try to simulate literally the entire world. It's hard to foresee the butterflies, accurately follow-up on everyone's orders in each corner of the globe, and run battles between 100,000 soldiers. I've decided that the best way to cut down on everyone being over extended is to drastically shrink the scale. Broken Brotherhood is an attempt to put this into practice. The economy has been even more simplified, combat has been brought down to a manageable scale, and, most critically, the playable area has been constricted. Instead of trying to balance 500 separate NPCs, there are essentially only a handful. Instead of worrying about whats going on in China or Kazakhstan, I can more fully, and in detail, explore the immediate area around the players.

Broken Brotherhood thus settles on the immediate post-revolutionary period in the United States as an ideal scenario for trying out this more limited scale. The states certainly vary in size, but there's only a 4x difference in the free population between largest and smallest potential countries. All have similar tech levels, similar cultures, speak the same language, etc. Even more, there is firm and reliable data on population, distribution, and a whole host of historical figures that you all can pull from to populate your world and events. This is an attempt to use a fairly blank and well-known canvas, for most players, that can be taken in a number of wildly differing directions. There are some stronger restrictions in many ways (this is, best I can tell, one of the few games we've done with this narrow a geographic focus for this level of technology) but I think that this actually frees up more space for creativity, if only because it allows me to field more requests and ideas.

Similarly, my goal is also to reduce the barriers to player freedom within this smaller scenario. I have minimal intention on playing realism police in this game; if you want to turn New Jersey into a despotic monarchy, be my guest. I am not going to forfeit my prerogative as mod, but I am going to more fully embrace the DM-ing strategy of "if your player wants to do something stupid and die, don't get in the way of them having fun while they go down in flames." This isn't to say I'm going to just allow each and every hare-brained scheme to be successfully pulled off, but I do intend to step back and let the Dice Lords decide if some of the more exotic ideas come to fruition. After all, this is a game, not the DARPA alternate reality simulator.

I am fully open to suggestions and proposals to address other deficiencies. I am fairly set on the technical rules I've put forward (though still want input!), but I am very interested in exploring opportunities to branch out and give players more things to do. For example, I have been thinking about letting players write-up battle results after I run the calculations. I would hand off a sheet that says who won, which units got shattered, etc, but then players would get a hand in writing them up. This could be attractive for players who dont want to sit open with a d20 calculator and crunch numbers, but who like to write. This would particularly be aimed at players who are not involved in any given conflict, because some players just manage to always miss out on the bloodshed and spend weeks on end just trolling Chatzy. This change is fairly inside the box, but I'd be interest to know any and all other suggestions you have--I'm sure I'm not the only one whose creative juices have gotten flowing over the last year.

I am currently aiming to get this game underway by mid-April (Update: As stated in my post below, I expect to do country assignments the week of April 7th and then kickoff events the week of April 14th), depending on interest levels from everyone else. I graduate from my master's program in late May, and then I get married in mid-June, so I'd like to have the ball rolling before those events happen. Ideally we'd have a few weeks of normal play before my schedule gets nuts, get into the swing of things, and at worst I'd just have to kick the game into two-week mode around those major events.

[Kilani]

I'm on board! Looks like fun. I'd be interested in playing a Native American nation at some point in the future, but will settle for a colonial government at this point.

[Haneastic]

I'm on board as well of course

[Rodenka]

Count me in, I suppose.

[Hussam B.]

Nice!

[TLS]

So we've been getting a lot of interest so far, which is pretty great. I feel like we're likely approaching critical mass here, with the people who have so far thrown their hats in, so I'm going to make an executive decision and say that I will assign countries on Sunday, April 7th. This is not the hard deadline, because I still want to aim for kick-off the week of Sunday, April 14th. However, we'll have a first cut by this weekend, and then anyone else who wants in can see what's still around next week.  I'm still considering a few rule tweaks that I'll try gaming out a little on my own this weekend, so we can be pretty firm for the pre-build phase, and then I'll also post preliminary build rules on Sunday.

[TLS]

Just a reminder to have your pre-builds and country threads up by Sunday, April 14th so we can kick this bad-boy off in earnest. Please don't engage in NPC interactions until the game gets started for real--I'm not going to bother interfering with any PC scheming you have going on in the meantime. The weekly schedule will be as follows moving forward, until it inevitably breaks down in three days because you blood-thirsty monsters will all simultaneously declare war on New Jersey:

Sunday/Monday: Builds
Monday: Winter (January to March)
Tuesday/Wednesday: Spring (April to June)

Thursday/Friday: Summer (July to September)
Saturday: Fall (October to December)

As always, during peacetime and very low-level conflicts these seasons can be played a little more fast and loose (hence a little overlap in days), but we'll try to adhere to this framework as much as possible.

[TLS]

Just a quick update, I'm traveling for Greek Easter this weekend and forgot to bring my laptop charger (I was too focused on grabbing food) so I'm unable to get up the Fall 1785 turn.

Everyone go ahead and post preliminary builds if they're so inclined today and tomorrow, and if your stuff is affected by the Fall turn you can change it. I'll get the turn up by Monday night.

Xoxo,
Your Mod

[TLS]

Just an update, as I foreshadowed when this game started I am now hitting my very last actual exam period ever until I have a mental breakdown and decide to get a PhD. As such, I am moving the game into biweekly turn mode. This will probably last for the next two years (1786 and 1787), but may finish up after just this year. Here's the current schedule:

Winter: Week 1, Sunday through Wednesday
Spring: Week 1, Thursday through Saturday
Summer: Week 2, Sunday through Wednesday
Fall: Week 2, Thursday through Saturday

As of today, Wednesday, May 1, it is still Winter 1786.

[TLS]

Update!


The game is still going on, despite the...lack of anything happening this week. I'm crushing my exams and moving right to the end, but I can't really justify taking the time to do mod things until I'm done. Thankfully, I'm done tomorrow! As such, we're on pause until Sunday, at which point we'll pick up with 1787 in the bi-weekly turn mode. I still have to move and such after graduation so I'm somewhat distracted, but will also be using that extra time to field some modly things.

Xoxo

[TLS]

Another Update

So you've all noticed I've been fairly absent, which is bad for a mod. I severely underestimated how much work goes into getting married, shockingly, and was overly optimistic when deciding that I could continue to moderate in this period. We've also had some player attrition which has made this a little more difficult.

To that end, I am doing a few things:

1) The game is on pause until June 23rd, at which point we will start up with 1788 (I will be sure to cover the rest of 1787's low-level conflicts in the interim--mostly guerrilla raids and such),

2) We've now been going for a few years, so there's been some rules stuff that has just proven to be a little wonky, so I'm going to work on re-tooling some of the rules. Your input would be very useful in this period,

3) We desperately need some more player-on-player content or help with handling NPCs; to that end, I'm going to make another recruitment push to see if we can get either an NPC mod or additional players,

4) I'd like you all, if you can, to give me a five-year plan for each of your countries in a PM. We have a lot of minor states that are getting in the way of things...maybe we should have fewer... *exaggerated wink*

[Galveston Bay]

You think getting married is a lot of work, just wait until kids come

I should become more active in the near future

[TLS]

We're back on!

I made a few small tweaks to the naval units and the ground rules, so please take note, but otherwise we're all the same rules wise. I've received five year plans from some of you, but could use a refresher from the others. We're going back to one week turns, since I'm now through any excuses for the slower pace and I find that two-week turns without the excuse of a world war tends to result in attrition. So this week is now 1788. Tell your friends!

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