Re: (TFT) Rough and Ready Campaigns 3

["Jay Carlisle" <selfinflicted_wounds@boardermail.com>]

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John J Hyland"
> 
> Jay,
>      You totally lost me with this one.  Not just a little lost 
> like many of your posts, all sorts of lost.

< grins, while sighing and sadly shaking head >
My fault!
 
> 
> I suppose it is the arena series thing.  When I run a game of arena 
> matches, it is a game of arena matches (as the description 
> implies).  So things other than the arena matches, are simply not 
> part of the game.

It's the arena series thing.
If all they can do is fight, it's NOT a RPG.
  
> Once I have a map or two, all sorts of ideas start happening, I 
> describe the locale and its history in broad strokes to the 
> players, then we get a few characters generated, whose players have 
> ideas of their own (hey, I want to find out what is in this big 
> blank section of map -- Road Trip!) and before you know it, we have 
> a campaign.

Okay, this is part of what I'm after.
Let the "Tools" of the game drive the story.
IMO, "Story" is how you describe what happened during play.

> It can definitely happen on the fly, much of my details get filled 
> in during play.  Of course the group has to be OK with that, but 
> mine is.  Yours may not be. 

Let me come at this from the other side.
I am building gameworlds that allow things like Building, and War, and this means designing to some level of detail from the start.

A main advantage is motivation for all that "adventurous" activity your players get up to.
For example the Map, used like Civ, becomes a dynamic tool that offers numerous avenues for "adventures".
Many Player actions at this scale will actually appear on the Map and, with hexes functioning as city squares in Civ, Players have a strong intrest in defending territory.

Another advantage is a gameworld that evolves over time.
I think R.A.H.s Future History here.
Instead of a static, never changing world why not one that's built to change?
 

Anyway, my point about the boxes was that if I'm going to run Melee and call it a RPG, I need to have more designed than just a hexmap of the arena, and seeing as how arena implies Coliseum, and Coliseum implies city, etc., I figure it's simply easier to model a world.
To have a Player breakout of the Coliseum unexpectedly and describe the city "on the fly" is alot easier if your thinking Sim-City or Civ style cities.
Oh, and yes, 20 year turns IS a long time.
A generation I think.
Seeing as TFT is quite deadly, I allow Players to play their family tree as Figures.
If the Campaign is focused on single characters then the method still gives a history of how the world came to be this way, and shows where the major troop concentrations, etc., are.

I'll get clearer as I go along.

Jay

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