Short Circuit's Journal: Woohoo! I'm writing a game.

This is fun. I'm writing a turn-based economic strategy game based on--wait for it--the Open Game Content.

You might be thinking, "Wha?--"

It's essentially a build-off from an old idea I'd had called e-Tale, where each player would be in charge of a competing organization, and the lower members of the organizations would do battle, instead of the the players themselves. The players would be left to roleplaying, and the combat mechanics would be left to someone else.

The game I'm writing (I haven't given it a name yet), is intended to do essentially the same thing, except you now have two classes of players. You have the roleplayers at the upper tier, and you have the hack-and-slash types who handle the combat. (Kinda like how some folks like playing in D&D miniatures tournaments.)

Here's what I've got written down so far:

Resources

You have four basic resources:

1. Land
2. Citizens
3. Military
4. Food

• Land...
• • produces food
  • holds a fraction of the national civilization
• Citizens
• • Consume food
  • may be obtained
  • • over time
    • by claiming/conquering land
  • may be converted to military units, at the expense of food
• Military units
• • Consume food (periodic expense)
  • May be created by converting citizens, at the expense of food
  • May be used
  • • to claim/conquer land
    • to steal food from another nation
• Food
• • is produced by land
  • May be stolen/lost in raids
  • Is consumed by
  • • citizens (periodic expense)
    • military (periodic expense)
    • training (converting citizens to military units) (incidental expense)

Macro play strategies should be obvious. You can physically conquer an opponent's land, claiming all his citizens, or you can steal his food and force him to choose between feeding his citizens or his military units. Eventually, he'll run out of military units, either by having starved them to death, or by running out of citizens to train.

I still have to work out what it costs to train each kind of unit. Barbarians, bards, clerics, druids, fighters, monks, paladins, rangers, rogues, sorcerers wizards, warriors, experts and adepts. I'll probably cull a few from the list; Some aren't particularly suited to hack-and-slash.

When first-tier players have chosen their activities for the round, there are likely to be military conflicts between the nations. Then second-tier players get to have their fun. They'll be given a battlefield map, rosters of the opposing armies, and be allowed to play out the battle. The results get relayed to the first-tier players, whose resources are adjusted, and they then take their next turn.

Obviously, first-tier play is suitable for high-latency players, while second-tier play would best be done around a table.

One thing I need to do, however, is set up alternate second-tier rules, for when second-tier players are unavailable.

Promisance..

[Praedon]

Look up a game called Promisance... It will give you some great ideas for it.

Re-read the OGL

[pythorlh]

Per the Open Gaming license, you can't base your computer game on d20 rules. Or, more accurately, you can't tell people you based the game on d20 rules. Other than that, I think it's a cool idea.

Re:

[Short Circuit]

Ah. Fixed.