Elements

This is a concept sketch for a game about 17th-century style court intrigue. In place of a traditional physical combat system, this game uses a political conflict system, described below. There are no rules for physical combat. Every resource which would usually be present to support those rules is instead redirected to support the political conflict system.

Political attributes
In addition to the regular traits used to accomplish actions, each character has three political attributes: Rank, Power, and Status.

• Rank is a noble title such as King or Marchioness, or a description such as Wealthy Merchant or Foreign Ambassador. Rank is generally immutable except in extraordinary circumstances. Mechanically, Rank determines how much inherent protection the character has from the manipulations of unimportant political players.
• Power is a number from 1 to 10 that indicates the strength of the character’s political movements. Power is used to overcome the protections of Rank, and to squash the actions of weaker political players. High Power is usually associated with high Rank, but this need not always be so. A King may be so weak that he cannot directly oppose his rivals, and a charismatic bishop might gain such popularity that he seems to stand toe-to-toe with a Grand Duke.
• Status is similar to a wound track. As a character suffers political defeats, he takes Status losses. When his actions are successful, he takes Status gains. A very low Status reduces the character’s effective Power until he can recover. Similarly, a very high Status can increase his effective Power.

Issues
Issues are the most common tool of influence. They represent concerns, ideas, and public reactions to policies and events. Issues have two political attributes and a list of investors.

• Visibility is a measure of how well-known the issue is. Subtle concerns among the higher class have lower Visibility while reactions to public events have very high visibility. High Visibility issues have more inertia behind them, and take more effort to influence.
• Popularity rates how well-liked the issue is among those it is visible to. Like Status, Popularity fluctuates from political maneuvers. Shifts in an issue’s Popularity affect the Status of every character who is invested in that issue.
• Investors are characters who are strongly associated with the issue. Investment is always either For or Against the issue. An invested character’s maneuvers involving the issue are stronger than an uninvested character’s, but her fortunes are also tied to the issue’s Popularity.

At any given time, there may be a dozen or more important issues in play, and at least twice as many with less prominence waiting along the edges for someone to pick them up.
Characters will sometimes find that they are already invested in an issue when they first learn of it, because it affects them or because of their other invested issues and positions.
Every important event and long-term project has an issue associated with it. High popularity for the issue makes the event or project run more smoothly, while low popularity can drive up costs or even stall a project completely.

Minions
Many political maneuvers can be performed by proxy. When a character sends a subordinate to complete a maneuver, that maneuver is resolved using the main character’s attributes and skills or the subordinate’s attributes and skills in the rare case that they are higher. Most unimportant subordinates will simply have the Minion trait instead of having stats of their own.
Characters with the Minion trait have no significant volition, and just do as they are told. These characters can be suborned, and resist with their master’s attributes. Characters without the Minion trait have the will to resist being turned if they choose.

Maneuvers
Activities in Court of Thorns are divided into Actions, which are standard RPG immediate result tasks, and Maneuvers, which are political tasks with a larger scope of result. Making a good impression on a lord you have just met is an Action. Swaying him to your cause is a Maneuver which may incorporate that Action.
Some example Maneuvers are:

• Spread a rumor about someone (by creating an issue that invests her).
• Press an issue positively or negatively (which is more effective on smaller visibility issues and on issues you are invested in).
• Directly affect someone’s Status positively or negatively (possibly with an escape clause if he takes a Maneuver you specify. Rank protections may prevent this if your Power is low.)
• Suborn a Minion and return him as your spy.
• Invest in an existing issue.

All Maneuvers must be phrased as things the character can accomplish with her existing networks of influence. Much effort will usually be spent on maintaining and expanding a character’s base of power so that she has sufficient channels to work her plans.
Maneuvers are usually enacted by meeting with or sending a subordinate to meet with other people to convince them of something. Maneuvers may involve multiple Actions or even multiple scenes of interaction, or may be resolved quickly with the appropriate skill test.

Time scale
In Court of Thorns, most political maneuvers require half a day for characters in or near the city, or a full day for characters in the country. These times assume the people or targets involved in the maneuver are readily available. If a character must send a message to a lord two days ride away, the appropriate delays apply before the maneuver takes effect. If the character must talk to that lord herself, the maneuver will take more of her own personal time to enact.

Parties
To get things done more quickly, the wealthy throw parties and gather many influential people together. While attending a party or a ball, the time required for most simple maneuvers drops to an hour if the relevant people are present.
These gatherings cost enormous amounts of money to host, and society looks well upon those who throw the best parties. To reflect this, every character is invested in their own Party issue. Party issues tend to have low to moderate visibility (because the uninvited public rarely cares) and are the subject of much gossip. Characters who throw cheap parties or throw no parties at all will find the popularity of their Party issue to be quite low, which can in turn hurt their Status.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 19th, 2005 at 3:20 pm and is filed under Roleplaying Games, Game Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.