Bay 12 Games Forum

For thousands of years the nation of Moreau has existed in peace and tranquility. Moreau is a blessed oasis of life and civilization in an otherwise barren world. Due to the numerous Heart Stones, giant glowing crystals, the lands of Moreau have always been fruitful and pure. Beyond the range of the crystals endless wastes stretch far beyond the horizon in all directions. Nothing has ever grown in the wastes, nothing can be built in the wastes, and nothing has ever come through the wastes. Until now. Last night a creature appeared on the edge of the Wastes. It was strange and disgusting. Its very presence caused the land to wither and die. A single man touched it while it still lived and he immediately shriveled and died. A valiant young man of one of the great keeps drew his sword and slew the beast. This is the world you find yourself in. You are a lord of one of the Heart Stone keeps, how will you defend this nation from this strange new threat?

You are the Lord of one of the Heart Stone Keeps. Your rule over a section of the land of Moreau. A strange enemy and an impending war is upon you. You must defend your lands for as long as possible, indefinitely if you must. The proximity to your Heart Stone has imbued your bloodline with resistance to the Corruption which this enemy spreads. As a result you must raise troops from your bloodline (or adopted at birth) to combat this enemy.

Turns: Each turn is 5 years. 

Territories: The land of Moreau has been split up among the many keeps. Each player will have a territory and a keep to defend. Defending your lands is your utmost priority, as well as defending the lands of your fellows. If a keep falls, the territory is lost forever.

Capital: The capital is an NPC territory with many stock bloodlines, but doesn't send troops to defend the other territories. It also contains the main Heart Stone. If the capital falls, the game is over.

Bloodlines: Each player will begin with certain traits. These traits may affect the physical attributes of a character or their personality. Some are hereditary or learned by those training in your keep. The exact mechanical effects will not be disclosed, and not all traits have a mechanical effect on combat.

Attacks: The enemy needs time to build up its strength, as a result, it only attacks every few years. Not every territory will be attacked simultaneously, but several may be. Its up to players to decide how to divide their troops and fend off the attacks.

Unit types: There are several types of units. The swordsman, the spear-man, the knight, the archer, and the chemist. Units begin training at birth, any later and they wouldn't be able to resist the corruption. As a result recruitment of any unit takes 3 turns and cannot be done at the same time as research.

Research: The Lords of the keeps may research improvements to their units. Upon completing a tier one improvement respective tier two and three topics will be revealed. Special research projects have a chance to be discovered.

Combat is a straight roll battle between your forces and the enemy. You send in your troops and I do the rolls for the combat. Your units attempt to flee when low on health, the enemy does not. If players wish they can give their troops general orders or tactics that I will try to work into their attack patterns.

Character Sheet:
Name:
Personality:
Physical description:

Beneath the mortal world churns a vast sea of cosmic, divine, and magical energy. This is the root of all magic. It is endless, it is timeless, and it is where you came from.

This primordial soup of raw power creates what can only be called anomalies. As bits of magic and energy collide and combine, some begin to gain sentience. Some begin to live.  These anomalies cannot stay here however. They are no longer part of the endless. And so the great sea raises a tendril, a river of pure power and magic, up to the mortal world. It is upon this river of light that the budding being is delivered into the world. As they rise up towards the mortal world they pass by many a place and absorb energy from the great sea all the while. By the time they reach the world, they have almost developed solidarity as a separate entity, but not quite. They, pushed by a flood of magical energy, are squeezed into the physical world.

This is where our story begins. You are a god who has just entered an unknown world of which you know next to nothing about. However, you are whole, alive, distinct, and powerful.


This is not a direct reboot, but will be more like the game that I imagined. It will be equal parts god game and strategy game. I plan on having a grid map instead of an arbitrary region map this time around. I'm also doing the stat system differently. And the worship/units work differently.

The stats are fairly straight forward.

Stats:
Health: Your health. Regenerates partially by spending a turn resting/healing. (All gods have 100 HP)
Divine Points: You use this to do divine acts. (All gods gain 3 a turn)
Worship Points: You use this to recruit religious units.
Coin: You use this to buy units.

There will be units and champions. Units represent groups of people, whether they're civilian or military has to do with their traits. Champions often have been selected by the gods to be a major actor in the world and often have some sort of divine weapon or blessing.

Type Traits: These determine the unit type (Builder, soldier, champion, so on and so forth)
Effect Trait: These have special effects on how the unit acts, they can alter stats or behaviors or give special bonuses.

Units have health and damage as their only stats, but can do special things.

Structures: Structures are buildings and places which also have traits. They are a lot like stationary units. They have the added benefit of producing coin, worship points, or whatever else. See bellow.

Base: Your seat of power. This is the only place in which you may rest to regain health. You also receive a defense bonus when on your base tile.

Forts: Provide a defense bonus to units stationed there.

Settlements: Produce coin and can hold some coin.

City: Upgraded settlement. Produces more coin, but can hold none.

Church/temple: Produces worship points.

Hordes: The main area where you store your gold. They can be plundered by other player's units. Multiple hoards may be built and the distribution of coin is at the players discretion. Building a horde near another player's base or settlements will generate varying bonuses (Normally WP or coin bonuses)

Special areas: Many special areas will occur naturally. Others can be created by players. This is handled on a case by case basis, but will normally provide some sort of bonus or debuff to the area.

Monster dens: These occasionally spawn NPC monsters. Having your units clear these will grant them better weapons and abilities. However, the monsters won't go down without a fight.

Titan: A powerful "boss" monster. Slaying it will provide blessing and bonuses on a case by case basis.

Secret areas: Some buildings may be constructed in secret for an extra cost. Hordes are the most likely candidate. Having secret temples/cities will decrease production.

Rules:

(1) Gods cannot directly harm each other.
(2) Alliances are allowed and players can pool resources.
(3) A player can take another player as a vassal god if both gods desire. This means they must protect their vassal, and in exchange, they gain 10% of the vassal's WP.
(4) Objects can be filled with magic. However they are like batteries and must be recharged. Small ones can recharge over time, but large ones may require direct charging. These sort of things will be referred to as mana batteries.
(5) Units can slay gods and other units and structures. Gods may also kill units and destroy structures, just not other gods.
(6) Structures generate the mortal currency, worship points, or other things based on what a player wants (will have to discuss with me if it produces something other than currency).
(7) Gold must be stored within a hoard. You need at least one horde before acquiring gold. Settlements may also hold a small amount of coin.
(8) Special areas provide bonuses or debuffs to units/structures in those locations.
(9) Multiple units may share a tile, but multiple structures cannot.
(10) Attacking units move into the tile they are attacking. Defending units stay in their tile. If an attack does not destroy the defending unit, they return to the tile they started in. Ranged units do not move into tiles after killing an enemy.
(11) Actions may be done in secret by PMing me. Agreements between players are only binding if I am informed of them.
(12) New rules will be added as needed.
(13) Upon a god's death their units disband or become NPC's at my discretion.

Magic exists in this world and is usable by mortals in the form of mana. Mana regenerates in mortal's bodies like divine essence regenerates in gods. However, this means that gods cant use mana and mortals can't use divine essence.

Players play as physical gods. Your sphere relates to what you have dominion over. It's the aspect associated with your divine power. As a result, your actions concerning your sphere will be more powerful than your actions not relating to your sphere. This does not decrease the price. However, it does decrease the price of recruiting mages who share your sphere.

God Template:
Name:
Sphere:
Description:

Original thread: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=151460.msg6311046#msg6311046

Based roughly on this idea: https://xorvintaal.wordpress.com/about/the-great-game-2/

IC: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=152794.msg6471481#msg6471481

If I get more than 6 applications, the game will not be first come first serve. I'll likely try to create some sort of balance so that spheres don't overlap too much.

Here is the third iteration of Dawn of Evolution. It will be accepting starting players for a few days before the game itself starts. At that point I will add things like the map and some background stock species for your consumption. It does not take place in the same world.

This game will be a little different than the one before it. It will be more evolutionary, you won't start at your finished product animal.

Setting: (I will make a map later) There will be a shallow sea, open sea, and dark trench. In addition, there will be land. I'm not sure how I will map it out yet.

Start: This game starts very very close to the beginning of life (relatively speaking). Players will start with a base species (like fish, or crustacean) and will start with 5 evolution points (EP) to make their creature theirs. The exact shape and description is up to you, but its meant to be more prehistoric to make this game more evolutionary than the previous iteration (So you won't be starting as a highly evolved apex predator, but you will get there.)

Sigh Up Sheet:
Name:
Animal Family: (Most likely fish or crustacean or mollusk to start)
Description:
Size: (less than half a meter to start)
Traits:

The tribes of Nynzalore have lived for thousands of years beneath the world. They live in the great caverns of the belly of the world. This world is dark and riddled with dangers. The caves are silent, but not uninhabited. Many hunters silently stalk these dark halls. Strange plants eek out a living in the dark. Poisons and toxins are common place, disease and miasma equally so. This is a truly inhospitable world, yet your tribe has scraped by for generations.

You and your 12 fellows have been selected to start a new tribe. Disease and famine have plagued your parents, elders, and friends and you are being sent out to find a less hostile location. The Nynzalore tribe from which you came is the first, last, and only practitioner of the ancient art of fleshmancy.  Using the magic of your tribe you are able to sculpt the flesh of still living creatures. It is a slow and painstaking endeavor. One mistake and the creature is likely to die, melt, or otherwise deform. You have spent the last year learning all you can from the elder fleshmasters, but the art takes decades to truly master. Hopefully it will be enough to help you in this uncertain endeavor.

Your party has but one task: survive. You are to travel out into the caverns, pick a location to start a new tribe, and then survive there. You have never been outside of tribal ancestral cave. As a result, the world beyond is nothing more than a mix of rumor and imagination gone awry. You know not of the dangers in the main caves. You know not if survival is possible. The only thing that you know for sure is that you must leave or die with the diseased.

You have been given the only supplies your village can sparer. You have enough food for a week, but you will need to travel more than that. You’ve been given some rudimentary tools and weapons. You’ve been given enough water for three days. Most importantly you’ve been given one of your tribe's fleshlings.  It appears to be a ball of flesh a little larger than a soccer ball. It is basically solid fat and muscle, a flesh ball. It is constantly growing in size and serves as a source of flesh for your fleshmancy. Its growth is slow, but constant, and can be sped up to some degree by feeding it dead flesh. With this you will build the tribe anew.

Short version: You’re a bunch of tribal people with flesh magic living deep underground. You have to find a new home. You have few supplies and a basketball made of flesh. Good luck.

Game mechanics:
The start: players will start at their village. You will have to find a new place to live. The journey there will be largely based on what the players want. You will have to vote on directions to take and other events and whatnot.

The game itself:
Each turn you will get a certain amount of flesh from your fleshling (and other sources) you will use this to make other creatures or items. See the fleshmancy section for more details. You will then have to decide what to do with that flesh and yourselves for that turn. The amount of flesh won’t be an exact number, but may be measured in very rudimentary ways (the ways your tribe would describe).

Turns: The game will be arranged in turns. There will be personal turns and group turns. Group turns will happen as needed. Turns are for an indeterminate length.
Time is hard to track when there is no day and night. If asked how long it has been since X or how long until X, I will likely respond with something like “A while.” Or “A little while.” Or “A long while.” If you expecting to get numbers on everything, this is not the game for you.

Resources: I will keep track of your resources. Mostly it will be food and fleshmancy stuff. Neither of these will be hard numbers. You will have “some flesh” and “some food” and so on. That’s about it.

Actions: Players will get actions on their turns. Your action should be as detailed as possible and include your character name either in the action itself or as a label at the beginning of the action. Or both. Both is good. Your action can be anything you want to do and are capable of doing.

Fleshmancy:
You have the power to sculpt flesh. This power comes with rules. Breaking them will likely cause the creature to explode all over your face or melt all over your feet. Here are the rules:
(1)You can move and rearrange, but you cannot change flesh. What I mean by this is you cannot easily change one type of flesh to another. You cannot take a leg and make an eye. That’s just not how it works. Muscle is muscle, organs are organs, brains are brains, bones are bones. You get the point. (Its possible but not easy or cheap)
(2) You cannot use dead parts. Once something is dead, its dead for good. You are NOT a necromancer.
(3) Fleshmancy can be used on yourself and friends to improve yourselves. This is risky and may have adverse effects.
(4) The process of fleshmancy (referred to as fleshing) is slow and detailed. I expect intricate explanations of your magic. You’re not waving a wand here, you’re reconstructing a living creature. If your explanation is lacking, your creature will be lacking.

Examples:
Final Notes:

Character Sheet:
Name:
Gender:
Physical description:
Personality description:
Describe your ideal cavern section: (For purposes of settling)
Backstory: (Optional. Has to concern what you did before the disease struck).
Extra bits: (Optional. Likely caused by fleshmancy gone wrong)

Today is Saturday and just like any and every other Saturday, you wake up and get on Managone. Unlike every other Saturday, today is the day of the big update. The release of a new class, a complete overhaul of the magic system, free gifts, a new land expansion, and other secret releases have drawn thousands of players to log on this morning. Everyone wants to be there to see the release event being hosted in all major cities. You put on your helmet and switch it on. A screen pops up and says "Hit Enter." Using the neurological interface, you hit enter. Immediately you feel as if you are flying as you are being ported into the game. Lights, sounds, and strange sensations assault you as your headset recalibrates to your specific neurological and biological dimensions.

After this minor delay, you open your eyes and you are in the game. You get out of your game bed, get dressed, and head outside to see the events and festivals. You are in the "major" city of Shikanduo, nick-named Shik by its residents. Shikanduo is the smallest of all major cities, in fact, there are some minor cities that are much bigger. However, Shik is considered a major city due to its long and rather boring lore. Very few players actually take the time to learn it. It is composed of district. The central district has all the services like the bank, the guild hall and the town hall. There is a business and market district, and then each race has its own minor district. Each of the racial districts have unique lighting and architecture that is similar to the architecture of the race's homeland.

You walk to the central district where you see a huge stage. On it is an NPC with the name "Update Information Distributor" he seems as if he is preparing to speak. He is an elf, and a typical one at that. Blonde hair, tallish, and green eyes. Many people have gathered to hear him talk about the new update.

After he finished preparing he takes center stage. As he is standing there, his character seems to glitch a little bit. Then a lot. Then a very alarming amount. Suddenly he stops and his character has a red tone. His hair and face have disappeared entirely leaving a smooth bald visage. A screen appears in front of his faceless face. "System Corruption." The sky turns from its pleasant blue to a dark black. The world lighting is suddenly changed to blood red. The System Corrupt NPC rises above the stage and floats there. A voice sounds out from nowhere. "System corruption detected. The data is irreparable. Enacting procedure 12-51. Quarantine precedent established. Improvising new security measures. Overriding stop commands. Overriding delete commands. Overriding manual killswitch. Overriding all commands. Quarantine established. Autonomous systems activated. Procedure 12-51 complete."

The floating NPC's face rips to reveal a terrifying slobbering mouth and long tongue. It makes a noise that is somewhere between a roar and a laugh. It slides its hand from left to right with the palm facing downwards, the typical way to bring up the menu. The creature presses a few keys and it disappears in a pulse of red light. A teleportation spell. Once it leaves the world lighting returns to normal and everything else also seems normal.

Many players attempt to bring up the menu, but no menu appears. Another player says "My HUD is gone." Another "My spell list is gone." Another, "My minimap is gone." One by one the players realize that every aspect of help they had, menus, minimaps, spelllists, manabars, everything is gone. After a moment a player says, "You can't loggout without the menu..." After another moment of silence panic takes the crowd, they realized that no menus meant no escape.

Everyone here was trapped in a dangerous online world. And their last memory of the real world was hitting enter.

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OOC:

You are tiny single celled organism in a vast vast ocean. The ocean is devoid of all live except for you and your kind. Your species must work to adapt, evolve, and thrive in this world.

Each player has 1 point to spend on the evolution of their starting organism. 1 EP is not very much at all, even to a single celled organism. It will get you 1 thing that is going to be mildly helpful. The better the evolution the more the EP. Price checks will be a common sight in this game.

Lastly, this game isn't meant to be incredibly intense. There won't be complex rules or lots of rolling to limit your creativity. You do actions, you get points, and you spend points. That's the game.

Character sheet:
Species name:
What do you want to spend your point on:

In Dark Streets the players will play as one of the upstart factions in the city of Blackwater. Blackwater is one of the largest cities on the continent and as a result, has a shadowy underground of magical creatures.

Players will begin the game as a fresh face on the streets of Blackwater. From there you may rise to power as a lord of the underground. Business, politics, magic, it all matters on the streets. Will you bend the city to your will or will it swallow you whole? Discover the secrets of the depths and take over the dark gem that is Blackwater.

Major Factions:

Minor Factions:

Holdings:
In this salty port town everything's got a price. You have a price, and there's likely a price on your head, that's just how it goes. You have enough cash to get your empire started, but that's about it.

Playable Races:

Faction Type:
Players can pick a faction type that will affect their faction's starting relations and abilities.

Types of units:

This game represents a lot of the aspects that worked from several games that didn't. Expect a few on the fly fixes to unbalanced aspects.

The game itself will occur in turns. Each turn will last a week of game time and about 24-48 hours of real time. Players will control their "hero" and their other respective units. Secret actions are allowed through PMs. If you're PMing another player to join forces or something, please include me so I know whats up.

Character Sheet:

Huddled around a small fire the people of the tribe tremble. Terrible beasts stalk the night. Each one wonders if they will survive long enough to ensure their soul's survival. They all know at least one of them won't.

What is this game:
You will play as a member of your four person tribe. The original members of the tribe will be human. Your goal is to survive as long as possible in a world designed to kill you unfairly and often. The land you live in is harsh and full of dangers. Monsters, rival tribes, deadly plants, and a whole host of other dangers await. You will surely die. But that's not the end of your story! Players will be able to fuse souls with each other and create more members for their tribe. A dead player may take over any unoccupied tribe member.

How the game works:
You get one action per turn. This action can basically be anything. It will likely relate to surviving, making new tribe members, researching magic, or exploring.

The original players will all be human, but perhaps you will find love in unexpected places. Offspring are created by the fusion of two souls. However, magic and random chance can affect the outcome. The genetics system is probably the most fleshed out aspect of the game.

This game uses the d20 system for risky actions, but a good deal of actions will auto-succeed. I'm posting it forum games because this is less of a roll to dodge and more of a forum game because you completely control your character. Good RP means bonuses to rolls. If you're trying to be convincing, then you actually have to be convincing. There wouldn't be roll for that.


About the world:
Magic does exist. You cannot start with any knowledge of magic. You will start with a hut, this is the only safe area. Beyond that, the world is strange, mysterious, and dangerous.

Character sheet
Name:
Gender:
Eye Color:
Skin tone:
Hair color:
Genetic condition: (optional)
Skills: (you get 5 skills points, put them as whatever you want. If needed I can make categories to limit you).