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Author Topic: 4X in Pen and paper. 4X the fun?  (Read 2921 times)

Adultratedhydra

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4X in Pen and paper. 4X the fun?
« on: December 15, 2011, 06:20:10 am »

Hey there all.

While playing a game of Imperium Galactica 2 with a friend today we got onto the idea of a 4X strategy game built in a Pen and Paper system.

We threw some idea's around and we came up with a slight overview of current things on our mind, they include but arent limited to:

-The ability to formulate your own race using a limited points system or pick from a pre-established pool and create a faction within that race using a points for perks system.
-A Powerful NPC race that appears in a late game that threatens all players.
-Multiple resource types to be tracked.
-Random events.
-Possible use of D10 Percentage based system.
-We want to make sure its accessible, but at the same time have a level of complexity within the game.

The question i pose here is what other systems would you expect to see in something like this? We have a desire for it to be as RP friendly as possible, a GM would ofcourse be required and there are many systems here that we havent even begun to think of yet but basicly im wondering, does it sound of interest to anyone?

If not, Feel free to state why not, if yes then what does appeal to you? what would you expect to see?

Any opinions are quite welcome.

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chaoticag

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Re: 4X in Pen and paper. 4X the fun?
« Reply #1 on: December 15, 2011, 07:38:17 am »

Although this is very interesting, I do have to ask, how long are turns going to take? I mean, with 4x videogames, the computer does a lot of number crunching, but when it comes to pen and paper games, there's only so much you can take before getting bored and hoping your turn starts soon.
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Adultratedhydra

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Re: 4X in Pen and paper. 4X the fun?
« Reply #2 on: December 15, 2011, 08:16:09 am »

Good question. That was the one we got too before pass out occured. as i said this would be played in a controlled environment so turns would need to be quick, thusly why we want efficiency in doing things.
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nenjin

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Re: 4X in Pen and paper. 4X the fun?
« Reply #3 on: December 15, 2011, 08:33:38 am »

Learn from traditional 4x games. The biggest consumer of time is the multiplication of city and unit type things to do. Dominions 3 is probably the worst offender, in that there is no cap to the # of cities or armies you can field and the cost stays flat while you're resources go up to infinity.

No one likes hard caps but they do force you to make tactical decisions and can drastically cut down on how extensive each person's turn becomes. Try to automate as much as you can or take it out of the realm of player decision making, where reasonable. Things like, territory management should you have it should not try to ape what 4x computer games do, in that people build 12 different things in each province/planet.

And go heavy on the eXploration part of it. Because that's content you can write and dole out via the rules at the pace you need/want.
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Adultratedhydra

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Re: 4X in Pen and paper. 4X the fun?
« Reply #4 on: December 15, 2011, 09:16:36 am »

Yea. we figured going too hardcore into endless numbers of cities and such would be a bad idea. We are in the general brainstorming portion right now, trying to come up with good rules but also trying to keep it simple. We dont want some herculean tutorial needed before the first turn heh.
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Thief^

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Re: 4X in Pen and paper. 4X the fun?
« Reply #5 on: December 15, 2011, 01:32:29 pm »

Investigate 4x boardgames like Space Empires 4X.
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chaoticag

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Re: 4X in Pen and paper. 4X the fun?
« Reply #6 on: December 15, 2011, 02:43:46 pm »

Hmmm, I do have something of a suggestion. Maybe, instead of making silly large maps, you can have maps reduced to one or two star systems with a lot of planets on each?

Also, it makes production easier to keep track of it you have two different colored dice (one for amount, the other for turns).

To be fair though, it might just be fun to allocate each player a certain amount of tech points and resource points, then have them spend them on techs and just go to war, effectively making this a war game instead, buuuut that's what I'd rather see, and 4x works great too.
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Girlinhat

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Re: 4X in Pen and paper. 4X the fun?
« Reply #7 on: December 16, 2011, 01:05:15 am »

I had an idea a while back that may be relevant.  Basically, I was thinking "How could you have a multiplayer game where people can play the same empire offline and not bash everyone else?"  My conclusion was similar to Terraria, world-hopping.  The game (would have) consisted of two major parts.  1: You own a mothership, no colonies.  Your mothership is a refinery, shipyard, residential sector, research lab, everything, and it's jump-capable.  2: You jump a lot.

How it (would have) played, is that you start the game.  If you're in single-player mode then it drops your mothership into an asteroid field or somesuch, allowing you to send mining ships to retrieve ore, with a small delay until some NPC arrived and gave you trouble.  It ended when you left, with ever-increasing enemy waves forcing you eventually to retreat.  Of course, surviving longer meant more time to harvest debris and perform research, from reclaimed vessels, your own tech, and observing combat (like watching how plasma reacts and learning how to control it by practice).  Then when you're done, you warp away.  Your mothership is saved separate from the world, so when you want to play again, it loads up a fresh map and lets you explore a new area to abuse.  Some places would be harder and more rewarding, while others a bit softer, allowing you to casually collect scraps of ore and perform maintenance.

Then when you want to play multiplayer, it loads your mothership and assets, and places it into a larger map, with yourself close or far from the other players depending on the setup and/or teams.

The advantage of this is, obviously, portability of play, and centralization of resources.  You don't get a dozen colonies, you just get your mothership which may be advanced enough to perform like a dozen colonies would.  This is significantly easier on the CPU (or the calculator and pen), and allows for some more freeform playstyle.  For my idea, it would have been limited to a few active fleets at a time, so you wouldn't have twenty fleets moving about, you might get a cap of 3-4 for mining and defense and offense and diversionary offense.  The downside, is that it doesn't feel very 4X, it would play a bit more arcade strategy in the vein of starcraft rather than your spanning empires in Sins of a Solar Empire.  It also puts a lot of emphasis on the one mothership, although in my thinking it would have some hefty armor.  You'd have enough time to escape an enemy, probably, but you'd take some damage while the engines warmed up, some punishment for being forced to retreat.  And of course the mothership could be outfitted as an economic beast to field a big fleet, an orbital drydock to spam fighters faster than they're destroyed, or just layer on the armor and strong-arm your way through the enemy fleet using a custom dreadnaught.  My version of combat was rather advanced, with several layers of missiles and anti-missiles and armor and shields and EVERYTHING factoring in, but it was for computer so you could bare-bones it for calculator.

...now I want to start coding again D: