Sunday, February 19, 2012

Mass Combat and State-Craft Campaign; Organization

A new friend, Cal of http://www.robotmessiah.com/ is prepping for his TL2 Mass Combat and State-Craft game. I've been always working towards bringing down the prep barrier/cost of such a game. 


At work one of the things that got me thinking about this is my experience with leasing and construction. Our main line of business is total-fit-out. We make furniture, design, build, lay-out network cabling, data-centers, civil-works etc... I'm not an engineer but I'm exposed to the costing portion of the work. You really just need a few structures with complete costing, ideally with samples of special constructions and things that are exceptions to the rule (use Low Tech Companions Building rules). Anyway, in Real Life, work costing is unpredictable and it can factor in to the variance from the abstraction. Nothing a GM can easily hand wave. Basically make an easier to use version and templates to draw from.  


One of the things I could help in, with GMs who want to run such game, is to make a way to organize assets. Assets like armies, holdings, head-quarters, and retainers. The idea I have is building Decks, card decks; I got it also from work particularly when companies and departments have to present to other people information about their organization they make a Power point of Decks. Making a power point version of you Card Deck doesn't hurt.   


3 Kinds of Decks. There is the standard CCG card stock, then there is the larger and fewer cards. I'm mostly experienced with L5R, which is a State-Craft and Mass Combat CCG.  Ideally a reference guide to be printed out and updated. Ideally more than 2-3 copies of the reference guide would be awesome for a GM-free board-gamification of this when Idle. 

The 3 card sizes. 

  • B8 ( 63mm × 88mm; 2.5" × 3.5") - Mass Combat Units, Manpower groups.
  • B7 (88mm ×125mm; 3.5"× 4.9") - Retainers, Minor Allies, Lesser Holdings (manor, villages, mines, towns). Has a sleeve that fits in Manpower cards. 
  • B6 (4.9" × 6.9"; 125mm × 176mm) - Stronghold, Major Allies, Greater Holdings (duchies, principalities, counties, baronies; large towns or cities). Has a Sleeve that fits in manpower cards and sub-holdings. 

Size according to ISO 216 

I'll really go full steam into this when I get a Gaming PA and buy the tools for this (Campaign Cartographer, Cosmographer... etc.). One with graphics skills... I have just the friend who has the skills to help me do this, I'll just ask him first.

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