I tried this a few months ago, and not one person responded. Encouraged by this success, I thought it logical to try again.
We’ll need optimally 33 players, but can probably get by with slightly fewer. There are no dice, no real rules, so no experience is required. Newbies are welcome.
Here is the scenario: The king is dead and named no heir to the throne. Around 15 people have some sort of claim, and various earls and barons have their own interests to persue. Will there be a smooth transition of power, or will it be civil war? It all depends on your diplomatic skills.
Sign up now – the fate of the kindom hangs in the balance!
Me telling you that you have no ultimate powers of mind control?
Everyone will be human, no one will have magic. Everyone will be a noble, some with royal blood and some without. All of the action will take place within the royal castle, where weapons have been surrendered. There will be “behind the tapestries” negotiations, then a roundtable discussion and vote. Then more negotiations, then another discussion and vote.
The only “rule” is that people will have varying power point numbers, based on various things like running a castle, blood line legitimacy, control of an army, etc. Power points are essentially meaningless, except they do count in the vote. A majority of power points will win. There are also rules for whether you are related to the king (allows you to vote in the first meeting), and if you are a tenent-in-chief (allows you to vote in the second meeting).
Here is an example:
Erelar Hirnen
3 power points
Nephew of Miginath (2)
Baron of Nenda (1)
Can vote in both meetings
Erelar Hirnen is a relative of the king and has a claim to the throne. An ill-tempered man of early middle years he is not popular either within or without his own court.
Natural allies: His brother Tarkin.
The time you put in is entirely up to you. When I played this at a con last summer it lasted from dinner time to a little after midnight, but there were some pretty hardcore players.
I’m not sure what sort of forum we should use, but I’m up for suggestions. What I figured is we can do character assignments, question and answers and both roundtables in this forum. Backroom deals can be made via e-mails, as you might not want to announce your support for a candidate to the whole world. I figure that backroom discussion periods might last a week or two. Hopefully that will give everyone enough time to accomplish what they want without eating into too much personal time. Roundtable discussion will take as long as it takes, and it’s up to players to demand that voting begins or insist on further deliberations.
Totally cool that you’re a newbie. If you want to bone up on what game play will be like, you might want to watch the movie Elizabeth. Very inspirational for this type of scenario.
I’m in. Just to let you know I haven’t done any gaming in the last 5 years or so, but I have not doubt that I’ll get into the swing of things quick enough.
Cool, hopefully we’ll have enough players to start in a few days.
I just got permission from Columbia Games to use their materials online.
I’ll be glad to forward the e-mail to any mods that are worried about copyright infringement.
While we try to recruit more people, here are some links you can look at. Note that only the last two are “official” materials. I have not checked the first two for accuracy, but I noticed that the Elendsa page has “votes” listed – these do not apply to our game, so please disregard them.
Sure, I can spend an hour or two spread out over a week scheming. Time’s not really on my side (at least, in concrete chunks) lately, but I’d like to try. I’m also a neophyte, so if my character screams “I can’t take this Machivellian hell anymore!” and dives through a window, is that okay?
Um … I might have to be a bastard daughter. Or, whatever. Just in case that detail is important. (I’m willing to play a guy, just wanted to make sure you knew I was a “she” if it matters.)
