Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Proposal: roaming merchants

Timed out, 1-1. Failed by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 29 Feb 2024 16:50:14 UTC

Change “1 food” into “2 food” in the 3th fortnight bullet point.


Add the following sentence to fortnight:

the period between two fortnight actions is called a week.

add a new rule called items:

A vassal must state in a message to the souvreign if he wants to use an item and which and if there are some parameters them too.

A scroll has always a second mode which reads “or ignore the first enemy in the next wave.”
A vassal has a publicly-known list of items.
A vassal may not use an item that is a part of a special trade this week.
all item actions are resolved before any fortnight bullet point occurs
If a scroll, pile or animal was used that vassal loses it.

Add a new section called merchants.

“sometimes traveling merchants arive at the castles. Vassals can aquire artifacts and other goods via the merchants.
bedvalue is calculated as following: bed = #wood +2*#stone+3*#ore+3.5*#iron
if a vassal didn’t bed his bed is -1
where #“material” is the amount that vassal has bed of that material.

This following of events is called merchants.

Roll a D100 d4+1 times.
Following the the result of that dice the following is available. If the dice indicates an artifact that a Vassal already has or there was already an artifact rolled, the places where there was rolled an artifact wil be empty.
1 horn of plenty ||  artifact|| your serfs only need 1 food per fortnight
2-3 ever burning torch || artifact ||you smelt one ore ones per fortnight for free
4 shield of protection || artifact|| the first time an enemy deals damage to you note its theatre you can take no more damage of enemy’s of that theatre, if you would you ignore it
5-8 scrol of fire || scroll || destroy 1 farm of any vassal.
9-11 scroll of ice || scroll || make a small wooden wall called ice wall without paying its cost
12-13 scroll of groundshaking || scroll || destroy one of your own structures and destroy one structure of the same size of any vassal
14-20 scroll of life || scroll || remove 5 damage of any vassal
21-30 stack of wood || pile || gain 5 wood
31-36 pile of rocks || pile || gain 2 stone
37-40 iron bar|| pile || gain 1 iron
41-51 chicken || animal || the next time the 3th fortnight bullet point is being resolved you ignore 1 serf
51-68 pig || animal ||the next time the 3th fortnight bullet point is being resolved you ignore 2 serfs
69-74 cow || animal ||the next time the 3th fortnight bullet point is being resolved you ignore 3 serfs
74-80 book of secrets || book || “does currently nothing”
80-100 special || special || special

Add a subrule of merchants called beds:

The Vassal can state in a comment on the most recent herald story post the amount of materials they will bed this week on which good . this may not exceed the amount of materials they have and is publicly know. Only wood, stone, iron, ore can be bed. When an amount of material is bed these can not be used for building or other activities until after the first following fortnight. if there is a special good, each player may set up to one good or artifact for sale if the do the need to state the following in a comment on the most recent herald story post “the name of the item and the minimum bed they want

Add a 6th bullet point in the fortnight list stating the following:

for every available good the highest bedvalue is calculated, the vassals with the highest bedvalue lose there bed on that item. Then if there was only one vassal who had the highest bedvalue on that item they gains the item, if the item was special and the minimum bedvalue was not reached they do not gain the item, if the minimum bedvalue was reached, the vassal of who was the offers gains the bed of the highest bedvalue of that item and loses that item.

 

 

trying to make the interfortnight more interesting

Comments

Rubbelt:

27-02-2024 20:23:13 UTC

i now realise i wrote bet 20 times wrong

Josh: he/they

28-02-2024 10:18:43 UTC

Sorry, going to have to vote against on this, a bit for mechanical reasons, and a bit because it’s just a bit of a mess.

Stylistic comments:
* The first change doesn’t do anything because the text “1 food” does not appear in the Fortnight action, so there’s nothing to change.
* The period between two fortnights being called a week makes no sense, narratively. The period between two fortnights should be two weeks.
* “Bet” or “bid” being misspelled throughout as “bed” isn’t a problem, as it’s a typo so can be corrected at will, but: there’s a *lot* of typos here. Some of the grammar issues make the rule impossible to interpret (“if there is a special good, each player may set up to one good or artifact for sale if the do the need to state the following in a comment on the most recent herald story post” - I have no idea what this means), and those can’t be corrected as typos - they just sit in the ruleset not doing anything. Might be worth running these things through a spellcheck?

Mechanically:
* Special goods aren’t really explained. I think I see the shadow of it - it’s a way of specifying that Vassals can sell their artefacts to each other - but I don’t think the rule is quite robust enough to make that explicit and have it hang together mechanically.
* The effects of the different artefacts are a mixed bag and some of them do not spark joy. Scroll of Fire and Scroll of Groundshaking would open up hostile direct player interaction, which is a can we want to open carefully if at all. Stack of Wood / Pile of Rocks / Iron Bar are zero sum in a way that’s just a bit boring. The Shield of Protection has an effect that isn’t limited and doesn’t wear out, so you’d quickly end up immune to all damage in all theatres. I could go on.

All in all, I think that this is somewhere between “not ready” and “not right for this dynasty. Meanwhile, as your mentor, please do feel free to lean on me for proof-reading proposals, as I’m happy to help make sure that they’re robust enough to make it into the ruleset.  against