Rules update 2016
Overview
Over winter of 2015/2016 we have carried out a review of the rules from the third year of Empire. As a result of that review we are implementing some changes to the published rules. We are in the process of updated the wiki and the downtime system to reflect the changes, but will summarize and explain all changes here so that players can identify the changes easily.
We will try to include a section after each rules update to explain the reasoning behind the change.
We will continue to update this page throughout January with any further changes and post a link to the page to players once the update is complete.
Downtime
We have amended the downtime system to remove the option to commit illegal or risky acts, foreign trade with barbarians, piracy with foreigners and raiding of nearby nations. From 2016 onwards fleets will be able to trade with foreign nations or pirate barbarian nations, or support Imperial navies. Military units will be able to support Imperial armies or carry out "mercenary" work.
We have removed the cost to the Empire to pay for the civil servants who were preventing illegal fleet actions.
The reasoning behind these changes is highly theoretical and consequently requires a fairly lengthy reasoning to explain it.
Reasoning
The version of the downtime system in the first few years contained actions that allowed players with fleets and military units to make choices in downtime that would impact the wider campaign. For example, by pirating foreigners it was possibly to damage foreign relations with that nation. When the Thule ceasefire came into being, it created the possibility that a few players might wreck the treaty simply by clicking a downtime option to raid the Thule - quite possibly even without realizing the implications of what they were doing.
At first glance, it appears appealing to give players the opportunity to change the campaign dynamics through downtime options. The previous game that we had run, Maelstrom, made widespread use of this concept, presenting players with downtime options that were beneficial to them but caused friction with other players. While it worked for that game, there were significant problems with the approach, but we had imagined that Empire would avoid these errors by shifting to political PvP mechanics instead of camp rolling.
In practice, the hugely streamlined downtime system used for Empire served to demonstrate the fundamental conceptual flaws in allowing this kind of downtime action. There are four core problems:
Conceptual
The Empire downtime system was conceived as an adjunct to the game. Its purpose is to produce an outcome we call "reflection" - the idea that the actions the players take should be reflected in changes in state to the world. Because this is a live roleplaying game - in this context, actions means "actions taken at the events". It exists to give the campaign meaning and credibility. If the Empire cede a region in Skarsind to the Thule - this has meaning and a discernible impact because the downtime system ensures that those decisions have palpable consequences.
Its purpose is not to drive the campaign - we want a downtime system because we want to ensure that Empire had a believable credible campaign setting - where the actions of players have a profound impact on the game world. But the design goal was to ensure that Empire remained a live roleplaying game 100% - that all the important decisions were ones taken at the events - that the campaign was driven by the actions of the players while roleplaying at the events - not by the choices they make in downtime.
We absolutely do want players to have opportunities to wreck peace treaties that other players have worked incredibly hard to create - that is essential to the game. But that opportunity should only happen as a result of actions taken while live roleplaying at events - not by decisions taken in downtime.
Cognitive
Research into various cognitive biases shows that human beings find it easier to break rules the further removed they are from the consequences of their actions. The more abstract the situation, the easier it becomes to justify the action to breach social protocols and break laws. In takes a significant degree of nerve - and preparedness for confrontation - to act against the socially agreed consensus - for example by breaking a treaty. But experience has shown us that players find it vastly easier to do this when choosing downtime options - where the actions are highly abstracted from the actions and the consequences are distant - than they would be to take actions with similar effects at an event. (for example see the current moment bias). In LRP terms we could summarize this as "Downtime crime is easy - uptime crime requires real guts".
At first glance, this appears desirable, if conflict is the lifeblood of a PvP political game, then seducing players into choosing antagonistic actions by making the pathways to conflict easier should create more conflict. Unfortunately the abstraction and the ease with which these decisions can be taken has a downside - namely that players feel detached from the decisions they haven taken. The actions do not feel like genuinely heartfelt decisions - because they are not - they are abstracted artificial choices.
As a result of this lack of internal commitment to the decisions, many players will attempt to reverse their choice when faced with the consequences at an event. In the base cases they tend to backtrack and use the artificiality of the downtime system to create new narratives that distance or divorce themselves from the actions they have taken. (Maelstrom provides a charming example of this, where characters who were horrified by the existence of slavery would continue to work large plantations full of slaves in downtime by claiming in uptime that the slaves were actually serfs). In the worst cases, players will abandon the character completely rather than face a confrontation they have not fully committed themselves to or in some cases even claim that the action was not taken by them (blaming system errors).
As a consequence the conflict that is generated by these kind of downtime actions is very often substantially inferior to the kind of conflict that is generated by uptime actions. Players who are the victims of the actions find it frustrating that there are few players prepared to stand by their actions. Players who are the perpetrators don't enjoy the experience of the ensuring confrontations because few were really committed to the actions they have taken, they were neither prepared for the ensuing conflict nor fully invested in what they have done.
The net result is that while these kind of conflicts are artificially easy to generate, they are often negative for the game experience as a whole. In Empire we want the conflicts that develop to be the result of actions that players have taken live at the events; in this way they are more fully invested in those decisions and better prepared for the ensuing confrontations.
Consequential
Empire is intended to be a game of significant decisions with important consequences. For those consequences to happen, actors in the campaign need to be able to link the actions of individuals to the perpetrators of those actions. As a simple example, there are no consequences to stealing - unless someone is caught for it.
In an ideal live roleplaying game the mechanisms that allow characters to identify the antagonists do not require reference to the organizers. If you assassinate a character in Empire, whether or not you are caught depends most heavily on whether there are any witnesses, how you dispose of the body, how well you hide your motivations - and so on. When working well, none of these factors require you to interact with Profound Decisions - they exist purely in the interaction between players in the field. Players may obtain interventions by refs using spells, rituals, or similar, but these work in predictable and readily repeatable ways. In essence whether or not you get caught for your actions depends on what you do, how well you do it and the IC actions of your political rivals.
Unfortunately, this situation is reversed when the actions take place in downtime. When a player clicks a downtime option to pirate a foreign vessel, whether or not any word of that action ever gets back to the foreign nation is a judgement decision made solely by us as organizers. There are almost no mechanisms that players can pursue at events that will allow them to identify who did the piracy - unless we choose to add a ritual or similar that identifies the guilty party - at which point there is no possibility of error. In effect, all the information pertaining to the action and its consequences can only be gained through interaction with Profound Decisions rather than through interaction with other players.
This makes it exceptionally difficult for organizers to decide how difficult such information is to obtain. The two simple outcomes are to provide all the information or no information and while it is possible to obfuscate the information, it is fairly tortuous to do so. If we give out no information we make it impossible for the perpetrators to be discovered, which makes it almost impossible to catch and stop them - and that removes the possibility of consequences. If we give out all the information we make it impossible for the perpetrators to get away with their crime
It is conceptually undesirable that the actions needed to investigate a downtime action rely solely on interactions with the organizers, but also highly problematic for the organizers to find themselves in the position of either giving out all the information or none of it.
Challenge
Actions that challenge the status quo - especially things like piracy and raiding would in reality be risky and difficult endeavours. They would be laced with danger and the clear risk of failure. None of this risk can be adequately modelled by our downtime system - the closest we could come would be choosing a random outcome to try to cover the possible risks. In contrast, actions taken at events have a clear risk of failure which is set by the environment, the actions attempted and the acts of others.
This latter element is crucial - at an event other participants can choose to act in ways that will make the actions of their rivals more or less likely to succeed. The difficulty of successfully achieving the desired outcome is dependent on the actions of everyone present - rather than random numbers generated by the organizer. Critically it allows other participants to act in ways that try to prevent their antagonists from succeeding, something is entirely lacking in a simplified downtime system like Empire. In plain terms, players can pass laws at events to allow or disallow piracy, but they can't put spies on ships or dock fronts to try and catch those engaged in it.
In a simplified downtime system it is very difficult to set the challenge of engaging in conflict at a justifiable level and almost impossible to have the level of challenge take account of the actions of other players who might wish to prevent it. In contrast, the challenge involved in succeeding at actions at events that would generate conflict is set totally organically and takes perfect account of the efficacy of the counter-actions of everyone involved.
tl:dr;
Conflict generated from actions taken in downtime is inherently inferior to conflict generated from decisions and actions made at events. We have chosen to remove the option so that we can better focus our efforts on improving ways to generate conflict at events.
IC Explanation
The changes made to military units do not require an explanation. Characters who choose to receive a bounty rather than supporting an Imperial army are free to roleplay that their military unit has been raiding the Thule, the Jotun or whoever. However what we have clarified is that such raids are below the abstraction layer - they do not have a significant campaign effect and consequently they are not detectable.
The legal changes made to fleets - that prevented them engaging in illegal piracy and illegal trade were made as a result of a law passed by the Empire. This law is back in force after a brief absence but the very significant costs - 50 thrones per season - are now being paid by an Imperial sodality - the Purple Sails - rather than from the Imperial treasury. Should the Senate ever decide to repeal this law, we would restore the option to commit illegal piracy and trade but it would be less effective than legal actions (to reflect the difficulties in carrying out illegal actions) not more effective as it was previously - and there would be an immediate and significant negative response from all foreign powers in the world of Empire.
Commission Costings
We have amended the costs for the Imperial Senate to Commission a spy network, to raise an army, and to enlarge an Imperial army, by adding a cost in thrones to reflect the labour required for these tasks (we have reduced the number of wains required). This has been done to bring these costs into line with other commissions. All standard commissions should now be operating on a system in which there is a labour cost of 2 crowns per wain used.
We have removed the requirement for an army to remain out of conflict for a year for it to be enlarged. While this restriction could be regarded as "realistic" and was originally conceived as part of the play balance preventing large armies, it was clear in hindsight that the increased costs for a large army were already significant. Critically we did not want the experience of an Imperial general elected to serve for a year to be one in which they ordered their army to do nothing while it was enlarged to make it more effective for their successor.
War
We have amended the published rules on the wiki for armies attacking a region (it is now clear that it must be adjacent to an existing Imperial controlled region). During discussion, it was clear that many players and some members of the game team held different views on how this fine point of the rules worked. The wiki is now very explicit and the rules are simple and help to provide a basis for long term strategic planning by Imperial generals.
Fast Casting Effects
Since the changes to spellcasting, rituals and items that allowed the fast-casting of regular spells were lagging behind in effectiveness. We've now adjusted these effects to allow a magician to cast spells with a few seconds of appropriate roleplaying, rather than 5 seconds of roleplaying. Furthermore, this means that (as with offensive spells the caster is not interrupted if they or their target are struck, or if the target is making an attack. All other restrictions of casting regular spells apply, especially the requirement that you must be capable of touching the target with your casting hand as you cast the spell. These changes effect the Hands of the Healer, Smooth Hands Shape the World, and Thought Becomes Action rituals, as well as the Forge of Isenbrad and Trollsweave Vest.
Healer's Harness
At the same time, we've altered the Healer's Harness ability to prevent loss of mana when interrupted while casting a healing spell. The change to spellcasting meant that nobody loses mana when a spell is interrupted; they simply have to begin the casting again, We have changed the effect, and slightly increased the cost in materials to create the item, which now provides reciprocal healing for the wearer when they use certain healing spells.
Warcaster's Oath
Likewise, the Warcaster's Oath effect has also changed. This shield is thematically intended to be useful for magicians who fight on the front lines, and the new power - to gain a burst of personal emergency healing in return for personal mana - is intended to reflect that.