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.
Conjunctions
We have updated the rules on major conjunctions to limit which nations can go on the battle and when. In the first year of the game there were limits on how many nations - with larger nations like Wintermark counting double - but those rules largely lapsed. Under the new rules, the civil service will analyze the conjunctions and inform the Imperial Military Council of their options, which nations could take the battlefield together. At each event there will be at least four different combinations - but the combinations will change from one event to the next.
At the forthcoming event, the possible combinations will be:
Option 1
- Wintermark, Dawn, Varushka, Marches
- Navaar, Highguard, League, Urizen, Imperial Orcs, Brass Coast
Option 2
- Wintermark, Navaar, Dawn, Imperial Orcs
- Highguard, Varushka, League, Marches, Urizen, Brass Coast
Option 3
- Wintermark, Navaar, League, Imperial Orcs, Brass Coast
- Dawn, Highguard, Varushka, Marches, Urizen
Option 4
- Wintermark, Highguard, Varushka, Marches
- Navaar, Dawn, League, Urizen, Imperial Orcs, Brass Coast
Reasoning
One of the fundamental design principles for Empire is to try to avoid giving players any opportunity to have a bad time. It is one of the truisms of LRP that many players will follow what their characters does - and have a bad time - rather than what pick the option that is the most fun. In our view, good game design is about presenting players with cool in-character choices - where they will have out-of-character fun no matter what option they choose.
The nations are radically different in size - but our volunteer pool is drawn from the players who are not fighting that battle as their character. So the number of Imperial characters who fight on a battle directly impacts on the number of volunteers available and that is a big factor in how enjoyable the resulting fight is. In effect, if one battle is more political expedient than another, then it is strategically sound to weight that battle and give up on the other one, even though that makes both battles less enjoyable from an OOC perspective.
There are also issues in which a significant factor in military council choices about the battle were the perceived levels of warriors that each nation was bringing. The perceived need to balance the sides - for fairness - was crowding the IC discussions which might otherwise have focused solely on the political and tactical implications of the choices.
Therefore, we have removed this dimension of choice. We are tracking the number of players who take the battle from each nation each event - that will allow us to pick at least four battle options for every event that we know are broadly even. Players in the military council will not need to worry about balancing the sides - that has already been done - they can concentrate on making choices based on purely in-character considerations.
IC Explanation
The Sentinel Gate is known to be strongly linked with movements of the Wanderer, a fickle and unpredictable star. Recent movements of the star, have indicated a subtle but vital weakening of the strength of major conjunctions - a vital part of the Imperial military machine. After much examination of the gate, the Imperial magicians employed by the civil service have identified that the conjunctions are still operational - but that the options for which nations may travel together are now more limited than they once were.
The magicians expect that the options are likely to change with time - indeed they do not expect them to remain constant from one summit to the next, but they are confident that they provide the military Council with a definitive list of options each summit by through the use of night magic divination.
Megaris, leaned back and rubbed her eyes, trying to use her fingers to relieve the strain caused by the hours spent staring through the lens of her mentor's telescope. She picked the stylus and recorded the coordinates of the three stars she had been observing, sighing as she did so. Star-gazing had seemed so mysterious, so exciting, when she was a young student. If she'd realized that her chosen occupation would mostly consist of counting stars, she might have been less disdainful of other traditions.
"I wander why Vitula is so interested in the Wanderer" she said aloud. "What it is doing that is so important?"
"Child, how many times must I explain?" Megaris jumped at the sudden intervention. Vitula, her mentor was always quiet and had developed the intimidating habit of coming up behind her student. She wandered how long the woman had been watching her.
"The stars don't do anything. No more than the runes the Mark pull from their bags. They're just a way to sense what is happening in the world. I met a Feni wizard once, who used to drop molten wax into ice-water, claimed he could read the winds of magic in the patterns formed."
Megaris rolled her eyes, she'd heard this explanation a thousand times from Vitula. It was only a figure of speech, that was all. Besides ... not everyone quite agreed with Vitula's view of the matter, no matter how often she repeated it. Still she was Vitula's student, the time for having her own opinions on magic was after she had learned what she could from her teacher and not before.
Thankfully the dreary anecdote of the Feni magician was cut short as Vitula leaned over her desk to inspect her latest records. She stared at them intently, ignoring Megaris who waited eagerly if she would dispense some wisdom on what it all meant.
"We need to keep watching, we need to record the motion accurately, to discern what is happening" was all she said before turning and gliding silently away.
Megaris signed, and rubbed her sore eye again before bending back to the telescope. Her teacher knew a lot about the stars, it was her definition of "we" that left a lot to be desired.
Shatter
We have increased the minimum length required to use a weapon with the shattering blow skill. The previous minimum was 42", this has been increased to 48". This means it will no longer be possible to use the skill to call shatter by holding a 42" sword in two hands.
In addition, we have clarified the rules to make clear that it is not possible to use the shattering blow skill using a spear, similar pole-arm, or quarterstaff.
We're also taking other steps to reduce the frequency of the shatter call on the battlefield, starting with our approach to briefing monsters.
Reasoning
Shatter is one of the most powerful calls in the Empire system. Its role in the system is partly to balance the weakness of two-handed weapons in live roleplaying games. In the real world, two-handed weapons provide a significant advantage to the wielder by allowing them to strike a heavier blow, but at the cost of being able to use a shield. In Empire, a character with a two-handed sword cannot use a shield, but they gain no advantage at all in terms of being able to strike a heavier blow. The shatter call tries to address that inherent limitation.
We appreciate that 48" two-handed swords are uncommon, that most weapon makers create swords to the commonly used system lengths, 42" for a one-handed weapon and 60" for a two-handed weapon. There is some variation but since most player want the longest reach that they get, weapons size tend to closely follow standard category limits. As a result, we anticipate that the majority of characters using the shattering blow skill will do so using a large two-handed weapon. This is desirable, we want characters wielding two-handed weapons capable of shattering a shield or weapon to be clearly identifiable to other participants on the battlefield.
The original rules meant that it was possible to use a 42" weapon in two hands with the shattering blow skill. This had a very unfortunate and undesirable consequence with monstering, where it is common for volunteers to turn up armed with a 42" sword and no shield. In some circumstances, it was clear that these volunteers were being briefed to have one hero point and an appropriate call - at which point they made the understandable but undesirable assumption that it would be acceptable to wield the weapon in two hands to call shatter, before reverting to one-handed use. That increased the prevalence of shatter on the battlefield, made it impossible to identify when having your weapons shattered might be a risk, and removed the relative advantage of two-handed weapons, by allowing characters to use the skill with a one-handed weapon - albeit wielded in two hands for that blow.
The new rules make clear that situation is not possible - you cannot wield a 42" weapon in two hands to call shatter with the shattering blow skill.
The original rules also made it possible to use a one-handed spear of the right length and then attempt a shattering blow by putting a second hand on the weapon. The new rules make clear that this is not possible - you must have an appropriate phys-rep to use the shattering blow skill - either a sword, axe, hammer or mace - that is of the right length.
Any player who wishes to drop the shattering blow skill as a result of these rules changes can do so by emailing us.
Artisan's Oil
We are implementing a new option for artificers for 2016 onwards - allowing them to create three doses of Artisan's Oil in a month at a cost of 1 crown.
Reasoning
At present there is no consumable resource (other than mana crystals for wizards) that could allow a character to repair a shattered weapon. Comparable battlefield effects, like a cleaved limb or being reduced to zero hits can be treated with magic or with herbs. Creating an additional consumable mechanism for repairing shattered items brings it into line with these effects - and also gives artificers an additional ability that they can utilize on the battlefield.
IC Explanation
Manuals explaining how to create the oil were bought from the Commonwealth by members of the Purple Sails Sodality, who then distributed it widely across the Empire.
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 best 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 added an upkeep of 5 Thrones to a shipyard to reflect their increased significance in the system; we will adjust the Imperial budget so that there is no impact to effective existing costs arising from the Madruga Shipyard.
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.