I guess when it's that many people, it turns into weather for me. I don't want to decide if it's sunny or rainy, I want to roll for that.
The "orcs" was a hypothetical; both Hawa and Qudra have forces of humans, elves, orcs, halflings etc all joined together.
But yes, they might send 10000 strong to burn down the city where the player characters have taken up their residence. A city that has 2000 guards but the player characters could still get killed. And they're on the council ruling the city. It's not something I want to decide to do. If I were to decide, I would decide that it would not happen also because it was such a hassle to learn the info about this city, find the maps etc.
It's a cold war right now and I want to simulate that, not, hmm… arbitrarily act out that according to my own volition.
There's a subjectivity to this that makes me feel like I could just do away with all the economical rules, all the army rules, all the everything rules because even though they're pulling their weight and adding detail and interest to the world, they're a lot of work for me (I don't really have a lot of experience with games of ACKS' complexity) and they would feel "meaningless" if I could just be so subjective with so big things as which armies join forces, when do they strike etc. This becomes a philosophical question — I'm not trying to argue a point. I think I'll try Hardrada's suggestion and make some sorta mashup of SWN/AER (it doesn't have a lot of info for nautical campaigns though). I can use the data from ACKS as a base. It'll have to wait until I have a few hours to spare to work on it.
Thanks for the additional information. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I still don't understand the problem you're having. I suspect my perspective might be off... Hopefully wiser minds than mine can help you grok it.
Perhaps try asking your question at RPG.stackexchange? There's some remarkably insightful people over there who're very good at looking at a question and working out what the querent's point of confusion is, though it may take some back-and-forth for them to zero in on the issue if you're not used to the site's format.
I'm not sure the SE crowd would understand; they don't have the best track record with OSR-specific issues of sandboxery and objectivity.
Other games have solutions; A Red & Pleasant Land has the Events table that you roll on every d8 days, but it has weird stuff like time distortion, invisible cats etc. Writing my own would be a solution and I've started it and abandoned it a few times. Their list don't really pull any punches when it comes to major NPCs being found dead etc — but their world has non-linear time so there's not the same need for consistency.
Stars Without Number have "goals", "XP" and clear turn taking that can solve the problem. I would just need to port everything from planets&ships to islands&boats.
The reason I brought it up here is that since we have an ACKS economy already, and I have D@W, I thought the Campaigns book would have a solution and I looked through it three or four times and then posted here. Of course, Alex, I realize your philosophy. I just have a hard time applying it fairly, myself.
You're right, it's tricky. Not sure we understand each other — it's possible you understand me but that I don't understand your proposed solution, GMJoe.
Alex suggested a wargame perspective — hence the hypotheticals from my part of what I fear would maybe happen if I became "the person who controls the forces that oppose the players" (or, for that matter, that oppose the players' enemy — the problem is the same regardless of whether it's Hawa or Qudra that gets the hammer dropped on them). As for free will… my brain is only big enough for maybe… 100, 200 consciousnesses? I can't hold millions of people (all of Zakhara) in there. (Am not sarcastic or rhetorical.)
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if it were me, i would try to make a list of priorities that a given NPC ruler has, ranked from most important to least important, and then filter any event through that list of priorities to try and get a rough idea of their reaction. Basically try to flesh out a character and try to give yourself a way to eliminate possibilities, get the number of potential reactions down to just a handful from which you can pick the most interesting.
edit: missed your reply mentioning R&PL and SWN. I too have tried, in vain, to port over the R&PL list to a different setting by doing find+replace on the NPC names. It didn't really pan out, but the main thing was i had to be willing to discard results that didn't make sense and roll again, as well as be willing to accept that some events just wouldn't be relevant to the PCs.
Rather than burdening yourself with making an entire list, you could try coming up with a smaller list, but having the last entry on your given die size be "make up something new". This saves you from having to do all the work, and every time you roll "make up something new" you only do a small amount of work but end up with a bigger table to roll on next time.
Could you use the table for domain favors and duties on page 131? A result of 3 on 2d6 is “Call to Arms” to go on military campaign. Or 1 / 18 chance per month.
You could do something like domain morale for how the different actors feel about each other, make a scale and do morale rolls to see how angry / aggressive they are.
I guess when it's that many people, it turns into weather for me. I don't want to decide if it's sunny or rainy, I want to roll for that.
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I've had the same problem regarding large-scale decisions that have a heavy impact. I like to watch the game unfold, not tell my players what's going to happen (I too have made stabs at converting the Sine Nomine GM minigames). For some types of events, I decide what happens but let the dice determine *when* it happens. I might decide that Kingdom A will attack Kingdom B but is waiting for B to show a sign of weakness, and that this will happen in 1d6+2 months. This takes the weight of decision away to an extent: there is still a random element involved and the players' actions still have agency.
Another resource you might consider is the encounter system in Oriental Adventures, which adds monthly and yearly events to your game calendar. Things like war, major incursions, politial plots, rebellions, assassinations, and so on are well represented here.
[quote="2097"]
I'm not sure the SE crowd would understand; they don't have the best track record with OSR-specific issues of sandboxery and objectivity.
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Perhaps not, but they're pretty good at understanding and acknowledging that there's a plurality of playstyles. The worst that could happen is that they can't give you an answer, which is no worse than your current situation; The best that can happen is that your problem is solved. You've got nothing to lose. Well, except the time spent writing up the question and responding to comments asking for clarification, but that's basically what you're already doing here.
A lot of really good answers from all of you — I follow along on a device where I can't really post answers, and have to remember to go here when I'm at the desktop.
[quote="tire_ak"]
I've had the same problem regarding large-scale decisions that have a heavy impact. I like to watch the game unfold, not tell my players what's going to happen (I too have made stabs at converting the Sine Nomine GM minigames). For some types of events, I decide what happens but let the dice determine *when* it happens. I might decide that Kingdom A will attack Kingdom B but is waiting for B to show a sign of weakness, and that this will happen in 1d6+2 months. This takes the weight of decision away to an extent: there is still a random element involved and the players' actions still have agency.
Another resource you might consider is the encounter system in Oriental Adventures, which adds monthly and yearly events to your game calendar. Things like war, major incursions, politial plots, rebellions, assassinations, and so on are well represented here.
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The 1d6+2 months idea is great — simple, general, flexible, yet gives me the "objective" feeling. I already had one event on such a clock (when a giant turtle with a fortress on its back will reemerge from the ocean) but didn't realize that I could use it for politics. If I put in mutually contradictory things on such clocks, what happens first will happen. Very interesting.
It's also useful with various levels of granularity. For example, we have PCs with ties to both the corsair council in Hawa, and the mamluk council in Qudra. I can put in clocks for specific council members and their proposals and how their own opinion swings over time. But put a more general, abstracted clock for something more distant in Zakhara.
That system in OA looks very interesting as an adjunct to that — which version of OA is that? 3e, 1e, some other e?
These clocks also might synergize well with Sine Nomine style minigames (whether or not I ACKS-ify those minigames with info from D@W:C).
I'm just now working with the mercantile ventures in chapter 07 for our campaign houserule document (so happy there is a markdown SRD, this increases the value of ACKS for us 1000-fold).
And I'm doing small changes in the text, changing GP to dinars, SP to dirhams etc. And I find that a lot of the mechanics are based on reaction rolls which we usually don't use because we use a system from another game to determine social situations. And I'm weirded out that on that level, (the "will the merchant buy from the PC?"-level) the NPC's behavior is codified, but not when it's wars with thousands of lives hanging in the balance. :D
Just a curiosity, not really a point to this post.
[quote="tire_ak"]
Another resource you might consider is the encounter system in Oriental Adventures, which adds monthly and yearly events to your game calendar. Things like war, major incursions, politial plots, rebellions, assassinations, and so on are well represented here.
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I just got it in a sale. Yes, this looks promising as an adjunct to the other techniques suggested here. Will give it a try.