Why aren't there any good grand strategy tabletop RPGs?

>>49651493
Well there was Birthright, but nobody played it

>>49651493
tabletop would be harder to manage all the stuff

>>49651512
It doesn't need to be mechanically complicated, though. Besides, in many ways it's far more challenging to construct a ruleset that accurately reflects the individual level. It shouldn't be that difficult, and clearly there's the demand for it - so why no games?

>>49651507
Let me preempt this kind of suggestion by stating up front that D&Dshit of any variety doesn't interest me in the slightest.

>>49651562
I think all the people who are interested are either playing grand strategy videogames or doing civ quests

>>49651493
>Why aren't there any good grand strategy tabletop RPGs?
>>49651562
>Let me preempt this kind of suggestion by stating up front that D&Dshit of any variety doesn't interest me in the slightest.

Well you're a fucking retard on a fool's errand, so good luck with that

>>49651676
D&D is hardly the only system around, champ.

There's the games of mortality? Can't quite recall the name. From Exalted, that act as a board game for ruling lands. It's super clunky and slow though.

>>49651562
Careful, DnD babies will come screaming for your he..
>>49651676
Oh, they are already here

>>49651493
If you want kingdom building and big (or at least sizeable) army combat, there's jap rpg Grancrest. There's a fan translation floating somewhere, so ask around in PDF thread (i lost mine copy sadly).

there's also Godbound, but
>d20

It's OSR rather than straight-up D&D, though, so it might be worth taking a look.

>>49651999
I thought Godbound was just d20 Exalted?

Oy vey is there really nothing for this?

>>49651493

I think Reign is what you're looking for, OP.

>>49651493
>Onna Kishi
Nice

Anyway, doesn't Diplomacy more or less fit the bill? Today I read an article about a research on social interaction where the test subjects played Diplomacy. The result: you can accurately predict who's going to betray you, because traitors tend to be overly polite to you.

>>49653263
Diplomacy isn't an RPG, it's a board game.

I'm interested in something like Dawn of Worlds except without the godgame stuff. Basically, players create civilizations and then fuck with each other and possibly NPC factions. I've tried variations of Literally Just Index Cards with a similar premise but honestly I don't really like having no actual rules to go on.

>>49653170
I looked into Reign a while back but was put off by the setting before I really investigated its company (iirc that was the term for player made organizations but it's been a while) mechanics. How exactly does it work?

Because RPGs are about interacting with players within a world, right? Sitting down at a table where the other characters aren't in speaking distance is no fun

>>49651493
Because it's the kind of thing that works best as asynchronous (e.g. play by post) rather than synchronous (e.g. tabletop).

>>49653841

Theclosest I've seen to what you want was uh...

shit, what was it called?

Some bullshit where the players are all working together to try and get a small kingdom's shit together so it can survive against the Evil empire that's gonna assault it. I read it hoping to be able to make actual rules for a game like you're taling about, but for some reason the mechanics and the setting just didn't agree with me.

Shit sucks senpai. If I were you, I'd just try and whip this shit up in FATE. I can tell you from experience you probably won't find the experience very satisfying though.

>>49651493
Isn't that what REIGN is for?

I've never played REIGN and could be completely wrong, but that was the general impression I had of it.

>>49651731
>>49651962
Does birthright even use the same ruleset as aDnD?
They seem totally different.

>>49653979
>does D&D use the D&D rules?

>>49653979
"Birthright is a Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting that was first released by TSR in 1995."

>>49654011
Birthright plays a tiny bit different than a standard tptrpg, doens't it wiseguy?

>>49654020
Oh well, I've only ever played the ck2 mod so I may have gotten some strange impressions about it.

>>49653901
>Not wanting to roleplay the interactions between nations.

>>49653901
Have the player be factions within the nation with their own characters and agendas.
We're doing this in my Civ quest and it's working great

There is the Kingmaker supplements for Pathfinder. Ultimate Campaign also presents that ruleset without the Kingmaker specific module.

Not sure its any good, seems like a lot of extra crap to pile on a game that is already so damn rules heavy.

>>49653841

I didn't read nor actually play the game: I just now that the idea should be more or less that.

>>49654215
This works extremely well, you will have intrigue, historical events created by the players and also very funny moments

>>49654538
We've had a civil war that went along interesting lines mass multiple barbarian invasions plenty of intrigue and an interesting bunch of characters orginzations and dynasty's

>>49653841
I hadn't played it but I picked up the books on sale awhile back. So I don't know how well it actually works.

Cities, Countries, Armies, and whatever else all have 5 stats, which go from 1-6

--Might, which covers martial ability.

--Treasure, which covers how much money they have.

--Influence, which covers their diplomatic abilities

--Territory, which covers land size, land quality, population, education, etc.

--Sovereignty, which covers the loyalty of the members of a group to the group itself.

Each stat can be temporarily raised through different actions, IE Sovereignty through declaring a festival, and so on.

The whole thing uses ORE, so d10s with height, width, and that sort of thing. Each roll is a combination of 2 stats, with those numbers determining the dice, possiby modified by a leader. So launching an attack on someone is Might + Treasure, and Defending it is Might + Territory (with some extra rules in there somewhere if you want more in depth.)

Scores can only be improved permanently either through combining with another company, conquering another company, or some kind of weird, nebulous XP system.

>>49651507
There is also Pathfinder's Kingmaker
But OP stated >>49651562 that D&D and such don't interest him.
You can just use the rules for the kingdoms without the D&D if it bothers you so much.

>>49654712
Also, depending on how you want to do it I imagine you could tweak the rules to Mutant Year Zero to male something worthwhile. It works on more of a city level, with Stats being Food, Culture, Tech, and Warfare. Instead of working on things at the national level, you work on the city level, commanding people to do things like build walls, mills, etc. It's naturally post apocalypse, but if you wanted to change it over to fantasy (Going by the pic you put in the OP) I imagine you could.

I actually tried to do it myself once but was never particularly happy with it. I think I still have it on my google drive. Keep feeling like I should get around to messing with it and then never do.

>>49654670
I Know, I was thinking of the brown wedding when I wrote very funny moments

>>49655816
You know the quest in talking about?

>>49654802
>There is also Pathfinder's Kingmaker

It's fucking shiiiiiiiiit.

Incredibly so.

>>49656016
Yes, I am a player on it

>>49657290
The Bulgar?

>>49651512
>tabletop would be harder to manage all the stuff

If you go the route of Koei's historical sim games, it shouldn't be all that complicated. Your entire population and your military forces could be consolidated into a few stats that would fit onto a single character sheet. e.g. You might have statistics like total food, gold, level of fortification against the elements, research tiers for medical knowledge...

Play could go something like this: Each character can take a single action on their turn, such as balancing taxes or food production within their population, or conscripting people into military service. As each player builds up resources, some of them may choose to invade another player's territory. The game would end when one player conquers the entire region.

Meanwhile, the GM could roll random phenomena that occurs throughout the region during each round, such as weather disasters or plagues. How the players manage their cities' infrastructure and sciences will play a role in how well they can withstand these events. So it may be possible for some players to be defeated by bad luck, assuming they didn't manage resources responsibly.

>>49658379
that's pretty close to how my civ quest goes

>>49651493
Victory By Any Means is a grand strategy tabletops game, but it's way more strategy than RPG. Though that might actually make it easier to incorporate into an RPG ruleset.

>>49654038
Ck2 is an excellence basis to rewrite Birthright

I'd love a HoMM styled pnp game with each player getting a hero, the various kinds of heroes having their own special advantages, but otherwise leaving the player to specialize their hero in whichever direction they want, with the original special subtly affecting their further specializations. Then empire and army building, with player interaction essentially being diplomacy. Especially if it allows you to make demons that specialize in siege weapons.

>>49658379
I wanna play nationbuilder games again.

>>49658244
Yes

I like the idea of this, would anyone be able to homebrew their own system or something?

>>49651562
there's the ACKS (adventurer conqueror, king system) that is pretty interest...

>D&Dshit

well go fuck yourself then.

>>49654011
it uses AD&D rules which are different enough from D&D 3.pathfinder and 5e that it merits a look.

Specially since all the realm management mechanics are divorced from the regular rules. But whatever, OP wants to dismiss something because it uses d20 that's his loss.

>>49659246
hey bulgar

>>49658379
How would combat work in terms of armies?

>>49659872
you use rolls then use the difference to determine the outcome
you can have certain factors like morale organization logistics reinforcements be represented by other rolls

>>49659906
I know you would use rolls, and stats would be involved. What I want is a formula or example of combat, ie how the stats and rolls are used to determine the outcome

>>49659935
Well there's the number of troops and the strategy and tactics we come up with as well as the equipment we have available and what races are involved.
I'm not exactly sure what the QMs formula is I think he just takes in all the data from what's happening to determine the outcome.

>>49651493
People play CK2 or EU4 or "(Insert Paradox Interactive Game here)" for that nowadays.

Nothing tops the fun you can have when a group of dedicated roleplayers decides to actually roleplay the traits of their chars while they are all running their one county domains at different corners of the same giant realm in CK2.

Oh the fun I have had, the sisters I have fucked, the cousins I have cucked, the brothers I have slain, the jews I have robbed of their gold, the infidels I have slain in the names of the old gods because it was politically useful to me and the superflous sons I have thrown into vulcanic chasms because an insane preacher told me to.

And all the while, the computer plays the perfectly fair GM for you and even does you a favor and gives you orders of magnitudes of NPCs more than any sane and well adjusted GM could come up with and they all have their own AI and plans they try to achieve to boot!

Europa Universalis started as a grand strategy tabletop, Paradox just made the video game for it and it's just a lot more successful for obvious reasons even excluding those that would have never played a tabletop.

The problem I have with Birthright, ACKS, etc. is that there are a lot of rules for dungeon crawling, then it adds a lot of kingdom management rules over top.

I'm wondering if a system that streamlines PC stats would be easier to use for a kingdom builder campaign. Thumbing through a long list of spells each morning on top of directing your cabinet becomes a lot of minutia.

If you want a lot of intricate simulationist mechanics then you're better off playing a board (or video) game.
If you want interesting stories there's a few rules-light narrative things that work well as one shots, I can't see playing this sort of game in campaign fashion working very smoothly. Its possible I'm sure, but it'd be a lot of work. Best if you blend it with more traditional one a character role playing, with each PC being a leader of a nation, since personal character arcs are familiar to everyone while the story arcs of nations is the purview of the rare fiction that gets it right and history.

Those one shots I mentioned: Kingdom, Microscope, The Quiet Year

Could you not use Make You Kingdom for this?

Alternatively, Godbound has some pretty solid rules, as somebody else suggested, but if you want to dismiss it because it's a retroclone then OK. You could just lift the Godbound rules and staple them to any other system, it wouldn't be hard.

>>49659310
>ACKS
ACKS is awesome, does the domain management game from a detailed bottom up design based on the economy (ie gold) and population. It's intricately linked with the game so it's all or nothing with ACKS.

Alternatively there is An Echo Resounding, which is more abstract and designed from a more top down approach. Can be layered on to any system. Except it's...

>D&Dshit

so never mind.

File: masscombattest.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

1B, 486x500px

>>49659295
I've been homebrewing a system in that vein. My murderhobo games have always ended up with the players starting warbands, buying businesses and eventually running small kingdoms so I've been sorta rolling with that.

I have a semi-complete system but I've been transferring parts of the rules to a more polished document as I playtest and streamline them.

A big thing a lot of these games miss is that they'll have rules for homeless adventurers, rules for kingdom management; but no rules for the inbetween of what players do when getting to that level of power.

An Echo Resounding is pretty good and not hard to remove the d&d shit from. Though it's balanced around some campaign assumptions. ACKS gets recommended a lot but it's clunky as fuck at the table ime.

For now I've been posting stuff like this in /gdg/ and getting bits of feedback from it. I haven't added yet though, actual unit stats or the rules around raising and maintaining armies.

File: kingdom.jpg (618KB, 1187x775px) Image search: [Google]

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>>49651493
D&D was literally made for this - the game started as a side-game for Gygax's Geneva wargames group. The gold heroes earned on dungeon adventures would then be spent on castles and armies.

That influence is very present in older editions, where fighters get castles and followers at higher levels. There's plenty of retroclones that take on the domain game more directly, like Adventurer Conqueror King.

For a more lightweight and game-focused approach, there's also the Japanese TTRPG Meikyuu Kingdom! (or Make You Kingdom!).

The real issue IMO is not finding a ruleset - it's finding a group of players who want to do that (and not play a territory control boardgame like Diplomacy/Game of Thrones/Rex/Dune instead).