About a year ago, I designed FFR and ran War for Endor. Since then, a number of months-spanning games have been run by various referees, each providing variations on the format. This is largely a meta post for people who’ve read about or played FFR and want to try running one themselves, summarising my findings on it.
This post is written from my point of view, and it’s likely that other referees and players will have different thoughts on it. I got Mike to add a point of view that isn't mine to this post.
Mike Note: I have included my contributions here as Mike Notes since 7th has been quite thorough.
The following games had been ran thus far:
War for Endor and War of the Archons - PvP games about fantasy civilisations warring against each other, run by me.
Undying Love - a PvE game about demigod vampires running a city in the middle of a world-ending crisis, run by Ranuth (it's unifinished as of yet)
World Bloom War - a PvP game about nations in conflict preparing for the arrival of an apocalyptic force, run by Mike.
Dawnchaser’s Journey - a PvE game about a fleet of living metal ships heading for the origin point of humanity, run by me.
I should preface this by saying – all of those games were ultimately fun and went well. The criticisms here are levelled against practices, not games or their referees.
World Bloom War and Dawnchaser’s Journey have used nonstandard systems instead of tokens to handle their scenarios.
Mike Note: I would say World Bloom’s system was a Token system just with two kinds of Tokens. The point, however, stands that the one currency option is probably the simplest and most streamlined.
Dawnchaser’s Journey
I’ve done away entirely with the token system for the duration of the Journey, instead adopting a system where an asset (unit, facility, etc.) can be used as many times as it makes sense before it’s depleted, then being restored next turn.
While in theory this should’ve facilitated more interaction, it killed a steady beat for the game and demanded far more interaction for the same amount of impact, which created issues for people who couldn’t devote as much time.
World Bloom War
Mike’s system relied on Power and Wealth. Theoretically the former was for moving troops and latter for establishing assets, but ultimately they could be used interchangeably a lot of the time.
Power was gained via accomplishing faction goals, and Wealth via establishing trade routes between your faction and others. I “gamed” the Wealth system relatively early on and thought it was quite fun to use from the “engaged player’s” perspective.
However, the steady growth of both Power and Wealth resulted in players taking like 5+ actions per turn, and massively increasing workload on the referee. This also had the chance to disadvantage players who didn’t have as much time to engage with the game.
Conversely, Undying Love and both of my early games have largely avoided these issues.
Mike Note: Much of the problem with the WBW system was in the rapid increase of Tokens. If the amount of Tokens gained over time can be more managed, many of these difficulties would not be so bad.
Conclusions
- Token-asset system seems to be the simplest, best starting point that enables impact both from busybody players with lots of time on their hands and people who will write 5-6 posts per week. It also minimises referee workload and puts the focus on roleplay and diplomacy.
- For the right group and a referee fine with a larger workload, more tinker-y and complicated systems may enable some very interesting interactions. A multi-referee game should be scheduled to see how more complex systems work in that situation.
Mike Note: The above point shouldn't be overlooked. There is give and take for all of this. I completely agree that more complicated systems lead to referee duty bloat, but they can also make for some interesting interactions. For instance, the necessity of trade forced players to ally in interesting ways and promoted diplomacy. However, you could accomplish this in more narrative ways.
World Bloom War was a primary catalyst to cover this matter, but some of the practices discussed here have been present in my games as well.
Here are some practices that raised “level of PvP” thereby making the game more hostile:
- Some factions had a history of bad relations or “lore reason” to be hostile to each other.
- Factions had goals that would by default require destroying or direct conflict with 1-2 other factions.
- Various subfactions demanded conflict with certain factions, ready to withdraw their support and rob the player of multiple assets if their demands weren’t met.
- Some factions started out in the middle of sabotage actions against each other.
- Information that would stoke conflict was very readily shared by the referee, while one that would quell it was usually difficult to acquire and often never divulged.
While not particularly detrimental on their own, the combination of all those resulted in a game that was very engaging, but also quite hostile and stressful.
Mike Note: It was the intention in the beginning to give the factions ample reason to fight with each other and have a genuinely difficult time creating alliances in order to face the invading threat together. However, the kind of antagonism and suspicion this bred became increasingly onerous over time. It drained some energy from the game rather than injecting vitality as was the original point.
Dawnchaser’s Journey was on the other end of the spectrum - a primarily PvE game, where direct combat between factions was disallowed for the vast majority of the game and little to no subterfuge between players had been performed.
This and Journey's nonstandard design choices messed with its pacing and made player input dwindle in later weeks.
Conversely, Undying Love which was primarily PvE, with some space for PvP had less of those dwindling issues.
Conclusion
- PvP vs PvE is a spectrum that should emerge naturally as a result of the lore and player choices, not be artificially driven by the referee.
- A form of golden ratio on this spectrum fitting for each table should be struck, instead of driving toward either extreme in design.
- The most successful way to handle this had been when factions had goals emerging from their flavour and fiction, sometimes driving to conflict, sometimes to alliance, but not locking a player in.
3. Information policy
Games heavy in subterfuge and diplomacy thrive or die on information - how much is presented to which players and why are extremely important matters. This was very important throughout all the games thus far so I’ll simply present my conclusions.
This could all be summed up as “be fair”. It’s not as simple as it sounds.
Referee Reliability
A referee is the player’s only reliable window into the world. As such, if they engage in misleading practices, like planting red herrings, throwing in misleading info or discouraging the player from reaching the right conclusion, they almost uniformly make the game less enjoyable. This of course echoes the points from three clue rule blog post.
Furthermore – your players have their own lives and may not have the time to reread chat history or guess what detail they missed. If there is something you want them to know - tell them. If there’s something they seem to be ignoring, remind them. Tell them the likely outcome of their action, especially if it’s not looking too good. The above, however, may be exercised with caution when dealing with subterfuge.
What should be avoided at all cost, however, is bias in revealing information. Don’t force conclusions, only correct them if they’re vastly out of line with what the player should already know. Don’t only reveal information that would push a certain conclusion, but don’t force red herrings either.
Subterfuge
If it comes to subterfuge and laid traps, the balance between liberty of information and fairness becomes more precarious.
When determining whether to tell the player any info about subterfuge, consider the following:
- Have they taken any counterintelligence actions or set up counterintelligence assets?
- Is their faction naturally resistant to ambushes or subterfuge?
- How effective is their opponent at subterfuge, how bulletproof is the plan they’re putting into place?
- How many tokens or other resources were spent on the attempt?
This should inform you:
- How much information do you want to reveal? Just a hint about something going on, or a full-fledged sitrep?
- How early do you inform them? Do they get to intercept the subterfuge attempt with their units? Do they only learn about it at the turn end? Do they learn about it only if they ask?
Theoretically, a well thought-out and executed subterfuge against a near-defenceless opponent should only be learnt after the end of turn, or perhaps only when the player asks, or not at all.
This will, in a “balanced” game, never be the case, of course, so you should adjust your outcomes as viable.
The prior questions should also be asked when a subterfuge event is investigated. You should not readily reveal via 3-hint rule who performed the subterfuge. Rather - consider the amount of resources used for the investigation, how good are the questions asked and actions taken, and possible flaws in the subterfuge plan.
Mike Note: This came up in WBW a lot and it increased the demand on me as a referee by a lot. It was fun too, but you really need to know your limits as a referee for these things. Especially if you aren't sure of yourself as a writer, and you're worried about giving too much away, I would try to limit the amount of subterfuge that you encourage in your games.
I had factions that were solely about subterfuge, and it made navigating information distribution really difficult. One top that I would have is: wherever possible only describe the effect of actions. Like if a faction plants a bomb in an enemy factory, don't say to the enemy: “A bomb went off in the factory.” Say instead: “There was an explosion at the factory.” That way there is ambiguity as to whether it was intentional or a random event or caused by NPCs. If the player wants to investigate further, you can let them, but keep the initial disclosure focused on effects rather than causes.
Dice also help. I used dice in WBW and it helped me as a referee to roll to see if someone noticed an event. See what Tokens they've spent on watchmen or counter espionage and how stealthy and careful the spying faction is and declare a roll. That way you don't have to solely rely on your own preference in declaring who has seen what.
This is a really good breakdown! I shall try and queue up a game of this scale early next year ─ I've already been using personal character stats as stands-in for cities and countries so it's only a matter of time now
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