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Game Concepts

Patrick

Politics and Civilization

  • Tribal - from followers: hunting parties, adventuring groups, merchant caravans, military organization
  • Civil - from buildings: shared structures, citizenship, communal policies
  • Corporate - from businesses: trade relationships, stock exchanges
  • Cultural - from schools, guilds, art houses: guilds, apprenticeships, bards

Tribal

An individual who battles a lot may simply be a [mercenary], [hero], or [smuggler], by grouping with others (share goals), experience toward real organization (follow, obey orders) can happen, allowing for AI overrides and basic hegemony.

Players with enough skill can [follow] to let another physically lead the pathfinding and eventually [take orders]. A [commander] with enough skill can [give orders], even if the ordered player is less experienced.

Promotions are natural as leadership complicates. Not relying on physical structures, all grouping is nomadic or ad hoc and can be violent or nonviolent such as simple groups for gathering, trade caravans or hunting parties, adventuring groups, and raiding parties. More than 5 (???) followers may begin to subdivide.

Commands in a tribal path

  • [Follow] (player) - physical path tracing to be in the same place and mirror control of directions. Related to [tracking] skill.
  • [Mark] (target) - tag a mutually visible object for attention by followers. Related to [attack], [gather], [unload], [load], [protect].
  • [Attack] (target) - command remote player to assault target using independent AI for determination.
  • [Gather] (target) - mark a specific resource for collection.
  • [Gather] (type) - find specified resource nearby and return to group or cache.
  • [Protect] (target) - defend a person, resource, or location.
  • [Obey] (player) - transfer trust of leadership to another from a group.
  • [(Un)load] (inventory, cache) - move in and out of a designated cache.

Skills in a tribal path

Skills allow certain commands and grant bonuses to group events beyond the advantage of numbers.

  • Lead
  • Direct
  • Organize
  • Schedule
  • Command
  • Tactics
  • Assault
  • Siege
  • Settle

Civil

When a permanent structure is built, civics begins to accumulate. A few (???, 5 to match tribal) households in the same place (each has at least 2 within 15 meters and is within 30 meters of the center) may allow for some laws and organization.

Administrative positions exist within a city and can be more formalized as it grows. Administrative buildings grant further commands and bonuses. These collaborative buildings can be very functional for players (city hall, firehouse) or direct city improvements (streets, walls). In smaller villages, individuals will freely contribute skills, but a city can have its own treasury and supply goods and pay for work, etc.

Laws in a city will start with recognition of citizenship. Some trust and reputation comes just from sharing citizenship (or enemies…). Eventually laws can include curfews, taxes, tolls, tariffs. Some leader player will decide these and (eventually) decide whether it goes to a consensus or vote.

Townships may eventually need to mint a currency to standardize exchanges and taxes. Before the mint, a village leader will artificially set exchange rates for tradeable resources, especially those which are needed for structures. Contributing to the town is reflected in the civic reputation for the player and may be key in elections or minimum standards for citizenship benefits. Exchanging for payable taxes at a banker (chicken for wood, for example) who sets certain values and stockpiles the trades. Backed script is then possible and is redeemable at these locations.

Once cities grow to a size that they can support a city planner or streets department, paths around the town boundaries can be paved as well. This can benefit movement for trade, military, or simple mobility. Several cities may even collaborate and share plans to build it and enhance their civic relationship as a result.

Corporate

A sale happens as early as the first trade. If I trade you a stick for a snack, I may be on my way to becoming a stick-seller. Once I set up a shop, this becomes more formalized, as others know where to come for their sticks. Shops have a limited inventory, so they are likely to start as general goods and grow into grocers, building supplies, weaponsmiths, etc. The earliest shop is just a trading post, since there is no money. Players will exchange their surplus for specific needs at the shop at a rate set by the shopkeeper. These exchange rates allow for “fair pricing” even while in AI mode. If the keeper is out - an offer can be made (offer range, if haggling) that the keeper can respond to when available (or set a default time to accept or reject).

At first, subsistence will be key, but shops will grow as players begin to specialize in trades and spend time in that way (gathering, crafting, smithing, farming). This covers goods (stock) primarily, since services will require some different logic.

The infrastructure for the economy will grow as well. A player who collects sticks all day and sells them the next will soon accept a lower price for goods in one shop to wholesale them. Alternately, a shopkeeper may be born when the same player decides to pay a less experienced player to gather sticks for them. If a courier spends enough time travelling between caches, he may become a merchant. Someone who decides to map out the different exchange rates at various shops and move goods to turn a profit may become a very rich stock day trader.

Support structures are raised around businesses for their protection and efficient operation. A courier may make do with a basket or a wheelbarrow, but a distance requires a horse or wagon. At each level, a more advanced skill to build is needed. A corporation will bundle several businesses together, with special rates and some control over the supply chain. A managed forest may supply great lumber that is only accessible at one wholesaler in large lots, so the final shops for individuals will have a higher price unless others can supply. In this way, “private” property can have a very civil relationship when it comes to land deeds and plots or paying for the city’s protection from raiders or supporting laws that punish theft or damage to property.

Groups of shops can agree to fix prices and avoid speculators, day traders, or fluctuations from flooding the market in one area. Block bargaining may fetch better prices and lead to corporate (or cooperative) formations. Shops may start to trade in store credit and allow players to trade for credit that can be used at other stores as well, even if the township doesn’t yet have a currency. In this way, currency may emerge from civil caches and banks or from corporate economic organization.

Cultural

Education and guilds make up the service industry. At a simple level, one player may tell information (story, landmark location, gossip), show a skill (dance, sing, teach), or performs a task (protect, carry, clerk) for another person. For a bard (poet, historian) this may be stories of deeds, resource locations, prices in another area. For a scout, this may be terrain information and troop movements.

With the addition of some resources, services become crafting. One may hire a carpenter to build a house or furniture out of resources on hand. Also, a furniture store may employ a carpenter full-time to supply the stock. At some level, even couriers are a type of service industry.

A guild structure allows for education and apprenticeship. Experience can be gained in tutelage for skills otherwise inaccessible. This is especially important for something interdisciplinary. For example, some musical skill may be needed for a furniture-maker to begin constructing musical instruments, but once it is learned it can be taught without the same prerequisites.

With higher levels in military or civics, other services become available. A policeman protects civic interests as a player, but also may need a badge, uniform, weapon. A teacher may learn many basic skills to share out and increase the quality of life or speed of learning through experience for others. A newsman may effectively gather information and report it out, but then need a printer and paper mill to increase circulation. A player with artistic skills and good communication can paint signs for storefronts, wayfinding, or public information.

Combined with corporations, a crafter or service person can be the official workshop for a group. A town may appoint posts (paid or not) so that new members or visitors can easily find their way around. “Help wanted” will become the default place for (un)skilled workers to find “quests”.

Building a Home

Tent

A tent is structural supports and fabric. Supports may be wood, bone, metal. Fabric may be a blanket, wool batts, woven grass, leather, skin. A tent is portable and can be picked up each day - it lays no claim to the property it is on, but offers a shelter bonus for sleeping anywhere. Before having a tent, a mat or blanket may also improve as area’s shelter enough to sleep. A tent may be left behind and returned to, but it may not be there upon return if another player sees it or an animal ransacks it.

Shack

A more permanent structure can be built from the same materials or something sturdier (stone, clay, mud, cobb, brick, lumber). A tent is always a 1m structure, but time can be dedicated to a solid home and it can be expanded. It would require basic planning, mapping, and some intermediate gathering and construction. The most typical homestead would probably start with a tent in place and build skills with fencing, traps, and simple tool and weaponsmithing. It may require experimentation to layout better plans and materials and homes may be dismantled for parts to rebuild a new abode.

Hut

Advanced homes and plans will certainly require the hiring of a skilled craftsman. It would be unreasonable to think a subsistence farmer would support himself and have the time/skills to build more than a 4x4m hut with basic furniture without help.

The smallest hut would be ߷ or a 6m² triangle (depending on the map grid structure), providing just enough space to lay down and store some items. A security skill would allow an indicator that it was disturbed, barring the door, and eventually locks of increasing complexity.

A Formed mud Homestead

Clay, brick, and cobb huts require construction knowledge and experimentation with mud (wet dirt) using a form of some sort. This could be wood (good) or woven (okay) and would require a curing time (faster in sun and with fire) to form a single brick. These bricks would degrade over time and need repair (short for mud, longer for fired cobb, distant for brick). Skills in masonry or pottery could improve the quality of even low quality materials.

Stacking bricks is ultimately easy and a simple house could be done in one day, once 288 ⅓ x 1/6m blocks are formed. Formed bricks or shaped stones can be dry fit or with slurry or mortar.

Roofing can be flexible, but requires appropriate support. A log roof cannot sit atop woven stick walls. Once homes get complex, physics for second floors, etc. will be needed. A simple thatch roof or woven branches should suffice for early homes.

While waiting for bricks to cure, perhaps some light gardening would be called for. Near water (lakes, springs, ponds) the dirt would be ‘soil’ with good fertility for germination and yield, even if relocated to a specific area. Amendments of ash, bone, blood, manure, or animal parts could make it more productive. A lot of seeds, fruit, and such would need to be gathered (as well as witnessing a certain number of seedlings) before planting would be unlocked. The witness concept would also be needed for soil amendments, so the benefit of apprenticing at a farm is automatic.

Experience with other things (hoarding, food prep, tanning, processing) will allow for the creation of tools and yards suited for these tasks and providing some bonuses. Bonuses may include faster action, faster skill development, higher quality output, or advanced creation options.

An abandoned building will degrade normally, but also suffer a penalty after being unoccupied for a time (1 week ???). Occupied means that someone has spent significant time on the homestead (crafting) or actually occupying the building (sleeping, eating). For this reason, som structures must always be associated with another build - a house, a shop, a workplace. Without this association obvious repairs will be missed and simulated dilapidation (from bugs, vermin, weather, etc.) accelerates.

Tools and Weapons

Simple, unprocessed components for items would be analogous to the ages of man - sticks and stones. The next tier would be nearly found items that require some handling - fibers, skins, bone, claws, teeth. A stick is a stick, but a sturdy stick can be used as a staff and processed with a rock to sharpen the point for stabbing or digging more effectively. Stone tools start with a handaxe or more primitive actions and can grow to flintknapping, polishing, etc. Bones are good for handles, scrapers, and can be broken into points. Small bones can become needles or drill bits. As each task is attempted by hand, it becomes easier to recognize how a tool would help. In this slow way, a tool can be invented. If a player sees a simple tool, the threshold to invent falls. When a tool is used, the threshold can disappear for simple tools (single process, handle (or known feature) + head) and can be reduced even for complex ones.

(aside: [Nomenclature])

Taxonomy

Materials have basic properties that complicate immediately, but a player won’t know utility until experience accumulates. So…

 | plant
 |- grass
 |    |- turf
 |    |- flower
 |    `- grain
 |- bush
 |    |- bramble
 |    `- berries
 `- tree
      |- lumber
      |- fruit
      `- nuts

For tools, the variety may make iconography tricky, but the knowledge tree will need to be examined as well. Handles, stone/bludgeon, ax/chop, point/pierce, blade/slice, needle, drill, etc.

Other materials can also follow this pattern: wood, stone, metal, animal

 | stone
 |- rock
 |    |- boulder
 |    |- stone
 |    `- pebble
 `- sand
      |- clay
      |- grit
      `- glass sand
Stone may also have hardness or flake attributes for variety, 
grouped near each other with some differences.

Metals are findable in some raw form (bronze) and can simply be hammered out into shapes (ingots, sheets). A furnace allows for combinations (alloys) and for cleaner metal that can be poured, molded, and smithed. Ultimately, wires, nails, and more complex things like hinges and armor can be fashioned.

Metallurgy requires some careful algorithms so as not to be obvious without practice. Simple metals (lead, copper, tin, iron) should all have properties, but be initially only distinguishable on sight from (silver, gold). Bronze should be reasonably easy to fashion, and cast iron, but the magic of steel should really take some precision and some metals (lithium, aluminum) are unavailable though they are plentiful in real life (since extraction is so hard).

Industries

Major industries probably include things with a significant startup investment and that are helped by complex machinery or skilled labor, but cheap and plentiful raw materials.

  • Milling - Grain to flour, wood to lumber, stone to grit (of types)
  • Smithing - crafting from metal (stone, wood), especially advanced weapons and tools
  • Farming - basic foods are easy to find and forage, but takes time
  • Shopkeeping - for timesaving and avoiding direct trading for goods as well as obtaining exotic materials or goods
  • Textiles - simple woven or processed fabrics from grass, fibers, and skins

A new player to an already developed area can start out by gathering any of these or apprenticing, if desired. If a player is in an area where this is not available, milling or textiles would come only with experience on a small scale; smithing could be learned and improved from building tools; farming takes experience with gathering; and shopkeeping is just super-trading.

More advanced industries may include:
Smelting - processing raw ores into more usable, higher quality forms and alloys
 Stock trading - moving large quantities of goods around the map
* Banking - storing and exchanging goods for taxes, shopping, or loans

Skills Study

  • Writing
    • from - storytelling, history, communication, art
    • allows - simple signs, sigla, ornamentation, glyphs
  • Pottery
    • from - digging, sculpting, forming (bricks)
    • allows - containing, cooking, firing
  • Weaving
    • from - botany, knots, mats
    • allows - spinning, fibers, containing
  • Butchering
    • from - cutting, fighting
    • allows - skinning, boning, scraping

Novice Events and Goods

Outfitting

  • First
    • Clothes: grass mats, animal skins
    • Meal: found fruit
    • Shelter: blanket, mat
  • Next
    • Clothes: fabric, leather
    • Meal: cooked scavenged meat
    • Shelter: tent
  • Third
    • Clothes: woven fabric, suede
    • Meal: fresh kill
    • Shelter: hut
  • Advanced
    • Clothes: textiles
    • Meal: prepared veg, soups, breads
    • Shelter: house

Materials

  • Raw meat (from carcass)
    • skills: Harvest -> Butcher (increase in efficiency)
    • tools: handaxe, scraper, blade, fingernails
    • attributes:
      • spoils (counter threshold, possibly affected by exposure, conditions)
      • feeds (satisfaction amount)
      • actions - dry, cure, marinate, cube, slice, boil, grill, combine
    • Cooked (steak, cubes, roast)
      • experience + skill + balance = food quality
  • Grass
    • skills: Harvest -> Reap (increase speed and allow tools)
    • tools: hand scythe, blade, hands, edged weapon
    • bundle for carrying volume bonus (leads to knots)
    • mat to craft mats, blankets
    • matting + knotting = weaving (make fabric, basket, quiver, pocket, string)
    • weaving leads to rope making (cord, rope)
  • Skin (from carcass)
    • scraped (time consuming + tool)
      • hands: long time, ---stamina
      • stone: shorter time, -stamina
      • scraper: honed tool, +quality, +speed
      • metal scraper: +speed
    • rawhide (after time, less with rack and heat)
      • cut to strips, tear with teeth
    • tanned (rubbed with brain, guts, using rack)
    • supple (re-scraped or waste treated)
      • more flexible, but less tough

Fighting

Turn-based, asynchronous initiative, automated with interrupt. Range considerations, movement, actions, free action, stamina cost. THAC0, DAM based on skills, wearables, and item used, aiming. Resistance based on health, skills (evade, etc.), stamina. In most cases, KO is real, but kill must be finished.

Fleeing and pursuit is just a stamina vs. skills game. Instinct may prevent desired action until fighting skills are gained.

Early Weapons

wood, leather, stone

  • fists - mostly stamina damage unless high skills or wearables
  • hands - finishing, binding, strangling, neck breaking, esp. in hunting
  • stick/baton - heavy crush injury and stamina, depending on target
  • stick/pike - puncture for injury
  • stick/spear - thrown pike
  • stone/klout - held stone for blunt action or finishing
  • stone/wedge - edged klout for damage
  • stone/ball - medium hurled rock
  • stone/bullet - small hurled rock, better with sling, atlatl

Next Level Weaponry

  • wraps - hand coverings for more damage, more stamina use, brawling skill
  • handled klout - large hammer or sledge (requires lashing or binder to handle)
  • handled wedge - large maul or hatchet or tomahawk (throwable)
  • stick/handle + bullet - shot (ranged)
  • strap + bullet - slingshot
  • arrowhead (flake + skill) + stick - bolt (fletch for an arrow)
  • sapling or flexible stick + strand - bow

Defensiveness

Evasion depends on a dodge skill, action selection (defend or evade vs attacking or running), movement of clothing. Experience with heavier or more rigid clothes leads to a clothes/armor distinction and hints can be directed towards utility, art, or protection. Leather can be formed, stiffened, plated or softened, scraped, and dyed.

Landing a hit is more about not being evaded, though damage can be low. A very immobile player can be quite safe with heavy armor, but a wildly quick adversary may simply be unhittable.

A fast enemy may flee or a stealthy one may move and hide, effectively ending combat and negating now invalid moves. An early player may find themselves hiding or fleeing involuntarily.

Using Weapons

Inventory controls should keep from carrying tons of weapons, but most folks might keep a ranged and melee weapon handy. First attack may require readying a weapon and switching may require putting one away or just dropping it (free action) and pulling out another.

A player with stone skills can pick up a stone or stone+ weapon easily. In fact, if the player does not know how to build it, it should be very easy to reverse engineer (albeit at low quality). Other related categories need to be identified as well, like good with a hammer should help with an axe. Vertical categories should also be linked. Good with a stone axe probably means good with a metal axe and probably means there is some skill with a metal hammer. Some weapons will have steeper learning curves and low quality will inhibit fast skill advancement.

Buying a weapon way out of your league may work out, but will require a lot of practice, exponential to the skill dearth. If the gap is big enough, the player may not even recognize the weapon as one and may hurt themselves in the attempt. Some parallel skills may help: a hunter may find it easy to pick up a longbow: a woodsman can use a battleaxe better than average; a butcher may have skills with a chopping sword, but not a rapier; a farmer may actually carry a fork like a trident for defense and with better effect because of the skill with it.

Related

Wiki: Nomenclature