Machinations of Court and Frame pre-production notes: Noble Houses and their Agents

June 20, 2023

ttrpg design, machinations of court and frame, total//effect

I don't have an actual cover for this one yet so for now you get a screencap from the SRD title. This one's still at pretty high level. But I did some of that high level work and I wanna talk about it!

Speaking of the SRD, this is the third Total//Effect game I initially proposed/outlined/etc on the Total//Effect SRD. My general (self)-pitch was:

Mecha, But Politics
- This Time, This One's About The People, Not The Mechs ^TM
  - (But it's also about feudalism and how internecine struggles between people in power completely do not care about the average person)
Political maneuvering and such. Heavy Faction emphasis in the form of noble Houses. Think Battletech or Game of Thrones or Dune.
Heavy emphasis on Relationships/Bonds/etc. They're big in Valiant Horizon but they're supposed to be even bigger here.
No "traditional" group tactical TTRPG combat. But there are mecha duels, because that's very important to me.

So first off, I think to give this the proper "space" (haha) to breathe, this one also needs to be a space game. This lets me be pretty vague on certain points without it being weird, especially I'm purposely relaxing "hard"-ness because the specifics aren't the point - everyone has FTL shit and can travel easy, planets are just habitable or terraformable and have atmospheres, it's fine. Get those good Dune/Battletech vibes going more so than like, Front Mission.

Given that, I think the proper order of operations is: Factions/Allegiances contain Houses which contain Planets. Factions/Allegiances are something that I think mostly gets hashed out in play but I'll focus on Houses/Planets.

Planets

The main resource I'm tracking is the number of planets they control, which is the only "resource" I'm tracking as such. More planets, more power in general: certain things can add "virtual" planets to this tally, like prominent (extra-population/resource/etc, counts as two) or independent (counts as half at most, is split X ways between any House with a trade agreement with them) planets. What do more planets get you? Each House gets X actions per Faction Turn: reinforce X planet, infiltrate Y planet, do some digging on Z, etc. I'm thinking the big benefit is that they get 2/3/4/5 actions if they have 1/3/6/10 planets: meaning a handful of lower Houses can overwhelm a higher one if they're isolated.

Houses

So off the bat, my first inclination was to do some kind of complicated 4X resource thing with Houses. But I realized very quickly that I didn't want that. The thing is that the interplay between Houses is not so much a game in and of itself as it is a backdrop to the personal action between agents of said Houses. Your points of view aren't the machine, they're also cogs in it, even if they are very important cogs. So what do we do for Houses?

To define a House, we start by defining the House's Distinction. This is kind of like a character class or playbook for the House. The ones I have down are Legacy (they're very old and storied), Money (they have a lot of it), Connections (they're got to where they are through intel and favor arbitrage), and Industry (they have control of some major supply of something, like food or ore). This is basically why they matter.

When you define this, the player making the House (this is a full-group effort, ideally, with each player making probably 2) is asked 3 Distinction-based questions to define something in particular about how the House got to where they are, who they're allied with, and who they're unfriendly with. Distinction also defines holdings, i.e. how many planets they start with, but it's based on a roll and each kind has various downsides: Money-Houses have High Die (average 5ish) but many are independent, while Connections-Houses have Low Die (average 2ish) but their capital is always Prominent. Because this isn't really a game about winning or losing, I'm perfectly fine with Houses starting on the front or back foot. For example, I rolled up 1 House of each kind to test this, and the Legacy and Money houses started with 4 each while the other two rolled very poorly ended up with 1 each. That instantly creates an asymmetric dynamic: maybe those first two are the major two powers, with the other two splitting one way or another (or combining forces to act as one...for now, anyway). That's workable!

The chosen Distinction also defines the Frames the House picks as its "core three" types (light, medium, heavy). I've defined 3 "lines" of mechs by name/manufacturer: the first is intended for old-money, focuses on melee capabilities, and labels theirs like TYPE-WEAPON; the second has more of a PMC vibe and labels theirs like 0X-ABC where ABC is a "character class" like KGT = Knight, RGR = Ranger, etc; and the third is full manufacturing and labels them XMYAZ (for instance MM10A4, like how the US military labels things as M16A4/etc). Legacy Houses have to pick 2/3 from the first (they're the oldest one, prior contracts, etc), Money houses have to pick 2/3 from the second (they have a expensive-but-practical vibe), Industry has to pick 2/3 from the last (more of an emphasis on no-frills craftsmanship), and Connections have to pick 1 of each.

Distinction does another thing with Relationships too but I'll get to it when writing about...

Agents

So the focus of the game is characters who are Agents. This is a very broad term that more or less comes down to "representative of a House, sponsored by them to get The Overwhelmingly Good Shit from their Frame manufacturer, sent to problem areas to fix or create problems or as liasons/representatives". Each player makes two and play shifts around various sides of a conflict on a per-session basis - when Agents clash, it could be with an NPC, or depending on what House moves have been taken, it could be another PC Agent! (And since direct conflicts are 1v1, you can just have this play out as PvP, unless both duelists were made by the same player.)

I'm taking a similar approach re: playbook/broad "class"-like distinctions to Agents. Specifically, I'm envisioning 6 kinds of Agents on a sliding scale of privilege/status/position from Heir/Scion at the high end (literally in line to be House leadership, or could be if enough people die) to Officer/Mercenary at the low end (not even nobles, just professionals who are good at mech fighting). The more important you are, the more Status you have: Status means that other characters with more/less relate to you differently. (One big one, for example, is that is no big deal for someone of higher Status to actually kill someone of lower in a battlefield duel, but someone of lower status is expected to find a way to disable rather than kill whatever inbred heir in their sight who has a death wish.) It does mean you've got more of a target on your back, however, and less ability to pivot around: I'm thinking a meta-currency equal to X - Status (probably 4 - Status, with Status being 1-3).

Playbooks/whatever I end up calling them also define a few things. I'm envisioning a passive ability relating to Relationships (like counting them as doubled for the purposes of Influence or unlocks), as well as starting packages: starting Relationships with the House and with people, and starting Moves picked from a big list split between Court Intrigues and Frame Maneuvers (like the Mercenary is Maneuvers-only at first, but it gets 4 instead of 3 Moves and can gain more of an appreciation for intrigue over time - think someone like Bronn from Game of Thrones).

Finally, back to Distinctions to talk about Relationships. When characters gain Relationships, they can take those out with other people (which gives advantages to influence them in particular) or with Houses. In addition to making it easier to influence them and various set benefits like extra Frame access or Tells on all that House's Frames or that person's Maneuvers, When they take a Bond (which is 1 of 6 points you can put into a Relationship, crystallized by a specific thing), they gain a token, which they can spend anytime to answer questions about a House: the questions in particular are defined by that Distinction/Playbook, and there's one good-connotated/one bad-connotated. For example, Legacy has a) What hidden secret in their past could propel this House to greatness? b) What dark event in their history or lineage is this House trying to hide? (Keep in mind these aren't just for good bonds, these can be for enemies too - a character can create a Relationship with a House they've sworn to bring to ruin, for example, and cash them in to create some horrid rift they can exploit, or a friendly Relationship can turn sour after a betrayal and lead to awful things being revealed on both sides.)

Hell Yeah

This game's gonna be cool as shit whenever I make it for real, folks. I mean I say this about literally every significant-sized game I make but this one's definitely also my baby.

(Read the original on cohost here!)