[X] Plan Magical plot device
-[X] Name: Kronk
-[X] Titles: Smith Lord of Zlatlan, Third Spawning Slann, Master of the Forge, The Tinkerer, The Builder Of Myth And Legend
-[X] Magical Focus: High Magic
-[X] Tinkerer
-[X] Smith
-[X] Architect
[X] Plan Lord of Life
-[X] Name: Wik'keer'mal
-[X] Titles: Lord of the Lost City, Friend of the Living, Master of the Forest, Lifebringer
-[X] Magical Focus: Ghyran
-[X] Healer
-[X] Mentor
-[X] Apiarist
During that turn you will select five (5) actions to work on (split between Projects and Expeditions), to which you will assign characters.
Actions are split broadly into two categories: Projects and Expeditions. I'll give some more details on them each in a little bit, but for now just think of them as actions that focus on Zlatlan itself and actions that focus on places outside of Zlatlan. They will be formatted like this:
Character Limit: the maximum number of characters that can be assigned to an action.
Tags: single word descriptions of what is expected for that action.
Ex. Construction, Warfare, Risky, Multi-Stage, etc.
Risky: action is more likely to result in injury or have significant consequences in case of failure.
Multi-Stage: this action is likely to take multiple turns to 'fully' complete, though it will not necessarily be locked in once selected
X Generation: action gains benefits from being assigned a slann of the appropriate spawning
Requirements: character fitting this description are requiredfor the action to be valid in a plann.
An action that is tagged "Requirements: Slann (1)" for example will require at least one slann to be assigned.
Other requirements may be for specific characters, equipment, or skills.
During a turn each action will have a series of updates involving challenges, encounters, and choices which will guide the development of that action. Rather than rolling dice to accumulate successes in order to complete a given action, your characters will complete stages of each Project/Expedition depending on choices made during that turn. Descriptions for each action provide an idea of the goals of said Project or Expedition and will not guarantee any specific results.
Some actions will lock in over multiple turns until they complete, but those will be explicitly called out. Most actions will not require pre-commitment to multiple turns of focus. Choices and rolls during the turn itself may affect which of those applies to a given action.
Other actions take place more in the 'background,' the sort of large expansive projects that don't require constant management from slann or priests but that can still have large, visible impacts on the world. These are called Policies.
Feel free to suggest new Projects, Expeditions, or Policies and I will review them and create options for them as appropriate. See the sections below for some basic guidelines on Projects and Expeditions.
Policies
More 'general' infrastructure work that is worked on in the 'background' over multiple turns. Policies are categorized into Huge, Standard, and Small; depending on the scope/relative labor investment required.
Characters are not assigned to Policies. Policies are voted on separately, but concurrently, to the normal Turns.
Projects
Projects are all actions which take place 'local' to Zlatlan. That is, if a crisis were to arise those characters would be able to affect the outcome of that crisis. Often this means complex infrastructure projects or magical research.
There are fewer restrictions on what characters can take part in Projects than for Expeditions.
Expeditions
Expeditions are all actions which take place outside of Zlatlan. They take characters far away from the temple-city to distant locations and are much more likely to result in 'locked in' characters and actions. Characters on Expeditions will almost certainly be unable to respond to a crisis.
There are many more restrictions on what characters can take part in Expeditions.
Constructing an Expedition Force
Each potential expedition will have a maximum allotment of force that can be brought along, depending on travel method, goals, and other factors which will be listed alongside Supply at the bottom. Supply represents not only the required feed, water, gear, and other supplies those units need but also the willingness of Zlatlan to see those units gone for extended periods of time. Every cohort of skinks or kroxigor, band of saurus, and warbeast will cost a certain amount of points (and maybe have additional requirements on their inclusion).
You do not have to include the breakdown of the expeditionary force but doing so will leave it up to me, and I will err on the side of simplicity rather than inclusion.
Black Egg (1 Point) (Requires 0.5 Points of Priests)
Max: 6 Points
Special
Priest (0.5 Point) (Requires: 0.5 Points of Skink Cohorts, 2 Points of Saurus Bands)
Max: 2 Points
+10 Magic/+5 Warfare for Each Point on Expedition
Quetzl's Mirror Guardians (1.25 Points)
Max: 1.25 Points
+5 Warfare when Defending Locations
Quetli's Chosen (2 Points)
Max: 2 Points
+ 15 Warfare against daemons and other chaos corrupted enemies.
Chameleon Skinks (1 Point) (Requires: 0.5 Points of Skink Cohorts)
Max: 1 Point
+30 Navigation (Land)/Tracking/+20 Perception on Expedition
Allows Assasination and Sabotage
Rheameninthys (3 Points) (LOCKED)
Max: 3 Points
Tyrecmion, Amnil, Isobar (2 Points) (LOCKED)
Max: 2 Points
Slann
Each turn will still see rolls to determine how many slann you have available. But now these slann are characters, though ones with sharp limits on how and when they may be used, and can simply be assigned as you do other characters.
The limits on slann though will often leave you with excess slann characters. So what to do with them? Introducing TempleActions; these are a range of actions which will mostly not have direct and immediate narratives attached but which can affect other actions, provide new avenues of development, or hint at dangers/opportunities on the horizon.
Three categories of TempleActions are:
Divination: Read the heavens for a sign of what the future holds. Chance to gain one or more prophecies, or to aid an action this turn.
Meditation: Delve into memory and study the twisting strands of magic. Gain understanding of a prophecy.
Contemplating the Sequence: Seek understanding of the Great Plan. Chance to gain a deeper understanding of the mysteries of the world.
On any given turn your slann will mostly end up assigned here.
Characters
Obviously all of this means that characters no longer provide dice to actions.
Instead characters have skills and traits which add bonuses to their rolls during actions they are assigned to, or provide unique opportunities for during those actions which would not be available otherwise. These should not be treated as exclusive lists of their capabilities — except in obvious cases, such as the use of magic — but rather as highlighting areas of particular specialty. You will have the chance, over the course of the quest, to improve characters skills, to gain new traits, evolve current ones, and gain equipment for your characters; all of which will impact how they are able to complete future actions.
Though be warned not to expect such opportunities to be frequent.
Zlatlan
But wait, so will we no longer be building up our Temple-City?
No. You will still be working to repair, improve, and maintain Zlatlan. The focus will simply be on your using characters to do so.
There will be fewer actions available to you overall, but this will come from a reduction in 'makework' actions rather than a loss of options. Each action available to you will have the promise of interesting things or places to discover, fun fights to have, and/or people to talk to.
Part of the reason I lost the energy to continue with the quest was because there were more and more actions whose updates amounted to little more than 'you did more of the same stuff you did last turn.' This was my own fault.
And I would hardly lay most of the blame on that, actual real life events had much more to do with it but it was part of it.
You will still have the opportunity to guide those sorts of actions, but I can more easily handle having them pop up as sporadic choices which continue in the background rather than having to be an actual main part of the turn.
Basics
Each turn, currently, spans 10 years (was 100 prior to reaching Infrastructure Level 1).
In order to complete, or make progress towards completing, and action you assign a certain number of dice. These dice are then rolled against a DC and if any matches or exceeds that number a success gets added for each die that did until the required number of successes is reached. Successes persist across turns unless otherwise stated.
But, most actions have 'Limits' on them. These represent various things which constrain the number of dice you can put towards a certain action — either per turn or in total — and can and will fluctuate over time.
Dice
Before every turn, a certain number of dice is rolled (currently 5d10) to determine how deeply the Slann of Zlatlan are affected by Lethargy for the upcoming turn. The results of those rolls are then used to calculate how many dice you will have for the turn, using this formula:
These dice can be freely applied to any action besides Learning actions, up to their limits. Limits can only be exceeded through the use of characters.
You Slann Dice per turn is calculated by rolling a number of d20's equal to the number of slann in a given generation and measuring the result against the DC. Each roll that beats the DC is awake and available for that turn.
Your number of Slann Dice per turn is calculated similarly, taking the result of the formula above (before dividing it in half), for each 'decade' of activity you have on a given turn, rounded down, a number of dice equal to the number of Slann for a given Generation is rolled. These dice must match or exceed a DC and if they do then the Sann are considered 'awake' for that period of time and you gain 1 Slann dice of that Generation.
Characters
Some actions, or certain critical successes, can lead to the introduction of special characters. These are individuals of import with specialized skills that have explicit and concrete impacts on your chances of success; any character without specifically noted mechanical benefits has none. Characters also have restrictions on what sort of actions they can contribute to, generally framed as benefits only going towards certain classes of actions.
Characters must be assigned to a specific action in order to gain their benefits, like so:
Unless otherwise stated, either somewhere in the characters' details or in the action itself, only one character may be assigned to any given task.
Note: in certain cases, some urgent actions are gate by certain other actions. When it is appropriate, successes in excess of the needed number will automatically apply towards those efforts. In such situations, if you would like to assign a specific character to said follow-on action first confirm that the action will occur and then in the same manner as above, indicate the assignment:
[-] Action: # Dice, Character 1
-[-] Follow Up: Character 2
Learning Actions
Like other actions Learning Actions require accumulated successes, but unlike most other actions they require Slann Dice and do not have limits. Each Slann Dice, depending on its Spawning (or Generation), has a certain floor below which that dice cannot roll - when the rolled number would be below that, instead the floor is substituted - and each Action itself has an affinity for a specific Spawning. When Affinity and Generation match the DC is reduced by 10; with further reductions coming for each Generation of the dice above the Affinity.
As voting continues I figure this is a good time to give you a little explanation of how Turns will work.
Turns will take place over a period of 100 years, with the number of actions you can perform controlled by how many of those years you are awake for with a floor of 30 minimum. On any given turn you will have between 30 and 93 years of activity.
But how does that actually work mechanically? Well before we get to that we have to talk a bit about how you actually perform actions during a turn. Basically it works similar to Paradox of Choice, where you spend die rather than 'actions.' For each die that beats the DC for a given action you gain a success which build until the required number of successes for that action has been met and, generally, unless an action states otherwise those successes persist permanently until the action completes one way or another.
How do I determine how many die you receive per turn? Under normal circumstances ever year you are awake and active you gain one die for the turn. Characters and even certain projects or events may confer additional die. But, you do not start under normal conditions.
At the start, you will receive only 1/2 of an action for every turn. Rounded up. So, 65 years of alertness would translate into 33 actions for a turn. This is due to the enormous hole you are still struggling to dig yourself out of; you have a lot of repairs to do and are suffering the worst of effects of the Great Catastrophe personally still. So are the rest of your Slann.
Which leads me into the only action category which does not operate under that same system; Learning. Instead of using regular actions to research and conduct other learning actions you use the POWER OF SLANN - by which I mean your Slann are what provide the dice for your research. So the amount of researching you can get done in a turn is determined separately. For every ten year increment in a turn each Slann has a chance of being alert and awake. And the dice they provide also have different floors of success (3rd floor at 30, 4th at 20, and 5th at 10).
Once you have addressed the major repairs and made some progress addressing your lethargy, turns will shift from 100 years turns to 10 year turns.
Edit: Something I forgot to mention. Limits. Actions (except for Learning) generally have Limits; this is a per turn limit of the dice which can be applied to a given problem, representing the need for specialized labor to focus on other tasks as well. They also sometimes represents the use of a limited resource. Thus limits can and will fluctuate between turns on some actions. This information will also be included in the first Turn.
[X] Plan Magical Items Galore!
-[X] Name: Nolhox
-[X] Titles: Smith Lord of Zlatlan, Third Spawning Slann, Master of the Forge, The Tinkerer.
-[X] Magical Focus: The Lore of Chamon
-[X] Tinkerer
-[X] Smith
-[X] Mentor
Which leads me into the only action category which does not operate under that same system; Learning. Instead of using regular actions to research and conduct other learning actions you use the POWER OF SLANN - by which I mean your Slann are what provide the dice for your research. So the amount of researching you can get done in a turn is determined separately. For every ten year increment in a turn each Slann has a chance of being alert and awake. And the dice they provide also have different floors of success (3rd floor at 30, 4th at 20, and 5th at 10).
I can never figure how to get it to show that. I know there is why to show my roll, I have some QMs do it. I guess it might be because I'm doing it on an IPad or something.
