Writing about Empire

Victory and Loss

This was written on Facebook by Matt in response to some discussion about the Druj invasion of Morrow. (22/08/2018)

Only actions are virtuous.

One of the key things to understand about the military campaigns in Empire is that they run on military and mathematical rules.

What that means is that the outcomes are determined by a set of mathematical rules. We just add up all the points on one side, compare them to the points on the other side and the spreadsheet does the rest. Then Andy Raff writes the flavour text.

The inputs are determined by military rules. The Empire - I assume - makes strategic and military decisions on where to put its armies. And we - as the commanders of the barbarians do the same. We look at the intelligence we're given and put our armies where our best stab (pun intended) says we should go.

Crucially what that means is that we don't go where the narrative says we should. In most *stories*, the outcomes are determined by what makes the best drama. Things happen according to the inexorable laws of maximum dramatic tension. Elan from Order of the Stick is a great example of a character who knowingly lives in just such a world.

It would have been stupendously easy for us to maximise the dramatic tension here. As will become clear later today there are other campaign theatres where we could have sent the Druj armies where arguably they would have created a better dramatic narrative. The Highborn armies could have fought the Druj to a standstill - while other conflicts played out for drama.

We didn't do that for a while bunch of reasons - lack of military intelligence to justify those military decisions were the IC reasons. But the OOC reasons was because we're not running for drama... we're running on maths and strategy.

That's pretty gutting when you take a huge loss like this one. And this is as Gerard Kurth eloquently describes it a "Holy shit" moment. It's pretty darn brutal. Is it more brutal than when the players fuck up on a battle and 50+ of them die? It's kinda the campaign equivalent I think.

But it does mean that when you get victories - you can be 100% confident that they happened because you outsmarted your opponents - you outplayed them.

That's because victory in Empire is not guaranteed. That's absolutely crucial to playing the game - if we run the numbers and rocks fall and everyone dies... then we'll publish a wind of war in which rocks fall and everyone dies. We'll find a way to run it out to the end of the year - and then next year we'll run a different game. (I have form).

But if the Empire triumphs and packs the Druj off to the history books it will be because they genuinely triumphed. You will know to the bottom of your hearts that it was *real* in every meaningful sense. The risk with any game in which you run for drama is that it can hollow out the sense of victory. If victory is the inevitable outcome - then what does it really mean to triumph? If the military campaign outcome was going to be written to produce a nail-biting stand-off... regardless of how many armies the Empire committed to that theatre... then why bother sending anyone?

I've seen a few times the players be surprised when their players actions don't equate to success. But Empire is absolutely founded on the idea that it isn't enough to just do something - you have to actually *win* to win. There are no victories for just turning up - this is not a story being told in which the heroes triumph. While the odds faced by the Urizen seem impossible - that's simply a consequence of the collective decisions made by the players - they most certainly could have been different.

We genuinely don't know how the story plays out. We literally have no more clue than you do. It's part of what makes running Empire fun. But it does mean that sometimes you get fantastic awesome results - and sometimes you get a whole sequence of gut punches that seem relentlessly brutal.

tl:dr; What Ed Rolison said. (To be fair, Ed has been playing LRPs run by me and my friends for 14 years!).

Writing Winds of War

Another post from Raff about the process of writing Winds of War (May 2018)

Winds of War is an involved process involving a lot of notes.

Given we've got nothing better to do I thought I'd write a short (for a given value) piece about how Winds of War get written, which touches on the way we work through the whole downtime military campaign. You might find it interesting.

The orcs plan their moves
Before every event, we talk about what the orcs are doing. "We" in this case means me, Matt, and Graeme but may include other people on a case-by-case basis. We sketch out the broad plan for each of the orc nations, with reference to the quests, skirmishes, battles, and delegations for the next event. We nail down where their armies are going and what they are doing, although we sometimes leave the exact order they're taking until later. There'll often be a variable in the mix - the players will often have the chance to do things on the field that will effect what one orc nation or another will do.

This bit often involves heated arguments, all sorts of logical fallacies, accusations of now knowing the brief, and arguments about what *might* happen and how much a given orc nation cares about mithril. It can go on for sometime.

We lock in our strategy, especially with regard to enchantments or curses the orc magicians are using.

The Event Happens
The event happens. Everything catches fire and falls into a swamp. The players choose which battles to take and they succeed or fail or partially succeed or what have you. This may or may not adjust the orders the orcs are taking in a given campaign. Sometimes an enchantment or curse goes off because of a quest failing; sometimes an orc army shifts its allegiance due to the result of a battle. Things like that.

On Sunday the generals submit their orders, usually to Graeme Jamieson. The Quartermaster announces who will be getting the guerdon.

At least one of us - ideally two of us - is careful to make sure they have no idea what the players are doing. It's tricky sometimes but we do our best.

We then review the orc strategy, and lock in specific orders if that's still needed.

We Analyse the Situation in Theory
Once we're properly committed, Graeme tells us what the Imperial players are doing. Sometimes we kick ourselves because if we'd just done *something else* things would have been different. We're often surprised. We discuss in broad terms the likely outcomes of the various campaigns, and how much additional force will need to be applied to change outcomes and the like. This bit doesn't usually achieve much beyond being a lot of fun.

Then we open downtime.

Downtime Happens
Downtime happens. Players assign their military units to support armies and fortifications and what have you.

Then we close downtime.

Campaign Processing
Once downtime is closed, Matt presses the red button and processes it. This takes a few hours. We twiddle our thumbs and I have a nice hot cup of coffee.

Once downtime is processed, we know where all the military units are and what strength they are. Graeme factors these into his spreadsheet. He adds in all the variables - enchantments, curses, special plot opportunities or levies, weird shit I've convinced people to let me do because of giant pieces of scenery, that kind of thing.

Then he presses his red button and it's time for the exciting bit.

We Go Through the Battles
We go through each camaign in turn, double-triple-checking numbers at every stage. We now know the outcome - its simply numbers. Someone won, someone lost, or its a double-defend. Regions change hands, or not. Thousands of imaginary soldiers are killed.

We're also at this stage starting to build a picture of the battle. "This would have been worse if they had done X" or "They have squeaked through because of Y and Z" or "If there had been b, then c would/wouldn't have happened".

I make a load of notes about this sort of stuff. We're usually left with a broad sketch of each wind of war at this stage.

More Notes
More notes. I spend a day or so looking at the orders from each player general, at the notes we made way back when we locked in the orc strategies, at the descriptions of the various effects especially the rituals and plot opportunities/levies, and most importantly at the territory that's being fought over. I review previous winds of war. Notes are made. By this stage each campaign will be a string of bullet points.

Write Winds of War
I write winds of war, one at a time, based on inspiration. In each case I try to find a "hook" that will turn the story from "we bashed two numbers together and the highest won" to something players can build their own stories about. The narratives can be long and complex - I try as much as possible to give each army a little spotlight time, and to mention significant magical effects, as well as calling out anything that happened during the main events that adds to the story - especially battle outcomes. Not everything makes the cut, of course, but everything contributes to making "two numbers highest wins" into something people can get excited about (or angry, or sad, or fired up about).

One of the challenging things when writing Winds of War is that we have to remember that we're not writing about a single battle but about three months of maneuvering, fighting, recuperating, and the like. Matt compares the downtime battles to the military campaigns of Wellington across Spain, while the PCs on the field engage in uptime activities take the role of Sharpe. Broad strokes, and a feeling of scale are what's needed for the Winds of War - leaving some wiggle room for the players to create their own personal narrative of what they did on their (bloodsoaked) holidays.

There's a few metarules here - we never mention individual characters or military units. We try hard to make sure that the coolest write-ups are given to the battles where the Empire suffers the most setbacks. As much as possible we try to bring out the individual characters of the orc nations, the territories where the fighting is happening, and the personalities of the armies and the orders given.

The writeups also contain a little setting building as often as not, and there will often be nods to or foreshadowing of things that are happening at the next event or in the wider campaign. For example, the fact the Jotun have sent a delegation to talk to the Thule, or the new ettercap strategies in Liathaven, or the hints of Yaw'nagrah influencing the vallorn, and so on.

The last part is the game information section which lays out clearly as possible the outcome not only of the campaign but of any significant impacts of the territory. This is also when we finalise any opportunities or special roleplaying effects or what have you.

Once I'm happy with one, it gets thrown at Matt to check over. He makes a load of pointy-haired-boss-changes to my deathless prose. Not a single Winds of War writing cycle goes by without an hour long argument over the tone of a single paragraph or in particularly intense cases, a single sentence.

At this stage we also finalize the order they'll be announced in - usually the order that will create the most drama and (hopefully) drum up the most enthusiasm.

Easter Eggs!
We decide on a naming theme for each of the Winds. We congratulate ourselves on how clever we are and how hard it will be for players to guess it. Mostly because I was not hugged enough as a child and we don't get out often enough.

Pictures!
I go and enlist the aid of some photodroids to find me some pictures. They get a bullet point list vaguely outlining what I want "Highguard looking grim" or "Sad Marchers" or "Something with the League or the Brass Coast ideally with trees" or what have you. Beth, Tim, Oliver and occasionally sundry others help me out and I narrow down the pictures.

Last Check
We do a last check through. By this stage Tom is well into creating the battle opportunities for the next event and we make sure that where possible the Winds of War foreshadow or support these so as to make the game world more coherent.

Then we start putting them live on Facebook, and the forum ninjas import them to the forums, and we update the wiki page in the aforementioned "maximum drama/impact" order. This is the really fun bit most of the time.

I add the hashtags, which keep me happy. There's a flurry of discussion and reactions. At least one comment gets deleted by someone.

If there's a particularly complicated WoW (it's usually the last one), it might still be unfinished, but there's plenty of time to work on it while putting the finished ones live. Normally.

At some point during this someone guesses the naming theme.

Added Value
We've added a few new steps in the last couple of events. We put up a last Wind of War that is about the upcoming major conjunctions - battles and skirmishes - with a variable amount of information. This helps people speculate about what the opportunities are, as well as hopefully letting people other than generals feel invested in the decisions that will be made during Friday night's muster.

As of last event, volunteers working with Ian record the Winds of War as sound files so that people who don't enjoy or have time to read reams and reams of glorified fanfiction can enjoy them.

Back to the Start
Then we go back to the start; we sketch out the broad strategies for the orcs, and lock in the locations of their armies and the like.

The rest of our writers start finalising the quests, battles, skirmishes, and field plots for the coming event. While everyone else works on that, Matt and I turn our attention to our next writing job - Winds of Fortune.

Epilogue
That was a lot longer than I expected when I started. I'm hoping that means the PD internet is now back up again and I can get Spiral finished and posted. If you've read this far, I salute you.

Do I Need To Worry About Downtime?

Andy Raff on Downtime, modified from an original post to the Empire page (November 2017)

Downtime is straightforward, and there's no requirement for you to actuall do anything if you don't want to.

With an eye to the fact this may be some of your first events, I thought I'd do a quick guide to Downtime and whether you need to worry about it.

First of all, the actual wiki page for downtime is here.

How to do it
Go to the Profound Decisions website and log in. On the drop down at the top, go to Your Account -> Characters and click on your character name. From there, you can spend xp, manage your inventory, and submit your downtime by following the helpful wizard. For now I'm going to concentrate on "Downtime".

The Interlude Page
When we open downtime, we put together an "interlude" page that contains a bunch of reminders and explanations about special effects that are in play. You can find it from anywhere on the main wiki by going to The Empire at the top of the page, selecting "Recent History" from the drop down, and going to the Winds of Fortune page for the next event.

Your Personal Resource
Some personal resources let you make choices about what they do in downtime.

• Mine, forest, herb garden, farm, business, mana site - these straightforward resources just produce whatever they produce. You don't even need to log in - the only reason to do so would be to check your projected income for the next event, and to double check that any enchantment you had cast on them has worked (but see Overclocking below).
• Congregation - you can choose to sell some of the liao you produce. You can automatically sell liao for (currently) 18 rings a dose if you want some cash for some reason. If you want all your tasty, tasty liao you don't need to worry about downtime.
• Fleet - If you leave your fleet to its own devices, it will engage in privateering and produce you a chunk of resources of a random type. However, you have another option - you can send your fleet to trade with a foreign port. Each foreign port provides different income; selecting ports from the drop down automatically calculates what your income will be.
• Military unit - If you leave a military unit to its own devices it will engage inpaid work, producing a chunk of resources of a random type. As with a fleet though you have more options - you can choose to assign your military unit to support an Imperial army, defend a fortification, or assist a special project such as a spy network. By assigning a military unit to an Imperial army, you can browse the orders the general has issued, Depending on what you support, you may or may not get shares of the Imperial Guerdon - only some armies provide an income when supported by military units as determined by the Quartermaster General of the Imperial Armies each event.

Overclocking
If you own a mine, forest, or herb garden you can choose to "overclock" them. This costs you 6 crowns which needs to be in your inventory, and produces an extra 5 ingots, 5 measures, or 7 herbs respectively. Characters with a mana site have also recently gained the ability to "overclock" their resources using the "white seed" - a unique alchemical product from the Principalities of Jarm. Unlike the other resources, you can choose to spend more money to gain more crystal mana rather than simply paying 6 crowns.

In both cases, the money to pay for overclocking must be in your inventory - that is you should hand it in in to GOD in your event baggy after the event

Upgrading and diversifying
Any personal resource can be upgraded. Depending on the resource, it requires either white granite, mithril, or weirwood. The number of wains you need is equal to the new rank, and you can upgrade a resource a maximum of one rank each downtime.

To upgrade, just select the option in downtime after making sure you have the appropriate number of wains in your inventory. Diversification works the same way, but changes some of your basic production to something else - mines, forests, farms, and businesses all have diversification options.

Ministries
A particular subset of Imperial Titles come with a "ministry" - the ability to swap something for something else in Downtime. For example, ambassadors can purchase trade goods while the Overseer of the Gloaming Road can trade iridescent gloaming for mithril with the Faraden. Obviously, you only need to worry about this if you have a ministry. If in doubt, check the page for your title on the wiki.

Artisans
If you have the artisan skill, you also log in to Downtime to make your magic items. You need to make sure you have the materials you need in your inventory, and pick the items you want from the dropdown. Because of the way the game is designed, everyone with the artisan skill has the ability to make at least one item - a two-month item that requires no materials.

Arcane Projections
You also use the downtime system to prepare an arcane projection. You need to make sure you have 10 mana crystals in your inventory, then follow the instructions on the screen. Arcane Projections are documents that allow ritual magicians to perform spontaneous magic. You must submit your arcane projection before the event, but there is usually a short window after Winds of Fortune are published to allow last-minute submissions.

That's about it
In summary then. You don't need to do anything with your personal resource, or log in to do anything during downtime. Your resource will produce something automatically, and there's not a lot more to worry about with our downtime system. We keep the downtime system as streamlined and straightforward and devoid of extraneous clicking as we possibly can! If you're having any problems, you can ask for assistance from a fellow player or e-mail matt@profounddecisions.co.uk with as many details of your problem as possible.

Winds of Fortune

This post was shared on Facebook to the Empire group, and deals with the purpose of Winds of Fortune. It was originally in response to a player feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of Winds of Fortune material before every event. Matt is not what you might call a natural football fan... (18/7/2018)

I like to try and read the news most days. And the Grauniad is my paper of choice for English news because it's free and it fits my bias.

But I pick and choose the bits I'm interested in - I assume nobody actually reads all that stuff about football or sports and stuff... I mean there was a thing... and like some people played football and... someone won. Or something. Germany I assume - I mean they usually win everything. Or Brazil? I mean I could care less....

The Winds are just "Empire News" - they are there so people whose characters are well informed can be well informed and to create stuff people can choose to roleplay about in the field. But it's perfectly fine for it to be just "more articles about football". Nobody should read articles about football unless they want to and they enjoy reading them.

If I could find a way to say "This content is a supplement to your game - it is optional - you don't need to read any of it - you can just go into play and roleplay finding out the news" then we would.

But there is literally no way that I can think of to say that that works. I don't know what words would communicate that in a way that would make any difference at all to people. We've tried really hard - but nothing works.

Personally I suspect the game is probably more fun if you don't read them. I think I'd enjoy turning up and being wide-eyed and knowing nothing and be like "What? The Columbians have won! That can't possibly have happened. Why weren't the Belgians using the 4-7-5 formation". I don't really understand football so I think the analogy has probably gone too far now... but basically I'd find it more fun to play in the field than read online.

Now obviously the fun of that relies on the fact that *some* people do want to read it online and get super-excited about it. And it seems a bit rude to make them do all the work and do none of the heavy-lifting yourself. But statistically - there doesn't seem to be a shortage of people mad keen to read the winds. So I don't think I'd lose any sleep over the work they put in to make your game better so they can portray well-briefed NPCs who know whats happening when you turn up in-character.

But... it just doesn't make a difference. Its mere existence seems to act as a psychic anchor for some players and I genuinely cannot work out what on earth we can do to help other than to just say over and over (largely ineffectively) "Just don't read/worry about it."

Using Social Media

This post was originally made by Matt on Facebook, on the Wintermark group, as part of a discussion about advertising In Character services, and talking about your group and such on Facebook. in it he talks a bit about our approach to Social Media and its positive impact on the game. (7/4/2018)

My view has always been that players advertising services on Facebook does give an advantage to players who are active on Facebook and reading the group regularly over those players who aren't.

But an advantage at what? At getting involved, at finding game, at knowing about places to go, help seeking out characters to talk to. Basically help having fun at the event?

I think it's hard to convincingly critique much of that. Our goal is to get as many people involved and enjoying the game as possible. I'd give that advantage to everybody if I could. It doesn't matter to me if one player finds it easier to enjoy the event than another - equality in enjoyment is not the goal - the goal is to get *everybody* more involved - to make it easier for everyone to have fun. If a rising tide lifts some boats more than others... I'll accept that.

For the most part roleplaying games are fundamentally cooperative out-of-character. They're not like sports - it's not just about winning and losing and competing. The more fun you are having... in a game in which much of the roleplaying is cooperative player-with-player - then it's likely that I'm having more fun. A busy bustling field full of characters going about their business is a cooler game setting for *everyone* - even if you personally are less informed on what is happening.

It's easy to think of these things in terms of competitive advantages - because some of the game is competitive in-character. Players compete against each to become senators, cardinals, grandmasters - and so on. Now clearly it would damage enjoyment to turn up and find everything like this had been stitched up in advance on Facebook - that would spoil the fun - not just for the person losing out but for everyone coming out on top as well.

But that's why we limit the scope of what people can post - IC adverts of services are fine - organizing meetings is fine - pushing agendas and discussing issues... is over the line. It's fine to find out what is going on on Facebook - but play out your response to that when you're live in the field.

I welcome any discussion of these things (provided it stays civil!) but PD have a pretty well developed sense of where we think the line is these days and generally speaking we're pretty happy with that. We're not going back to the bad old days of "FOIP" - that is not happening.

What I would say is this - posting adverts on Facebook and having signs at the event is not an either/or. You can do both... You can post adverts for stuff on Facebook... AND you can make Anvil a much cooler place by building beautiful signs...