Conquerors and Consequences

The key to the system is that the campaign is about taking over or defending territory. I'm going to try and design the game to work with a GM, but be optionally GM-less. It's kind of like delta vectors, but with dice. We'll see what happens.

Court of the Conquerors

Warring Kingdoms, rebellious factions, rival gangs, cults and associations, foreign invaders, all after one thing, the power of a god on earth. Conquering is not about gaining land, or spreading boundaries. Conquering is about proving to everyone, including yourself, that you can.

This is how we do it. This section gives a taste of the setting and mechanics. There are two ways to play this game. One way, Dreams of Dynasties, revolves around a structured campaign play, with huge battles, elaborate intrigues and comprehensive strategies. The other method, Flow of Rivers and Lakes, is about personal exploration and smaller scale struggles. Both ways are about exploring the reaches of a character's self-involvement and the effect on the world around them. The methods of game-play are interchangeable campaign styles each providing a unique sense of pacing.

Dreams of Dynasties

This is a method of play that involves the character's as protagonists in a story about conquering territory, whether it is localized gang-turf or broad-scale warfare. The players have to manage large-scale maneuvers, smaller scenes and intense conflicts, both social and martial, all with the goal of conquering enemy territory. This method of play separates the outcome of the story from the individual drama, setting up a sprawling epic backdrop for the character's personal drama. This style of play can be played with or without a GM.

Flow of Rivers and Lakes

In Flow of Rivers and Lakes, the character's are protagonists in a more personal story that flows freely, each storyline sprouting from every choice a player makes, every risk taken and every desire felt. This style of play requires a GM to adjudicate the story.

D20 and D10 This game requires two dice for conflict resolution. Conquerors and Consequences require two kinds of dice for rolls. A twenty-sided dice and a ten-sided dice are required to play the game. From her on out, dice will be referred to as D. They will be denoted as D20 and D10. The D20 is used to face a challenge, the D10 is used to rate the effect of a successful challenge.

Challenge

Each ability has rating from 1 to 20. This rating represents the development of the protagonists ability to effect the world around him. The higher the rating, the more complete the character's mastery.

To attempt a challenge, roll D20. If the result is below the rating, the character has succesfully effected his or her environment.

Effect Each time a character effects his environment, the player rolls a D10 to determine the extent of that effect, determined by referencing the Effect Chart. Their maximum effect is determined by the rating of the ability plus any situational bonuses or modifiers.

To determine effect, roll D10. The extent of their effect depends on the ability rating.

CHART HERE

The number next to the character's stats, attributes and skills is the rating. This indicates the difficulty of successfully effecting their world. When a player wishes to challenge his character, he rolls the dice to see if he has the ability to effect the situation.

Each attribute rating has a corresponding Effect Value. This Value represent the extent to which the character can effect his situation and the degree of his ability is determined by a roll.

When to Roll

Whenever a character undertakes an action to effect his environment in any way, a roll is required to determine success or failure and thus the direction the story takes.

If he succeeds in the challenge, the degree of his effect his then determined by another roll.

Intended Effects

Whenever a player wishes her character to effect his environment, she must declare her intent. The intent determines the Effect Value that must be met to achieve it.

Members of Wu Lin

Wu Lin is the martial arts community and it's surrounding environment. Players develop characters who act as the protagonists in the stories. These character's are members of Wu Lin, heroes in their own eyes.

Talents

There are eight raw abilities every character has to describe his physical, mental and celestial composition in the Conquerors and Consequences. Characters are born with these talents, although they may be developed and improved over time. They are Intelligence, Willpower, Charisma, Awareness, Agility, Hardiness, Strength and Essence.

Intelligence This is the mental acuity stat. It is challenged often in the game when a player is learning a new skill, trying to recall information or simply trying to apply their experiences. It factors heavily into any knowledge based skills.

Willpower This represents the character's strength of mind and mental perseverance. It is challenged often in game, although it doesn't factor into many skills.

Charisma This is the social stat, representing the character's ability to interact with others. It is challenged whenever the character wishes to influence another, and ties to many social skills.

Awareness This represents the character's ties to their environment. It represents their ability to use their five senses to take in and process information effectively. It is challenged often, but doesn't tie into many skills.

Agility This is the hand-eye coordination of the character. It ties into many skills and is challenged often.

Hardiness This represents the character's physical durability. It is challenged often, but is tied to no skills.

Strength This is the basis for the character's ability to physically effect his world. It is challenged whenever the character wishes to overpower someone or something and ties to a handful of physical skills.

Essence This is the spiritual sum of the character's being, tying the character to all things. It is challenged rarely, but has a powerful effect on character development.

Attributes

These statistics are derived from the character's talents. They include Initiative, Luck and Endurance.

Initiative

This is represents combat readiness. It is tested to measure the effect value character's reaction time in combat. It is derived from a character's Awareness and Agility.

Luck

This represents a character's fortune in the world. It is derived from a character's Essence and Charisma.

Endurance

This represents the character's ability to withstand physical and mental stresses. It is derived from the character's Hardiness and Willpower.

Skills

These are fields of knowledge and techniques that have been developed by the character. It allows the character to achieve more effective mastery over their environment than Talent alone.

Virtues

These represent the social structure of the Middle Kingdom. Each of the five Virtues is represented on a polarized scale. The virtues are Loyalty, Duty, Mercy, Ceremony and Righteousness. Their respective opposites are Selfishness, Negligence, Cruelty, Rudeness and Corruption.

A character is partially defined by his placement on the scale of Virtues.

Creeds

These are the priorities for a character. They are the fundamental ideas a character lives by, combining the character's outlook and the goals of the player.

Traits

These are characteristic quirks and abilities that further define the protagonist, setting him apart from others in the story.

Influences

These are the scope of the character's ties and influence over society, monetarily or socially.

Assets

From a destitute beggar to a wealthy merchant, each character has a rating of his assets. It is used like a skill to determine the character's economic and financial viability in the game.

Contacts

This is a representation of who the character knows, the scope of his social influence.

Gear

From weapons to armor, these are physical items that augment the Effect Value of skills and abilities.

Powers

These act like skills, but they are what set a protagonist apart from the other character's in the story, thus they deserve a little of their own description. In the world of Wu Lin, Qi and Geomancy are the heroes Powers.

Qi

This represents the inner power possessed by a character. While it is a skill to be developed, it deserves an explanation on its own. This involves honing the body and mind to have a superhuman influence on it's environment. It is the heart of martial combat and the road to both self-destruction and enlightenment.

Geomancy

This is the character's spiritual mastery over his physical environment. Also a skill, it involves vast powers outside the realm of mankind.

Manipulating the Masses

This is the specific breakdown of how the system mechanics work. The system is designed to be universal.

Challenging Yourself

It is very much a game to be played for enjoyments sake. Dice rolls are the heart of play, driving the story forward. A challenge involves one of the character's abilities, from a Talent, to an Attribute, a Skill, Influence or Power. The degree of the challenge and the value of their effect determine the direction the story takes. Without challenges, the story and life of the character's would never move forward.

Actions

Actions revolve around the character's attempt to influence his environment, whether it is to effect other people, an item or themselves. These are a declaration of a quantifiable method performed by a character on her surroundings. They represent the task they are challenging themselves to perform. The declaration of an Action decides the Ability rolled to decide the result of the challenge.

Intent

These are the goals that the actions are meant to accomplish. These define the player's desired effect on his environment and ultimately the direction story.

Effect

This is the quantifiable result of the challenge. To accomplish his intent, a character needs to roll two dice. The first dice is challenging himself, a test of the ability he is using to accomplish his intent. If he successfully performs the ability, he then rolls his effect. The resulting number is the degree to which he effects his environment.

Standard Challenge In a standard challenge, the character must meet an Effect Value set by the GM. Failing to do to results in consequences.

Opposed Challenge In an opposed challenge, the character tests his effect versus another character's effect. The character with the highest result achieves his Intent.

Personal Challenge In some cases, a test is personal; the Effect Value itself determines the outcome.

For instance, a character wishes to make a rope. This is a personal challenge, and the final Effect Value denotes the length of the rope.

Modifiers

Sometimes a character will have environmental or situation modifiers to his Effect Value. These are always added before the D10 is rolled to determine the final effect. Ways to add modifiers include working Slowly, getting Help, Accumulating effect and Relating skills. The GM or another player may also grant a +1 Coolness effect once per player, per session.

Slowly Taking twice the time to complete a Challenge grants a +1 modifier to the Effect Value, up to a +3 Modifier for 8x the time.

Help Each source that can Help with a Related Skill grants a +1 modifier to the Effect Value up to a +3 Modifier for three sources of Help.

Accumulating A character may use her or another character's previous successful challenge to add a +1 modifier to the Effect Value of the Challenge in a long-term operation.

Relating A character can use a related skill to add a +1 modifier up to the Effect Value up to a +3 modifier for three related skills.

Success

When the final Effect Values is determined, then the degree of success must be determined. If the dice is rolled and the character has generated an Effect high enough to meet the Effect Value set by the GM or overcome the opposing Effect of another character, the character's intended Action is accomplished.

Failure

If the dice is rolled and the character has not generated a high enough Effect to meet the Effect Value set by the GM, the character fails the challenge and must accept the consequences set by the GM before the roll was made.

Failure complicated the situation, providing tension and conflict in the story. The ramifications must push the story in an interesting direction.

Following the Flow of Fortune

The Fortune set by success or failure must be allowed to flow. Once the results for a challenge are determined, that challenge cannot be made again without first drastically and legitimately changing the circumstances.

A GM cannot call for multiple rolls from the same ability to meet the player's stated intend, nor can a player attempt the challenge again simply because of failure.

This rule protects the integrity of story from GMs who wish to make multiple rolls the focus of the difficulty and players who don't wish to accept the consequences of failure. It also minimizes time wasted on redundant rolling, leaving more time for story development.

Time

Each type of challenge takes a certain amount of time to accomplish.

Talent Challenging a talent or attributes is most often instantaneous.

Academic Challenging an academic skill falls into either the category of instantaneous recall of a subject or time spent on research. Research lasts as many days as the Effect Value of the Lore being acquired.

Crafts

Forester

Martial

Medicinal

Military

Athletic

Social

Improvement

Improving abilities relies solely on challenging them. You must push yourself to improve yourself.

Degree of Challenge: Simple, Tough, Heroic

Challenges can have varying degrees, and it you must learn from easy challenges as well as difficult ones to advance your degree of mastery.

In Conquerors and Consequences there are three degree’s of challenges that must be met to advance any ability, whether skill, talent, asset or power.

The Degree of the Challenge is based solely on the Effect Rating of the skill being challenged including any modifiers against the Effect Value it must meet to be successful.

Simple These are challenges that have a high degree of probably success. They are every day actions that one using that ability should be able to perform.

Tough These are actions that require an extra amount of skill and concentration, and perhaps a little luck.

Heroic This is a challenge that requires a level of effort above and beyond the scope of the imagination. These are those challenges which are impossible to succeed at without using Karma and are only required to advance the ability beyond the normal human capacity.

Succeed or Fail

When a challenge is undertaken, experience is gained from success or failure, with a few exceptions.

Attributes

Intelligence and Awareness must be successfully challenged to improve.

Expanding Assets

Assets must be risked to be gained, and thus require successful challenges to improve.

Logging Challenges

Next to each skill, there are marks for logging challenges. Here you note the degree of the challenge, whether simple, tough or heroic. Whenever a series of rolls are made in a conflict scene, only one challenge can be logged per ability.

Challenges are only logged when something appropriate to the game is at stake. The rest simply counts as practice. ie. Do not log challenges for performing nightly at an inn. Only if the performance is intended to have an appropriate effect on the story would a challenge be logged.

It is both player and GM responsibility to remember to log challenges. They are the lifeblood of character development and allow character’s to develop organically.

Creeds, Virtues and Traits

If abilities and advancement is the lifeblood of a character, these societal attachements are the heart that make that blood pump. These place the character firmly in the world and represent the ideas and themes that drive the character forward, and often hold the character back.

Creeds

A Creed is a saying that a character has, representing his outlook on the world. More importantly, the Creeds represent the aspects of character that the Player wishes to explore. Creeds change often in a game, and provide the backbone for dynamic roleplaying.

Through playing to the character's creeds, a player earns karma, which helps him effect the outcome of the story.

Virtues

Virtues are the values a society holds strong. In Conquerors and Consequences, these are represented by the five confuscian values, translated here to be Loyalty, Duty, Mercy, Ceremony and Righteousness . They are opposed by Selfishness, Negligence, Cruelty, Rudeness and Corruption.

A player places his character's virtue on a polarized scale of 3 to -3. The numbers represent a bonus to a character's Effect Value when that Virtue is brought into play. If they are playing against their Virtue, the number is subtracted from their effect Value.

Traits

While Virtues reflect the personality and behavior of a character, traits are the most prominent aspects of a character, including cosmetic and outwardly obvious psychological traits.

Karma

This is the engine that fuels the game. It is what ties the GM, the players and the characters together. In it's most simple role, Karma is a reward for driving the story forward, but it is also a tool for players to have a more powerful effect on the outcome of the story as well.

Spiritual Rewards

Karma is an Eastern concept reflecting power in the comsic scope.

Integration

The reward of Karma is important to integrate players, character's and the GM, to tie them all together and forge a connection.

Curses and Blessings

Karma is awarded as a boon, but sometimes it is also earned to be a bane.

Blessings are earned when the player manifests a Creed in an engaging dramatic way. They are also earned when the story is driven in an unforseen manner by playing a Virtue or applying a trait. When the player does something dramatically engaging or incredibly humorous in character, they should also be rewarded a blessing.

Finnally, a Blessing can be awarded at the end of the session for the most memorable scene and for best behind the scenes action.

Curses are awarded when a player goes against the character's Creed or Virtue.

Spending Karma

Blessings can be spent to increase an Effect Value of a challenge. These are taken into effect after the fact, and do not count towards the Effect Value for logging the challenge. They can also be spent to pass a skill challenge, earning an automatic Effect roll.

Curses can be spent to change the value of Virtues or to introduce a complication in order to avoid a character's demise.

Xia

Translated loosely, xia is selfishness. It is the core of the human condition, obsession with the self. In Buddhist philosophy, attainment no-self, is the path to enlightenment. That is the removal of Xia.

Mechanically, in Conquerors and Consequences, Xia is an emotional attribute. Xia is built up by curses, or bad karma. It is the ultimate expression of human failings, and also a driving force in human existence. Xia acts like any other attribute, increasing when it is challenged. Xia is challenged whenever a curse is awarded. Xia is a powerful force, and a curse can be spent to fuel any challenge with xia. Xia replaces the applicable talent.

When Xia reaches the human maximum, the character must retire. Xia can never be reduced, only held off by spending a Blessing.

A Land of Rivers and Lakes

The world of Conquerors and Consequences is one of scheming, selfishness and self-denial. It is rich in its complexities and devastating in its cosequences. To explore it is to explore the ebb and flow of the human condition. They key to the world is not the self, but those that interact with the self to provide challenge and perspective.

Assets

There is no money in conquerors and consequences. No coin counting, no accounting no saving pennies. That is all only color for the story. To express this, a character's monetary value is represented in one ability, called Assets.

Assets allow the character to purchase goods, pay for services and influence the world through finances. It is not a direct relation, but an approximated value of the character's financial standing. When a player wishes her character to purchase goods or services, they challenge their Assets. The price of the gear or service is represented by an Effect Value set by the GM. The character must challenge their Assets and meet the Effect Value to gain the gear or the service. If the challenge is not met, they are taxed. This is not an in-game tax, but a way of measuring the depletion of the character's current assets.

If the character fails to make a challenge (ie. fails the ability roll), it means they do not have the means to even attempt purchasing goods.

Contacts, Mentors, Families, Clans, Brotherhoods and Scheming

Verbal Duels

Territory

The game is designed to focus on a conflict over territory. Once the territory in question is determined the campaign must be designed.

Campaign Building Developing a focus for the story is key. This is the first step in focusing the story.

Conquering This section details the development of the stories big-picture. It involves the resolution mechanics for the careful strategic movements each faction makes to conquer the territory in question.

Burning Kingdoms

Battle!

Rules for resolving mass combat.

Battle as Conflict

This is intended to resolve conflicts that are between commander's of large forces. The forces can be broken down into individual units under PC commanders or stand for all of the individual units depending on the number of players intents involved in the conflict.

Anatomy of a Battle!

Martial Conflict

Weapons

Gear

Injury

Chi

Geomancy