Are there any good systems for playing as the ruler of a nation/civilization? I like the idea of leading armies into battle and taking land in the name of my god/beliefs. Crushing enemies, driving them before me, etc.
>>48057848
Reign?
For warfare, you could get GURPS for free plus the free rules for Mass Combat.
>>48057861
>for free
My favorite price tag! Where do I go to get GURPS?
>>48057848
IIRC there was an AD&D campaign setting about playing kings called Birthright.
Adventurer, Conqueror, King is an OSR game that puts an emphasis on PCs becoming rulers.
There's the Kingmaker rules for Pathfinder, although they aren't great.
Honestly, I've never seen a single system with good rules for empire management and such across the board, but I've seen various ones with really awesome rules for specific elements here and there.
The Hawkmoon supplement for Runequest had really interesting rules for the role of characters in large battles, melding general strategic rules with a variety of specific encounters characters might have on the battlefield, from duels with enemy characters to raising fallen banners and so on. It was a relatively small list, but I felt like that would be a really cool way of doing mass combat in that sort of system, abstract for the most part with 'zoomed in' moments of various characters having an impact.
>>48058149
Do not use the Kingmaker rules. It is the worst kind of garbage "accountant simulator" that system had to offer, and they offer a lot of systems needing excel files to keep track of.
>>48057951
You can get started by checking the site:
http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/lite/
This might be a bit for an older edition, not sure if you'd need to tweak it a bit:
http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/Roleplayer/Roleplayer30/MassCombat-Land.html
And you can check the GURPS thread for more pdfs.
>>48057848
>>48057861
>>48057951
GURPS is fantastic, don't get me wrong, but basically no game system models national leadership. The closest that I've seen are card games like the one for Game of Thrones and the old Babylon 5 card game.
Here's what such a game would include, and why it's tricky.
Politics/Policy/Diplomacy. This would have a lot of ground to cover, especially since there are so many different systems. Gaining power in a republic is different than a monarchy or theocracy. Lots of game developers have political axes to grind, but very few are sophisticated about the day to day art and practice of politics and policy. Just for the record: politics is "how do I get into a position of power", policy is "what decisions do I make as a leader for my country", and diplomacy is "what are my interactions with other leaders in other countries". Every decision a leader makes has a political dimension and a policy dimension.
Economics: Yeah, right. And you thought people had axes to grind about politics. A surprising number of economists are gamers, but the sad reality is that we don't know all that much about macroeconomics. And what we do know is hopelessly controversial and political. Microeconomics is pretty much solved from the POV of what a gamer would see, say a merchant or trader. See GURPS Traveller Far Trader for the best treatment of economics in gaming. But it doesn't touch on macroeconomics and nothing I've seen does.
Intrigue: Now here you'll find a plethora of RPGs, TCGs, etc that handle this in lavish detail. Awesome. Thats because intrigue happens at the scale where typical RPG groups operate, and the exciting sneaky things they do are much more interesting to the average gamer than politics, diplomacy, policy-making, or economics.
Military: Again, lots of games handle this, though usually at the level of a general and not that of a staff officer or political leader.
>>48059629
Another problem is that from a tabletop standpoint, there's less player agency in a game like this. You're often not making key decisions yourself; you're appointing people who you hope will make the key decisions in line with your overall policy orientation. You can't handwave that for two reasons.
First, the reliability of your supporters is a major (perhaps THE major) consideration of governance. The competent, strong leaders you need to enact your own policies always come with their own agendas. And there's always a shortage of able people.
Second, in the case of policies and economics, often the best choice is to not exercise or even have power at all. Limited government and rule of law are wonderful things, but they absolutely suck when it comes to playing a game because you're making a principled decision not to touch 2/3 of the play decisions you could be making. Even if it's the right decision in real life, "do nothing" is hopelessly boring.
Meanwhile, the time scale is all fucked up from a tabletop perspective. In each turn, you want the player to be making important decisions and to see meaningful changes. Compare real life leadership, where you set long-term policies that often won't bear fruit until the end of your reign or even later. Let alone the fact that in a democracy your rule won't be longer than a decade or so. Big swings in fortune just don't happen, unless you've really, really fucked things up.
So that's why in games like Sid Meier's Civilization you're given all kinds of extra decision-making powers. You control the civilization, not the leader, and even if there's a coup, the new leader is still played by you. You control generations of leaders coming one after another. And even then, while fun as hell and a great game, it's not really much of a simulation of real life.
Look into Birthright for AD&D.
>I like the idea of leading armies into battle and taking land in the name of my god
>"le crusaders were so ebil prolly republikans xD"
Spotted the atheist.
Shit thread, saged and filtered.
Fate Core does this, specifically through a couple of the 'Fate Worlds'; namely, 'Romance in the Air' is all about political drama, social subterfuge and nations at war from the perspective of people on an airship together (or mostly, anyway). It has rules for 'faction turns' and stats, making it relevant to the story and characters, etc.
Fate Core 'House of Bards' does a similar thing, except it more closely models D&D-style urban fantasy elections and smaller-scale social stuff like that, usually.
Diaspora has very interesting mechanics for planets and social stuff, but it's system is somewhat crunchier than Fate Core (came out beforehand).
Hope this helps someone!
>>48061494
He could just as easily be talking about international socialists, national socialists, buddhists (historically, several sects were violently expansionist), muslims, jews, aztecs, assyrians, and greek humanists under Alexander.
Of course, wars are also fought over economics. Putin's invasion of georgia and the Crimea. America's interventions in latin america in the 19th century. Britains entire empire. Spain's many conquests (of course, also motivated by religion).
Or fought over strategy. The USSR sponsored Cuba's revolution in part to have a land base close enough to America to threaten it. The Russians under the czars pursued the dardanelles so they'd have access to the mediterranean. Rome fought Carthage so they'd have unchallenged strategic position as the sole mediterranean power. Alexander conquered Israel more to achieve access to Egypt and the middle east than for its own sake (which is why they largely self-governed and were permitted to retain their religion and culture). Britain spent centuries of "splendid isolation" fighting on any side of any war, often BOTH sides, to ensure that no power took sole control of continental Europe.
Or fought for sheer love of conquest. That's the Mongol business model. German conquest and colonization of Africa served no good strategic or economic purpose (which is why Bismarck spent so much time opposing it) but the lure of exotic overseas empires created enormous political pressure and finally the Germans went ahead and did it. France's attempted conquest of Mexico makes no sense at all.
Point being that wars are fought by all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons.
>inb4 b8, this is a good point to make in a thread like this
Reign is basically made for the players to run an organization of some kind. Town, nation, thieves guild, whatever
Reign if you want a crunchier fantasy nation state simulator, Kingdom or even Microscope if people are more interested in collaborative story telling (but A Quiet Year could be made to work pretty easily too), An Echo Resounding/ACKS if you like old-school-revival dnd stuff. Stay the fuck away from Birthright, its all kinds of bad.
>>48057951
>free
Its /tg/. There are pdf share threads every day. Probably anything you want, or anything anyone will recommend is free if you are willing to put in even a minimal amount of effort.
>>48061694
Forgot to mention, there is a Fate Core 'World' called "Burn Shift," which has group/city/tribe/civilization cultivation and action rules.
>>48061801
I'm unfamiliar with it, care to elaborate on what's wrong with Birthright?
