Anybody ever "sim" instead of RP?

[Agathon]

Hey, new here, though I've played Rebellion since it was released and have used Rebed and this site for a couple years now

 

Annnnyways, I was wondering if anybody has ever been in a SW sim instead of an RP. If anybody ever frequented the SWSF boards on AOL (back when they existed, years ago), they'll know what I'm talking about. It involves standard roleplaying like you've got here, with everybody running around with their character and adding on to the story. However, there are some more things. You see, each person is a member of a galactic faction (Rebs, Imps, Hapans, CSA, etc). Each faction controls planets/systems in the galaxy and collects taxes from those systems to build ships, troops, vehicles, facilities, defenses, etc. The leader of each faction gives each member a ship or ships to command based on their rank or respect or performance, however the leader determines. The factions then go about their ways, fighting enemies, allying with each other, gaining new planets through force or deplomacy, etc. Basically, imagine Rebellion except each of your fleets is controlled by another person, and its not just the Empire vs. the Rebellion. It has just as much depth as these RPs that you do here, but it comes with more "reality" -- fleet battles, planetary assaults, gaining/losing worlds, political intrigue, etc.

 

If anybody's interested, I could tell you a lot more about what I know. I was very involved for years doing that sort of stuff. I think with everybody here being Rebellion enthusiasts (I assume), something like this could really work. Imagine playing Rebellion except having a lot more control, including having a real story going on with the action: real plots, real characters, real interaction.

 

You could just PM me or reply here if you want. Let me know what you think.

[Evaders99]

There many sims out there already. I've had experience with most of them. Still some players from SWSF, but most are new.

 

The biggest is still SWC - http://www.swcombine.com

A lot of splinters from there - we have our own community sim at http://www.swcic.net (No massive system at the moment, just for people to roleplay while we develop things)

 

And of course, there's the more gamer-oriented Rebellion online project - SW Galactic Civil War. Currently in development, check the forums at http://forum.swgalacticcivilwar.com

 

The roleplaying on SWRebellion is mostly free-form, since actually creating a sim here would take time that we don't have

[DarthSyndros]

Well uh, I see the 'Sim' idea does sound pretty nice, but.. hm... would the people below the leader be able to overthrow him? I'd like to know that. And what other kinds of controls does the leader have? Anyways, uh, ya, new user here... This is my custom created Sith Lord Darth Syndros, who goes by the AKA of 'Malice', after his sometimes cruel nature. I figured I might want to try finding some SW RPG sites, and this one popped up in my google search so, as the fifth site I've tried, I'll give it a shot, and if it works out, then it works out.

[MattTarkin]

Yes; I simmed a great deal, years ago. From about 1996 to 2001. Started off in the WBS days with the SWOS, after WBS shut down I migrated to the ASWS and its various incarnations. Some of the best days of my life...

 

 

 

 

 

Matt Tarkin

Fleet Admiral (Ret.)

[Agathon]

I've long been aware of the SWC; that system is so big and convoluted that it loses its intimacy among players, and it's not very similar to what I'm talking about. That SWCIC, on the other hand, looks really interesting and hopefully I'll be able to put some time into that. I'd be more than willing to do whatever I could to help that get going. Still, it doesn't seem to be quite what I mean.

 

Well uh, I see the 'Sim' idea does sound pretty nice, but.. hm... would the people below the leader be able to overthrow him? I'd like to know that. And what other kinds of controls does the leader have?

 

To answer the first question, yes, I suppose members would have the option of overthrowing the leader. Whether or not they could accomplish such an undertaking is another matter entirely. Say a captain --- no, let's make it an admiral for an even better example --- say an admiral decided to be all uppitty and try to take over the faction. We'll say its a splinter Imperial group after the Battle of Endor. The admiral has under his command a modest task force: a couple frigates, perhaps a strike cruiser, and we'll give him an ISD for command (note that in many sims I've experienced, players only had ONE ship, plus whatever fighters/auxiliary craft were onboard). However, the leader, being the leader, would undoubtedly have more and better ships at his disposal than the admiral. A space battle ensues, end of admiral. Or, it is not unreasonable to think that the stormtroopers onboard the ships would be more loyal to their leader than the admiral (stormtroopers were supposedly notorious for their loyalty to the Emperor --- they boarded a giant moon-sized space station that practically had "BLOW ME UP, PLEASE" written all over it...twice). Stormtroopers overthrow the ISD, end of admiral. The leader could probably think of many other creative ways to solve the problem. For in character reasons, however, overthrow attempts are very seldom seen.

 

As for what powers the leader has, well, they are not very numerous, but remember: quality over quantity. The leader chooses what to build (ships, fighters, troops, vehicles, stations, defenses, facilities), where to build them, and how to further allocate these constructions, for instance giving ships to his members. The leader then gives orders to his members and they carry them out; remember, this is *in character*. In character the leader is like any other leader; he can take all these actions upon himself or he might delegate them. Something that happened very often was the delegation of diplomacy duty to a trusted member who had earned it. Diplomacy is carried out by going to a planet and basically wining and dining them to get them to join your faction, thus contributing their income (taxes) at the cost of having more territory to defend. Diplomacy is carried out between the diplomat and the planet's governor/president/premier/etc., controlled by a GM.

 

In this type of sim, the GM (Game Master) is very important. First off, all faction leaders also double as GMs. The GMs run the sim (out of character). They work with the rules: adding new ones, deleting bad ones, making sure everyone follows them. Sometimes there were elected GMs besides the faction leaders to add a little democracy to the running of the sim. Also, GMs needed to be impartial in their rulings, so this often required there to be neutral factions aside from the Rebellion/New Republic and the Empire.

[Agathon]

In order to give a more fleshed-out idea of what I'm talking about here, this is a list of some of the more common features I've seen in my experience

 

Space Battles: Players control capital ships (ISDs, Mon Cals, you know, like Rebellion) and fight above planets or in deep space

 

Ground Battles: Players control their troops from their ship(s) when assaulting a planet, while the defending faciton/neutral GM controls the planet's troops; fight until surrender or all of one side is killed

 

Diplomacy: Diplomat goes to a planet to convince them via storylining to join the faction they represent; interesting when two factions go for the same planet at the same time

 

Planets: Divided into sectors; planets ranging in number from dozens to easily over 100 (depending on sim); divided into factions or independent; some sims allowed discovery of more planets; also given a tax value, which usually were described as Very Poor, Poor, Average, Rich, Very Rich, and Capital (faction capital); taxes collected once a month, usually, sometimes twice, rarely once a week

 

Ships, Troops, Etc.: Each faction has unique ships, troops, fighters, vehicles, etc (Imps have ISDs, etc); also were neutral techs (technologies, blanket label for all that stuff, sometimes called specs) that were available to every faction; shipyards, fighter plants, vehicle plants, training centers were all used to build these things --- and could all be attacked by enemies

 

Factions: Most sims had at least four --- Rebs/New Republic, Imps, plus two neutrals (Hapans, CSA, Yevethan, Chiss, Black Sun, Hutts, etc); factions could be allied with each other, could trade with each other, could kill each other; most factions controlled sections of territory and were often divided up into majors (Rebs, Imps, Hapans, etc) and minors (Black Sun, Hutts, Tenloss, etc)

 

Research & Development: Every month factions could submit three new techs that they wanted to introduce into play, could be ships, fighters, anything; High Council (comprised of the GMs and maybe elected ones) would then vote on the new tech

 

Fleets: Factions would sometimes have limitations to the amount of ships they could have, whether by type (a certain amount of Smalls, Mediums, Larges, and Supers) or by length (total meters of length of all ships used by the faction); major factions would be allowed more; factions could keep ships in reserve and these wouldn't count towards the limits; players would be given a ship or several ships depending on their rank and their standing with the faction leader

 

Characters!: Each person would control a single character that they could flesh out with a biography (necessary for joining) plus the usual storylining (RPing) posts about their past or what they're doing in the present; factions would often hold events, and then there were always the occasional huge space battles where everyone could get involved; there were also "mock battles" which were basically just free-for-alls to have fun and have nothing to do with the real sim

 

 

I can't quite think of anything else that's major that I haven't covered. This is all carried out on message boards. For the most part it's like your standard RP except on a different, galactic scale, rather than having all the action concentrated on a single planet. The only parts where rules play a prominent role are the battles. Personally, I think ground battles can be conducted without rules, and they really aren't all that common compared to space battles. Space battles are all about moving and firing, using an easy to follow hit point system that incorporates simple multiplying (ex: each turbolaser does 12 damage, you fire 6, so you cause 72 damage). The rules can be as simplistic or as realistic as the members like; but the rules allow you to have fun without arguing about who killed who or who's ship should be destroyed.

 

Hopefully this'll interest people even more. Feel free to ask more questions.

[MattTarkin]

Agathon; You clearly know what your talking about; even down to the most miniscule mechanics of gameplay. Are you involved in such a organization, or do you merely have ideas for starting one? Either way, you've certainly rekindled this old-timer's interest..

 

 

Matt Tarkin

Fleet Admiral (Ret.)

(ensignoftheunit@hotmail.com)

[Agathon]

I played in such sims for years on AOL: New Horizons Universe, Legacy of the Force, After Endor, Realms of Chaos...so many good times. Problem was, AOL gradually started changing their message board system, and the SWSF (the collective of sims) slowly changed and became harder to find, so people lost interest. I never really ran anything, though I did achieve second or third in command of several groups. And I'm not looking to be some grand high game master, just trying to find other people who might be interested in rebuilding. I can't take credit for most of the rules and stuff as being my ideas; most were around before I was. I'm just trying to keep the spirit of the ol' SWSF alive, even if it means starting over.

[Evaders99]

Well Agathon, I think SWC is convoluted too

But ideas for a sim are easier than actually implementing one. You have to have the right people working together. And if any person can't control themselves, you'll have flaring battles and politics. I've seen too much of that myself.

 

SWCIC had much grander goals, while it was a part of another sim. But frankly, very little got accomplished, despite the thousands of posts of dicusssion. So we're working small, trying to get things done with the manpower we have - a small dedicated group

[MattTarkin]

After playing the SWOS for quite awhile, as it dwindled down I was given my first taste of command in the ASWS as a Vice-Admiral. We had a good long run, but it ended up dissovling like most sims. I can say I've gamemastered quite abit though in a Chat-room based enviroment; most of my simming was in chatrooms. I briefly ran a very ambious SIM myself some years ago, but induced its downfall by merging it with another organization.

 

Personally, I believe myself to be the last remnant of the second generation of grand Imperials. I played with those I consider the greatest minds the Empire has seen since Zahn penned his works about Thrawn. Michael Ng, Rob Wettengel, Cronrus Groundwalker. I'm an experienced Gamemaster, and I know how these things are run. Most importantly, I know why these so often fail.

 

My webpage coding skills are slim to nil, and I couldn't run the thing by myself. Logistics and Macro-management, I enjoy. But I cannot devote myself to being a full-time supreme manager.

 

I would be assuredly interested in finally seeing a true reemergence of the classic star wars sim.

 

 

-Matt Tarkin

Fleet Admiral (Ret.)

[Agathon]

Hah, believe me, Evaders, I know the pains and sorrows of getting a sim going Judging by the lack of response here, starting this type of sim would most likely fail miserably. But like I said, if I could help in any way with SWCIC I would. I don't have much in terms of technical expertise, but if you need a writer you can count on me.

[tehgrandadmiral]

i would be very interested in something like this.