Masters of the Cycle

What's Masters of the Cycle? Why have I never heard of this? Is there a link to something or what?

These questions (and others) may be running through your mind right now. Well, let me dispell them...

Masters of the Cycle...is the tabletop roleplaying game I am DESIGNING RIGHT NOW! AS WE SPEAK!

The basic gist of the game is that each player controls a Galactic Civilization - one that they design themselves - and that the game is played over the vast sweep of time and space as the GCs (my version of PCs, see) spread across the galaxy, meet eachother, advance their technologies and generally muck about.

The Cycle Master (my version of the GM, named after the 'historical cycle' that the game is about) handles the galaxy's planets and the Four eXterminators (or the 4Xs! It's an in-joke!). The 4Xs are the "combat encounters" of the game, as the players deal with the Nature (asteroid impacts, plagues, earthquakes), the Future (technological runaway, rogue AIs and so on), the Fringe (civil wars, protests, terrorists and so on) and The Power (a transdimensional species of highly advanced aliens who seek to exterminate all threats to their power.)

But...the problem with my idea was that focusing purely on the broad sweep of things left the emotional core that makes good storytelling out of the mechanics.

And so, Masters of the Cycle also has "Movers and Shakers", or Movers for short. Whenever something vitally important happens in the galaxy, Movers are the famous admiral, brilliant scientists, brave explorers and unlikely farmboys who step up to save the galaxy.

So, basically, the game will alternate between Masters of Orion 2 and Mass Effect, as the players chart out centuries as their civilizations go from crude FTL to Godlike postmortals reshaping the galay to their whim.

Thus far, I have gotten 10% of the way through character creation.

I have almost finished scribbling down rough outlines for the Features/Flaws of a GC. All numbers are subject to change, but the general effects probably won't.

The basic idea is that a Feature and a Flaw are both interlinked, but you only take both if you want. So, you can have the good side of a colonial history (diverse ethnic groups) without the bad side (a history of slavery and intolerance) or vice versa.

My favorite thing thus far is the downside to Democratic History: A huge increase in Fringe events, but an equally large decrease in their Danger Factor. So, you're dealing with riots and protests a LOT, but coups are rare.

I'm working on events. Still need to come up with how much or how little detail I want in the main "game" part of the game...like, will space combat have an actual tactical mini-game?

Decisions, decisions.

But, a friend did give me the great idea that every war between other players should give negative buffs to the neighboring powers - to discourage prolonged or constant wars. Refugees, disrupted trade, stray RKVs hitting your planets...bad stuff like that.

Still designing this.

I realized my systems were inelegant and crummy, so I scrapped them and started from scratch!

Basically, the game has two scales: Galactic and Mover/Heroic.

On the Galactic Scale, your stats are Aptitudes (representing the average of your civilization's people) and Organizations (representing the combined infrastructure and skillsets of a group of peeps in your Civ.)

So, for example, humans have a Mind of 2 (average), but Starfleet (an exploration org) has a rating of 3.

Combined, they have a total of 5 for Explore actions. This is a bonus added to the manager overseeing the Explore action in question. Most of the time, you send a nameless manager (which basically reduces the thing to a diceless action, whose speed is based on your combined bonuses) or you can send in Captain Picard, a Mover (Hero unit, basically.)

If you are using a Mover, you'd use their dice pool - which is a combination of Attribute (your racial average, modified by how experienced the Mover is) and their Skills (unlike Orgs, which are fairly free form, there are 16 pre-set skills that movers can have ratings in.)

So, Picard has a Mind of 4 (he's smarter than the average human) and C-Tac (basically the command/tactical skill) of 4 (he's an extremely talented captain).

That means he'd roll 8 dice plus the bonuses given by humanity's Mind attribute and Starfleet's rating - representing the fact he is commanding a starship, crewed mostly by humans.

if he rolls well, the Solar system is explored rapidly and well, where a manager would have not rolled at all - it would have been a sure bet and slower, and it would have freed up Picard in case the Borg invaded (which would have required what I call a "Flashpoint", where various Movers take on a threat in a more traditional RPG session.)

Well, you swap between playing a Galactic Civilization and playing a heroic character.

Like, you manage your civilization, but whenever major things happen, you zoom in to the perspective of a heroic character.

I liken it to playing Masters of Orion 2 (or Endless Space, if you want a modern example) that occasionally becomes a game of Mass Effect.

They're technically both. Basically, if you put a mover to work managing a project, they're not available for Flashpoints (the adventures.) But then again, you have multiple Movers (each Civ has 4.)

Haven't quite gotten there yet...still thinking about it, to be honest.

Oh, you misunderstand, GWW, Flashpoints are supposed to involve the whole party.

I really do want to emulate Mass Effect when it comes to these things. In that Mass Effect is about a team of heroic figures from every major race in the galaxy wrecking face and saving the day.

It's a mix. Since Movers are special heroes that raise above the common flock, they are also the people who know how to work with other races when they have to.

So, even if two races are at war, two unlikely heroes can still work together to halt a bigger problem!

GhostWhoWalks said:

I see now, sounds good. Though doesn't this require that all Flashpoint events be of the scale that they can threaten all the players in the game? To stick with the Mass Effect analogy, that would be like having the Reapers invade every few years. I can understand how some heroes would go against their government and recognize that an issue that doesn't immediately affect them still needs solving before it gets out of hand, but it's a bit a stretch if a hero aids an enemy race solve an issue when their race would clearly benefit from the enemy not solving it.

Click to expand...

You are exactly correct!

Basically, the CM (CycleMaster, since everyone needs a replacement for DM) handles the 4X's, the 4 threats that continually threaten the galaxy. Nature (natural disasters, usually not a flashpoint, just some background details to deal with.) Future (out of control AI and machine-races...this is more of an issue in the late game.) Fringe (terrorists, space pirates, civil war and so on.) And finally, The Power (a crossover between the Reapers, the Antarens from MOO2, and the Powers from A Fire Upon the Deep.)

So, for example, a Fringe Event where a terrorist cell from a minor (NPC) race gets a WMD would need a response from everyone. A Future Event where a space station goes dark (because it has created the Geth by accident) needs a response from everyone.

And the Power (which is the "oh shit, we're absolutely fucked" moments akin to the Battle of Wolf-359 or Mass Effect 3) DEFINITELY needs everyone.

...especially since the Power's nanotech is pretty much spread across the entire galaxy and they can use it to mind control entire planets at the drop of a hat...

But for events that are technically Flashpoints but have no reason to have Movers from another civilization help. Uh, like, if those terrorists I mentioned before are going to attack just one civilization and no one else likes them in universe.

I have two ideas for solutions, and I don't know if either are any good.

Solution 1: The other players handle important NPCs. The CM goes, "The Mover is handling this, with support from X, Y and C, who are played by Bob, Krystal and Jerri."

Solution 2: The other players play the other movers of the Civ in question. So, the Flashpoint would be handled by all the Movers of the GC in question, rather than a mixed unit.

And, finally, there is Solution 3: If a Flashpoint does not involve everyone, resolve it more abstractly using a GC Action. (I.E, rather than having a small team of heroes handle it, just have drown the issue with numbers. Less efficient, but takes less time from a gameplay perspective.)

...wait, why don't I have all 3 solutions as possibilities, chosen by the table in question?

That's brillo!

*steals*

So, ruleswise, I've covered the stats that go into planets and how construction and building is handled.

I've also tackled something rather important: Sectors and Sub-Sectors.

Once your GC has reached a sufficient size, you smoosh Solar systems into Sub-Sectors, then those Sub-Sectors into Sectors, which can turn a sprawling empire of 53 planets over 14 solar systems into an empire with 3 sectors, two with three sub-sectors of two solar systems each, and one with two sub-sectors of with 4 solar systems each.

Basically, you smoosh the combined industry of the planets together for a Sub-Sector, then smoosh the combined industry of the Sub-Sectors together for a Sector.

Which of course, sustains the feeling of growth, as you go from having 11 BP per turn to having 1100.

I am still working on this, and the work is going well!

In the past week alone, I've...

Done the rules for espionage missions

The rules for space and ground combat (Spoiler, war will make you feel like a terrible person, because the "hit points" of your ships is their Crew, and every year that ground combat goes on, 10 million civilians die!)

The rules for flash-points

Designed the rough outline for the special powers that hero units get (think biotics from Mass Effect, only more so)

And gave some background information on The Power and their five factions: The Endless, the Protean, the Solarium, the Aegis and the Lords. The faction modifies the artifacts they left behind, and changes what kind of HORRIBLE MONSTER that your research teams become when they try and figure out the artifacts. Remember husks from Mass Effect? It's like that.

Finding a Power Artifact should leave the player with a serious quandery: Dare they try and poke at it? Because if they successfully poke it, then they can get technology that is LEAGUES better than anything else in the tech tree.

But if they fail, then a few million people have become Screamers (The Endless), Lycanthropes (The Protean), Flare/Eclipses (The Solarium), Husks (The Aegis) or Exterminators (The Lords.)

Each monster has a special power that is dependent on the statline of the race they mutated from - basically, their highest stat determines what power they get. So a physically adept race that gets mutated into Flare/Eclipses become able to either turn invisible or shoot lasers out of their hands, while a race that is more mentally focused gains the ability to grant wishes.

...of course, if anyone asks for a wish, they get the wish granted, and then are Indoctrinated.

Well, each monster is derived from whatever race they are mutated from, so...really, it depends on the people playing the game. If you make your race a bunch of floating gas bags with tentacles and eight eyes, then that morphology would be the baseline that the monsters grow from.

ASsuming, of course, you don't just nuke every Power artifact you find from orbit.