Neolithic Revolution is a game about the early days of civilization (from just before the
Agricultural Revolution (for which NR is a different name), and, who knows, maybe all the way to modernity). Players can join in what I think of as an innovative way, and it can theoretically support any number of participants for as long as they are interested. The rules are hopefully not too complicated, but the emergent results should be entertaining and interesting. Some people may notice similarities to
The Market, which has inspired this game to some extent.
On to mechanics:
Each player has a character sheet which looks something like this:
Name: the name of the character.
Age: age of the character
Talent: the character's talent (described below)
Health: current health/maximum health
Stress: current stress/ maximum stress
Skills:
Possessions:
- list of possessions which you carry with you
Afflictions and conditions:
- list of afflictions and conditions
Leftover Actions:
for example:
Name: John Smith
Age: 20
Talent: keen eye
Health: 85/105
Stress: 19/50
Skills:
Possessions (17/20):
- 15 units of food
- 2 units of sharp rocks
Afflictions and conditions:
Leftover Actions:
The first 10 people to sign up get a character with the following stats:
Age: 16
Talent: -choose 1-
Health: 105/105
Stress: 0/50
Skills:
Possessions (10/20*):
Afflictions and conditions: none
Leftover Actions: none
and get to chose 1 talent and 1 starting skill (in addition to migration which every
starting character gets)
The rest of the people don't get characters yet, but there is a way they will get them later.
*or 40, depending on talent.
Not all of these are practical skills, some are more abstract ideas (concepts), which lead to more research. Starting characters get to pick one of these.
Concept:Agriculture: The idea that you can just put a plant near yourself instead of having to go to the woods to forage from it. research:10, difficulty:1.
Concept: Construction: The idea that you can build stuff out of sticks or leaves to create a sort of artificial cave in the open. research:10, difficulty:1.
Concept: Craftsmanship: The idea that you can make stuff out of rocks or sticks. research:10, difficulty:1.
Concept: Fire: The idea that fire can be used as a tool, as well as the basic knowledge of how it works (what burns and what doesn't). research:10, difficulty:1.
Concept: Property: The idea that suff can belong to someone even if they don't carry it around with them. research:5, difficulty:1.
Skill: Basic Foraging: The know-how to tell the more common edible plants from non-edible without close examination, saves you enough time to get another roll during Forage actions. research: impossible, awarded after 100 Forage actions. Difficulty:2.
Skill: Basic Teaching: The know-how on how to impart knowledge onto people, you can train 1 more student at no extra TU cost. research: impossible, awarded after 50 Teach actions. Difficulty:2.
Skill: Basic Tracking: The know-how to track some of the animals by their tracks, slightly improves rolls in Hunt actions. research: impossible, awarded after encountering 25 animals during hunts. Difficulty:2.
Skill: Basic Unarmed Fighting: The know-how to hurt something with your bare hands, improves roles during fights. research: impossible, awarded after killing 10 things (like animals during hunts). Difficulty:2.
Skill:Migration: The knowledge of how to move from place to place without losing people, taking all day to depart, forgetting stuff, etc. research:10, difficulty:1.
Forage: Go out into the woods and try to find some food. For each time this action is performed 3 rolls are made, each granting you a food on success (so you can find 0-3 food). Note that the more anyone forages, the less chance there is that you will find food. Cost: 2TUs
Consume Food: Set the amount of food consumed this turn. If not specifically written, it's presumed character consumes the minimum amount of food to be fed.
Create Child: Get together with another player to create a child (described below). Requires another player with the same action. Cost: 5 food, 5TUs.
Hunt: Go deeper into the woods and try to find an animal for food. For each time you perform this action, you must declare with which hunter group you depart (you can also go alone) and what prey you are hoping for (big prey is dangerous, small prey is... small). The roll to find the animal is performed by the person with the highest probability of success in the group. If you are successful, combat against the animal occurs, which can lead to injuries, but also, hopefully, lots of food. Cost: 5 TUs
Influence Child: Try to impart a talent onto a child. cost: 8 TU, however if the tallent matches yours it's only 4 TU.
Learn: Learn a skill (or concept) from other people. The 'difficulty' attribute of a skill tells you how many times you need to perform the learn action to receive it. You need a teacher, but don't have to use the same one. Cost: 3TU.
Migrate: Your tribe picks up and moves to a different spot, never to come back again. This resets the forage and hunt counters. Unfortunately it also destroys any land holdings, or buildings your tribe had. Cost: a total of 5*(amount of people in tribe) TUs must be expended for the tribe to move (this includes children). Requires: Migration.
Relax: Do nothing and unwind. Decreases stress by 5, restores 1 additional health if character is fed. Naturally no stress is gained. Cost: 1 TU.
Research: Ponder on the misteries of the universe and get a skill or concept you didn't have before. Cost: depends on research, however,
If noone in your lifetime had this skill, it's 20% more expensive (rounded down)
If the direct result of the skill (so a spear would qualify for Spearmaking, but a rabit carcas would not qualify for Basic Tracking) is available to you for study, it's 50% cheaper (rounded down)
If more then half of the population knows a concept it's 50% cheaper (rounded down).
Scout: Go deeper still into the forrest (or beyond) to find something interesting. Skills and concepts you know will influence what is "interesting" to you. cost: 7TUs.
Teach: Pass your skills (or concepts) on to other people. The 'difficulty' atribute of a skill tells you how many times you need to perform the teach action to pass it on. Cost: 3TU+1TU for every student you take.
Take care of a child: used with children (below). cost: 1 TU.
Agile: Bonuses in combat and tracking.
Creative: all research is 50% cheaper for you (rounded down)
Educator: you can train 1 more student at no extra TU cost.
Fleet of Foot: Scouting and Migration are 2 TUs cheaper.
Keen Eye: Bonuses in tracking, foraging and procurement.
Nerves of Steel: Maximum stress of 75, +1 stress recovery from relaxing.
Pack Rat: double possession capacity.
Super Smeller: Bonuses to foraging, cooking and 1 extra stress reduction from cooked food.
Strong: Bonuses in combat. Farming takes 1 less TU.
Multitasker: leftover tasks don't deteriorate.
After the first 10 players join the game, the only way for new people to join is to take control of a grown child.
The procedure for creating a child is as follows:
Two grown characters (i.e. Age: 16 or older) use the 'create child' action- the game doesn't keep track of gender so these can be any characters. This creates a child with age of 0 and health of 9/9. Children don't have stress.
Every turn a child under the age of 9 consumes 5 food and performs no actions. It also needs someone to perform the 'Take care of a child' action. If a child doesn't receive food it suffers damage to maximum health (malnutrition is really bad for children). if the take care action sin't preformed, the child loses another point of maximum health. At the same time, the child gains 6 maximum health.
Every turn a child under the age of 16 (but 9 or older) consumes 10 food and performs half the actions it should based on health (rounded up). It also needs someone to perform the 'Take care of a child' action. If a child doesn't receive food it suffers half of the damage as damage to maximum health (rounded down). If the take care action isn't preformed, the child loses another point of maximum health. At the same time, the child gains 6 maximum health.
The actions a child performs need to be unanimously decided on by both parents (both provide a list of actions costing the appropriate amount of TUs in total, and anything that appears in both lists gets done).
Note that any member of the tribe can give a child food, or perform the 'Take care of a child' action.
Finally when a child reaches the age of 16, it becomes a grown-up and a player takes control of it. If the parents can unanimously decide who that player is (every player can control no more than 2 characters, so this can be one of them or some other player) it's awarded to whoever they chose, otherwise the first player on the waiting list gets the character.
The child gains a talent at birth based on the following probablities:
30% one parent's talent
30% other parent's talent
30% random talent
10% no talent at all
Until the child reaches the age of 16, it's talent can be changed by the Influence Child action. Children under 9 are easier to influence and parents have an easier time doing it, but it's never certain.
You might be wondering why you need 2 characters, the reason is simple: your old one is going to die from the horrible disease we call "aging".
At age 40 all characters gain the condition
Early Old Age: Lose 1 health/turn, -25% chance to recover from diseases.
at 50 they gain
Moderate Old Age: Lose 2 health/turn, -25% chance to recover from diseases. (for a total of -3 health and -50% recovery)
at 60 they gain
Severe Old Age: Lose 3 health/turn, -25% chance to recover from diseases. (for a total of -6 health and -75% recovery)
finally, if they survive to be 70
Crippling Old Age: Lose 5 health/turn, never recover from disease, 10% chance to forget a known skill. (for a total of -11 health and no recovery)
Every character needs to consume 10 food units to stay fed (this is a base value and may be modified by conditions and such).
If a character is fed, he gains 1 health up to his maximum (more can be gained by relaxing).
a character may overfeed himself with up to 5 units of food (or later in the game 5 units of cooked food), gaining 1 health for each 2 food units he eats.
a character may underfeed himself taking 1 damage for each food under base (usually 10) he doesn't eat.
a character who eats less then half of base (rounded up) is "Starving" and can has 1 less TUs this turn.
Regardless of being fed, a character loses 1 stress (this is a base value and may be modified by conditions and such).
Performing an action causes the stress to go up by 1 point (unless stated otherwise).
A Character gets 1 TU for each 10 health it has (rounded down) and loses 1 TU for each 10 stress it has (rounded down)
A character who reaches or exceeds half of his maximum stress develops a nervous condition. You can only have 1 nervous condition at a time.
A character who reaches or exceeds his maximum stress has a break down and must spend the whole turn relaxing.
*I will announce a new round. Unless I make corrections, all stated actions from the previous round are carried out. Any that require my input will be resolved in this post. I will draw from the global event deck, which may effect the result of your actions in the previous round.
*Everyone makes a post containing their new character sheet, based on the result of the previous round and any external modifiers, updating stats as appropriate. If you ever have zero health or happiness, your character dies. If your happiness is equal to or less than half your maximum happiness (rounded down), you gain the status "Depressed" for as long as the state continues.
*Gain TUs tokens available to your current health and stress.
*State the actions you wish to take for the next round, by saying how you spend your time points. See the action list below for how to spend your time. You do not have to complete an action in one round - simply record your progress in an action in your post, just below your character sheet (and visible to others) until that action has been finished. You can have as many actions in progress at a given time as you wish, but at the end of each turn progress on the ones left over from the beginning deteriorates by 1 TU (even if you worked on them).
*Work out deals and exchanges with other players, if you so desire. Feel free to edit your posts to reflect these changes. You can edit your post as many times as you wish until I end the round, at which points the results are locked in. Do not create a new post to change orders. You can trade anything in your inventory, even knowledge, although knowledge works a bit differently than other items. Trading knowledge does NOT cause you to lose that knowledge, but instead creates a copy of it in the other players inventory at the beginning of the next round. For know, knowledge can only be traded through the "Teach" action.
At the begging of the game the Foraging Counter is 500 and Hunting Counter is 100.
Each time a foraging roll succeeds, it decreases the Foraging counter by 1. The lower this counter is, the harder it is to gain food by Foraging.
Each time an animal is killed, the Hunting counter is decreased by 1. the lower the counter is the harder animals are to track and the more dangerous they might be. Unlike the foraging counter, hunting counter can go below 0, which just means you have to travel further for hunting.
At the beginning of each turn, Foraging counter is increased by 50 up to 500, and Hunting Counter by 10% of the difference between it and 100 rounded up.
Counters can be reset by migrating.
Name: John Smith
Age: 20
Talent: keen eye
Health: 85/105
Stress: 19/50
Skills:
Possessions (17/20):
- 15 units of food
- 2 units of sharp rocks
Afflictions and conditions: none
Leftover Actions:
Give 2 sharp rocks to Adam Smith
Relax x2 (2)
Scout (3 to 7/7)
Procure (stick) x2
Which assuming Adam Smith gave us 1 spear in trade, and we would have moderate success procuring, would result in the following sheet next turn:
Name: John Smith
Age: 21
Talent: keen eye
Health: 90/105
Stress: 12/50
Skills:
Possessions (9/20):
- 5 units of food
- 1 rock spear
- 1 unit of sticks
Afflictions and conditions:none
Leftover Actions:none
The game will update Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Waiting list:
1.
Author
Topic: Neolithic Revolution (Read 2779 times)