I decided to post this here on suggestion from the players of my game, many of whom are big fans of both Dwarf Fortress and Liberal Crime Squad. I've only really played the second one much, myself. I found it pretty amusing, though I actually played it after I launched my games after it was suggested by a couple players of my game. My game has drawn a variety of comparisons for some similarities, though not really so much in the gameplay. More the theme of political satire.
I'll try to explain the premise of my game, Clout, since I imagine the title is probably somewhat confusing. I have a hard time coming up with a designation for it that makes sense, since the premise of the game is fairly unique. It's online, and massively multiplayer in the sense that everyone plays in the same world... but calling it an "RPG" is probably a bit misleading since that's come to mean something a bit more specific than just a "role-playing game". I mean, technically you're playing the role of a Congressperson in the US Federal Legislature... but you do so by actually playing that role. In other words: the base gameplay involves introducing bills and debating for them to try and get them passed in Congress.
However, your bills and everyone else's bills are always visible to all other players in the game, who can choose to debate for or against your bills. That's just the basic PvP element, though. Things get a bit more satirical from here on out.
One of the things you can choose to do in-game are drugs and other scandalous things like sleeping with your interns or hiring an escort. Every time you do something like this: the game keeps a record of it. Then there's a separate feature of the game called "Investigations". These allow you to get information about other players, and they also give you a chance of uncovering scandalous acts that the person you investigate has committed in the past. Once you discover one of these things: you can release it to the press and harm the constituent support of your target, or you can attempt to blackmail your target to get some cash from them in return for losing the option to release the scandal to the press.
Which brings me to the topic of constituent support and character loss. Clout is a permadeath game. There are two ways to lose your character: you can be killed by an assassination (rare and expensive option only available in the late game), or you can lose an election due to having poor constituent support. You can lose constituent support in a variety of ways. The aforementioned scandals are one, and another is simply by debating incorrectly. Either by using abilities in a nonsensical way and causing a gaffe, or by debating against bills that your political party supports. There's also a type of false scandal that can be caused by a slander option, or the use of the "Poison Pill" ability which will negatively impact your constituent support.
As I've now mentioned those things, I'll expound upon the options available to later-game players. As I said before: at a basic level you debate for bills. But that's not all that goes on in Congress. There are various abilities that you attain later in character advancement that have special effects, such as Filibuster, Poison Pill, and abilities which form congressional committees. I've attempted to model all of these things after their real-life counterparts.
Additionally, once you pass the initial tier of gameplay known as "Clout Tier 1" (Clout has no "levels", per se): a new set of PvP options known as "Skullduggery" opens up. These options allow you to do illegal things which are usually directed at other players. For instance: you can attempt to have other players assassinated, attempt to have VIPs such as the President, cabinet and Supreme Court Justices assassinated, hire thugs to try beating up a rival player, hire crooks to steal another player's cash, pay the media off to slander an opponent, pay the police off to protect a rival less to make assassination attempts more likely to succeed, pay off some committees to gerrymander your district and artificially improve your chance of reelection, or pay off a "Think Tank" to offer fabricated support for one of your bills. All of these acts are scandalous and are recorded by the game for possible discovery by players later on, and scandals such as assassination attempts will cause a huge hit to your constituent support and will probably get you unelected if they're ever discovered.
There's also many other features such as hilarious equipment, scandal coverups, and public speaking appearances. The game is very in-depth and I've done my best to make it as true-to-life as possible at a basic level. Anyway, here's the links if you want to give it a try (note that the platform you play on is irrelevant; all players play together in the same world):
http://www.kongregate.com/games/delosford/clout-the-gamehttp://apps.facebook.com/cloutthegameAnother rather unique feature of the game world is that I'm in the process of making completely separate games which integrate into the world in various ways. The closest to completion is a game called "The Lobby", which is not publicly-available right now. In it, you play a lobbyist that seeks to affect the political process using bribes and influence. In doing so, you actually direct interact with the game that's going on in Clout. There are options to directly bribe players in Clout, as well as options to curry favor with NPCs in various ways, which can then be forced to act as a player-driven Congressperson in Clout would. Clout itself has no NPCs.
Also note that the basic interface/gameplay for these other games is completely dissimilar from Clout. You can read more about my plans for these other games here:
http://cloutiverse.net
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Topic: So I made a Text-Based MMO PvP Congressional Simulator (Read 2555 times)