Imperial Splendour - A Rising Suns Game
IC-ThreadYes, yes i have returned to my HOTRS-Setting, for good or for worse. To the Players of the Deeps, don't worry its still alive, to the players of mountainhome sorry, so many guys stopped posting that it makes no sense carrying it on at this point.
So What is this about?Houses of the Rising Suns was originally a forum game idea i had after playing the original yaks. I wanted yak in space, like Emperor of the Fading Suns only in Yak style. The first attempt failed terribly. The second attempt suceeded for quite a while and was filled with !!FUN!! but died at some point due to me failing with proper gming.
Now this is in the Rising Suns universe, but plays out differently, basically a fusion between the first HOTRS and the Second One, with plenty different and new mechanics.
The Story after HOTRS IIWe begin 100 years after the story of HOTRS II. After the events on Si'Kar House Nova was weakened beyond measure, the constant conflicts with the church, the repeated orbital bombardements and other things had turned the planet into a blighted wasteland. But Nova endured. The Church however did not fare so well. With the Vengeance system turned into a battlefield on which its entire remaining resources where spent the stranglehold of the Church was broken. Without a fleet to effectively control space travel and humanity anymore, they lost their importance. After several years the Wreckan finally moved on, leaving vengeance the grave of the entire church fleet and a good part of the Empires Nobility. Billions of lives had been lost and at that point it seemed that humanity would become a footnote in the history of the universe. But as always they endured.
And as the Empire was at its lowest point, something happened that nobody expected. The Grey Guard resurfaced. After decades of self-imposed isolation, they remerged on the galactic stage. With fleets and armies which were held in reserve for the return of a fitting heir, they restored order. Fulfilling ancient directives they stabilized the Homeworlds of the Noble Houses and retook Vengeance with an efficiency and skill that would put the best of the Ecclesia Custodes to shame. Yet despite their best efforts the Empire is still weak and brittle. Now 100 years later Lord Commander Malcador (internal Grey Guard Name: A-3003) has ordered the 5 remaining Imperial Houses onto the Garden World of Halo, once a Forbidden World, seat of the Patriarch and a Death Sentence on anyone who is not of Clergy Origin, however things have changed and no one would dare defy the only man left in the Vicinity of 100 light years to order a orbital bombardement...
The GameEach of you plays a Noble house, but opposed to YAK or HOTRS emphasis will be on Dynasty management as oppose to the managment of a single character. Your Family Members are important but we will get later to that. Turns are working after the following scheme: summer and winter (as known in yak and HOTRS) and then a 5 year skip. Why the 5 year turn you ask? With a Dynastic emphasis we need larger time periods to allow children to grow up and parents to grow old. Besides i noticed that in each Yak or HOTRS game players would use up all resources at their disposal to gain power, which is nice in and as of itself, but from a game standpoint it left their lands smoldering bloodied ruins. The 5 year skip in between represents periods of peaceful growth and contemplation, basically all the things that would be boring if we would play them out.
In any case the important thing here is Family. Why? you'll see.
The Noble HousesEach player plays a Noble family, a major player on the political stage of the Empire. IS won't have any goals but those you set for yourself. However your family gains prestige on a varying set of factors to determine its impact on the Empire at large...see it as interesting side thing.
Each family consists of a Head of the House, aka your playing character and family members which you cannot completely control. You may give them orders, sent them on missions and have them move around, but they will also possess a variety of traits which will influence their behaviour and even their loyalty towards the family. A craven family member makes a terrible general and can be coerced to give secret information away, a drunkard while otherwise competent may, when in his cups blabber out that you tried to assassinate the Emperor. a Pious member might go away crusading and a brave one might actually be useful. I won't say what each trait does, thats for you to figure out and to handle, plus it would spoil some fun surprises.
So why would you bother to have huge families around? Well lets say the Emperor declares you treasurer, so now your main character is stuck taking care of that. That means somebody needs to take care of your lands. And then you need somebody to lead the military campaign the emperor has appointed you to lead. And then you need somebody...you see where that goes? Major Actions take up your characters entire attention span. He cannot handle anything else, what constitutes a Major Action we will leave to common sense.
But most importantly your characters have Fiefs. They handle those usually passively but at some point administration of a fief becomes an active action when it gets too large. One character can handle a maximum of 3 fiefs. If he goes beyond that he either needs to give them to a family member, or a vassal. While the vassal will still loyally provide you with money, his troops will not so actively be available. A Vassal is an NPC character who will usually not do much, you can fluff him out as much as you want otherwise he will be left blank. So you say, well i have my 3 family members let the other 40 fiefs be administrated by my vassals! Well here we come to the Problem:
Vassals have loyalty tests. Whatever you order them to do will cause an automatic loyalty test. usually your Vassals, as opposed to family members will not gain traits, but every now and then they will if they do interesting stuff. So you want to dethrone the Emperor, right? Call the Banners! Your purposefully stride into the courtyard and find...5 guys. Your Vassals will roll whether they follow you or not and if one decides not to, a loyalty cascade may happen. As Noble A decides he doesnt want to follow you, other nobles get penalties on the loyalty roll, due to your lack of authority. If more than a quarter of your nobles fail to follow you we will reroll for those who would have brought troops. And if more of those fail to follow, well, at one half we reroll, at three quarters, we reroll. You might find yourself with lots of Nobles who dont follow you. Now, usually a Noble will call his banners at a 2+ and your family members in any case. However if they are unhappy, have bad traits (like disloyal) or are straight up bribed or somehow coerced or influenced by other players this will go up to 3+ or even 4+ or they might just say screw you asap.
So you want to keep lots of family around right? WRONG! Some of your dear family members might be Wastrels, drunkards, gamblers or worse and you certainly don't want those guys anyway near your lands where they can fuck shit up. So where do you put them? The Imperial Palace of course! A Noble at the Imperial palace will continue to administrate his land but cant do anything else and he consumes money. So why would you do that? For two reasons first: he can plot. Secondly: His Bodyguards will be there. Why this is important we will talk later about.
FiefsA Fief is usually a Planet or a large piece of land on a planet you gain. a Fief always produces 1 Gold and can sustain 1 Flotilla.
If a Flotilla is destroyed it needs two turns to replenish itself. A Flotilla may consitute a wing of destroyers or a pair of Cruisers or even a dreadnaught. It doesnt matter a Flotilla always counts the same.
Gold, ah Gold. Can be used for many things. But its main purpose (apart for several event related ones) is to bribe others and keep your family afloat. Your Wastrel Cousin Jaque shouldnt be directly administering your lands so you send him to the Imperial Palace, where he idles the days. But there is a problem. Jaque costs money. Usually just one credit, but Jaque is also a Wastrel so he costs you 2 Credits. still easy to handle. But in his weeks and years in the Capital Jaque also starts to gamble. While at first he produces some extra money for the family, his luck runs out and he suddenly accrues debts...of which he tells no one...until House B decides to generously pay his debts...in return for a favour...nothing major...just getting drunk and making a ruckus in the family estate on a certain night. You can use money to bribe people or hire agents which will gahter intel on things for you.
The Imperial Court It is expected of every Noble Family to bring their members to the court...some of course are excused because they are heavily occupied but usually a noble will reside at court. Of course he is never alone. The Imperial Capital is large and houses are often at war...not openly of course. But as it is every Noble has an Honor Guard always with him. Not to mention unseen security details on top of that. depending on his importance a Noble may have up to 3 Guard Contingents with him. If your family is large and important enough you may bring entire armies to the Capital.
Of course there are rules of propriety:
A Noble always gets as many "free" Guard Contingents as he has Fiefs. So a Noble with 3 Fiefs will have 3 Squads of Guards with him. At least. Here is where the fun starts. For some reason you dont feel save anymore in the capital and you start hiring extra Guards ( extra guards cost extra money obviously), but that may seem odd or suspicious. So the others start to buy more guards also. And then suddenly The Emperor has enough seein Rebellion in the making: he decrees that no more guards are allowed in the Capital (that is well within his rights). However there are still the Noble Accords and by those the "free"Guard Contingents cannot be sent away, after all where are we coming to if a noble may not represent his status properly?
So whats with all these Guards? At any point in the game a Noble can declare a Palace Revolution and attempt (in a very bloody fashion) to take the throne for himself. At that moment all Guard Contingents work similiar to Armies only on a smaller scale. It doesnt matter if the House supporting the Emperor has 100 Fleets in Orbit, in the Imperial Capital they may only have 10 Guard Contingents and you may have 20. A Palace Revolution is a quick and dirty way to become emperor and prevent large protracted Civil Wars with the Imperial Bannermen and the Grey Guard.
DuelsAny noble in the Capital may challenge another Noble to a Duel. You can declare one of your available House Members a Champion and send him instead if you want, however refusing is a great shame.
Open Warfare in the CityWhile not expressly forbidden Guard Contingent Warfare in the Capital is a touchy thing. People might get itchy trigger fingers...
Cloak and DaggerSo you found out you cannot take them down with fleets, Street Fighting or duels? Why not make a Plot.
A Plot works simple. Any free noble in the city can partake in it. Now the question is what you want to achieve. Depending on the Plot Specifics certain nobles might be more helpful than others and some things work differently. Lets Say you want to assassinate a noble. For everyone who joins your plot you get +1 Plot Strength, add to that your intel providing agents on that house. Now we add special bonuses: drunk cousins blabbering about security, the wastrel cousin whose debt you covered and owes you one. And then you bribed away some of the guards. On the other side of the thing are first of all Security Details, these are chiefly made up out of the free Guard Contingents which each add +1 Counter (+ whatever extra Security Details you hire), then whatever active counter intelligence agents you have which each add +3 and of course if you know that there is a plot going on against you, (through your own agents) you automatically cut the enemy plot power in half. Of course both of you dont know how much exactly the other side has in the backhand but that only adds to the suspense. In the end Plot Strength and Counter Strength will be added up and the guy with the higher number wins. Depending on how much you fucked up if you were the assassin the other guy might have evidence that you were involved. Since also a matter of Randomness is involved (each plot strength represents 1d6 or higher depending on various skill and tricks) this can end very good or very bad. The History is littered with men who were just too damn lucky to be killed.
Agents each cost 1 money per turn and perform a variety of duties, from gathering intel, over partaking in plots to counterintelligence. They are however not of great importance and if you lose a few well thats to that. Agents like everything else can be turned and bribed and used for whatever devious purposes you can make up.
The EmperorAt the Beginning of the Game the 5 Houses will sit together and elect an emperor. From then on the family chosen will be the Imperial Family. That is until he is dethroned through some method.
Privileges:- may assign Imperial Treasurer
- may assign Imperial Spymaster
- may assign Diplomats
- may assign Generals
- controls the Grey Guard
- Right of Tax
- Right of Conquest
Duties, Expectations and Accords: ((note this list may expand to accomodate balancing))
While the Emperor has many Privileges he also has rules to follow, accords to agree upon, unless he wants to bring the wrath of the noble houses or even the Grey Guard upon himself.
-Imperial Lands stay Imperial Lands: all lands the Emperor gains belong to the Empire and if his line should end or another take the throne all these holdings will go to the new Emperor
-Spoils of Conquest: While the Emperor gains half of all conquered lands, the other half goes to the conquering general. While the Emperor may decide to forsake spoils of war, he may not take them away from a general.
-Right of Tax: 1/3 of all Income of the Houses goes to the Emperor.
-Right to an Honor Guard: a Noble may at all time have his minimum Security Detail (1 -3 Contingents) with him.
- The Grey Guard cannot be used for Private Feuds, however they will intervene if the Emperor is the offended party
The Grey GuardThe Greatest Asset of the Emperor. The Grey Guard counts at the same time as 10 Fleets, 10 Security Details and 10 Guard Contingents. However they can only be one at any given time, so you may distribute them as 5 Fleets and 5 Guard Continents and 0 Security Details or anyway else.
The Grey Guard cannot be bribed, coerced or in any other way influenced. Their Loyalty to the Emperor is unwavering. And they are expensive. the First 10 Grey Guard Units are free, but beyond that you have to pay. Expanding or restoring the Grey Guard costs 5 Gold, if you have more than 10 of them they will also start costing 2 Gold Upkeep each.
The TreasurerAdministrating the Imperial Treasury is one hell of a job. Getting all the taxes to come in and making sur enot everything falls apart is difficult. Why? Because the minor imperial bannerman (read those guys administrating the Imperial Lands) are a bureaucratic nightmare. While the Grey Guard does its best, it is a military and not a horde of accountants. The Imperial Treasurer has the thankless job of making sure that all that works out. Income money fluctuates heavily each season a d20 will be rolled to show a -10 to +10 difference in the treasury. Since only the Treasurer is beholden to it (that is usually) he could potentially take money out of the treasury for his own good. However like everything else in teh Capital, somebody might have agents supervising what you are doing...
The SpymasterAn office not yet established, it is up to the Emperor to finance and establish an Spy Service to do his bidding. The good thing is: he can pay it out of the Treasury and let it do whatever he wants with it. The bad thing: he needs to put somebody to supervise it.
The Imperial Army and NavyOn top of the Grey Guard, the Emperor can raise and Imperial Navy and Army. It is cheaper than the Grey Guard and can be hired en masse (aka 1 Gold Upkeep/Cost), however they are corruptible...but you can pay them out of the Imperial Treasury.
GeneralsMilitary Campaigns do not fight themselves. And it would be unseemly to send some commoner to lead the Empires army. So you have to send somebody to
die conquer for you. A Noble. Now Sending someone away from the Capital has various effects. a Noble on campaign cannot plot or partake in rebellion...he is after all far away. On the bad side, he may gain lands, glories, become a better general and even gain the loyalty of the Imperial Troops assigned to him. Or he may die, or disgrace himself or some mishap may befall him...
DiplomatsSo you decided that instead of sending the unpleasant noble to war you want him somewhere where he can not be so dangerous. maybe that embassy with the Church...well at least he can't plot right? Wrong! A noble sent to do diplomacy cannot plot in the palace but he can attempt to sway other factions to his side. Bribing them, enticing them with lands or other favours. But at least he is out of the direct way.
WarfareIs very straight forward, first of all we roll for the Campaign as a whole (1d6+General Skill+other traits+ battles won + battles lost) which will determine how the overall situation fares. Camaigns may be short affairs, a quick skirmish, a short invasion or may drag on for decades with years in which nothing moves on either side of the front. However each short turn(aka a season) there will be a deciding battle, which will move events forward quickly. Battles are quickly explained: (1d(6+Skill)xArmies vs. 1d(6+Skill)xArmies) = damage sustained. After such a battle the enemy will retreat and the gains will be determined with an extra roll in which the Campaign situation will be taken into account. So even though you might be winning every battle, you might still be losing the war. If you make good gains however you gain land and gold, half of which always goes to you as General.
Street Warfare/Palace Revolutionworks the same as Warfare (only without the campaign thingy).
DuelingAlso works quite simple: (1d(6+Skill)+Skill) vs (the same). Losing a Duel is not the same as dying. Duels are fought with secondants there which will intervene once a duel is clearly lost. Nonetheless injuries, maiming and even death may happen.
Okay i think that covers everything...rules and stuff are as always subject to change and i may have overseen things.
Sign-Upbefore you continue, you should be aware of the Rising Suns fluff.
here.It is not required but helpful.
House Name: (Either one of the five/six established Houses (Nova, Argonian, Rastyqua, Cr'tok, Al-Hazar, Azores) or one of your own choosing)
Home System: (if one of the established Houses, according to fluff, otherwise choose one of the five systems settled)
House History:
Bonus: (select 3, you can select 1 trait three times if you want) More Land, Large Family, Good Genes, )
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Topic: Imperial Splendour - A Rising Suns Game Need 1 Player (Read 7804 times)