nWoD City Territory System?

Bristled Thistle

It really depends on if you're making the Next Big Thing or not. If you accept that the people who don't like territory-style games won't play there, then life gets a lot easier. If you're trying for NBT, then you need to worry about the millions of caveats.

Bennie

Start with people having not a full pool of resource at the start of any kind of an interaction that might require it, and go up from there. Give a vampire 3 Vitae unless he is part of a territorial claim. Give a werewolf 3 Essence for his Gifts. Then people who want to really play the game can go get that Resource and have the full suite of benefits.

Ganymede

@Wizz said:

How? You keep saying you don't like Arkandel's system and that there's another way to do it, but-- as I think's been pointed out before in a similar discussion on WORA-- if the resources aren't somehow meaningful (collect this Stuff! It's shiny!) the players who "want" to fight over them really wouldn't have any motivation to do so.

MET had an Influence system. Players battled it out to take advantage of limited Influence in particular spheres. Those with greater Influence were able to take actions that affected the Domain. However, those actions did not affect the day-to-day existence of players who did not want to get involved in those politics. In that case, the limited resource -- the Influence -- was not a bar to existence or RP, but had enough meaning and importance that it was worth fighting over politically.

How could this apply to a vampire game and territory? Suppose each "grid space" provides a certain amount of Influence in a sphere. Depending on who your allies are, you could combine Influence to take actions to affect others. You could take steps to improve your territory's Influence score in particular spheres. Cap the amount of Influence in each sphere to cap the amount of improvement that can be done.

This is probably the best way to do it, in my opinion. However, it requires a great deal of maintenance. You'll need someone to consistent apply the rules to figure out what everyone's doing, and the effect of each action taken. You need to figure out how often people can "act" on or with their Influence. And so on.

tragedyjones

I think the idea of a territory system is awesome, but it IS a pain and many people are not going to want to deal with it. If it is a part of the game, it needs to be, IMO, built in from the ground up, You need to decide, and I hate myself for saying this, if it impacts everyone separately but equally. By that, I mean that it should influence Mortals/Vampires/Werewolves/etc, though they should not inherently block one another out or occupy the same slot on a turf.

Say you have "Dangerous Ghetto #1' - This provides, say, 4 vitae, 2 essence, 5 glamour, 1 Pyros, and 0 Aether (there's no Infrastructure there). Do you want this place to be able to be Harvested by, say, a Pack, a Coterie, a Motley, a Throng, and a Ring to be able to suck the various supernatural juices from a place?

My personal opinion is to divide that up. Maybe take the lowest amount and divide the remains among the various groups.

Also, are you going to grant mundane benefits as well as supernatural ones? Is the territory system just a means to regenerate pools? A gateway to influence? Or a means in and of itself?

Wizz

@Ganymede So territories would only have large-scale political effects rather than changing day-to-day existence? Fair enough. I feel like that's maybe a lot of work on both staff and players' sides-- given how many players are going to be involved versus your average MET group-- for a kind of nebulous reward, but that could be tweaked as needed.

Personally my mindset's similar to @Bennie's in that I actually like the resource scarcity and managing bloodpools and whatnot, I think it's extremely thematic and makes playing supernatural predators as dangerous as it should be, but. Diff'rent strokes.

Arkandel

@tragedyjones said:

I think the idea of a territory system is awesome, but it IS a pain and many people are not going to want to deal with it. If it is a part of the game, it needs to be, IMO, built in from the ground up, You need to decide, and I hate myself for saying this, if it impacts everyone separately but equally. By that, I mean that it should influence Mortals/Vampires/Werewolves/etc, though they should not inherently block one another out or occupy the same slot on a turf.

You are correct in both accounts.

A system would need to be integrated with other mechanics across the board. If it's entirely an island it'll feel like the add-on that it is.
It would need to impact everyone but in different ways. Obviously a vampire doesn't need to control territory for the same reason a werewolf does. But then again they can share (at least in the nWoD) because generally speaking they don't need it for the same reason, either.

Otherwise the same clause applies to it as for any other game design choice: It has advantages and it has drawbacks. Not everyone will like it (but some will), so choose your poison.