Open Invite: City-State RPG

I invite you to join me for a 5-round PBEM RPG in which you will play as a city-state or another large polity.

July 26 update: We have filled the roster! However, if you would like to be a put on the shortlist in case anyone drops out or if you would like for me to reach out to you in the future for gaming invites, please send me an email at thespiritofthedepths@gmail.com.

Index

Setup

Stats and Rolls

Factions

Joining the Game

Setup

The context is a world predominantly composed of city-states with a tech-level of ~1910-1930.

The players will be a new alliance formed for mutual security against the Cynthian Empire, a thalassocratic state which subjugates coastal realms for the use of their ports. The Cynthians raid inland and use espionage to weaken stable states, so they are a threat to even deeply-inland states.

They are one of many existential threats.

The game will be five turns. You will have 3 real-time days to decide and submit your actions for each turn.

I will send out your results on the day after each turn. The game will total 20 real-time days (3+1+3+1+3+1+3+1+3+1), turn->report->turn->report.

Stats and Rolls

Your faction will have eight stats. Each turn, you can take an action using each of these stats. That is, eight concurrent actions per turn.

This is a PbtA-style system, so each action will have a chance of succeeding, a narrative effect, and a mechanical effect. The results might give you bonuses or maluses, for a certain period or permanently.

You will describe your actions in the form of directives, including your intended outcome. (“Intelligence Service: I want an operation executed to infiltrate a Crag of Songs crew. The intent is to ascertain the location of their cavern. If we can get people inside for a description or undercover op, do that, but at least one agent needs to report the location ASAP.”)

Your state organizations will execute your intent. There will be a number of characters associated with each capability. They are executors, and they may triumph, be disgraced, live, die, or transcend the cosmos, but they do not change the base probabilities (this could change if a character is involved in something very special).

You will not be punished for leaving out precautions etc; these will be seen to by your people, unless you have specific guidance. The outcomes will be determined mechanically along the axis of your intent.

You can find specific mechanics for this at the end of this section.

The eight stats are:

Expeditionary Warfare

Intelligence Service

Diplomatic Influence

Economic Power

Industrial Base

Civic Engagement

Research Capacity

Defense in Depth

Brief descriptions:

Expeditionary Warfare: Dealing kinetically with threats beyond the city wall.

Intelligence Service: Uncovering facts and taking physical actions in a surgical manner. Also serves as a passive defense against covert activity occurring in your city-state or faction’s sphere of influence.

Diplomatic Influence: Influencing foreign states, gaining their cooperation and shaping their policy without threatening them directly.

Economic Power: Influencing people and organizations through investments and disbursements, outright purchasing things, and developing your Intelligence Service, Diplomatic Influence, and Research Capacity.

Industrial Base: Developing your Expeditionary Warfare, Economic Power, Industrial Base, Civic Engagement and Defense in Depth capabilities, as well as supplying foreign efforts (e.g. supplying disaster relief to a foreign policy, or arming a foreign insurgency).

Civic Engagement: The ability to marshal the actual residents of the city to do things organically. A jack of all trades stat that can be used to enhance other stats (e.g. by encouraging militia service, free enterprise, disaster recovery, mass philanthropy, home workshops and cultivation, and participation in research bond programs)

Research Capacity: This is your ability to gain permanent situational bonuses through various forms of research. The Occult always beckons but failures in its employment are catastrophic

Defense in Depth: A passive capability that represents the difficulty of directly attacking your city-state or headquarters. A threat may encounter your Expeditionary Warfare and/or Intelligence Service first, especially if you have turned these capabilities to security.

I will physically roll for the success or failure of your actions.

The roll is 2d6 + Stat Bonus.

10+: Full success. This will execute your intent diegetically if you have the resources to reach your intended aim, and in doing so you can resolve threats, take full advantage of opportunities, and/or recieve ongoing bonuses or increases to one of your stats.

7-9: Partial success, success with collateral damage or fallout, or progress which benefits you in the short term.

6-: Dramatic failure.

City-states and factions are built with the following spread of bonuses and maluses spread between their eight stats.

+2, +2, +1, +1, 0, 0, -1, -1, and two situational +1 bonuses.

There is some variation in this among the pregenerated cities and factions, though newly-generated cities should follow this spread. If you’d like to be more specialized, let me know.

Factions

You can play as one of the city-states and factions listed in the Factions section below, or you can create your own city-state using the city-state creation tables. You can optionally create a protagonist noble house for your city-state using the nobleman generator. Player-generated city-states can be fairly dastardly but should be diplomatically-compatible with the states listed below (e.g. not adhering to a belief system that seeks the overthrow of all existing city-states and not practicing the Occult, at least at first).

        Playable Preexisting Factions

The following factions are pregenerated options for play, and their full stats and descriptions can be found below (the actual alliance will consist only of player factions)

Archzenith

Ascension

Cape Cittacotte

Diadem

The Earthheart People

The Empire of the Twin Canals

Great Loom

Grimwall 

The Knights Tarragon

Lethemarket South Archipelago Company

Mandrake

Solomon VK’s Saxherm

Troutbridge

        Nonplayable Preexisting Factions

The following factions may be present in the game but are either international pariahs or serve a mechanical role, and so are nonplayable (though if you are highly interested in playing Atrialia, Attar, Sarabande, Setroxia, or one of my states from the City-State Generator, let me know and we can figure it out)

Atrialia: An island dictatorship famed for the production of blacklisted narcotics and chemical weapons, which are sold on the international black market.

Attar (conceptualized by Dan Sullivan) is a prosperous and cosmopolitan city in the fens. It is noted for the production of world-famous scents. A host of bandits once occupied Attar, but were gradually transformed into its security forces. Player factions can pay 1 Economic Power to Attar in exchange for a +1 bonus to Diplomatic Influence the next turn, as they receive pheromone-laced fragrances and lessons on the human ego from a group of the city’s most prominent citizens (who managed to tame their invaders).

Bounty: A city of river slavers whose captives work their endless mines and refineries. Bounty’s ironclads travel far and wide, slaving along the rivers and coasts.

The City of Leagues: The world’s premiere Anarcho-Syndicalist city-state. They are opposed to most existing governments as they are opposed to most governments existing, and as such they continually send cadres abroad to spread international revolutionary Syndicalism and spearhead uprisings. They oppose the Cynthians and could be interesting to play, but they don’t belong in an alliance with the other city-states that are playable because they’d lose legitimacy by cooperating with them.

The Crag of Songs Killers: A hinterland society who board ships, planes and caravans as ostensible guests or hirelings, before eliminating the actual complement and delivering the cargo and/or transport vehicle to the Killers’ mysterious fastness.

The Cynthian Empire: An aristocratic society dwelling on their battleships and aircraft carriers, sending fleets to conquer coastal city-states as supply stations, drydocks, and points of excise.

Feyglade: A once-prosperous prairie state now subjugated by heartless nomads seeking their next target for unlimited conquest.

The Red Charter Companies: Raiding organizations who seize hinterland RGOs and operate them with slaves, selling the products on the black market.

Glossolalia: A sleepy island state which sends out agents to hide radioactive runestones made of lead and mercury in foreign city-states at the behest of exocosmic instigators.

The Grave of the Sorcerers: A mysterious desert island characterized by megalithic architecture. Their rusting ships go forth and their mute, sometimes four-armed crews employ inexplicable electroshock weapons on foreign ships. The sea raiders take men captives while throwing shock-paralyzed women and children into the sea.

Sarabande is a city-state (conceptualized by Ben Massey and interpreted by yours truly in this story) located in a dense forest, where they employ enslaved tribesmen in the harvesting and refining of valuable wood and beetles into fine lacquerware. The people of this city-state are suffering from a wood rot which causes their bodies to harden and eventually calcify into immobility. They are highly resistant to gunfire during this process.

Setroxia: The Fane of the Poppy (conceptualized by Dan Sullivan and interpreted by yours truly in this story).

Starling & Shrike: A mountaintop city-state known for raising its children to be mercenary detectives and financial investigators. Most playable factions can spend Economic Power to gain an additional Intelligence Service-type action from S&S each turn, or to gain a passive military Assist and Advise capability from Starling & Shrike (applied to Expeditionary Warfare or Defense in Depth).

Mechanism: Convert 2 Economic Power to a +2 Intelligence Service-type action or a +1 bonus to your Expeditionary Warfare action or passive Defense in Depth.

Certain treaty partners only have to spend 1 economic power to get the above. Treaties with S&S are annotated in the state’s Strengths section.

        Pregenerated Factions

Stat bonuses in parentheses are added to the base stat.

    Archzenith 

Note: The government of Archzenith is evil, but they can be included in this alliance due to their actions against the Cynthian Empire, which most city-states consider a greater threat.

Nature: The brutal fourfold aristocracy of Archzenith controls a gleaming city in a steaming jungle. They have recently conquered the city-state of Palmgrove with the assistance of their tribal allies, the Affidavits, and are using the POWs from this war to mine the pits beneath Archzenith, which have been found to contain seemingly unlimited precious minerals. For some reason, all artists and craftsmen in Archzenith have disappeared since the start of the mining boom.

Strengths: Start with Mandala as subject and source of miners. The allied Affidavit bandit tribe defends Archzenith’s outlying regions. The Fourfold Aristocracy controls them with Setroxian heroin.

Challenges: The mines directly beneath Archzenith are growing unstable and continuing the boom without massive underground restructuring may sink the entire city. Archzenith is the enemy of many nearby bandit tribes. They are blacklisted by Starling & Shrike and mistrusted by other city-states.

Expeditionary Warfare: +1 (lower than expected due to occupation of Palmgrove)

Intelligence Service: +1 (gentlemen of Archzenith; +1 when carrying out targeted killings)

Diplomatic Influence: -1

Economic Power: +2 (+1 when spending pure gold and silver; catastrophe on Total Failure [8.3%])

Industrial Base: +0

Civic Engagement: -1

Research Capacity: +0

Defense in Depth: +2 (jungle, tribal allies, heavy guns on city wall)

Head of State: Duke

    Ascension

Nature: Rich, technologically-advanced but serene city-state on a vast plain.

Strengths: Ascension is wealthy and has a bought-in population who can be relied upon to aid in almost any endeavor. Ascension Fighter Command possesses unrivaled air superiority capabilities. The city has a defensive treaty with Starling & Shrike, reducing contract costs and permitting support in warfare. 

Challenges: Ascension’s government is nonbelligerent and somewhat aloof despite being geographically vulnerable. The heartless prairie nobles of Feyglade could make a direct motorized drive on Ascension. Expeditionary Warfare: -1 (+2 when a pure ground attack air raids, as in +1 total, and +3 in air superiority engagements, as in +2 total)

Intelligence Service: 0

Diplomatic Influence: 0

Economic Power: +2

Industrial Base: +1

Civic Engagement: +2

Research Capacity: +1

Defense in Depth: -1

Head of State: President

    Cape Cittacotte

Nature: A city on a stretch of pleasant coast on the edge of a great desert. The coast has many heroöns where the people of Cape Cittacotte go to be inspired by the heroes of history.

Strengths: Cape Cittacotte has an elite army and navy whose officers double as intelligence operatives, and the city is somewhat sheltered from naval invasion by the archipelago of the Little Iguanas. 

Challenges: Cape Cittacotte is absolutely surrounded by threats. In the high desert, the Gardens of Anomie disgorge warlocks armed with weapons strange and terrible. Brigands and bandit tribes harry the coastline, and at sea the city-state faces a quadruple threat from pirates, the slavers of Bounty, the silent kidnappers from the Grave of the Sorcerers and their inexplicable electroshock weapons, and the Cynthian Empire.

A +1 bonus can be assigned to any stat, but it comes into effect on the next turn after you declare it. This is because of state promotion of a particular heroön associated with the endeavor in question.

Expeditionary Warfare: +2

Intelligence Service: +2

Diplomatic Influence: 0

Economic Power: +1

Industrial Base: 0

Civic Engagement: -1

Research Capacity: -1

Defense in Depth: +1

Head of State: Grand Secretary

    Diadem

Nature: A city of towers overlooking vast farmlands, Diadem is a rich, beautiful and stable city-state.

Strengths: Diadem is a functional society with a roaring economy and industrial base. It has broad opportunities for fundamental development along many axes. The city has a defensive treaty with Starling & Shrike, reducing contract costs and permitting support in warfare.

Challenges: Diadem’s striking power is limited to the Dragon Dragoons, glider troops who can deploy from Diadem’s towers to deal with threats on the nearby prairie. Furthermore, it has traditionally lacked a dedicated intelligence service, relying on intelligence-sharing agreements with allies and on reports from the city’s traders when they return from abroad.

Expeditionary Warfare: -1

Intelligence Service: -1 (+1 if it has to do with something that another player’s state or faction is connected to, or if it’s something that has to do with a neutral city-state or faction)

Diplomatic Influence: +1

Economic Power: +2

Industrial Base: +2

Civic Engagement: +1

Research Capacity: 0 

Defense in Depth: 0 (+1 when intercepting oncoming threats)

Head of State: Lord Mayor

    Earthheart People 

Nature: The Earthheart People are a Bandit Tribe living off of the plunder of foreign states and tribes on the highways and rivers.

Strengths: Decentralized clan structure means that the Earthheart People are very difficult to eradicate. Their ability to go on psychoactive spiritquests that can alter the very conditions of reality means that they have an almost unparalleled ability to adapt to threats or reverse them. They have a positive reputation with certain city-states (generally ones inaccessible for raiding).

Challenges: The Earthhearts feud continuously with other bandit tribes and are regarded as an object for extermination by a number of city-states who have suffered their depredations. Spiritquests can alter reality itself, rewriting problems out of existence or bringing aid from beyond the cosmos, but are proportionately dangerous to undertake, with Total Failures levying disastrous consequences.

Expeditionary Warfare: +1

Intelligence Service: 0

Diplomatic Influence: -1

Economic Power: -1 (+1 after winning some kind of engagement due to extensive plundering and connections to resell equipment to distant bandit tribes)

Industrial Base: 0

Civic Engagement: +1

Research Capacity: +2, but with really disastrous Total Failures (+1 when attempting to discover something existential rather than technological)

Defense in Depth: +2

Head of State: High King (elective monarchy)

    Empire of the Twin Canals

Nature: A mighty land and sea empire with 12 subject peoples, the Empire of the Twin Canals is known for constructing megalithic superstructures such as the vast inhabited stackstones in their capital city of Megakratheon and the citadels in the lands of their subjects.

Strengths: Most of the Twin Canals’ army and navy consists of degraded conscripts from their 12 subject peoples, but this manpower pool has proved nigh-inexhaustible despite continuous warfare. The Twin Canals possess a tremendous economic and industrial base given their position as an entrepôt and their vast population, and their intelligence services have been finely honed by tearing out the roots of rebellion in their subject peoples.

Challenges: The Empire of the Twin Canals is engaged in “the Thousand Wars”, border conflicts all neighboring cities and tribes. Furthermore, the Canalite people rule their subjects through state terror, which flatlines civic engagement and primes them for uprisings, particularly with the aid of International Revolutionary Syndicalism. The Empire of the Twin Canals is also a primary target for the Cynthian Empire, which salivates over the great entrepôt and the Empire’s already-subjugated population. On top of it all is a Starling & Shrike blacklisting.

Expeditionary Warfare: +1 (easily replenished; never depletes. You don’t lose any of this stat if you suffer a major loss)

Intelligence Service: +1 (+1 when attempting to root out internal sedition)

Diplomatic Influence: -1

Economic Power: +2

Industrial Base: +2

Civic Engagement: -1

Research Capacity: +0

Defense in Depth: +0

Head of State: Emperor

    Great Loom

Nature: Great Loom is an intellectually potent but unwarlike city-state sheltered in the strong arms of a mountain valley. It has a strong economy and a library that spirals and branches throughout the inside of a mountain, expanding all the time due to Great Loom’s literary and academic culture.

Strengths: Great Loom’s unrivaled research potential allows for development along any axis, and despite their starting lack of expeditionary warfare power, the city has a strong defensive position. The city has a defensive treaty with Starling & Shrike, reducing contract costs and permitting support in warfare. 

Challenges: First, Great Loom has not been directly involved in a war in over 100 years and possesses only a token security force, historically sheltered by their highland position and by friendly outlying cities such as Troutbridge, Diadem, Ascension, Feyglade, and Starling & Shrike. As such, the city possess only token security forces, but recently Feyglade has fallen to prairie nomads who are turning their hungry eyes on Great Loom. Second, Great Loom’s libraries shade into places that do not entirely fall within this world. The city’s librarians and intellectuals are beginning to get lost in these ways, and they may encounter things of an unearthly provenance there.

Expeditionary Warfare: -1

Intelligence Service: -1

Diplomatic Influence: 0

Economic Power: +1

Industrial Base: +1 (+1 when producing something associated with printing)

Civic Engagement: 0 

Research Capacity: +2 (+1 when searching for knowledge that already exists on some level) 

Defense in Depth: +2

Head of State: Councilor Presiding

    Grimwall

Note: The government of Grimwall is evil, but they can be included in this alliance due to their actions against the Cynthian Empire, which most city-states consider a greater threat.

Nature: A warlike and aggressive industrial city-state built into the face of a sheer cliff. Grimwall has extensive tank and alpine warfare capabilities, and recently used them to destroy the city-state of Mandala 

Strengths: Mighty and variable expeditionary warfare capabilities with an extremely strong defensive position, allowing them to weather the vagaries of warfare.

Challenges: Grimwall is diplomatically and economically isolated and faces the newly-formed defensive alliance of the Free Cities of Tourmaline Gorge (which will become an offensive alliance should the Free Cities lose their internal war against Revolutionary Syndicalism). Grimwall is blacklisted by Starling & Shrike and mistrusted by other city-states.

Expeditionary Warfare: +2 (Grimwall Column: +1 when assaulting a city-state with intent to raze, though not while engaging their EW forces; Grimwall Mountaineers: +1 when fighting in rough hinterlands)

Intelligence Service: +1 

Diplomatic Influence: -1

Economic Power: 0

Industrial Base: +1

Civic Engagement: 0

Research Capacity: -1

Defense in Depth: +2

Head of State: Supreme Commander

    Knights Tarragon

Nature: A military order of knights financial operating out of a network of banks and hardened offices in city-states and empires across the continents. 

Strengths: The order’s Knights are consummate warriors and spies, and their lay personnel are drilled in defensive warfare. The financial acumen and resources of the Knights Tarragon are legend, and there are few foreign states who would not be threatened by the Knights’ abilities to offer life-changing bribes to their personnel. The order also retains battalions of mercenaries coming from various traditions of warfare and can employ air and naval mercenaries on short notice, but generally do not engage in formal warfare except with extreme debtors.

Challenges: Many other Military and Chivalric Orders are enemies of the Knights Tarragon and will duel them at the drop of a hat or actively scheme against them. Furthermore, the bank vaults of the Knights Tarragon riot with the wealth of nations and despite the knights’ fearsome reputation there are no shortage of marauders ready to accept unlimited risk and shed unlimited blood for a crack at a fraction of the orders’ wealth. This also goes for many city-states when they fall on hard times…

Expeditionary Warfare: 0 (+1 when acting against those who owe the Knights money)

Intelligence Service: +2 (+1 when acting against those who owe the Knights money)

Diplomatic Influence: +1

Economic Power: +2 (+1 when engaging in bribery, attempting to employ mercenaries, or issuing loans)

Industrial Base: -1

Civic Engagement: -1 Research Capacity: 0

Defense in Depth: +1 (vaults and banks spread across the world)

Head of State: Lord Director

    Lethemarket South Archipelago Company

Nature: A charter corporation for the cultivation and trade of rare goods in far-flung environs. While nominally chartered out of the continental city-state of Lethemarket, the Company’s administrators universally reside abroad in the Company’s extraterritorial trade fortresses while Lethemarket has been reduced to a shell front for the company, a Potemkin village maintained so as to give the Company a veneer of nationalist legitimacy.

Strengths: The Company has a standing navy and tens of thousands of mercenaries under its employ, as well as trade fortresses and vice districts that enjoy extraterritorial status in a handful of weak city-states. It also owns trading houses and liveried bazaars in stronger city-states with the permission of their governments. Their trade fleet and RGOs give them outstanding economic capabilities and a robust industrial output of raw materials.

Challenges: The possessions of the South Archipelago Company are far-flung and difficult to protect with a concentration of force; while the South Archipelago Company would be nearly impossible to eradicate over a short period, any individual holding would not be particularly difficult to sack. Furthermore, the company has something of a legitimacy problem; their presence as an economic driver is widely desired, but the Company’s assumption of extraterritoriality in a number of sovereign states and its murderous actions against various foreign corporations has made potential clients wary of it. 

Expeditionary Warfare: +2

Intelligence Service: +1

Diplomatic Influence: 0

Economic Power: +2

Industrial Base: +1 (+1 when harvesting and utilizing raw materials)

Civic Engagement: -1

Research Capacity: -1

Defense in Depth: 0 (but cannot be eliminated on a failure)

Head of State: Chairman

    Mandrake

Nature: The riotous maritime city-state of Mandrake serves as a safe haven for the world’s exiled nobles, welcoming these men and women (and their expertise and resources) with open arms. 

Strengths: A world-class blue water naval power, the city of Mandrake benefits from an unrivaled pool of brilliant admirals, generals, aristocratic spies and gentleman scholars.

Challenges: Mandrake is one of the most violent and chaotic city-states in the world, and when shorn of common purpose the city’s nobles and their retinues tend to feud relentlessly. Mandrake lacks a robust domestic industry, given that most of the exiled nobles eschew economic activity other than robbery. Expeditionary Warfare: +2 (+1 during sea battles)

Intelligence Service: +2

Diplomatic Influence: 0

Economic Power: -1 (+1 after winning some kind of military engagement due to excellent channels for reselling plunder to foreign city-states)

Industrial Base: -1

Civic Engagement: +1

Research Capacity: +1

Defense in Depth: 0

Head of State: Grand Commodore

    Saxherm

Nature: Saxherm is a city-state (conceptualized by Solomon VK in the city-state generator and interpreted by yours truly in this story) distributed across several adjacent hills surrounded by farmland. Saxherm’s businessmen and industrialists idolize thieves and sometimes sponsor their activities abroad, though it is understood that thieves are not to target the equities of Saxherm’s movers and shakers.

Strengths: The affectionate relationship between mogul and thief tends to make the thieves available for special actions benefitting the city.

Challenges: The affectionate relationship between mogul and thief tends to make other city-states look askance upon Saxherm. The city also does not begin with military forces capable of expeditionary warfare.

Expeditionary Warfare: -1

Intelligence Service: +2 (+1 when stealing from abroad)

Diplomatic Influence: -1

Economic Power: +1

Industrial Base: +1

Civic Engagement: +2 (+1 when it involves stealthy activities within the city-state)

Research Capacity: 0

Defense in Depth: 0

Head of State: Lord Speaker

    Troutbridge

Nature: Troutbridge is a wealthy representative democracy on a confluence of major rivers.

Strengths: Powerful economy based on shipping and consumer goods, extensive riverine and air warfare capabilities. Defensive treaty with Starling & Shrike, reducing contract costs and permitting support in warfare.

Challenges: Troutbridge has many enemies and is easily accessed by land and water, and lacks force projection beyond littoral and riverine areas. They have historically feuded with Archzenith and Grimwall, but this may be mitigated by an alliance to deal with the mutual threats of the Cynthians. Despite being a democracy, the city-state’s officer core sometimes acts unilaterally, and they tend to be popularly forgiven even when clearly in the wrong (as they “acted out of overwhelming patriotic feeling”). 

Expeditionary Warfare: +0 (+2 when fighting on the riverlands and/or coasts, and in air engagements)

Intelligence Service: +1

Diplomatic Influence: +1 

Economic Power: +2

Industrial Base: +1

Civic Engagement: +1

Research Capacity: +0

Defense in Depth: -1 (easily accessed)

Head of State: Prime Minister

Joining the Game

This game will be predominantly PVE. You can spy on the other players, but can’t act to directly hinder them.

If you cannot submit your actions in a given three-day window, your faction will by default lay low and do nothing, or you can “delegate to your ministers” and I will play the faction that turn period.

My original conception was to give priority to people who’ve posted city-states or who I’ve gamed with before, I guess we prefer known quantities, but something feels wrong about doing it that way so it will purely be by order received.

If we fill up, I’ll edit this post and note that. We’ll go forward with a minimum of 3 players.

If you are interested in playing, please reach out to me at:

thespiritofthedepths@gmail.com

Please rank-order a few factions that you’d be interested in playing, or indicate that you will create your own using the city-state generator as a base (you can characterize the results however you like). You’ll be able to ping me with questions on Discord during your 3-day turn periods.

Thank you!