Jumping Truth's "Planes!" (Not Open, but in a bit!)

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Jumping Truth
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Jumping Truth's "Planes!" (Not Open, but in a bit!)

Post by Jumping Truth » Thu Nov 07, 2013 5:37 am

As my third post on this forum, I would like to introduce the game of "Planes!"

For four to three players and run by me, the players work on individual planes of existence, having received essentially unlimited godlike powers within their own. The goal is to produce the best and most entertaining plane of existence they can.

The game works in phases, and thanks to the separate nature of the game, each player gets one turn a phase. Occasionally, there are "Opens" that allow interaction between planes, a wonderful opportunity to get your guys to mess up the other guys place.

So: accepting four players.

State Name, appearance, general theme, backstory, and initial state of the plane. (for example: endless void, endless ocean, giant globe, disc on a turtle, etc)

For example:
Name: WizzFuzz
Appearance: Purple flying bear with sparkly wings
General Theme: In a word: Cutesy
Backstory: WizzFuzz was born when the young daughter of a deranged alchemist screwed up the owlbear mixture.
Initial state: Hills, covered in flowers as far as the eye can see.

Rules
There are three actions that can be taken.
1: Create Action
Create actions take half a turn, they allow you to:
Spawn a race/small category of races/creatures
Populate an area with an already established kind of animal. (Eg: fill the oceans with fish, fill a dungeon with dungeon-creatures)
Fashion a magical artifact.
Grant a being "favour" that essentially makes it your prophet or semi-avatar. (It doesn't have to be a sapient one)

2: Manipulate land action
Manipulate land actions take half a turn, they include:
Creating a mountain range, lake, or island. (Note, it comes with a biome)
Building some sort of structure, castle, tower, village, dungeon.
Spawning a forest, desert, or other biome on already existent land.

Using two can:
Create a continent or other similarly large area.
Build a city or other similarly significant jurisdiction.

3: Divine Action
Divine actions take a whole turn, they can:
Transform or destroy whole groups of creatures.
Smite areas or groups with divine wrath. (Plagues, floods, hail, fire, meteors)
Other assorted godlike stuff.
Last edited by Jumping Truth on Tue Nov 12, 2013 7:05 am, edited 2 times in total.

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BadgeAddict
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Re: Jumping Truth's "Planes!" (Open!)

Post by BadgeAddict » Thu Nov 07, 2013 12:16 pm

Can you give any kind of an example of gameplay? or directive? and im guessing that it is text based?

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gamecreator
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Re: Jumping Truth's "Planes!" (Open!)

Post by gamecreator » Thu Nov 07, 2013 12:30 pm

Does it have any distinct rules or is it freeform?

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Orga the Strange
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Re: Jumping Truth's "Planes!" (Open!)

Post by Orga the Strange » Thu Nov 07, 2013 4:17 pm

So...Minecraft but with better graphics? *budum tish* Sounds good.
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Unhallowed Isle - Gru-Baak Ironheart
Magic, Mazes, and Monsters Oh my! 2 - Bal-Ghash Zajar/Mage

Jumping Truth
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Re: Jumping Truth's "Planes!" (Open!)

Post by Jumping Truth » Fri Nov 08, 2013 3:48 am

It is mildly freeform, yes. The game lets you perform a set number of actions per turn (For this one, two "create" actions or one "divine" one), and it is in fact text based, yes.

The directive is really whatever you choose to do. Do anything. Make a war-torn land full of zombies. Make a utopia where everyone's a robot. Anything goes, really, but does allow you to interact with the other planes occasionally.

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Lee
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Re: Jumping Truth's "Planes!" (Open!)

Post by Lee » Fri Nov 08, 2013 9:48 am

What are the limitations for "create" actions ( how much I can create with 1 action) and what does a "divine" action entail?

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Re: Jumping Truth's "Planes!" (Open!)

Post by BadgeAddict » Sat Nov 09, 2013 6:54 am

I think I'm failing to understand the point.

Jumping Truth
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Re: Jumping Truth's "Planes!" (Open!)

Post by Jumping Truth » Sat Nov 09, 2013 10:54 am

It's essentially a sandbox game, like the other god games, only you work on separate planes and the planes interact only occasionally.

Create actions allow you to create landmasses, species and populate areas.

Divine actions are things like sending meteorites or turning a bunch of people to frogs.

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gamecreator
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Re: Jumping Truth's "Planes!" (Open!)

Post by gamecreator » Sat Nov 09, 2013 1:43 pm

That's it. It looks aimless.

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Re: Jumping Truth's "Planes!" (Open!)

Post by Nerre » Mon Nov 11, 2013 2:52 am

Reminds me of the old "dawn of worlds" world builder games, of which I run 2 myself. But it doesn't seem you are using any rules to keep the game balanced. maybe take a look into the rules of those games? just limiting it to 1 or 2 actions, but don't giving limitations to those actions might let you end up with some performing very strong or powerful actions while others maybe run a low profile and focus on something else. How to balance that out? There would be no point to see who wins if to players work against each other than just dicing (without any attributes to base it on). It still might be fun, but better have at least a rough draft of rules.
:zzz:

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Re: Jumping Truth's "Planes!" (Open!)

Post by BadgeAddict » Mon Nov 11, 2013 10:30 am

I'm sorry if it appears that any of us are attacking your game. I just think that a few of us, gamecreator and myself at least, fail to see the point of the game. If i want to rule a plane of existence, I'll just go sit in the corner and talk to myself and I will probably have as much or more fun than this currently sounds. No offense intended of course.

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Re: Jumping Truth's "Planes!" (Open!)

Post by Jumping Truth » Tue Nov 12, 2013 4:42 am

In my opinion, the part of this game that distinguishes itself from simple fantasy is the interaction between planes, which is why the game is played in groups.

While yes, the balancing is quite shot (I'm still trying to think of a system for the combat), the main characters cannot use their powers in someone else's plane. They don't get the phenomenal cosmic power they do back home. I think I will edit the OP with some ground rules first before opening, now that that has been brought up. Good points.

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Re: Jumping Truth's "Planes!" (Open!)

Post by gamecreator » Tue Nov 12, 2013 4:56 am

It's short-sighted (and, I think, impolite) to start recruitment without rules ready.

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Re: Jumping Truth's "Planes!" (Open!)

Post by thinkslogically » Tue Nov 12, 2013 5:49 am

I think the concept sounds fun, and I think you could probably build a simple system based on something like the old Populous games. In case anyone's not familiar with them, the idea was to build a world for your chosen race to inhabit: the more followers you had, the more mana they would generate for you to spend on spells (pretty straightforward prayer = divine power mechanic). Combine that with the 'Dawn of Worlds' style gameplay for the initial plane-building (essentially a point-buy universe) and you might get something pretty cool out of it. If you base your entire system on numbers then your players can choose the flavour.

EXAMPLE:
World-building - Each player gets some points (let's say 10) to spend on turning their universe into something inhabitable for their chosen race. If you assign these features to broad categories, such as 'defensive' (e.g. mountain ranges, an explosive-gas nebula, a giant automaton; to protect them against the wrath of other gods) or 'productive' (e.g. cities, temples, food-production etc. to enhance mana production) that keeps things simple but allows for quite a lot of variety. This is the world-factory each player has to protect while simultaneously attempting to destroy the others.

Game Phase - With the initial setup done, the game can begin. Each player can choose how to spend the mana they generate each turn (i.e. defense, growth or aggression) based on a mana-run economy. This is where the balance needs some careful consideration though and the most devastating spells should definitely be left for later in the game (otherwise someone could spam on production and immediately spend all their mana on destroying another player).

Allowing each player to see the terrain the others have just adds an extra level of strategy to the game, but details could be left hidden for a bunch of things (e.g. what spells are in each player's arsenal; how many followers per settlement etc.)

But, if you base everything on point-buy then the players are still free to go nuts and create anything they want. So essentially, a 1-mana spell has the same kind of effect no matter the flavour (give or take). I'd definitely allow variation, but players shouldn't be penalised for preferring one flavour of existence to another (e.g. fire-plane shouldn't automatically lose to water-plane just because that's how pokemon works).

I do feel that the game will only be fun if you can use your powers to mess with the other player's worlds though. Perhaps this is a game for domination of the Planes, winner-takes-all style?

-------------------------------------------------

This is of course, just a suggestion and might be too PVP for what you were thinking, and may not work too well in a forum format (perhaps other folk have some ideas?). Hope it's a bit of help though as an idea of one place you could start.

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Re: Jumping Truth's "Planes!" (Not Open, but in a bit!)

Post by BadgeAddict » Tue Nov 12, 2013 7:32 am

(loved populous)

Perhaps I can ask a question that hasn't been asked yet. What is the Role of the GM in this game and what rules guides him/her in his/her interactions with this game?

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