V&V Post-Mortem Discussion

[GeneralHankerchief]

I quite liked the game; the Diet politics in my opinion were at the best they'd been since KotR, which is no mean feat. However, as TCV suggested, I think we were hampered somewhat by the fact that there was really no balance of power whatsoever to speak of. In this game the Kaiser was always able to stop tensions before they boiled over simply by threatening to unleash holy fury if everyone didn't shut up and play nice. With a very large and powerful Austria going up against the Margrave, with my character somewhere in between, these things usually had a predictable result. Had the balance been somewhat different (say, Brandenburg had been more powerful, or Bavaria and Austria had been present), the Margrave and/or Herden could have easily circumvented me and looked to other places for allies. Unfortunately, the House structure as it was was just the way the cards fell in this game, and there was nothing anybody really could do about it. I bet that if we played this game the exact same way starting tomorrow, we would have an entirely different structure.

In terms of running the thing, Cecil put forth a Herculean effort for just around a year or so, something which absolutely boggles my mind. To the point that Zim alluded to in the post above, I would like to see the return of a strong Chancellor role in future games like we saw in the very old TW RPGs: the first part of KotR and even Will of the Senate. There's less player freedom, yes, but at the same time the turns move at a much faster clip and I think centralization allows for the empire to properly build so that when the internal politics inevitably hit the fan, there's actually things at stake.

[Zim]

As someone who joined KotR during the Cataclysm you'll have to refresh my memory. In the game's early days, the Chancellor did all of the movement? I recall reading about someone who ticked him off being put on "watchtower" duty.

As far as chancellor positions go I always liked the system used in the second half KotR and later games, but I've never played under the older system.

I've always wondered if something similar to KotF's rules set would have worked well if the gm (me in that game) didn't flake out and disappear due to loss of internet access, or if we now have too much of a taste for financial freedom.

One thing I appreciated about V&V that hasn't been touched on yet was the setting. While in general I would have liked to see more rpgs outside of the Central Europe area I thought it worked very well in V&V. It had been just long enough since KotR to invoke nostalgia and I liked the little touches like the starting character names (and my character's sharing part of a name with each of two different characters from KOTR). The HRE also matched very well with the greater financial and political freedom of the Hosues in V&V.

[phonicsmonkey]

To GH's point, the Diet session where we quarrelled over the Reichsmarschall was my favourite part of the game. I really enjoy behind-the-scenes political skulduggery and this really hit the spot for me...

I would also observe that it's a pity in some ways that the game ended where it did - because we were about to reinstate the two lost Duchies of Bavaria and Flanders, which would have enabled more politicking and power struggles further down the track. Eventually Leo would have succeeded Heinrich, weakening Austria further so it's likely that if we had carried on you would have seen the PvP conflict you were looking for.

This is not to say we could have continued the game in its current form. I think it has been shown that it was too much work for you Cecil (and for anyone!)....but it demonstrates I think that the 'balance of power' issue was situational rather than structural...

[Cecil XIX]

Everyone, thank you for replying. Looking at your comments, I'm seeing two common threads.

The first is basically bad luck vis-a-vis the number of players/generals, as well as the structure of power regarding the Houses and the Kaiser. As has been said, this is basically the result of following the rules, so there was little to be done about it once the game had started. In regards to making improvements, I think something like the Patronage system in KotN does a great job at addressing my concerns with RGBs: They no longer start off less connected to others IC than family members. The power structure was just the result of in-game events, and not something that can really be fixed without being overly heavy-handed.

The second is the amount of time it took to administer the game. My experience was that the time requirements never seemed that bad when I was actually working on things, it was only when the task was before me that it seemed overwhelming. I think the solution is to use the V&V system for short-term games or a less open-ended situation. A good example of the latter would be Civil Wars or events in regular TW RPGs. We've had rules for players to declare "independence" from the main faction and form their own Kingdom, and with the V&V system it would be very easy to separate the finances between two parties. Another idea would be to have separate finances for each House, rather than each player.

In any case, I'm currently mulling over a few ideas I've had for new games. I fully intend to use the lessons we've learned here to make even better games, and for that I indebted to everyone for playing.

[TheFlax]

Sorry for the very delayed replies, I've been off the Org for a while now.

First off, I want to thank Cecil for the work he did. While I wasn't a very present player, being dead most of the time does that, I had fun for the parts I played.I can't comment much on the mechanics, since I never got to use them really, but I found them interesting and enjoyed the debates that came with that system. (Marshal position for example) I concur about what has been said about the initial civil war. I didn't even really know why I was fighting the Kaiser and had no real motivation to stick with my fellow rebels. So I decided to be opportunistic instead.

I guess I don't have much to add, except cursing Zim for killing off my second character () and saying I appreciate the game and the effort Cecil put into it.

Hope to see you guys in the next M2TW, if there is one.

(P.S.: Maybe I'd die less if I stuck to my more traditional role )