9

My friends an I want to start a political campaign on Skype. Each player would play a character or faction/kingdom. They should be able do wage war and do mass battles against each other, do the gestion of their kingdom, send spies and assassins and handling political stuff.

Our GM is motivated for running this kind of campaign, he already did this with with vampire the requiem although the system does not have most of the features we are looking for.

What kind or pen and paper roleplaying games can handle this kind of specifications? What would be your favorite suggestions and why?

PS: We are looking mostly for medieval/fantasy stuff but could be interested in other genres.

PPS: we will often roleplay by skypes the face to face interactions of the different characters but would like to have a mean to sometimes abstract the passage of time in a more turn per turn style if possible.

gomad
  • 33,405
  • 6
  • 101
  • 180
Heschoon
  • 611
  • 5
  • 16
  • I'd suggest DramaSystem, but I get the impression you want something where the crunch is focused on the Kingdom stats. Is that the case? – Quentin Mar 15 '15 at 21:33
  • Well, it can be either kingdom building or political intrigues. There will be a little bit of both I guess... – Heschoon Mar 15 '15 at 21:42
  • @Quentin DramaSystem would be great for the face-to-face stuff, but useless for the kind of turn-based strategy RPG this question is referring to. – SevenSidedDie Mar 15 '15 at 21:45
  • Useful answers may be found in this not-quite-duplicate: http://rpg.stackexchange.com/q/57661/696 – gomad Mar 16 '15 at 00:01
  • @Heschoon - I'd suggest holding out on selecting an answer; you're more likely to get other (and possibly better) answers if you do. – Chuck Dee Mar 16 '15 at 13:57
  • @Wraith808 you are right, I'll wait a little bit more. – Heschoon Mar 16 '15 at 14:41

1 Answers1

11

Greg Stolze's Reign is pretty much right up your alley here. Though its rules for "companies" (or really any organization) are written more with the assumption that the PCs jointly run a single organization, I've played in (and seen) more games that fit your description than the "standard" play. And the political side is run objectively enough that the GM can serve more as a referee for those parts.

I should also add that you get both "mass combat" rules, like for running a battle with two armies and well as a more abstracted set of rules for larger conflicts, where even the outcomes of individual battles are reduced down. So you can really choose your own level of engagement with the system.

The basic rules are in print and PDF and are fairy cheap. Reign also has its own setting, which is medieval fantasy, but it's not really "vanilla" fantasy, so you might want to start with the basic rules and build your own world around that.

Links to Reign: Basic rules in PDF & print: http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=79955

The full setting in PDF: rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=59095 and in print: indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/product.php?productid=16591

A couple that would count as distant runners-up in my book are:

Savage Worlds is good for combat on the scale of a group + some allies and has mass combat rules to boot, but it lacks much in the way of rules for kingdom-building. The rules assume a lot about having maps and miniatures and things that might be trouble if you're running with straight Skype (as opposed to a virtual tabletop solution like Maptool).

5th edition D&D (and some earlier editions, though I have less direct experience with those) has mass combat rules (as of a recent free release on wizards.com) and plenty of options for stronghold-building and running an enterprise in the DMG, but that's not really its core strength and running the kind of PvP campaign you're talking about is kind of uncharted territory.

Polisurgist
  • 7,846
  • 37
  • 50