Some Specific Design Ideas for Maelstrom

[Ry Vor]

On almost every front, the intention is to slow things down.  So there is a longer building time, large regions almost certainly won't be controlled before turn 6, kingdoms likely start a brigade lighter, lots of spells go up a power level or two, less assassination, more customization.

Less pressure to move on neighbors as a military kingdom, less anxiety about the early wizard positions.  More nuance with covert and economic planning.

[unclemike]

So does that mean that kingdoms will have all of their pc's in their starting region? By not having pc's in other regions, you reduce the chances of conflict between others which will result in a slower start of the game.

[Ry Vor]

So does that mean that kingdoms will have all of their pc's in their starting region? By not having pc's in other regions, you reduce the chances of conflict between others which will result in a slower start of the game.

As of today, the intention is still that most kingdoms will have a town and village in their capital region, each kingdom will have a distinct capital region, and there will be a town and village in two neighboring regions, as in The Choosing.  Giving a kingdom four PC's in the same region would accelerate regional control.

Am considering mage kingdoms start with one town and two villages.

Still could have Giant Ants and Tyrant begin with more PC's in more regions.

[Ry Vor]

New spell:

Meditation:  a wizard of P3+ can Meditate (counts as spell and an order) to allow him to cast a spell one level above his Power the following turn if he is in good health.

Also thinking of changing Ring of Spells to enabling to cast through the Ring a 2nd spell 2 power levels below the caster.  This would be a Superior Item, likely requiring a key.  So a Power 6 mage with the Ring of Spells could cast his normal spell up to Power 6 and then using the artifact, cast a Power 4 spell from the kingdom's spell list.

[JonDoe]

New spell:

Meditation:  a wizard of P3+ can Meditate (counts as spell and an order) to allow him to cast a spell one level above his Power the following turn if he is in good health.

Also thinking of changing Ring of Spells to enabling to cast through the Ring a 2nd spell 2 power levels below the caster.  This would be a Superior Item, likely requiring a key.  So a Power 6 mage with the Ring of Spells could cast his normal spell up to Power 6 and then using the artifact, cast a Power 4 spell from the kingdom's spell list.

Both of these sound good.   It does sound more like a ring of spells if it actually gives you more spells,

The ring should likely default to minimum of a P2 spell.  Meaning a DW adept could cast a P2 spell having the ring.   for some of those low magic kingdoms getting to level 3 to cast a level 1 on a bad spell list already is both hard and not useful.

[Ry Vor]

Pushing out (didn't make the cut this go around due to laws of human stanima, etc.) some things like this, sad to say:

• Really transformational sea power model.  Very complicated with fleets treated as groups and many types of ships.  Just it would take a long time to do and we never really heard players asking for it.  If we do the Archipelago map (which has been pushed back in favor of another map to be shared soon), we may try to take that on.  That included Sail Into the Unknown that allowed moving from A to Z (world wrapping as a full turn's movement, maybe two) when huge credentials (Admiral, gold, Influence, risk, fleet quality) had been achieved.
  
• The idea of Eclipses and Comets, that also through Sages would depend on the idea of discovering Astronomy which also allows Navigation.  Those Sage Knowledges fit better with an Archipelago type map. Eclipse would have been a lesser event like lower cost of magic research and greater chance for covert missions that turn, while comet would be bigger like assured exceeding magical limit.  Eclipses about once every year (12 turns), and Comet once a game, sometime after turn 18.  Sigh.
  
• Undecided on lots of stuff like new character classes such as Engineer, Sage, Hero, changes to Fanatic.  Battle tactic additions.
  

But that's because we have so many other great things to get in!

[Wookie Panz]

I suggest it is time for a numerical index of commands and spells.  This would be very helpful to new players.  I recall my first game (only 8 months ago) and trying to figure out whether what I was looking for was in the rules or commands or a spell and trying to scroll through the different data bases.  An index would have been oh so helpful.

[Ry Vor]

For me it is not the random location that bothers me for dispersed kingdoms.   It is the starting in a region where someone else already has there capital.   To go further it is really only in the anon or silent games.  In diplomacy games I can work around it, but most games are now anon or silent.   I believe the small regions can be used to remove the multiple capital part.

I still see value in allowing a DW to start in different regions and keeping the extra PC locations based on that region vs being the DW.   It gives the flexibility to have different neighbors and change how you would approach the position.   Yes some can plan to use those PCs to trade with a partner.  That issue is already present.   If it was decided to put all PCs in the single starting region except for dispersed I would say start with one less town or village and the regional reaction boosts in two other regions could be random.  This would make games play different from game to game and need to see you turn 0 before you start planning.

When I've had focus on Maelstrom lately its been on trying to complete the map.  It's nearly done. 

It does have 12 regions, none quite as small as I originally thought.  I think the smallest is 45 areas, the biggest maybe 78.  The smaller ones will have fewer PC's and so easier to control although any mythical city (hidden) could make any region harder to control, especially the smaller regions.  Of course then having a hidden city under control could be a great boon.  The map isn't really like Resurgent in some important ways.  One, there aren't really regions like Oakendell or The Talking Mountains that are dominated by a single terrain.  Most regions have a mix of terrains, although one terrain might be more prevalent in some regions than others.

So that makes it easier to allow kingdoms to be in different regions.  Possibly 3 or so for most kingdoms.  The other problems to solve are Mike's concern about the non-capital region on setup of the other PC's, and mine about not knowing who is where disrupting strategy.  I think we can solve that problem by setups determined by zone, so the same sort of dispersion as in Resurgent, generally two adjacent regions for the 2nd town and village.  Then we solve the other problem by instead of having The Dwarves, we'd have The Dwarves of Zanthia or the Dwarves of Nyvaria, so that claims both the zone and the kingdom.

The new map has more regional borders, or more neighboring regions.  There isn't something like The Talking Mountains with two neighbors (and barely that considering the access to the Northern Mists).  Instead, the average is more like 4 or 5 neighbors (I think one small region still has 2 neighbors).  Makes for a bit of paranoia and diplomacy.

[Calidor]

New spell:

Meditation:  a wizard of P3+ can Meditate (counts as spell and an order) to allow him to cast a spell one level above his Power the following turn if he is in good health.

Also thinking of changing Ring of Spells to enabling to cast through the Ring a 2nd spell 2 power levels below the caster.  This would be a Superior Item, likely requiring a key.  So a Power 6 mage with the Ring of Spells could cast his normal spell up to Power 6 and then using the artifact, cast a Power 4 spell from the kingdom's spell list.

How would spell lists be handled with Meditate? Would kingdoms be given full spell descriptions? Would we just have to cast the spell and see what happened? How would we even know what to put in certain columns?

[Ry Vor]

How would spell lists be handled with Meditate? Would kingdoms be given full spell descriptions? Would we just have to cast the spell and see what happened?  How would we even know what to put in certain columns?

All the spells available by level for each kingdom are shown on that kingdom's Dossier (setup) which you receive with your Turn 0 report. If you don't know what a spell does, you probably wouldn't meditate to use it. But you might have a Power 4 wizard and a Power 3 wizard and you could have the Power 3 meditate to use the P4 spells you know.