Anyone Playing Greg Stolze's Reign?

[Serendipity]

Fascinating - in general I really really like Greg Stolze's work. I've not heard of this game and you've piqued my interest. I'll head over to RPG.net (among a few other places) but if you want to give me an overview that would be mighty sweet.

 

[coyote6]

QUICK EXAMPLE: Thyrus and Malik square of, Thyrus has a 3 in Sense and Malik has a 5, so Thyrus declares what he is doing first and Malik declares afterwards, thus Malik can react to what Thyrus is doing better. Malik is going to attack Thyrus and parry any blow from Thyrus(incurring a multi-action penalty of -1 die from the lower of his two relevant pools)...while Thyrus is going to attack without parrying or dodging.

Malik has Body 3/ Coordination 2/ Weapon:Axe 4/ Parry 2
Thyrus has Body 3/ Coordination 4/ Weapon:Sword 2/ Parry 3

Malik rolls Body(3) + Parry(2) the lower of his relevant pools and subtracts one die for 4d10...Malik rolls a 8/8/8/5/5 Malik chooses to attk with his 2x5 set and parry with his 3x8

I think there's a mistake here -- you say he's rolling 4d10 (a pool of 3+2=5, minus 1 for multiple actions), but he gets 5 numbers.

 

[Imaro]

I think there's a mistake here -- you say he's rolling 4d10 (a pool of 3+2=5, minus 1 for multiple actions), but he gets 5 numbers.

You are right...sorry about that.

 

[Ycore Rixle]

You can play the traditional, adventuring party type fantasy or you can play the leaders of a mercenary band (where there are rules that are elegant and easily grasped for followers), or even the ruling a kingdom level where, again there are rules that take it to a level where you can actually control and maneuver the soldiers, land, wealth, spies, etc. that you control.

As the guy who wrote the Affiliations chapter in the PHB II for D&D 3.5, I was very interested in Reign. I think this sort of play is missing from traditional RPGs. I've run a lot of campaigns over the years, and in every one so far, at least at some point, I needed rules for large-scale organizations to act. War, taxes, declaring holidays, espionage, ruining economies, that sort of thing.

One big difference: in Reign, the emphasis is on the players all banding together to form one company. For example, all the players are pirates, and their company is a pirate ship. In the PHB II, every player could join whatever sort of affiliation he wished. A cleric might be affiliated with his church, while a rogue is associated with a thieves' guild.

A great advantage to company or organization play is that the organization can become the focus of the campaign. Player death can be meaningful but not the stumbling block it is for certain players: now they can be more invested in the company than in their character.

The game I'm working on now includes company play and goes a few steps further. Players with a military company can recruit and train multiple different units to wage war. Players with a shadow company can dispatch assassins, steal tax shipments, run cons that topple kingdoms, etc. And there's player-vs.-player company potential, and multiple company potential... Well, I'll stop plugging now. The point is that Reign does a good job, in my opinion, of opening up an area of play that I've always wanted to see RPGs develop.