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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sparky McDibben" data-source="post: 9084067" data-attributes="member: 7041430">Yeah, I'm not really talking about using it to simulate the spread of diseases in-game, but rather as a way to model how the various factions in a game behave in a semi-organic way. I do need to track down Curse of the Crimson Throne for another reason, though, so I'll be sure to check out those mechanics! Thanks!Well, invitation accepted! I guess what I find interesting about Pandemic is that it models pretty interestingly geometric-ish progressions without the "aaand you're dead" feeling that actual geometric progression brings. In Pandemic, you play as a group of epidemiologists trying to stop four diseases from spreading and wiping out the globe. On every players turn, more cities (determined by random card draw) get infected. Players move around the board and try to research cures, contain outbreaks, and generally juggle grenades. In addition, when a city hits a certain infection threshold, it triggers an outbreak that infects all nearby cities (potentially triggering cascading outbreaks). There are multiple ways to beat the diseases, and multiple ways to lose. For me, I'd probably set it up so that I have three to four big threats in a sandbox, each of which have certain goals. So let's take the Sparky Boyz! They're a group of orcs who've decided to steal the secrets of inventing from Garl Glittergold. So their goals look like this:Stage 1:1) Capture the gnomish inventor Fuddlestucks Twinkletoes2) Develop Sparky-tek, weapons and armor that give the Sparky Boyz a significant advantage over their foes3) Learn from Fuddlestucks about Garl Glittergold's Beamy Deffgun, the only weapon that can kill Garl GlittergoldStage 2:1) Scout the nearest gnomish community (Chunggus)2) Raid Chunggus and sack the temple of Glittergold3) Find the Big Book of Bits 'N' Bobbins in the templeStage 3:1) Discern the location of the Vault of Garl2) Find out how to bypass the Vault's defendersStage 4:1) Acquire interplanar travel method2) Break into the Vault of Garl3) Steal Garl Glittergold's Beamy DeffgunStage 5:1) Kill Garl Glittergold with his own Beamy DeffgunI'll have to play around with the actual mechanics, but basically, between each PC adventure, you draw 2 - 4 cards. Each suite of cards corresponds to a threat (the Sparky Boyz are diamonds). When you get a card for a given faction / threat, you add ticks to a clock on one of the goals (starting with the Stage 1 goals and proceeding down). So let's say that each goal requires 4 ticks on a clock before it's complete. Once a goal is complete, it adds 1d6 ticks for the DM to spread around to every incomplete goal near it (again, pardon the incomplete mechanics), and triggers a rumor to the PCs that a threat is accelerating their plans. If the PCs intervene (depending on how successful they were at disrupting the threat), they can "rewind the clock," removing ticks from incomplete goals. All this would ideally plug into a faction's responses (see the Vampyramid from Night's Black Agents) that informs how they react to the PCs. Stop their forward progress enough and maybe you can trigger a showdown with the faction, potentially removing them for good after several adventures. It needs work, but that's the core concept.That is a really good idea! Borrowing!That's a good way to think about it! I'll have to check that out!</blockquote>

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