Empires in the Dark – Research and Developments
Empires in the Dark – Research and Developments
I picked up a copy of Wrath of the Autarch (thanks again Jason Corley ) and read through Houses of the Blooded and Reign again and I’ve been doing some research on a 4X take on Blades.
I feel like one of the important aspects of a 4X RPG is probably the concept of research and development : researching technologies and developing regions… I for one would certainly like to be able to discover new arts and sciences, and improve my empire’s territories and culture.
Generally, I like the concept of players taking on the roles of regents of a single realm, so that the empire echoes the players’ crew in Blades, which means I’d ideally like a system that can stand up to multiple players cooperating on their empire’s development each season.
I’ve been wondering about the concept of making the empire’s equivalent of Crew Claims act as technology improvements, unlocking access to various regional developments.
There’s a few reasons I dig the concept :
1. Each empire playbook has its own tech tree, explored by taking claims on the empire’s castle map, each claim acting as prerequisites for various region improvements, these make up your empire’s default technology progression.
2. BUT just as in Blades in the Dark, if you really want a claim from another empire playbook, you can have also it, you just have to find a way to take it from someone else (with all that that entails)… and when you do, it may well be the prereq to some weird, new and exciting region improvements.
3. Using Calum Grace’s awesome concept of character-unique claims, it means player character choice effectively unlocks access to certain technologies : a Lurk in the crew could give access to the Thieves Guild or the Spy Network claims, which act as prereqs for certain region improvements
I’m still deciding how to handle resources, which will hopefully decide whether taking Claims should also cost resources or not.
What do you guys think?