Suikoden Effect: Giving Players a base through contacts/followers.

[Enforcer84]

In my increasingly fevered attempts at converting consol RPG's To HERO system I am brainstorming one of my favorite cliches. In the Suikoden games (as well as some others) part of your quest is to build an army and a base. You do this by gathering fellow adventurers as well as merchants and specailists to your cause. Then the game generally gives you a spot to develop as your headquarters. The first three games featured castles and the fourth a gigantic ship.

 

This seems really easy to do in HERO. And here's why. The basic land needs to be bought by the players. They put a certain number of points into the base. Then they need to recruit the merchants, specialists, and mercenaries to build up and/or defend the castle. Each merchant has some base points. When they have joined you and you get them home they begin to work on their own little portion of the castle/town/hamlet/starport/whatever. Every couple of adventures or so, when the PC's come back to their home base something new should be added, a shop or two, perhaps a new level, a wall for defense, etc.

 

This opens up a bit of exploration for the heroes to see what's up in the homestead and they can start to become self sufficient, no longer needing to travel to the big city for armor repairs and foodstuffs. Now in the video games this is a one and done scenerio, but in a campaign it could be a series of side adventures on their own. Players who treat their citizens badly might have to find new ones. The shop keepers could require help, giving the GM some minor adventures to run (smash monster, fetch quest, etc.). This also works great if you use mass combat rules. Recruiting armies and getting special units would be great non xp/gp style rewards.

 

Oh well, just thoughts anyone ever do anything like this or at least thought about it? Or am I alone in my insanity.

[Erkenfresh]

Re: Suikoden Effect: Giving Players a base through contacts/followers.

 

That's an incredible idea. The material you get out of it would be limitless. You find a stonemason to build your walls but then he requires certain equipment only made by an engineer etc. The main drawback I could see to this is the party would really need to adventure only in the immediate area of the base, at least until it's self-sufficient. But, that's probably a great way to introduce a new group into the game, handing them little quests they really should do to make a nice castle.

 

I only played Suikoden 1 and it was a great game. I recommend it to anyone who hasn't played it.

[Markdoc]

Re: Suikoden Effect: Giving Players a base through contacts/followers.

 

We did this in a long ago game and it was huge fun. One of the characters started the ball roling by deciding to build a castle. First we had to scrape up all the money to pay for construction (that means adventuring - you don't think we'd work for it, do you?), find the builders, shepherd them carefuly to the castle site and protect them from the Bad Things That Lived In The Woods until they could build enough walls to live without permanent supervision. In the meantime, the others were scouting about and recruiting soldiers, etc.

 

We were almost finished when the Bad Things That Lived In The Woods got organised and came rampaging out in a great horde to burn the lot to the ground, leading to an all-weekend "defend the half-built castle" game. We eventually buried all the dead, hired new workers, repaired and finished the castle just in time for invasion of the Bad Things That Lived In The Woods II: Electric Boogaloo, followed by a series of punitive expeditions on our part to subdue the surrounding wilderness - all the while trying to get enough of an economy up and running to support the castle.

 

It was just about the most fun I think I've ever had roleplaying. You could stat it out, but you equally well could just say: to build a castle (or whatever) you need a master mason, some journeymen and a couple hundred laborers. Oh, and someone to feed them. And...

 

cheers, Mark

[mayapuppies]

Re: Suikoden Effect: Giving Players a base through contacts/followers.

 

....Electric Boogaloo' date=' ...[/quote']

Ah yes, what a great cheesy movie from the 80's. I think I still have my parachute pants somewhere.

 

But, back on topic. This is a fantastic idea and I am certainly going to swipe it for my upcoming campaign. One of my players has been bitten by the Kingdom of Heaven bug and I am certain he is going to want to go Crusadin'

[Glupii]

Re: Suikoden Effect: Giving Players a base through contacts/followers.

 

Question about this Suikoden game. Was it ever released as a PC game or is this a console only game?

[Enforcer84]

Re: Suikoden Effect: Giving Players a base through contacts/followers.

 

Playstation & PS2 games. 1-4 have made it over here the fifth installment is hitting Japan. Sometime soon?

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Suikoden Effect: Giving Players a base through contacts/followers.

 

Apriori Premise: I'm currently playing the first of four Suikoden's on my PS One (yeah, the little revised one, got the hot LCD screen and e'y'thing.) I also have 3 & 4 ready to go on my PS2. They released Suikoden 4.5 as Suikoden Tactics, but it's getting mixed reviews. Just an FYI.

 

On the campaign front: I'm doing this exact thing in my Ravenloft campaign, except the design is in part the massive ancestral (haunted) mansion which is located conviently next to the Badly Infested Woods of Pain and Death . Which is on the road which leads to the Town Where the Plot Is Being Forwarded. So far, everyone loves the design, and they're very early on. This is the first campaign I hope to completely flip into HERO, in fact, so this is a great thread for me to hold me nose on.

 

The concept is that the mansion is amorphous; it's as big as it needs to be and holds as many people as it needs to hold. The PCs own about a hundred acres around themselves and can move in and out of the area fairly freely. Until I let a BBEG opt to get involved, but that's half the point. Beneath the mansion is a massive dungeon, because it seemed like a good idea at the time. At the bottom of the dungeon is THE TRUTH about the nature of the overplot. By the way; the dungeon hates you. Just a fair warning.

 

So I'm going to grant them land (which is haunted) for "free" and then as they wish to burn CP allow them to add followers, etc., and (as Mark said) off they go adventuring to make the money they need to do the repairs to get the people into the house to forward the plot. And oh yes. The house hates you. And your dead uncle is in the study. And there's Ghouls in your basement, a locked door and a ritual stone altar with a blood caked Athame on it.

 

No pressure.

[Enforcer84]

Re: Suikoden Effect: Giving Players a base through contacts/followers.

 

Oh yea, Suikioden Tactics, it will arrive from EB Games on Saturday I think.

Ayup. I loveme this game world. It's unique in that each game covers one or two areas on the world so the various kingdoms have a bit more heft to them than the average consol RPG. That and the sheer number of chracters many who appear again and again giving the game continuity and background mysteries to work on. LOVE THEM.

II is considered the masterpiece, III is my overall favorite, IV has been maligned a bit, but I enjoyed it tremendously. 5 looks beautiful so far. We'll see.