[HoE] An inquiry, totally OT but Role Playing related

["Leybourne, Brian" <Brian.Leybourne@airnz.co.nz>]

Hi all.

Not deadlands related, I'm afraid, but I was hoping someone would know a
direction to point me in here.

My DL group want a new challenge (as well as DL, not instead of) so we're
going to play DL fortnightly, and in the alternate fortnights they want to
play something else. Rather than pure roleplaying, they are interested in me
running some kind of conquest "campaign" where the players play super
powers, and use diplomacy, alliances, battle etc to deal with the others and
eventually take over the universe / planet / town / whatever. Something like
mega-RISK I guess, played over months rather than hours.

The genre they're interested in is a kind of sci-fi meets fantasy, so what I
envisioned is something like Silent Death combat (each power can research
and build fighters, carriers, frigates, etc and have battles), but also the
potential to go down to a planets surface and have ground combat there
(using HOE road warriors or Car Wars modified rules I guess) and even army
battles (warhammer 40K perhaps?). I'm not 100% sure where fantasy comes into
that, unless the powers are spacefaring elves, dwarves, undead etc
(warhammer / warhammer 40K). They definitely want something that uses actual
figures rather than pure "in-the-head" roleplaying to provide a contrast to
the concurrent DL RPG.

In between "sessions" I would coordinate with each and handle diplomacy,
research into new troop types and ships and suchlike.

A big project to plan. I have two main problems, and was hoping that such
super minds as those on the DL listserve might have some ideas.

1) I don't really want to have to use three or four different sets of rules
- it would be nice to be able to port one set of rules across space battles,
ground vehicle battles and ground troop battles, while being fun, not too
complicated, and not spend eighteen hours to resolve. Does anyone have any
ideas as to any system that can handle this, and not be overly pathetically
complicated or overly long?

2) There are 4 players, and we'll only have 5 hours or so a fortnight. It's
not much good if two of them spend four hours fighting a big battle, and the
others just have to watch. Somehow, I need to ensure that all four (and me,
if possible!) are involved each time. A possibility might be to have two
battles going concurrently, which I wander between to arbitrate. Any other
ideas as to how this might work?

If anyone has any ideas, email me privately or to the list (it is not
completely OT, it's still RPG related!). Thanks.

Brian "Mucho apprieciated (in advance)" Leybourne.

.-->
"The Web brings people together because no matter what kind of a twisted 
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Brian Leybourne
brian.leybourne@airnz.co.nz
bleybourne@hotmail.com

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