Sorry for not responding sooner, but I wanted to read your post with tought, been busy lately.
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Originally Posted by militarist
Some ideas....
ORDEALS can be like quest, and as reword for it's completion, you can get direct - item, etc or indirect (boon points, which reflect how Pantokrator treats specific nation and then how it affects all future boons to this player) benefit. And they could be of different level of complexity ,and reward will be different. In this case, Pantokrator would be able to give larger range of boons , for example HINNOM asks for HARD ORDEAL, saying I need something to swim for my army.
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Intresting idea, but IMHO you should always strive to keep the rules as simple as possible, especially for a format already cluttered with rules such as this. Also, each ordeal that I have to design is more work for me and a potential balance problem (because each easy/hard/ etc.. ordeal would have to balanced against each other ordeal of the same type of the each nation).
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Originally Posted by militarist
That can be pretty good for Hinnom, if his capital has 2-3 water provinces around, and some dimoplacy...Anyway it can be gamechanging to give him that. So, understanding it (or just to improve quality of items, for example completed Easy ordeal gives lvl 0 item, normal lvl 2, hard level 4, impossible level 6 an it should depand on how easy or hard this ordeal for THIS SPEcific player, and how useful could be such iem for him). Rejection ot inability to complete it (for example - impossible ordeal can be - to get by war some provinces which are belong to stronger neighbor) can have or not have consiquences, regarding of Pantokrator decision.
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Well, there is a reason why I designed the Ordeals before the game even started. There is a variable that I want to eliminate and that variable is me. That's why I have made all these charts where I randomly roll for the stuff granted, that's why I will release all data I used at the end of the game. The fewer decisions I make on the spot, in the game, the less chance there is for me to favour some nation over another. It's very easy, for example, to grow symphatetic towards the underdog and favour him more. That would not be fair, it would the equivalent of that effing "hit-the-leader" shell in Mario Kart.
Hence, I rely on charts and dice instead of me. Charts and dice are fair 100%, I'm like only 90-95% fair at best. My years as a tabletop GM have taught me it's really easy to subconsiously make decisions that favour some player more than another, no matter how fair you are determined to be.
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Originally Posted by militarist
For example, I finished a war and would like to devote the next war to my god, what should I do?
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Your suggestion is quite thematic, but there is a problem with a player deciding what his ordeal would entail. Like in your example, what if the player is going to wage war in any case, but just wants to get some free favour while he's "at it", so to speak. Sure, the pantokrator could tailor it to be something more intresting, but see the problem of making a lot of "on spot" decision I detailed in the above paragraph.