Campaign Mode

First off, just picked up the stakes and moved to a small town in Washington. Basically I just needed to get away for a while. This might not be the smartest thing I've ever done, but then again it just might be. Certaintly good to be away, and good to be living with my old roommate again. We'll see how it goes I guess...

In terms of what to do next, from the beginning I wanted a set of campaign rules, so that characters can use the same party from game to game. I had the idea that instead of the typical RPG thing, where parties get stronger over time and eventually become invincible (i.e. D&D, Necromunda, Final Fantasy, and pretty much every other RPG I can think of), parties will eventually break down over time (i.e. what would happen in real life if you had a party go to war and not recieve reinforcements). I posted to a new forum recently (Eastern Fringes), so I'll see if I get a response to that, having already tried The Forge (got lots of responses, but not any that really fixed my problems).

Here are the various ideas I've been having for how to simulate the gradual meltdown of the party:
-The party can only lose X games, then they are destroyed
-Each character can die in battle X times, then they remain dead
-Each time a character dies in battle, they become weakened (such as get -5 HP)
-If a character dies in battle, they have a % chance of dying
-If a party is annihilated in a battle, it causes major problems (such as each character has an additional 50% chance of dying)

Here is what I have to simulate skill advancemnet:
-Each time you play, no matter what you gain X advancements for your party
-Each time you play, you get a random number of advancements
-Each character gets 1 advancement per game (or a random chance of one)
-Additional advancements are given for performing particular actions, for winning the game, for losing the game, or for fighting more powerful opponents
-XP is given each game (instead of direct level-ups), and it requires more and more XP per level of advancement (ie 5 XP to level 2, 10 to level 3, etc)

I guess I have 3 worries about what is going to happen. First, I worry that this is going to create a death cycle, where the player who wins the first game will keep getting better, and the loser will keep getting weaker, so that really only the first game is any fun. Second, I worry that either players will never retreat, or will retreat too easily. Finally, I worry that people will just do stupid things in the game because it earns them XP (I could win this game in 2 turns, but I think I'll spread it out to 5 and keep having my mage use XP boost).

Don't know what's going to work, figure I'll bounce ideas off friends and the forum(s?), and see what rises to the surface.

Simon

“We are all trying to go to America. Why would you want to leave America and come to Namibia?” – the Namibian girl at the concert