Succession- Does Heroes of Might and Magic work as a role-playing freekriegspiel board game?

 

Succession

It’s not really a Role-Playing Game, and not exactly and Area-control board game. So what is it?

Succession is my highly experimental project that combines free kriegspiel style role-playing and D&D fantasy with area control inspired by Heroes of Might and Magic and Dominions 6.

On the surface, this is a fairly straightforward board game. Each player begins with a home region, which can hold 3 buildings. They have a maximum of 3 Retinue characters at one time.

Each building can be used once, and each character in your Retinue can be moved and take one action. Each of these is a Turn. Once every player has taken turns activating characters and buildings, then the Round ends and all assets reset, available to be used again.

There is also the Command action, a free action which does not end your Turn. This can be used to build a building or hire a character to your Retinue. The other free action is Raise Troops. Your home region may raise Elite Troops, while provinces you rule may raise Militia troops.

The goal of the game is to prove yourself the worthy successor to the Old Empire. 
Seems simple right?

But how Succession differs drastically is the use of a Referee in place of traditional rules.

Players have absolute freedom when it comes to what characters they can try to hire, what buildings to build and what actions they can attempt.

Monster hunters could capture monsters roaming the lands and build a regiment of them to fight in the army.

Thieves can creep into foreign lands and steal magical artifacts, magical artifacts that your own Smiths, temples and wizard’s towers can create.

Each character and building has a level, and it increases whenever they take an action, from

Basic-Advanced-Expert-Master.

The Referee has the last word on whether an action succeeds.

My players tried to persuade the local elves, dwarves and hobbits in the nearby territories to join their empire peacefully, without needing to risk war. But their meager gifts, and the low skill of their ambassadors mostly failed to impress the locals.

Some players started the game with characters that were Doctors, diplomats and court fools.

Reluctant to spend their singe Command action to replace them, they instead set about using them as best they could, with entertaining results.

Ultimately, this style of game places tremendous responsibility on the Referee.

They must fairly adjudicate actions and conflicts between not just the monsters and denizens of the Realm, but between individual players.

So far we have completed one full Round of gameplay. I am curious to continue the experiment and see how viable this bizarre hybrid really is.