How do I create rules for a zone of magical safety using the company rules of REIGN?

Question

In my friend @Magician's game, he's created a shadow-substance called Taint (stolen from Heroes of Horror) which infects communities unless they are protected by "Daylight Crystals" (does what it says on the tin. Diamond shining with artificial daylight.)

These daylight crystals protect a fixed area from the corruption of Taint. However, we're having some difficulty translating this into something which can be modeled in REIGN.

For a given approximation, each crystal can protect a Territory 1 from taint. It's difficult to model taint as an enemy company because it corrupts and is functionally invincible with infinite territory.

How can these very rare crystals be granted importance at the company level and how can they be integrated into a city's expansion?

Answer 1

It's hard to answer without knowing exactly what Taint does, but making some assumptions…

Start by considering Taint to be a base state: something that just is, a part of the world, part of the background assumptions that the Company rules indicate exceptions to.

Effectively, allow Taint to reduce the Territory stat (or Sovereignty, if Taint is a mind-affecting thing) of a Company with land that isn't protected by Daylight Crystals. (This would either be across-the-board for all unprotected Companies, or as special stat-reducing events for specific Companies, depending on how this Taint stuff works in your setting.)

Then, you can model the crystals as Assets (Enchridion p. 104). Treating Taint as the base state of the environment, Daylight Crystals would be an Asset that does something depending on what Taint is. Whatever Taint does, consider the Daylight Crystals Asset to enhance the opposite. If Taint makes people disloyal, the Asset gives +2d when you Train and Levy Troops. If Taint makes people unproductive, then the Asset allows you, once a year, to permanently reduce Treasure by 1 for a permanent increase of 1 to Territory (modelled on "Permanent Underclass", Enchiridion p. 108), which simulates the ability to expand safe holdings by investing in more Daylight Crystals.

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Alternatively, if Taint is a thing that turns villages evil or something dramatic like that, don't model Taint as anything: just run the Company as usual, but make the PCs make a "Installing and Maintaining Crystals" Treasure+Sovereignty roll each month to protect their holdings, failure on which generates a new, small, enemy Company (or two) that will be a thorn in their sides. Think of it as spawning homegrown cults every cycle. Then they can have the fun of tracking them down personally or sending in the army.

Answer 2

I don't think the taint would really be well modeled with company rules (I don't think they were designed to handle everything anyway), but the crystals could have an influence on multiple aspects of the company, from resources (they're virtually priceless), to governance (if the king has these crystals that protect you, you probably do what he says). I'd model the crystals as a significant boost to a company, while the taint is just the taint. It's a setting characteristic, and doesn't have to be modeled using any particular rule set.