So, during the course of my No Room For A Wallflower campaign, a city got blown up, and now the players are dealing with a refugee crisis. They're not in charge de jure, but they definitely are in charge de facto, so I thought it might be interesting to mechanicalize the various problems their suddenly-larger settlement has, and have the players choose where to allocate resources. I'd love some opinions on what I came up with, whether you're familiar with Lancer as a system or not.
So, I have six clocks I'm keeping track of: Manufacturing, Logistics, Morale, Shelter/Infrastructure, Healthcare, and Rations, which I loosely adapted from this neat little mini-expansion for The Sprawl called Haven (unfortunately I can't remember who wrote it). Each clock is split into quarters, and my thought is that each quarter filled gives some tangible benefit, or that each unfilled clock gives some tangible detriment.
I've got some ideas I like for some of them, but I'm not completely certain about the others. Without getting too into the weeds on the exact mechanics involved:
Manufacturing: instead of recovering everything on a long rest by default, each quarter of Manufacturing filled lets you recover about a quarter of the resources you'd normally get (of your choice from a list). I like this idea, I think it'll really make things feel like the players are low on resources. (For those who know Lancer, you can recover all stress and strain OR your core power OR all your repair cap and HP OR all your limited and broken systems). My players have told me they really like having to play around the systems that involve managing their resources, so I think they'll enjoy this.
Logistics: for each quarter filled, you can treat another clock as one quarter fuller. It sort of makes sense for Logistics, but I'm worried this is the obvious clock to fill first at the expense of any other.
Morale: for each quarter unfilled, the DM gets to make things harder for one of the NPC teams out there (of which there are probably 3-4). I debated instead making the town harder to defend, but I feel like messing with the NPC teams might be better? They also have the ability to fill clock segments if they roll well.
Shelter/Infrastructure: for each quarter filled, the players get to make things easier for one of the NPC teams. I was struggling with just Shelter, but I like this dichotomy with Morale, so I added "Infrastructure" to the title.
Healthcare: if this clock isn't added to this mission, the players make a roll for the town doctor that's harder the emptier this clock is; failure indicates loss of life in the population, or maybe a beloved NPC gets sick. This was my attempt to make Logistics not just be the obvious thing to fill first, but I do kind of like it.
Rations: the only thing I've been able to think of is that it's just Healthcare again.
Thoughts? Opinions? Have I gone mad with power? Is this overcomplicating things?
