Another aspect of the game I am working on is planar warfare. Within a world players will fight over land and access to resources. But there will also be inter planar warfare through gates. Essentially, a player can attempt to enter a planar gate, and either they will have a % chance of permanent death, or a % chance of permanent inability to travel to that world based on the personal power of their character. For this reason in order to exploit new worlds, powerful players or alliances will be forced in some cases to send through lesser allies and provide them with the resource base to attempt to conquer a world. Or in the case of an empty world race to become the most powerful alliance there.
There is a large chance that a player will attempt to defect from their faction either to go it alone or get a position higer up in another faction. This is a viable strategy because high powered players cannot just gate to any world at any time and smash upstarts. It will either be very risky or very unlikely for the player to succeed in using a gate if they are too powerful. They will have to either be lucky, or outfit a lesser player to take back their investment. And that player also could betray them. Alternatively, they could finance an assault with no intention of ending up with control over that world. It may be better to allow another lesser player to attack the world in revenge just so that potential vassals know that a revolt will be punished harshly even with no chance of regaining what was lost.
Additionally I expect to create recipes and combinations of resources that will only be usable with cross planar resouces. Maybe you need this resource from your world and that from another for a particularly powerful potion, item, spell, enchantment, ritual, et cetera. And possibly certain abilities would be of normal power on one world and great power on another. Consider a monster who can control the minds of other creatures. Creatures of the homeworld may have developed a resistance but those of foreign worlds may not. In some cases the value will merely be a powerful effect. Say a firestorm spell that has a larger aoe and damage than a spell written with the words of power on one world.
There are 2 possible endgames for a round. Either there would be a limit on the number of worlds and whatever alliance conquered them all would be the winner, or new worlds would constantly spawn and alliances would be scored based on their point of most influence. Maybe an alliance controls 10 worlds at its peak and then falls, due to powerful players leaving, or a multi alliance faction attacking all at once and dividing the spoils.
Now the game relies on a few factors. Firstly, that players would be willing to backstab a financier in the hopes of becoming a power themselves. Secondly a player base large enough that a single alliance can't become too strong. Thirdly that there aren't some really good exploits to get passed limitations.
