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Old 02-21-2019, 11:11 AM   #1
FeiLin
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default GURPS Economy (Simulator)

Are there any GURPS accessories that are able to simulate economies?

I have a gritty but high fantasy campaign (TL likely around 3/4+1/2, based on stuff the "regular" Fantasy series with a splash of DF for inspiration, mostly), with everything from simple villages of dozens of inhabitants to sprawling metropolises of hundreds of thousands even millions. What I'm looking for are ways of simulating the economy of the campaign.

Ideally, I'd want to have the ability to "zoom" according to players power level. While not every village needs be represented, I still want to make them feel they're contributing to the world by saving a village from raiders or sacking it themselves, and seeing their consequences affect the world (so somewhat small regions should preferably be represented as a "unit" or such). At the same time, I want them to see the change when they negotiate trade deals between cities or nations, levy and lead armies that clash with others for power. Or if they decided to domesticate the huge oxe-like beasts for use as labor in the fields, that definitely helps the local population, or if they use them to establish a trade network by taming the dragons in the north for express flight transport, that should boost the country economy.

I would like to merge these layers seamlessly with a "continuous scroll", so that I don't have to define every single village to see the country, and conversely have a region defined by the country parameters and break down the parts. At the top level, it would be great to be able to define policies for how the country is run, and change from "democratic low tax" to "militaristic authoritarian high tax" society. I'd also have the economic system as an input for the Mass Combat system, so the armies are impacted by and impact the society.

I'd want to look at the land in the terms of resources and it's quantity and quality, and be able to quantify that into monetary terms and connect the different parts. It'd be great to define that "now that the undead blight is upon the land, the population's productivity is down by 30% and the resources have withered away by 50%".



I have looked into this, and I think there's some inspiration from other games. Notably, the ASOIAF RPG (Chronicle) has a holdings system, but that's focused around an individual family. That's not bad, and having that level of detail where every building provides a bonus would be awesome, but I'd like to aggregate that as well.

I haven't found that much about that in GURPS, but it seems that City Stats has some stats for cities. Are these relevant?

I also saw that Fantasy seems to have some information on how societies work, but is it an actual system or more like a description?

Of course, it doesn't have to be specifically fantasy, so long as it can be used for that purpose (or adapted with not too much hassle).



All right, that's quite a lot of wishes, so thought I'd check for some inspiration and advice from the Community before I start crafting some on my own. Any input is very welcome at this step!
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Old 02-21-2019, 11:36 AM   #2
tetrahedron
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Toronto, ON, Canada
Default Re: GURPS Economy (Simulator)

Not to sell you on anything but Mailanka created a document that does just this, but for a science fiction setting, though I hope we will see a reduced TL option. He talks about it here: http://mailanka.blogspot.com/2017/06...ument-and.html

You can look to City Stats, Boardroom and Curia, Space and Infinity Worlds for bits and pieces, which is where I started out when looking at this... but yeah, Mailanka is the man!

T

Edit: He actually addresses it here too: http://mailanka.blogspot.com/2019/01...ment.html#more

Last edited by tetrahedron; 02-21-2019 at 01:41 PM. Reason: More comments
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Old 02-21-2019, 01:17 PM   #3
Stormcrow
 
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Default Re: GURPS Economy (Simulator)

GURPS isn't really built to simulate anything. If you look too closely at the "economics" of GURPS, you'll find that it doesn't actually add up. Imagine what you want the economy to look like, and GURPS will give you tools to let players interact with it, but there's nothing behind the scenes making it function. It functions by GM fiat.

City States is pretty much the same. It invites you to take the city you've imagined and express it in rules terms with a series of stats. It won't help you design why the city is the way it is, just how to express it in rules (and player-facing rules only) once you've decided how it works.

Fantasy gives you a lot of good information about how realistic societies were put together and how the introduction of various kinds of magic and monsters might change that. But it doesn't present a system that generates it all for you or sets it running while your players wander around in it.

That's not to say that you can't give your players zoomed-in details of any part of your world you want or show them the society-wide effects of their actions; it just means you'll have to figure out those details and effects yourself. GURPS will happily tell you how to put those details and effects into rules, but you have to figure out what they are yourself.
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Old 02-21-2019, 01:31 PM   #4
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Default Re: GURPS Economy (Simulator)

I'm running a fantasy campaign set in a TL1 world of animistic magic with multiple humanoid races. A lot of it is about trade, and lately the PCs have been buying houses and a larger ship. But there really wasn't support for this in GURPS. I took the basic figures for wealth and income levels and made everything consistent with them, but other than that I did my own economic modeling by adopting simple approximations.
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Old 02-21-2019, 01:33 PM   #5
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Default Re: GURPS Economy (Simulator)

If you want something you can use as a.starting place you can adapt and build from, you can do much worse than HarnManor.

http://columbiagames.com/cgi-bin/que...roduct_id=4751

Caveats:

1. The native setting is low magic with some assistance to the TL 3 two-field agriculture provided by local priests and priestesses of a fertility goddess, mostly to prevent blights and such.
2. The merchant system is strongly based on the Harn's "money," which draws a lot from how things sorta worked in the Middle Ages. So, there's not a lot of currency in circulation, and a lot of barter for goods take place, as well as for services provided "in kind."

That means it takes some work to figure out how to adapt it to a DF setting, because those tend to swim in currency.

You also need to carefully consider the impact of certain spells that appear in various GURPS magic systems. GURPS Fantasy discusses that, a bit, as noted.
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Old 02-21-2019, 02:11 PM   #6
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Default Re: GURPS Economy (Simulator)

I've been playing with how the economies work recently, in some of the low tech examples I've worked through the best measure I've come across is "how many non farmers/hunters/fishermen etc does the settlement support"

Also low tech 3 has some possibly useful content.
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Old 02-21-2019, 04:04 PM   #7
Polydamas
 
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Default Re: GURPS Economy (Simulator)

Quote:
Originally Posted by FeiLin View Post
Are there any GURPS accessories that are able to simulate economies?

I have a gritty but high fantasy campaign (TL likely around 3/4+1/2, based on stuff the "regular" Fantasy series with a splash of DF for inspiration, mostly), with everything from simple villages of dozens of inhabitants to sprawling metropolises of hundreds of thousands even millions. What I'm looking for are ways of simulating the economy of the campaign.
Some of the GURPS Traveller suppliments have trade rules, focused on 1880s-style small merchant steamstarships.

Keep in mind that systems like this tend to be 'hanger queens' (fun to imagine, too much work to use in a game or to keep the players interested) and that things like starting wealth, wages vs. cost of living, etc. fall apart when you try to use them to model an economy, because they were not designed for that, they were designed to give a quick answer to "what cool gear can I buy" and get on with the adventure. Starting wealth was chosen to give characters an amount of equipment which "felt right" not to represent the average value of a single young adult's portable assets.
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Old 02-21-2019, 06:24 PM   #8
Kax
 
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Default Re: GURPS Economy (Simulator)

Aria Worlds also does this, and explicitely allows scaling play from individuals to states and back to individuals. However, it's as much a toolkit as GURPS is so you'll have to do a bunch of work yourself.

And it's a heavy read.

But I don't know a published game that does an economy the way you want.

Most stuff like that, make it look like you're taking account of the economy as a whole but do local and aggregate larger effects by keeping track of changes and GM fiat, much, much easier.

Unless your players are economists, of course.
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Old 02-21-2019, 06:33 PM   #9
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Default Re: GURPS Economy (Simulator)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kax View Post
[URL="https://www.amazon.com/Aria-Worlds-Canticle-Monomyth/dp/096459031X"]

(SNIP,)

Unless your players are economists, of course.
If your players are economists, make them do the work.

Table-top RPGs are supposed to be collaborative. :)
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Old 02-22-2019, 08:16 AM   #10
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Default Re: GURPS Economy (Simulator)

Quote:
Originally Posted by tshiggins View Post
If your players are economists, make them do the work.

Table-top RPGs are supposed to be collaborative. :)
If I recall correctly, Ken Hite's first Traveller campaign was for a group of economics or business students at University of Chicago. Apparently, that was a bad match of player skill and setting assumptions, as the Traveller PCs promptly began applying real-world business practice to Traveller free traders and got very rich, instead of engaging in Han Solo-esque hijinks as expected.

Then he switched over to Call of Cthulhu, and that worked out all right.
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