Abstract ressource manaement system plug-in for tabletop RPGs, with medieval-tech bia

[Peter Knutsen]

Sorry, the Subject line ran out of space, missing 2 characters (and with a few typos):

Abstract resource management system plug-in for tabletop RPGs, with medieval-tech bias?


What's actually needed for this to be complete and comprehensive?

Well, some RPG systems use point-based character creation. GURPS, Hero System, BESM, Sagatafl. Some systems can be said to be analogous to this, even though they don't use points, such as FUDGE, and some other systems, maybe Storyteller, may have something vaguely similar in character creation.

Thus, one very valuable element of such a system is that t can interact with player choices during character creation, a process in which the player has some points that he may spend freely. So we need to be able to assign point costs to traits, such as starting with hirelings, or owning ressource-generating facilities like mines, farms or cities.

Different RPG systems use different scales. Some use tight scales like BESM and Hero System. Others use coarse-grained non-point currencie such as Gift and Double Gift, or Minor Virtues and Major Virtues. I think it is more reasonable to use a fine-grained costing system, so that there is no trouble for those who utilize fine-grained RPG systems (such as GURPS and Sagatafl) and so that eveyrone who uses less fine-grained systems can simply decide on a division factor, e.g. 2 points in this system equals 1 Hero System point.

Secondly, we cannot assume non-existence of specific skills. Some RPG systems have many skills, so the least harmful assumption is the positive one, the one that says yes, there might well be a skill for being good at X, and so we design accordingly.


Thirdly, what is it that is actually wanted? Over in the other thread, in the GURPS forum, one poster, hal, wants very detailed material tied in with real-world stats, specifically farmland acreage.

Being able to have that as a sort of appendix would be nice, but I'm much more interested in an abstract system that yet is not wildly subjective, and that has some transparency, and which gives the users a reasonable idea of scale, e.g. you know whether your knight's manor has farmland that is most reasonably measured in square meters, or most rasonably accounted for in square kilometers.

A three-part division could be into Manpower, Facilities and Commodities.

Facilities produce Commodities, but only if supplied with Manpower.

Manpower is that which provides work. One possibility I've come up with is to divide Manpower into five categories:
Labour
Crafts
Transportation
Administrative
That's four types, that can be switched around by the leader (or his desinated deupty) character at reasonable intervals, e.g. monthly.

Labour produces grunt work, at farms, or in mines, logging camps, so the important things to know, apart from social stats (Morale, Loyalty) is how strong and fit they are, and how much they can work, e.g. zombies who can see in the dark, and can work 24 hours a day, are better than Humans who can only work 10 hours a day 6 days a week and only in daylight (or supplied with plentiful lamp oil and torchlight).

To a large extent, labourers are simply a multiplier, e.g. Ogre labourers are x3 as good as Human labourers because of strength, zombie labourers are x5 as good because they can work 24/7 and see in the dark, and are a bit stronger. So this multiplier is used to derive labour points.


Crafts is skilled labour, carpenters, stone masons, blacksmiths, and so forth. Craftsmen can to some extent suprvise labourers. What we primarily need to know about these is how skilled they are, and they can probably be classified in a very coarse-grained manner into journeymen, masters and grand masters.

Transportation is anything that can move stuff around, ox carts, horse carts, human carriers, various boats. It is needed for a good "empire", whether a small busines empire consting of a farm, a mine, a smeltery and a blacksmith's workshop, or an actual large kingdom with hundred of thousands of square kilometers of land.

Administration is clerks of various types, record keepers, accountants, scribes, judges, lawyers. Like transportation they are needed to run an empire, but fulfil different functions. On a personal level I'd also very much like for this abstract system to accomodate illiterate administrators who use mnemotechniques instead of written records, to simulate the proudly illiterate Keltic druids of my Ärth setting. These are much harder to grow, since it takes longer to teach mnemotecniques than to teach literacy, but function in somewhat different ways (I'm thinking cost to employ is lower, since they don't need wax tables, abaci, ink and parchment)


Facilities require manpower to work, Labourers or Craftsmen, and might also require Administrators. Additional Administrator and Transportation Manpower is required to connect facilities, depending on distance and terrain type. For instance, the distance between the Mine/Smelter and the Blacksmith might be 300 km of wilderness, which is a long distance. Eventually the ruling character has a road built, so that now the distance becomes smaller, 300 km of road instead of 300 km of wilderness, and so less Transportation Manpower is required to handle that connection.

Facilities are one thing, Potential Facilities are another. These are placed that can be built into Facilities if desired, at the cost of Manpower (for the build duration) and Commodities.

Some Potential Facilties are plentiful, for instance in addition to actual Farm Facilities of various types (Farm, Farming Village, Farmstead, Slave Farming Villa), there will be many places that are Forested Farmland, which turns into Farmland when cleared, or Swampy Farmland that turns into Farmland when drained (or at least Wet Farmland - smaller continous drainage efforts may be required, on top of the large-scale one time effort).

Other Potential Facilities may be rarer or nonexisent. For instance there might be only two place in the Duchy where the rock is rich in iron ore, one already turned into an Iron Mine Facility, leaving the other as a Potential Iron Mine. And in Denmark (ignoring Bornholm, and the Swedish parts that used to be a part of Denmark) there simply are no Quarries or Potential Quarries, so if mason-quality stone is requied, it must be imported (or the ruler must conquer land htat contains Quarries or Potential Quarries).


To be continued...

[Peter Knutsen]

Some Facilities cannot be built, I think. Towns and cities are not built by ruler fiat, but rather evolve gradually - and usually completely naturally or nearly so - along trade routes, and especially where trade routes cross, or in important administrative centers (Rome, the administrative center of the Catholic Church during most of the middle ages).

So these cannot be built, but can exist and be bought during character creation, and rulers probably should be able to take steps to encourage them to grow (provided they are already htere) or shrink (encouraging emigation).

Large Facilities like Towns and Cities can have lesser Facilities added to them, though, a bit like in Civilization and similar computer games. Add a Harbour to encourage trade, or a Major Temple to achieve various social effects.

These Lesser Facilities can also be located seperately, far from Towns and Cities, and can eventually function as the nucleus around which a Town grows (eventually a City), although rarely if ever within the lifespan of a single Human character, unless he has some form of supernatural life extension.


What about Commodities?

In the other thread, I proposed these five:
Food (including drink and clothes and other total necessities)
Soft building materiakls (wood, rubble, wattle-and-daub)
Hard building materials (stone, concrete, for cathedrals, fortresses and so forth)
Luxuries (jewelry, expensive cloth, high-class foods, mandatory foods like fish in areas that have religion-derived "fish day" or -weeks)
Wargear

Tools should perhaps be added, or Wargear could be generalized into Tools.

Food is the basic of any empire, small or large. You have to have enough food to feed everyone, otherwise nothing runs. Either grow it yourself via Food-producing Facilities, or else import it (usually trading for Luxuries, maybe for Tools/Wargear), or go forth and loot it.

Soft and Hard Building materials may seem an arbitrary distinction, but they vary in utility, and to some extent in social class. A peasant wouldn't want to live in a stone brick home, and a nobleman would rather die than live in wattle-and-daub home no matter how large and multi-story it is.


In addition to being put to work in Facilities to produce Commodities, Manpower can also be put to work in other ways, sometimes in Facilities, sometimes in an abstract place, e.g. Administrative Manpwoer can be put to work inventing new magic spells, or making mundane innovations like improve agriculture.


A spatial map of the empire is required. Even if the empire is merely some Facilities placed in land formally owned by somone else, e.g. a feudal lord, it is still necessary to know the distances between Facilities, for the purpose of calculating the required Transportation Manpower.

Obviously any ruler would want Facilities located as closely together as possible, but that isn't always possible.



Feedback on this outline is greatly appreciated...