Mailanka's Musings -- GURPS Content Post

[Mailanka]

Psi Wars triumphantly returns with a first look at the Alliance! Today, I kick off the new series with a look at the Alliance as a whole, including the infrastructure, culture, government, security and history of the Alliance.

[Mailanka]

Today, I have a Patreon post for you (only $1!): A modular robot design system, which is meant to create robots with similar prices and power requirements to those in Ultra-Tech.

[Rigil_Kent]

Damn, dude. I spent entirely too much time reading through the Psi-Wars setting ... and man, I kind of want to play in it! Very well done. I especially like the whole Communion thing - the avatar stuff specifically made me think that something like that would be really, really cool for Holy Warriors in Dungeon Fantasy.

[Mailanka]

Today, another Patreon Post, this time announcing the Poll Results of the Rebellion of Grist poll last month. Available to all $5+ Patrons

Originally Posted by Rigil_Kent

Damn, dude. I spent entirely too much time reading through the Psi-Wars setting ... and man, I kind of want to play in it! Very well done. I especially like the whole Communion thing - the avatar stuff specifically made me think that something like that would be really, really cool for Holy Warriors in Dungeon Fantasy.

If you ever do get a chance to play it, please let me know how it went!

[Mailanka]

Another Patreon Post today: Yesterday, I had the poll results of Grist, and today, I have the actual preview documents for Mech Mob, the fractious and idealistic resistance movement that fights for the independence of Grist. Available to all $3+ patrons, including both the preview documents, and a design journal regarding my thoughts on their design.

[Mailanka]

Continuing with the Alliance, I bring you the Senate, which is the second time I've looked at a Senate in Psi-Wars, but this time they totally mean it! This looks at the ultimate governing body of the Alliance, where all its members go to air their grievances and to plot the restoration of the Federation.

[ericthered]

I hope this isn't off topic, but I've been looking through the notes on orphan of the stars, and you reference that city stats has mechanics for improvements. And yet I can't really them in city stats. Could you give me a hand? I'm trying to figure out how much it costs for a bunch of Romans to extend their wall...

[Mailanka]

The State of the Patreon: A look at how my blog is doing, and a plan for the next month. Plus, I hit my next funding goal!

Originally Posted by ericthered

I hope this isn't off topic, but I've been looking through the notes on orphan of the stars, and you reference that city stats has mechanics for improvements. And yet I can't really them in city stats. Could you give me a hand? I'm trying to figure out how much it costs for a bunch of Romans to extend their wall...

Of course it isn't off-topic :)

Pyramid #3-54 "Social Engineering," the article "City Management" by Matt Rigsby, page 30

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Of course it isn't off-topic :)

Pyramid #3-54 "Social Engineering," the article "City Management" by Matt Rigsby, page 30

Awesome. Thanks. I'm really loving Orphan of the stars, possibly because it ends up being so relevant to my game!

I'm a little curious about the decision to use the military budget from city stats for everything. 5% sounds a little low for an entire civil budget, and it certainly doesn't line up with my taxes! </joke> Any reasoning here?

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Awesome. Thanks. I'm really loving Orphan of the stars, possibly because it ends up being so relevant to my game!

I'm a little curious about the decision to use the military budget from city stats for everything. 5% sounds a little low for an entire civil budget, and it certainly doesn't line up with my taxes! </joke> Any reasoning here?

Clearly, MBF doesn't cover all taxes coming in to a city. You're doing basic maintenance, paying administrative staff and so on. I have no information on that value, or what would be a "safe" or "sustainable" amount. I also, personally, find the MBF a bit overly arbitrary in that it's focused "on the military." I see no reason why a city wouldn't hurt its economyby spending, say, 99% of your income on civic projects, so long as it only spent 0.5% on the military, but suddenly be economically crushed if it dropped taxes to 20% and spent all of that money on military forces. What we're really looking for, then, is the "surplus" beyond sustained expenses that a city can spend.

What is that value? Without creating a new one, MBF is the closest that we have and I believe other works treat it as the total surplus, but I could be wrong (I cannot find a reference right now, but I'm also not looking particularly hard right now). I would argue that if one had a budgetary excess of 20% that one spent on monuments or advanced laboratories or extreme propaganda, that this would harm the economy as much as spending it on guns and tanks. It's just the "excess economic value."

I suspect City Stats was written with the only other Big Strategic GURPS Gameplay in mind, namely mass combat. Between defense and MBF, you have a pretty good platform from which to play a very large, strategic wargame using GURPS as your base (which is no doubt its intention). If your game is nothing but mass combat, then the question you want to answer is "How much of my taxes can I spend on mass combat." MBF answers that for you. If you want to expand that to include works like City Management, or the broader politics of a work like Orphan, where you want to force your players to choose guns and butter, then you need to answer the question "How much can I spend on military forces and/or civic improvements," and to me, it seems that the answer must be the same: MBF.