GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

Organizations
Undertake our greatest works
And greatest follies

— Some beret-wearing radical

Suppose you want to get organized . . . I mean, really organized. You have GURPS Social Engineering for all your scheming and influence-peddling, and GURPS Mass Combat for when you lead your army to victory. But that skips Step 2 – the one that comes between "I talk to a few guys" and "I achieve world domination," the part where you arrange your people into a hierarchy and figure out a way to pay for your legions.

That's where GURPS Boardroom and Curia comes in. It provides a systematic way to define the vital statistics of organizations, much as GURPS City Stats does for cities. (In fact, the working title was GURPS Organization Stats, but that seemed too boring – like something created by a bureaucracy – so we changed it.) At a glance, you can figure out a group's size and wealth, the resources it can bring to bear, and exactly how cohesive it is and how loyal its members are.

It doesn't stop there, though. Boardroom and Curia also covers tasks for and pertaining to organizations, including how to create them, run them, and use and abuse their resources. It elaborates on how organizations work as Patrons, Allies, and Enemies for PCs. And of course it provides a whole chapter of examples, from a 15th-century bank to a 22nd-century biotech company – including some unusual ones, like a superhero team and a Cabal brotherhood.

Remember, SJ Games brought you Illuminati – we know this stuff! You can trust us. And if you don't, well, don't you at least want to read the organizational handbook?

—

Store Link: http://www.warehouse23.com/products/SJG37-0151

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

Interesting. Gonna have to scope that out.

Thanks for mentioning it; I wouldn't have known it existed otherwise. :)

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

Oh man, perfect for my upcoming GURPS Dark*Matter game (which is very much like Illuminati)! Does this kind of replace Illuminati or is that older book still useful?

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

Not that familiar with Illuminati but I still feel safe enough saying no. The example organizations are interesting but mostly included as examples. No comprehensive coverage of anything.

Now, if you want to be able to compare the relative incomes of Cosimo Medici and Al Capone it's covered. :)

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

Does this volume include any details on using the resulting organizations with GURPS Social Engineering: Pulling Rank?

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

I've already statted up a thieves' guild I've been making for a few weeks (what is a fantasy game world without a thieves' guild, unless Greyhawk isn't out yet?). It's pretty handy. I had the key stats done in about 15 minutes.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

Wellll... I do note that the Index lists one mention of Pulling Rank... and the page it mentions also happens to be one of the sample pages offered.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

Oh, it's silly to assume I would check the preview, Steven. (Second time tonight I could have answered my own question by clicking a provided link.)

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

That's okay; I love those kinds of questions, because they're so easy to answer! :-)

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me.
Happy birthday dear meeee.
Happy birthday to me.

Seriously, one of my favorite things is incorporating cities, nations, and organizations into a game and rules support for these sorts of things is probably my favorite part of GURPS.

I'm going to have to peruse the rules for a bit to see, but I'm hoping I can kitbash this, some pyramid articles, Social Engineering, and City Stats to make a useable nation-state ruleset.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

What does red taste like and how many meeples can you get by trading it to the Borg? :-0

Also, YAY! It's out.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

I think this is the first 4E release where I didn't have a clue what it was about from just the title.

Only had a chance to quickly scan through it, but I like what I see so far.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

This book was pretty cool and one I wanted for awhile, pretty much since City Stats.
The Rash modifier is perfect for some silly games, applicable in others too but more fun with slapstick in mind.
Was surprised to see the Green Lantern Corps mentioned by name.
That get a legal pass as a reference or something?
I liked the variety of organizations in the sample chapter.

Overall I would say its about as useful as City stats and glad it referenced other works. The Contact seems a bit off and Patron cost.
Also need to see how it meshes with the Captains Boat article.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

Hmm... yes...

*steeples fingers*

This will do quite nicely. Quite nicely indeed.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

*eyes the recent release*
*eyes budget*
*shakes fist in the air* CURSE YOU, RED BARON! </snoopy>

Yeah, yet another item for my wish list I didn't expect to get released. This would work wonders for my Marvel Reboot project, particularly guys like Green Goblin, Baron Zemo, and Baron von Strucker, not to mention the Kingpin....

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

So City Stats, Social Engineering, and Boardrooms and Curia are all infrastructure modeling aids. Can they be stretched to cover larger political formations such as kingdoms, nation-states, or stellar empires?

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

There may be some thin spots but I think so.
City Stats can handle habitats and larger government models with broad strokes.
Boardroom and Curia can handle companies, govt agencies, etc regardless of size but does not handle populations and such. So the two are compatible with minimal overlap.
Social Engineering then handles the negotations and politics itself.
The missing piece which could be hand waived but I would like to see is raw resource and devolpment. That covers how much food you need and what is required at any given TL (the tech series and Urban Magic help some) and mining, lumber other resource from the land.
I think merchant trade income still has room for a book as well but the above works for anything but a merchant campaign.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

I don't think it replaces GURPS Illuminati, but it's been many years since I last read it, so I really have no idea whether or not they overlap at all, to say nothing of the extent of any overlap. It's a generic book about organizations, very similar to City Stats. It doesn't get deeply into conspiracies, if that's what you're after.

Albuquerque.

If you're inclined to read something like "polity" or "district" for "city" in City Stats, you can probably use it as a very abstract way of treating any political unit, and B&C is already broadly scalable. It depends on what you want out of your game, though. The larger the scale, the more abstract it gets, and none of it provides you with a detailed guide to structuring the day to day tasks of people with positions in government or other organizations. That is, B&C (and, to some extent, City Stats when taken together with the city management article from Pyramid) give you an at-a-glance take on the capabilities of the organization/polity, but they don't tell you what the lord high judge or assistant guild master does on a daily basis.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

You can do without food for a week. Join us...

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

Very nice, I waited for something like that for some time, inspired by company rules of RPGs like Reign for instance. Its also very good that the system is compatible with City Stats and Mass Combat.

After a quick read, I basically like what I see.
The problem for me, though, is that I am really disappointed what I did not see:
Rules for resolving conflicts between organisations. That would have been my personal priority with regards to an addon like that. I hope that this is already in progress as an addon to the addon at least... ;) Then it would be complete in my eyes.

My first thought was: Great, now I can resolve conflicts in fights for power with different empire or so, like in Game of Thrones for instance... But I did not find the rules for that - the foundation is there (well made IMHO) and the rules for running organizations on their own. Conflicts are, for me, the missing bit to make this addon a really great and valuable resource. Actually it would be the most important bit for my games.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

Awesome! I saw this release yesterday and immediately thought, "What a cool supplement!" Just the sort of thing that makes GURPS what it is.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

During playtest we were told "This is the book that will not be called Gurps Organizations".

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

I am inclined to read polity/district/Empire of Sol as 'city' in City Stats.

I am OK with coming up with day to day routines of staff and supplicants/citizens using services/etc of organizations within a populated area on my own. What I would be looking for is how to resolve things between polities or organizations within a polity. Ideally I could use B&C to flesh out the organizations in Space. How much can the Intelligence Service interfere with Law Enforcement? Does someones personal satrapy have the wherewithal to flout functionaries of the Imperial Government? How much are which organizations dependent on others?

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

Doesn't need one. It's kosher to simply mention someone else's IP, as an example or such. Heck, I tried to throw as many pop-culture examples into Monster Hunters as I could fit, and even did a straight up list of "these were the things that inspired MH" in Pyramid 31.

Now, if we were to go as far as statting the Corps up, that starts to get squishy . . .

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

I would think that this would be resolved by either picking a trip point that would lead to declaration of war (Mass Combat) or going to a higher court (Court room drama or SE?) or by using Social Engineering rules to allow the leaders/functionaries of the various factions to thrash it out with threats, charisma, promises of payment or social transactions like advantageous marriages.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

In fact, in terms of IP, I'd think they'd WANT this kind of mention. If you're familiar, you nod and smile. But if not, you may well become curious. I ended up reading/watching some of the things in your MH Pyramid bibliography article. Which means the owners of said IP made money as a result of essentially free advertising. Everybody wins.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

Also, that seems like it would be the stuff of adventures. Otherwise I suppose a Pyramid article could sort that. But much as Mass Combat isn't really a war game but rather is set up as a platform for role playing, so too should such conflicts be.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

This has already made its way into my current campaign as ways to think about organizations. I've been hoping for this one.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

Some aspects could probably be resolved that way... But, for instance, what is about the reputation? Let's say two political parties are facing each other as GURPS organizations in a conflict before an election. The question is who wins: a or b?
Now party a successfully manages to gain reputation. How does that affect party a? (e.g. New reputation b = Old reputation b - Reputation win a?) Or, as an alternative, making it the other way around: How do I handle a "negative reputation" campaign against the other party?

I'd say this kind of stuff is very important. Also the same mechanics could be used to handle "rumour" about a person, affecting his/her reputation (reaction rolls) etc.

Another example: How can e.g. company a make a win on the market against company b? Thus in GURPS terms, company a would increase the resources, while company b would lose some... These mechanics would definitely be very nice for my games. Really does not have to be very detailed (can be quite abstract), but there should be a good way to generally resolve conflicts.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

There is a lot of mechanics for that in Social Engineering. For example, there are rules for undermining an opponent's position in a debate, or making a romantic rival look bad; those obviously would generalize to negative campaigning.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

This sounds like a use of the election rules in chapter 5 of Social Engineering. I'd probably have a candidate or possibly campaign manager's skills be the important ones here, but that individual would have the support of the organization's Resource Value and Contact skills. There's probably room for expanded rules for soliciting donations, though.

Again, chapter 5 of Social Engineering. Dueling Merchant skill rolls determine who comes out ahead. The relationship between lost revenue and adjustment to Resource Value probably wants better definition.

So, yeah, the rules for this sort of thing already mostly exist. There's probably a good Pyramid article or two expanding Social Engineering's treatment of various kinds of social conflicts in the context of B&C. The important thing, I think, is to keep the focus on the individuals involved rather than treating organizations as autonomous entities, much as, in Mass Combat, the mass of troops provides a set of costs and capabilities, but ultimately it comes down to individual leaders contesting strategies.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

After "City Stats" and "Boardroom and Curia"......

It's time for GURPS Interactive History!

http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.html?id=1705

Maybe not a supplement, but what about a Pyramid issue? :)

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

Does Mass Combat, Social Engineering, City Stats, and Boardroom and Curia handle differences in tech level between entities? Wealth adjustment? Lavish accommodations at TL so are not the same as TL 3. High tech used to overawe the natives, disparity in firepower/overwhelming numbers even with blasters taken into account...

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

Mass Combat certainly does. City Stats and Boardroom and Curia are not about interactions between organizations/cities, though, so while they have rules about TL and wealth and all that they don't have rules about interactions between cities/organizations based upon TL/wealth.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

GURPS IP Code! Coming soon!

Who wins? Alice Cooper of course.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

As much as possible, B&C relies on existing rules rather than creating new ones, and I think that's largely the case for City Stats. For example, in this case, there's already an interaction between Wealth (and the related income rules) and TL which ensures that a city or organization of similar Wealth to one of an earlier TL will be richer in absolute $ terms.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

I think they were left out to give the PCs something to do. To provide the framework for the organization saying, "Here's our mission and we need you to deal with XYZ Corp's project that will undercut our newest product. We can give you up to <Percentage of Resource Value> to do it, but anything else you need is up to you."

In the mean time, you look up XYZ Corp's data and see based on their wealth level and CR that their facility would have CCTV and rent-a-cops, plus their black research team is doing something with robots, so... killer robots is the surprise twist in the adventure and Bob's your uncle.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

<wince> I don't like the "Zeroed" bit. It's going to encourage further misunderstanding of Zeroed with the words "At least initially". A Zeroed organization at the least should be able to persistently keep itself out of the mass media and remain unacknowledged by non-covert law enforcement.

Re: GURPS Boardroom and Curia
 

...you know, this would have been very useful a few months ago before I started with the "nation building" aspect of my Cold Frontier campaign.