Skills and skill levels for building an army, intelligence service, bureaucracy

~~Peter Knutsen~~ · 07-25-2013, 06:39 AM

... continued from previous post

Anyway, for starters, try to think in terms of demographics. How rare is that which the PC is looking for?

How rare are those veteran mounted archers?

You might be able to do it in stages, thinking in terms of GURPS' "Lens" concept.

You start with "archer" (as that's the "Template", rather than being a "Lens"). How rare is that?

X?

Okay. Next you apply the "mounted" Lens. How rare are archers who are skilled enough to quality as "mounted"?

Y?

Okay. Finally you apply the "veteran" Lens. How rare are mounted archers who have achieved veteranhood?

Z?

Okay. What's your recruitment base?

W?

Okay. Then your answer is:

W/(X*Y*Z)

That's how many potential recruits there are. You're not going to get 100% of them, but with skill, persistence and offers of generous pay (or support for an attractive Cost-of-Living) you can get close to it.

At some point, you might get fed up with the fiddly details, and just nail down some very coarsegrained tiers, like 1-in-20, in-in-400, one-in-8000, one-in-160k and one-in-3.2M, and then whenever one of the PCs wants to hire an underling, you estimate which "tier" the underling alls into, depending on how outrageous the PC's demands are.

"Dude, you're asking for a lot. What you want is a six-in-a-milion. I'm not saying you can't find one of those, I'm not saying it's completely pointless to roll for it, but if you lower your standards, maybe if you say you might be willing to compromise [here] and also compromise at least slightly [here], I'll lower it to the 1-in-8-thousand grade, which is much more doable. Yes or no?"

Sagatafl has formal area designations, Village, Town, City, Megapolis, et cetera, but they don't correspond to population sizes (although if you divide them up into urban and rural, and include Tech Level, then they could be used like that). You could define a scale of population size categories, or just use GURPS PR system, which I understand is logarithmic or something. Each time PR goes up by 1, the recruitment bases increases by a factor of 10.

07-25-2013, 06:39 AM	#15
~~Peter Knutsen~~ Banned Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Europe	Re: Skills and skill levels for building an army, intelligence service, bureaucracy ... continued from previous post Anyway, for starters, try to think in terms of demographics. How rare is that which the PC is looking for? How rare are those veteran mounted archers? You might be able to do it in stages, thinking in terms of GURPS' "Lens" concept. You start with "archer" (as that's the "Template", rather than being a "Lens"). How rare is that? X? Okay. Next you apply the "mounted" Lens. How rare are archers who are skilled enough to quality as "mounted"? Y? Okay. Finally you apply the "veteran" Lens. How rare are mounted archers who have achieved veteranhood? Z? Okay. What's your recruitment base? W? Okay. Then your answer is: *W/(XYZ)* That's how many potential recruits there are. You're not going to get 100% of them, but with skill, persistence and offers of generous pay (or support for an attractive Cost-of-Living) you can get close to it. At some point, you might get fed up with the fiddly details, and just nail down some very coarsegrained tiers, like 1-in-20, in-in-400, one-in-8000, one-in-160k and one-in-3.2M, and then whenever one of the PCs wants to hire an underling, you estimate which "tier" the underling alls into, depending on how outrageous the PC's demands are. "Dude, you're asking for a lot. What you want is a six-in-a-milion. I'm not saying you can't find one of those, I'm not saying it's completely pointless to roll for it, but if you lower your standards, maybe if you say you might be willing to compromise [here] and also compromise at least slightly [here], I'll lower it to the 1-in-8-thousand grade, which is much more doable. Yes or no?" Sagatafl has formal area designations, Village, Town, City, Megapolis, et cetera, but they don't correspond to population sizes (although if you divide them up into urban and rural, and include Tech Level, then they could be used like that). You could define a scale of population size categories, or just use GURPS PR system, which I understand is logarithmic or something. Each time PR goes up by 1, the recruitment bases increases by a factor of 10.