Using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules with GURPS

[nondescript handle]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

I think I've asked this before, but what about City Stats and the city management rules in Pyramid #54?

City Stats is very good at what it does (describing cities/settlements carefully designed by the GM), and I think it can be expanded to a more general system. But it is quite hard and frustrating to do so ad hoc for an GM. This is really more a task for a game designer and a playtest group.

Scaling City Stats down (i.e. for city quarters) is the easiest, but it relies heavily on GM fiat (e.g. what is the combined Corruption Rating? The average of all quarters? The one of the government quarter?).

Scaling City Stats up for nations is much harder. E.g. in City Stats you just pick a number for the population and there are some vague hints about the area this city then covers (CS p. 12). In nation building you often have the area first and have to come up with an appropriate population number. I bolted on the Carring Capacity rules from Space p. 91, but those are very granular and incorporating Environmental Quality ratings would make a big difference especially at low TLs.
I would also like some kind of system for natural resources (e.g. silver mines, etherwood forests, etc) and other physical/social features (natural harbors, way point at the silk road, etc).
And the RAW system of 'taxes depend on CR, CR depends heavily on Society Type' is a bit constricting for players and too granular for domain play.

Also: player often want to build their domains, since they are basically an extension of the PCs. A build system would be of great help: 'You have 100 City Build Points/12M$/whatever to build your barony, normal mana only, max TL3!'

On the other hand GMs often need to come up with several NPC-domains, so a random city/domain creation table would be GM-stress reducing.

[McAllister]

Originally Posted by nondescript handle

Also: player often want to build their domains, since they are basically an extension of the PCs. A build system would be of great help: 'You have 100 City Build Points/12M$/whatever to build your barony, normal mana only, max TL3!'

This is why I'm pulling for that Grand Unified Kingdom Generation and Running ruleset. I can pretend to be a game designer and a playtest group, but I'd love for the professionals to do it.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Well, the other reason why I am using the Pathfinder Kingdom Building rules is that while I am running most of this campaign with GURPS, I want to eventually release it as a Pathfinder product.

But yeah, a nation-building system for GURPS would be of huge interest to me as well.

[Dragondog]

It might work to run a Kingdom, but as each plot is 750 by 750 square feet, creating a small town seem to give results that doesn't fit with the small fantasy towns I've seen created for RPGs.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Dragondog

It might work to run a Kingdom, but as each plot is 750 by 750 square feet, creating a small town seem to give results that doesn't fit with the small fantasy towns I've seen created for RPGs.

The population for a fully occupied district - one square mile - is about 9,000 people.

And now I am wondering: What is the population density for pseudo-medieval towns?

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

And now I am wondering: What is the population density for pseudo-medieval towns?

Pseudo-medieval fantasy towns? Can be what you like. Actual historical settlements? Varies a lot and is exceptionally problematic. There's a possibly interesting paper here which discusses the issue of estimating civic populations, but it's best read not as a source for hard numbers so much as an overview of methods which are used to that end.

[Dragondog]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

The population for a fully occupied district - one square mile - is about 9,000 people.

And now I am wondering: What is the population density for pseudo-medieval towns?

Which is my problem. If I count the number of plots I need, the town will cover more than two square miles, but with a population of less than 2000 people. So the plots are way too big.

Do you want an inn or a caters tower on a plot covering 562,500 square feet?

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Dragondog

Which is my problem. If I count the number of plots I need, the town will cover more than two square miles, but with a population of less than 2000 people. So the plots are way too big.

Do you want an inn or a caters tower on a plot covering 562,500 square feet?

It should be assumed that the lots generally aren't filled by just that one building, but also generic minor housing and businesses.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

The population for a fully occupied district - one square mile - is about 9,000 people.

And now I am wondering: What is the population density for pseudo-medieval towns?

GURPS has some material on that. There is GURPS Fantasy and GURPS-Low Tech (or the Companions).

There is also "Medieval Demographics Made Easy" by S.John Ross.

[fifiste]

Just a note of interest if anybody would like to host a game like this on SJG PBP I would be soooo intrestested.
Otherwise the worked out systems and alll the logs you could care to make public would really be appriciated by me.