GURPS Boardroom and Curia

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Steven Marsh

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

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

Also, YAY! It's out.

[Tyneras]

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.

[Refplace]

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.

[Anders]

Hmm... yes...

*steeples fingers*

This will do quite nicely. Quite nicely indeed.

[Phantasm]

*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....

[Joseph Paul]

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?

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

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?

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.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by apoc527

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?

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.

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

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

Albuquerque.

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

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?

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.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

*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....

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

[OldSam]

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.