test driving GURPS Realm Management

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I'm sorry I didn't spot this during the playtest, but it seems to me now that this is an unnecessarily complex approach. What Corruption is actually supposed to do is to lower a city's effective CR for those who are in the know. That could be defined as a realm having a split CR: a higher CR for the general citizenry and a lower one for whichever group has the relevant skill.

So if a realm has CR6, it has a minimum of +3 to Will to resist Influence rolls to get someone to break the law. But what if it has Corruption -6? That says that if you have an "in," you can get any law whatever set aside for your own gain or bias. The high CR just doesn't impede you doing what you want.

I'm kind of stuck with the current approach, but I could sneak in a "dimplier Corruption" rule in a later book. I'll make a note of it.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

I'm kind of stuck with the current approach, but I could sneak in a "dimplier Corruption" rule in a later book. I'll make a note of it.

Of course. On the other hand, I think that I'm going to set aside this particular rule, and just use Corruption the way it's defined in City Stats, without trying to reconcile the two. House rules don't have to be so bound by precedent.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Of course. On the other hand, I think that I'm going to set aside this particular rule, and just use Corruption the way it's defined in City Stats, without trying to reconcile the two. House rules don't have to be so bound by precedent.

That's cool. :-)

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

I originally had RP based on the realm's size...but that didn't work out to well. I'd probably give 4-5 points for Agriculture, 7-10 for Luxury Goods, and 10+ for Workforce. 0 for Natural Resources seems appropriate.

This is the part that I understand least. If I look at CR, or Education, or Infrastructure, or Loyalty, they're all pretty intuitive. If I look at population, or area, or money, they have real world meaning. But I just don't have a sense of what it's supposed to tell me if a realm has Agriculture Resources of 1, or 5, or 20 (or 100!). I don't even have a sense of what it means to say that the total points of Resources add up to one or another number.

How do you decide this sort of thing? What tells you that 5 points is a modest level, and 10 points a high one? Here you're looking, say, at a city of 50,000 inhabitants; what are the scores you propose telling you, in concrete terms?

Or are resource values a purely abstract idea, like Hit Points?

[whswhs]

I'm taking a further look at the rules on food production.

* One type of disruption is a famine, during which a realm's ability to feed itself fails; rather than getting food from current yield, it has to go into its Agriculture Points. A realm must spend 3 Agriculture Points per month to avoid starvation.

* Lost Agriculture Points are replenished by the Gather/Extract maneuver. Getting 3 Agriculture Points requires success on a skill roll by a margin of 6 in one months, or by a margin of 2 in three months. On the average, this requires a skill of 16 or of 12. To produce as much food in a month as is consumed in a month during a famine needs skill 16.

* A realm with one level of Fertile Territory gets one extra Agriculture Point if it succeeds by 3+. So with skill 14, it would expect to succeed by 4 points, yielding a base of 2 Agriculture Points, plus one extra. With skill 16, it would get a total of 4 Agriculture Points on a typical roll.

* A realm with two or more levels of Fertile Territory gets one extra Agriculture Point per full three points of success. With skill 14, it would still get 3 points; with skill 16, it would get 5 points. That's 1 AP per two levels of success plus 1 AP per three levels of success, or in total, 5 AP per six levels of success.

* So it looks as if Fertile Territory 2 or more increases food output by two-thirds. Applying this backward, that suggests that taking Fertile Territory 2 boosts TL10 carrying capacity from 600 to 1000 per square mile for +30%.

* This isn't as good a deal as taking Higher Carrying Capacity, which gives 800 per square mile for +5% or 1200 per square mile for +10%. On the other hand, it seems as if it would be possible to take both, getting 2000 per square mile for +40%.

With that combination, for example, Pavonis Portal's 50,000 inhabitants would need 25 square miles of inhabited area. Stacked two levels high, they would occupy a circle 2 miles in radius.

But there's a further puzzle:

* What if the required area to support 50,000 people is 84 square miles, but the city-state is crowded into 70 square miles? Its population exceeds its carrying capacity by 20%. How does that penalize it? It seems that it ought to have recurrent difficulty in feeding itself, fixed either by trade with other realms, or by repeated famines. But I'm not seeing a rule that addresses this. I've searched on Carrying Capacity and that doesn't turn up anything.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by whswhs

This is the part that I understand least. If I look at CR, or Education, or Infrastructure, or Loyalty, they're all pretty intuitive. If I look at population, or area, or money, they have real world meaning. But I just don't have a sense of what it's supposed to tell me if a realm has Agriculture Resources of 1, or 5, or 20 (or 100!). I don't even have a sense of what it means to say that the total points of Resources add up to one or another number.

How do you decide this sort of thing? What tells you that 5 points is a modest level, and 10 points a high one? Here you're looking, say, at a city of 50,000 inhabitants; what are the scores you propose telling you, in concrete terms?

Or are resource values a purely abstract idea, like Hit Points?

They are purely abstract. It's easiest to think of them as if they were a combination of Hit Points and Fatigue Points. You need them to keep on and you need them to act. Blow too many and you can't act. Don't act and they don't really do much but let you exist.

This might be a bit out of your idiom (I don't know if you play builder games like Civilization) as I based them on the common/popular concept resources in building games.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by whswhs

snip

Yes. That is a way to do it. There are multiple methods of providing for a realm.

Originally Posted by whswhs

* What if the required area to support 50,000 people is 84 square miles, but the city-state is crowded into 70 square miles? Its population exceeds its carrying capacity by 20%. How does that penalize it? It seems that it ought to have recurrent difficulty in feeding itself, fixed either by trade with other realms, or by repeated famines. But I'm not seeing a rule that addresses this. I've searched on Carrying Capacity and that doesn't turn up anything.

You could lower the Carrying Capacity. You could lower any number of Quality of Life modifiers (such as IR, ER, etc.). You could start out with a lower workforce or agriculture points - they have the resources but can't effectively bring them to bear. You could lower Management Skill as resources are squandered on trying to keep people alive in what is becoming a hostile area. A low Habitability with a population exceeding it's Carry Capacity seems to fit the bill as well.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

You could lower the Carrying Capacity. You could lower any number of Quality of Life modifiers (such as IR, ER, etc.). You could start out with a lower workforce or agriculture points - they have the resources but can't effectively bring them to bear. You could lower Management Skill as resources are squandered on trying to keep people alive in what is becoming a hostile area. A low Habitability with a population exceeding it's Carry Capacity seems to fit the bill as well.

What I don’t understand is what difference it makes if you lower the carrying capacity. I mean, suppose that the CC is 50,000, but instead of being 60,000, the population is 600,000? or 6,000,000? I don’t see anywhere that that makes a difference to how things go for the realm in the course of play.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

They are purely abstract. It's easiest to think of them as if they were a combination of Hit Points and Fatigue Points. You need them to keep on and you need them to act. Blow too many and you can't act. Don't act and they don't really do much but let you exist.

This might be a bit out of your idiom (I don't know if you play builder games like Civilization) as I based them on the common/popular concept resources in building games.

I have played Civilization. The second time I sat up playing till my eyes were sore, I uninstalled it. I tried reinstalling it a year or so later and did the same thing . . .

You know, it’s fine to say “purely abstract.” But I still don’t have a process for deciding how many abstract thingumbobs a realm should have. I mean,if I’m building a character, at least I know that a normal character has 10 HP and 10 FP. If you were building a realm that was in average condition, how many resource points would you give it.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by whswhs

What I don’t understand is what difference it makes if you lower the carrying capacity. I mean, suppose that the CC is 50,000, but instead of being 60,000, the population is 600,000? or 6,000,000? I don’t see anywhere that that makes a difference to how things go for the realm in the course of play.

Carrying capacity determines population. Population determines things like Realm Value which determines revenue, military spending, etc. In my original draft having over your CC basically inflicted a famine on your people that got worse the more over you were. It looks like I cut that for being fiddly and instead left it up to the GM. I couldn't cover everything I wanted to. It's why I'd like to write some follow-ups to add more rules and give more examples.

As for the difference . . . The difference is you give it one of the options I listed so there is an obvious reason why things are the way they are. Crafting a realm is a bit of an art more than a science - just like crafting a character.