Realm Management

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I can't find an equivalent clause to city stats page 12 where drawing more than 4% revenue came with the risk of permanently damaging your monthly income. Was that dropped from realm management, or did I miss something?

I didn't include it. You could if you wanted to. I found it a tad too fussy.

[Tyneras]

Originally Posted by maximara

From a logical stand point such spending doesn't effect Realms in the same way it effects cities.

Modern governments spend far in excess of their revenue to keep things moving along. As long as they don't go print happy with their fiat money everything is good. Heck, England is still repaying the debt it racked up in the 1700s!

The last time the US was debt free was in the 1840s. Debt spending was one of the tools used to fight the Great Depression and WWII for many nations.

Debt and Taxes (drawing revenue) are very different beasts. Debt is ultimately just another expense, like road maintenance, and only becomes a serious issue when debt payments start seriously impairing your ability to pay for other things. Very high taxes can directly depress economic activity, which leads to higher taxes collecting less revenue, regardless of debt level. The simplified version is the Laffer curve, which basically says in a specific system there is a level of taxation that produces maximum revenue, and going above or below that results in lower revenue.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

Debt and Taxes (drawing revenue) are very different beasts. Debt is ultimately just another expense, like road maintenance, and only becomes a serious issue when debt payments start seriously impairing your ability to pay for other things. Very high taxes can directly depress economic activity, which leads to higher taxes collecting less revenue, regardless of debt level. The simplified version is the Laffer curve, which basically says in a specific system there is a level of taxation that produces maximum revenue, and going above or below that results in lower revenue.

It all depends on where the higher taxes are aimed. For example during the Great Depression the highest tier of taxes was 63% increased until it hit 91% in 1944, went up to 92% for 1952 and 1953 and then back down to 91% 1964.

The time of 1946-1964 are generally regarded as the peek economic activity of the United States and the reason was simple - CEOs and those below them wanted to keep below that punishing 91% income tax bracket and so the net profit went elsewhere - into the company and the pockets of the workers. When those high taxes were reduced things slowly started to go pear shaped.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

I didn't include it. You could if you wanted to. I found it a tad too fussy.

Thanks for confirming that. I can certainly see it being fussy with the given system, as so many things are built on the back of the base realm value. I wonder what can be done to make it less fussy?


Now I'm looking around for ways to keep realm rulers from hiking up the tax rate to 30% any chance they get. Sure, you can use social pressure from the taxed to convince them not to, but historically once you tax beyond a certain point you're impeding the ability of people to operate a proper economy, or even to feed themselves (see Robin Hood stories).


The roll feels important to me mostly because it was the center of a realm-management-ish game I ran using city stats. Every (in-game) month the PCs overspent, and every month we had this tense session where I summed up the last months of events and actions, and gave small bonuses to the roll. Then at the end, someone rolled, and we got to saw if they'd reduced their resources by 10%. If it wasn't for that roll, I'm sure they would have raised taxes early on, so I'm looking for a similar brake in realm management. (It was a fresh banestorm game, so things happened every month, and we only played about a year).

Originally Posted by maximara

From a logical stand point such spending doesn't effect Realms in the same way it effects cities.

Modern governments spend far in excess of their revenue to keep things moving along...

I'm going to disagree that realms and cities are fundamentally different when it comes to taxation rates. Realms are generalization of cities.



That realm spending can never be too high... There are counter examples to that. Certainly, you can use various tricks to add revenue, shuffle around where it comes from, and so forth, but in the end you're just stoking flames and redistributing wealth. You can overburden an economy that way just as effectively as through direct taxes.



Note that the Revenue factor isn't the same as the total tax rate for a society. Taxes that pay for the upkeep and maintenance of existing infrastructure aren't included in it, and I suspect school salaries aren't either. Unless you're currently upgrading your education system.



As for what the "overburden number" is... that probably is TL dependent, and there is likely some variance from realm to realm as well.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Thanks for confirming that. I can certainly see it being fussy with the given system, as so many things are built on the back of the base realm value. I wonder what can be done to make it less fussy?

Fussy was probably the wrong word - I take that back (and sorry, Bill!). It was too high resolution. It was excluded for the same reason as I excluded population growth from the main book. It absolutely is something that is important to this sort of supplement . . . but it's not something easily done. It's why I decided to include it here. I'm sure folks will come up with rules of their own for these things and I'd love to include them in a follow-up(s).

Originally Posted by ericthered

Now I'm looking around for ways to keep realm rulers from hiking up the tax rate to 30% any chance they get. Sure, you can use social pressure from the taxed to convince them not to, but historically once you tax beyond a certain point you're impeding the ability of people to operate a proper economy, or even to feed themselves (see Robin Hood stories).

This is where the roleplaying part of this supplement kicks in me thinks.

Originally Posted by ericthered

The roll feels important to me mostly because it was the center of a realm-management-ish game I ran using city stats. Every (in-game) month the PCs overspent, and every month we had this tense session where I summed up the last months of events and actions, and gave small bonuses to the roll. Then at the end, someone rolled, and we got to saw if they'd reduced their resources by 10%. If it wasn't for that roll, I'm sure they would have raised taxes early on, so I'm looking for a similar brake in realm management. (It was a fresh banestorm game, so things happened every month, and we only played about a year).

I'd be interested in seeing what you come up with to simulate something like this. Nothing I did really worked or was too complex or was both.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

I'd be interested in seeing what you come up with to simulate something like this. Nothing I did really worked or was too complex or was both.

Looking at the book, I'd probably keep the Finance roll, with a modifier, at the end of each turn. The exact "overburden" number would be different from campaign to campaign, based mostly on Tech Level.

A failed Finance roll would be treated as a disruption. It would give -10% revenue each turn until fixed, which would probably be an improve maneuver costing 50% of the realm value (or maybe 100%). If you have two standing Finance failures, add them instead of multiplying them. Adding an immediate effect like mass protests or shortages may also be appropriate.

I don't see this as too fiddly, but I also see it as being part of my core game-play loop, which means it can bear more resolution.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by maximara

From a logical stand point such spending doesn't effect Realms in the same way it effects cities.

The cities in City Stats are modeled primarily as independent city states, and as such would be considered Realms. By intent the rules there ARE rules for Realms.

But note that the MBF is not primarily an amount of money. GURPS works in terms of "real dollars," that is, in terms of a nominal monetary unit that bears a constant proportion to economic output in real goods and services; a GURPS $ equates to a nominal cash value of $1 in the early 2000s, but of $0.10 right after World War II. So the question of military budgeting is one of how large a proportion of real output you are diverting from civilian functions (necessities of life for the labor force, and capital maintenance for businesses) to military activities.

Breaking windows may get the glazier some extra income, but the owners of the buildings would have spent the money on something else if they didn't have to replace the windows; the net effect is a decrease in wealth.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Looking at the book, I'd probably keep the Finance roll, with a modifier, at the end of each turn. The exact "overburden" number would be different from campaign to campaign, based mostly on Tech Level.

A failed Finance roll would be treated as a disruption. It would give -10% revenue each turn until fixed, which would probably be an improve maneuver costing 50% of the realm value (or maybe 100%). If you have two standing Finance failures, add them instead of multiplying them. Adding an immediate effect like mass protests or shortages may also be appropriate.

I don't see this as too fiddly, but I also see it as being part of my core game-play loop, which means it can bear more resolution.

Interesting. Hmmm.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The cities in City Stats are modeled primarily as independent city states, and as such would be considered Realms. By intent the rules there ARE rules for Realms.

But note that the MBF is not primarily an amount of money. GURPS works in terms of "real dollars," that is, in terms of a nominal monetary unit that bears a constant proportion to economic output in real goods and services; a GURPS $ equates to a nominal cash value of $1 in the early 2000s, but of $0.10 right after World War II. So the question of military budgeting is one of how large a proportion of real output you are diverting from civilian functions (necessities of life for the labor force, and capital maintenance for businesses) to military activities.

What I mean (and admittedly poorly explained) is that this falls apart when you get past the city state level.

For example, you have Detroit in the Realm of Wayne County which is in the Realm of Michigan which is in the Realm of the United States. Detroit has been an economic basket case even when some of those realm it was in weren't.

The various State Realms have to balance their budgets while the United States can spend like a drunken sailor racking up debt as long as the world has confidence in its currency.

[edk926]

City, county, and states can rack up debts too. Chicago itself is billions in debt now, and the state of Illinois is too. As long as people are willing to loan them money and not demand the loans back, they can continue to rack up the debts.