THE MISSING SUPPLEMENT: DOMAIN MANAGEMENT!!!

[cupbearer]

Hi,

The topic: GURPS DOMAIN MANAGEMENT

I know there are other threads, i've perused them now and then, this a rehash, but i do this because i have not seen a real explanation of why this is missing from the GURPS line up.

Now, before we begin, some things i will mention: Matt Riggsby (i hope i spelled his name right) did some really cool stuff in pyramid regarding plots of land and crops and having a manor (i think it was called lord of the manor) and another article that talked about cities getting crops etc... all of this is cool.

Moving on we have City stats kind of gives you some idea of what kind of military budget a city has, and of course Mass combat rules take that military budget and allow you to raise armies.

The low tech supplement on economics allows you to calculate the cost of construction (but not roads strangely....)

Still though, you would need to do a loooot of work to even run a small area of land using what scarce rules there are.

So beyond what exists, does anyone know of anything in the works either officially or fan generated that would cover this area? Because I can tell you that there are more than ten systems for the 'other' game that deal with this (kind of shittily mind you but still). This includes some thirdy party stuff (domains at war is the most detailed option).

the issue i have with what is there is that its really small scale and at large scale you are playing with disgusting numbers, and of course there are just huge gaps everywhere! Why hasn't this ever been done.... or am i wrong? were there earlier editions that did deal with this?

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by cupbearer

Why hasn't this ever been done?.... or am i wrong? were there earlier editions that did deal with domain management?

Well, the basic issue is that unlike some of the other games companies Steve Jackson Games is mostly a publisher of RPGs and not a producer of RPGs. There is comparatively little RPG design staff at SJ Games. Aside from the Basic Set the GURPS series is mostly written by free-lancers who have written what they wanted to write; SJGames has play-tested, edited, laid out, illustrated, printed, and distributed only what free-lance writers offered to write. Mostly.

Which moves the question on to "Why have no free-lance writers with suitable capabilities chosen to write a supplement on domain management?"

Well, I can't read minds. One issue might be that a domain-management system that met GURPS' standards of genericity and universality would be a major undertaking. It could not cover only European champion-country crops. It could not cover only temperate season climates. It could not cover only manorial economic management. It could not cover only mediaeval technology. It couldn't even cover only realistic settings. My fantasy setting is a mountainous tropical archipelago with irrigated-rice agriculture, Renaissance technology, and an important role for ritual magic in agriculture, set on a world with no plains fauna; fishing, pearling, and the fermentation of fish-sauce are important to the rural economy. In my SF setting agriculture takes place at five different tech levels on a thousand planets using genetically-engineered perennial crop plants that directly produce high-tech drugs, fibres, and chemical feedstocks.

Another issue might be that managing a domain is an activity of interest in only comparatively few GURPS campaigns. My GURPS campaigns have had parties of PCs that consisted of academics at a wierd university, a private investigation company in Prohibition-era Cincinnati, a team of official criminal investigators in a far-future interstellar setting, a team of explorers, diplomats, space marines, and space-navy warfare officers in the same far future. Other GMs run campaigns for teams of action-movie heroes, monster hunters, consulting criminals, special anti-terrorist strike forces, official or unofficial investigators of Cthulhian horrors, spaceship crews etc. etc., most of whom have no inclination to manage an estate or rule a domain.

So answer, probably: it would be very hard and a lot of work, and not many people would buy it.

[Gedrin]

We have a term for characters that spend lots of time doing accounting and paperwork, NPC.

[Dwarf99]

Originally Posted by Gedrin

We have a term for characters that spend lots of time doing accounting and paperwork, NPC.

Or people who want to play Civilization Building games? I would welcome a Ultimate Campaigns type treatment of land ownership for GURPS.

[whswhs]

Agemegos addressed, to my mind, the single biggest reason that "domain management" is a problematic idea: GURPS is a generic game. Will your system of domain management work for a slave-worked Roman latifundium, a medieval European barony, a collective farm in 1940s Russia, a government-subsidized mechanized U.S. farm in Kansas in 1960, a hollowed out asteroid that raises food locally but exports minerals, or a community of sapient cephalopods raising fish in the reefs of some distant planet? Even encompassing the historical diversity of Earth societies is going to be challenging.

Bill Stoddard

[cupbearer]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Another issue might be that managing a domain is an activity of interest in only comparatively few .... most of whom have no inclination to manage an estate or rule a domain.

So answer, probably: it would be very hard and a lot of work, and not many people would buy it.

Hi,

Thanks for the replies so far. The answer that NPCS like to do calculations is a bit silly to me, as is the assertions that comparatively few people want to run domains.

1.Firstly, there is an excel spreadsheet somoene created to make "realistic" bows and arrrows... there are tons of gun nuts who have milions of gurps rules for "realistic balistics." why is my suggestion of domain management strange.... the big other guys who only cater to the lowest common denominator each have multiple systems to draw from... further our system says you can do it all... but you can't. its a glaring hole which is interesting to me, and mentioning it provokes strange arguments about utility when you have people who want to use complex algorithims to design a bow and arrow... does the bow and arrow excel sheet not qualify as "stuff for npcs?" LOL
2. Second, as i said in the my original post... there are ALOT of domain management rules out there. Somebody likes them, and im thinking that the "pay way to much attention to detail gUrps crowd" would be in that demographic. Just simply saying that this is not the case is kind of strange, do you want me to list all of the mass combat/domain management supplements out there?
3. your games descriptions are very very specific, cincinnatti prohibition investigators? Still, the rules can handle them, a generic set of rules would do the same for domain management.
4. Why bother having mass combat rules without domain management? How do you propose to run a military campaign when you don't have any rules for how your country gets its money?


Now as far as the complexity goes, I didn't ask for complexity. Again, as you size up, the details and graininess will recede, a basic set of rules could be generic and realistic enough without going into minute detail.... fermented fish won't make it into the rules i'm afraid.....

Further, to answer mr. Stoddard, by pulling back on the rules sets detail you can do whatever genre or setting you desire. the principal objective being to cross reference TL with whatever game objects you like. I don't really understand what the difference is betweeen a soviet commune and an underwater alien pod society. You have buildings, and a market place. You're going to abstract things.... the flavor and detail will be provided by the GM. Just as when you take a bullet to the back you don't have to name the part of the spinal cord, you are going to pull back and look at the "big picture".

I wouldn't say that it would be easy... but its not insurmountable and I can't really agree that its too small of a niche to be worth doing.

Is there someone who wants to do it? Now this was one point raised that i can't disagree with. Perhaps that is the main obstacle, maybe the sole obstacle, because in the end we have the millions of ballistics rules right?

I would even take a stab at it myself, except that i feel that i wouldn't be qualified to do it. One of the reasons that i came over to GURPS was because i wanted to use rules from designers that were more talented than i was lol... (plus although i have a BA in history, i dont think i have the background either.)

[sir_pudding]

I was going to write one but you used up all of the exclamation points.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by cupbearer

Hi,

Thanks for the replies so far.

My pleasure.

The answer that NPCS like to do calculations is a bit silly to me, as is the assertions that comparatively few people want to run domains.

I'm disappointed that you think it's silly, because I'm assured it's true. The biggest-selling GURPS 4th edition supplements include Mysteries, Action, and the Spaceships series, all of which are aimed at genres in which domain management is not a thing that happens. Even Dungeon Fantasy, despite its obvious similarity to D&D, is self-avowedly aimed at a style in which everything outside the dungeon is an abstraction best represented by price-lists and healing rates.

We went through this once before in a discussion about why the free-lancers don't write the prepared adventures that are on Steve Jackson's wish list. I came up with a list of almost fifty different sorts of campaigns that are mentioned and to some extent supported in 4th-edition GURPS materials. Pick any sort of campaign you can imagine: 90% of GURPS campaign are completely unlike it. We really are playing detectives and space traders and criminals and spies and anti-terrorist operators and academics and ghosthunters and soldiers and NAZI-biffing archaeologists and pirates and swashbuckling musketeers, and most of us really do have no interest whatsoever in ruling a domain or managing an agricultural enterprise. Really.

The first law of GURPS marketing is "everyone else's campaign is stranger than you imagine".

1.Firstly, there is an excel spreadsheet somoene created to make "realistic" bows and arrrows... there are tons of gun nuts who have milions of gurps rules for "realistic balistics."

Those were created by amateur experts who have taken a keen interest in hoplology for many years and wrote those materials on their own initiatve and out of their own interest. The works were not commissioned or originated by SJ Games to fill needs it felt in its line-up.

why is my suggestion of domain management strange....

It's not strange. That's not the point.

the big other guys who only cater to the lowest common denominatoreach have multiple systems to draw from...

WotC and Paizo and big guys like that?

First, they have a lot more customers for their RPGs than Steve Jackson Games has for GURPS.

Further, each of them is supporting a game that has a much narrower field of campaigns. There are many, many fewer types of D&D campaign than there are types of GURPS. Which means that each type of D&D game has a larger proportion of the D&D players playing it than is the case for GURPS, mutatis mutandis. Larger proportion of a larger player base means a much larger market.

2. Second, as i said in the my original post... there are ALOT of domain management rules out there.

Well, that means more competition. Since and acre is an acre and a bushel is a bushel, a worker is a worker and a year is a year, a GURPS GM can take any one of those existing rules sets and use it in his or her GURPS campaign.

your games descriptions are very very specific, cincinnatti prohibition investigators?

Yes indeed. That's common characteristic of GURPS campaigns: people who want to run something that is too specific for anyone to ever publish a robust game system about it tend to use generic games, such as GURPS.

Still, the rules can handle them, a generic set of rules would do the same for domain management.

GURPS rules handle their adventure activities; the issues of collecting payment for routine cases and paying the rent, the taxes, and the secretary while managing speculative investments bought on margin is not handled by the rules nor anything that we thought worthwhile paying much attention to.

4. Why bother having mass combat rules without domain management? How do you propose to run a military campaign when you don't have any rules for how your country gets its money?

Well I probably won't be running a military campaign from the point of view of a monarchial ruler. My PCs are more likely to be mercenary officers, Imperial high officials, the senior military retainers of a daimyo, etc. etc.

I would even take a stab at it myself, except that i feel that i wouldn't be qualified to do it.

I certainly wouldn't. Designing a domain management system covering everything from Egyptian or Sumerian tribute systems through Roman villas and mediaeval open-field manors, Antebellum South cotton plantations, and Soviet collective farms to borloi plantations in the swamps of Tanith is a very daunting task. But unless somebody does it will never be written, because Steve Jackson Games Inc. does not employ a game-design staff who could be assigned to the task as a salaried day job.

The only way such a product is likely to come about is the way the bows and ballistics products did: someone acquires recondite knowledge of the subject as a result of some other occupation or interest and, also having a solid knowledge of GURPS, decides to base a GURPS product on their knowledge.

[Refplace]

I see two options here.
A simple Pyramid type article that abstrats a lot of this.
I say simple but it is unlikely to be that but at least it will be simplified and very high level.

A detailed system that works for a large variety of settings.
The latter would require a supplement but probably wont sell a lot of, probably less then City Stats but not horribly so.

The more abstract one would unlikely be enough crunch for a book so it would have to fit into a Pyramid article.

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I was going to write one but you used up all of the exclamation points.

That's an exceedingly small stock of exclamation points.


Hans