Realm Management as a 4x game?

[KarlKost]

I've made a variation of Realm Management for a "Post Apocalipitic Fantasy" game. In it, I divide workforce into dozens of professions (including Mages, Alchemists, Clerics, Hunters, Miners, Farmers etc etc and even exotics like Automatons and Golems), dozens of resources (water, fertile soil, iron, wood, wool, horses, chickens, wheat, rice, medicinal herbs, alchemical components, weapons, magic items, grimoires and plenty others).

I greatly expanded the system for that, still needs a few adjusts and tests to avoid too much handwavium, but I gotta say, it is neat.

Too bad it is mostly in my spreedsheets that pretty much only I myself understand and know how to navigate, but it became very very sweet. I even added social infraestructure levels and a bunch of other stuff.

[Christopher R. Rice]

I'll note after Realm Management came out I considered a follow-up volume for more detailed management. But I didn't want to just write it without playing with it first. So I put it on ice and about 14 months later I got a chance to use it for a displaced community in out-time. They built from holes in the ground to a pretty good city. Acquired livestock and made fields of food. Fished. All that. I had rules for how much would could be gotten by one person in a day. How much food was consumed. How much clay objects could be made and much more.

It was TERRIBLE to keep track of in play. Looking at it out of play wasn't bad. It was obvious that it was going to take a spreadsheet and lots of notes to keep track of. It just was not fun. I mean not at all. Only one of the players was really interested in doing anything with it and I kept it up for 16 sessions before telling my players, "We're going to full RM when we resume." and then shelved the game. So in my experience literally keeping track of all animals, available building supplies, and so on is fun-killing for 80% of the table.

[JulianLW]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

I'll note after Realm Management came out I considered a follow-up volume for more detailed management. But I didn't want to just write it without playing with it first. So I put it on ice and about 14 months later I got a chance to use it for a displaced community in out-time. They built from holes in the ground to a pretty good city. Acquired livestock and made fields of food. Fished. All that. I had rules for how much would could be gotten by one person in a day. How much food was consumed. How much clay objects could be made and much more.

It was TERRIBLE to keep track of in play. Looking at it out of play wasn't bad. It was obvious that it was going to take a spreadsheet and lots of notes to keep track of. It just was not fun. I mean not at all. Only one of the players was really interested in doing anything with it and I kept it up for 16 sessions before telling my players, "We're going to full RM when we resume." and then shelved the game. So in my experience literally keeping track of all animals, available building supplies, and so on is fun-killing for 80% of the table.

I would pay a medium-sized bundle for GURPS Despots.

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

I'll note after Realm Management came out I considered a follow-up volume for more detailed management. But I didn't want to just write it without playing with it first. So I put it on ice and about 14 months later I got a chance to use it for a displaced community in out-time. They built from holes in the ground to a pretty good city. Acquired livestock and made fields of food. Fished. All that. I had rules for how much would could be gotten by one person in a day. How much food was consumed. How much clay objects could be made and much more.

It was TERRIBLE to keep track of in play. Looking at it out of play wasn't bad. It was obvious that it was going to take a spreadsheet and lots of notes to keep track of. It just was not fun. I mean not at all. Only one of the players was really interested in doing anything with it and I kept it up for 16 sessions before telling my players, "We're going to full RM when we resume." and then shelved the game. So in my experience literally keeping track of all animals, available building supplies, and so on is fun-killing for 80% of the table.

Yes, that's exactly the problem for such an "ultra realism" system such as this. I've run into the same problem. Tons of spreedsheets, and that's not the best format for RPG Books material. My own spreedsheets for example became so arcane that only I can understand. I therefore do no recommend it, even if doing some "systematizations" like I did - turning it into a lot like a video game, so instead of measuring water in liters or tons or gallons for example, just giving "arcane" values like "for one unit of wheat, you need 1 unit of water per turn, and each pop unit consumes 1 unit of grain per turn, which is what I did, but it's still a massive mess.

I still managed it because my Realm was NOT in the hands of the players - so, I would throw the dices each month to determine the "landscape" for the next month, and that would be the background of the game, and players would have imput and impact, but were not the administrators, and all the arcane changes could be done outside of the game sessions, but yes, it would've been terrible if I tried to implement this mess for my players to control.

EDIT: I still think something like it may be possible, if the parameters are kept resonable. Maybe taking Civilization games as inspiration for instance. For example, maybe you could have common labor, soldiers and a minor group of "specialists", divided between "scientists" (mages?), artists, engineers and leaders (generals, bureocrats etc), giving different bonuses; just SOME resources - instead for example keeping track of how many glass makers and glass is produced like I did). So, it could perhaps go a bit beyond Realm Management, but not down to the tiniest detail (like keeping track of how many hand made T-Shirts are produced by blind nums in your realm)

[Coinage]

As a side note, I would probably use the rules for founding a realm as the same for founding a city, or some other settlement. Unless someone can see a problem with that.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Coinage

As a side note, I would probably use the rules for founding a realm as the same for founding a city, or some other settlement. Unless someone can see a problem with that.

I don't have either supplement, but realistically, doesn't establishing a realm generally start with establishing a settlement anyway? And what is a realm, really, if not a group of settlements under a single rule?

Particularly if playing in 4x mode, a realm is generally going to start out as a single settlement (and said settlement's local area of influence), then once that has grown enough it will send out people to establish new nearby settlements (and/or conquer existing ones) that will be under the same governing body's control (be this a King/Queen and their heirs, a council of some flavor, a deity, or whatever).

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

It was TERRIBLE to keep track of in play. Looking at it out of play wasn't bad. It was obvious that it was going to take a spreadsheet and lots of notes to keep track of. It just was not fun. I mean not at all. Only one of the players was really interested in doing anything with it and I kept it up for 16 sessions before telling my players, "We're going to full RM when we resume." and then shelved the game. So in my experience literally keeping track of all animals, available building supplies, and so on is fun-killing for 80% of the table.

Originally Posted by KarlKost

Yes, that's exactly the problem for such an "ultra realism" system such as this. I've run into the same problem. Tons of spreedsheets, and that's not the best format for RPG Books material. My own spreedsheets for example became so arcane that only I can understand. I therefore do no recommend it, even if doing some "systematizations" like I did - turning it into a lot like a video game, so instead of measuring water in liters or tons or gallons for example, just giving "arcane" values like "for one unit of wheat, you need 1 unit of water per turn, and each pop unit consumes 1 unit of grain per turn, which is what I did, but it's still a massive mess....

EDIT: I still think something like it may be possible, if the parameters are kept resonable. Maybe taking Civilization games as inspiration for instance. For example, maybe you could have common labor, soldiers and a minor group of "specialists", divided between "scientists" (mages?), artists, engineers and leaders (generals, bureocrats etc), giving different bonuses; just SOME resources - instead for example keeping track of how many glass makers and glass is produced like I did). So, it could perhaps go a bit beyond Realm Management, but not down to the tiniest detail (like keeping track of how many hand made T-Shirts are produced by blind nums in your realm)

When I ran Banestorm Atlante, we used a generic Gurps$ economy, and then calculated resources that mattered when they came up*, like food, weapons, salt**, boats, and magic gems. It helped that every community had extremely specific characteristics. The players did not run the economy: they directed it in specific ways via City Management from pyramid, made rolls to avoid mismanaging it***, and took diplomatic, military, and exploration actions to fill in short-comings. It still very much felt like 4x.


* Low Tech companion 3 is pretty useful here.


**The salt came up, and the salt was important because of a recent windfall of meat and fish, so we tracked it and ultimately one of the more memorable NPCs ran the state salt pans.

*** The monthly finance roll was ALWAYS tense, because the state was taking so much in taxes due to the ongoing emergency. We summed up the games events over the course of the last month and gave a modifier between -2 and +2 to the over all roll from each event. It was a central feature of the game, because you always new it was coming and 10% of your income was at stake.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Coinage

Thank you very much for the suggestion. I will give it a look. Do you think that it is possible to tweak the rules to cover an entire realm (like, say, a fantasy kingdom, or an interstellar civilization)? Thanks again.

Originally Posted by maximara

Given that that at the level of City-states Realm Management and City Stats are closely linked it should be possible to tweek things to an entire Realm. In fact, by using City Stats you avoid worrying about things that generally wouldn't matter in a 4x style game.

I've used it for provinces as well as cities. And Banestorm Atlante "Cities" included the surrounding countryside. In orphans of the stars (seriously, read mailanka's stuff on that if you're serious about using the city stats method) he writes to treat each planet as a "city".

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by JulianLW

I would pay a medium-sized bundle for GURPS Despots.

I'm pretty sure more than 20% of the forum would be interested in GURPS Chartered Accountancy too.

[JulianLW]

Originally Posted by TGLS

I'm pretty sure more than 20% of the forum would be interested in GURPS Chartered Accountancy too.

GURPS Despots and GURPS Chartered Accountancy sound like very different supplements to me.

And I suspect that GURPS Despots would be appealing to more than 20% of the forum.

And I think Christopher Rice is the one to write it and make it cool. Which is why I commented.