ideas on how running a kingdom should work

[Ice9]

Or just hand out rings of counterspells like candy; they're wish economy fodder after all. So are minor energy resistance rings, and Necklaces of adaptation, and rod of flame extinguishing, and every potion.

That's an interesting point, actually. If we assume the attacking Wizard is in the Wish economy and has "unlimited" wands, then why not the Wizard who equipped the army? Give infinite amounts of equipment on both sides, and the the army has the advantage of more standard actions.

Fectin, blasted... range is based on caster level. That's why the wizard is flying - presumably his lessers are ground bound, and he can literally dictate the range of the encounter such that his higher caster level gives him impunity. Though, yes, if you put the wish economy in full swing with an army, everybody has access to one-use magic items of good caster levels. But the high-level caster can still take advantage of globe of invulnerability for a minute of immunity to these lesser magic items, while he blasts away (and it would be difficult to cover an entire army with globe of invulnerability). I think anti-air from swarms of low-levels would be a no-go.

But then he's either:
A) Using his own spell slots.
B) Using items that are beyond the Wish economy.
Which means he's very limited. He has nowhere near enough juice to deal with a spread out army, and every time some jackass pops up a tower shield, it eats a precious slot or charge.

I don't think anybody's claiming that casters don't hold all the cards, but armies include casters, have casters supporting them, and are often commanded by casters. A lot of the "armies are obsolete" stuff seems to ignore that, which is a bit like saying "Armies are obsolete in the modern day, because pikes and chainmail don't do shit against a combat helicopter"

[Blasted]

I see Kingdom running as a game of political intrigue against other characters of a similar high level.

The basis is that outright conflict is very deadly and no-one really wants to die.
So the actual minutia of running a kingdom is nice to know about, but not the most important part of the game. The actual game which everyone is playing is about diplomacy and subterfuge. I think that this was handled reasonably well in the Glantri gazateer, which is about a magic user based collection of principalities and baronies. If one ruler were to resort to outright conflict, the remaining rulers would all side against him or her in maintaining the status quo.

[Swordslinger]

By Generals, I don't mean dudes who lead other dudes, I mean High level physical combat characters. Fighters, Paladins, Martial Adepts, whatever. They don't provide the high level impact of wizards, but they can still run around and massacre a battalion of normal troops. This makes them important enough to care about.

No, it really doesn't.

Normal troops don't do anything anyone cares about, so being able to kill them is a trivial ability.

Any smart kingdom would just not put regular troops on the battlefield at all. Regular troops is the crap that comes in later to occupy the place, assuming you don't just decide to burn it to the ground, in which case all you need is heroes.

[Winnah]

Here is a short list of things I think should take place in a Rulership/Kingdom type game. If it looks suspiciously like birthright, it's because I am an unapologetic fanboy with an open book in front of me.

Territory
Geographical expanse divited into various domains or provinces. For ease of use, population should be incorperated into this attribute. Depending on how complex you want things, an abstract probably serves a player better than a number with ratios of creature types.

Terrain
Most territories should have a terrain type, or multple types if applicable. Mountains, rorests, rivers and the like serve as handy cartographical tools. Most likely has an effect on ordinary travel (trade, army logistics) as well as what kind of industry may be available. Some territory may be more difficult to manage, such as extraplanar holdings, underground cities or cloud castles. Probably best to deal with special cases on a one off

Access
Deals with access to the domain. Mountain borders may penalise normal movement into the territory for example. An underground dwarven fortress may be extremely difficult to access without permission, an extraplanar hideaway almost impossible. A flexible attribute modified by things like roads, portals, bridges, fortifications and ports. Probably needs a lot of work to differentiate things like army movements, migration and trade.

Holdings
Physical locations that the ruler of the territory has direct control or great influence over. Probably ties greatly into Access. Fortifications, guilds, temples, industry and magical locations to name a few.

Contested Holdings (needs better name)
Physical locations the ruler does not have direct control over. Could be independant holdings such as a thieves guild or a circle of monstrous druids. May be holdings owned or captured by a rival ruler.

Sites
Special features that noone controls but may be of benefit to whoever holds the territory. Like an ancient shrine that blesses crops or an active volcano.

Once you have the basics of your territory hashed out, you probably want to refine a little.

Law or Rule.
A ham fisted attribute that determines how much the ruler gets his way. A high rule may represent a black garbed police force that makes dissidents dissapear or perhaps numerous knight errants and vigilantes. A low rule could represent a lazy or corrupt administrator.

Loyalty.
How much your subjects like you...Or fear you. Probably should influence how much trouble an occupying force receives from the locals.

Trade and Industry.
Probably best handled with a periodical cash reward depending on the type and number of holdings owned. Special cases like Alchemists and Fiendish markets should be resolved seperately as needed.

Lieutentants and Henchmen.
It's probably best to pass of responsibilities to some of your important followers. Where they are stationed and what they are capable of it probably worth noting.

Armies.
Same as lieutenants but the details can afford to be more generic.

Taxes
This type of income should be handled as an abtract of some sort, especially when dealing with large areas. Baseline should assume you are paying all of your retainers as well as upkeep on infrastructure and holdings.

Once you have basics like that detailed, it's probably a good idea to go over what kind of actions you want your ruler to be capable of, or by proxy henchmen. A short list of basic tasks that should be able to take place in your own territory, or in another where appropriate.

Administration/Justice/Hold Court
Agitation/Contestion/Revolution
Assassination
Development
Diplomacy
Espionage
Financial Actions
Fortification
Spellcasting/Research/Magical Item creation
Troop movement and War

Obviously, this is a lot of information to track. Especially if every player has their own little kingdom and they are surrounded by hostile territories. A game of this type should have a map in addition to a character sheet, even if all the players are working under the auspices of one player as the leader. This type of game may also work as a competitive game, though that would put a great deal of pressure on the GM as well as creating problems at the table when a player gets his kingdom steamrolled or usurped during the competition. Sitting out would be lame, so perhaps a ruler in exile mechanic needs to be in place.

Tying rulership mechanics into a game where adventuring also takes place would be problematic to say the least. Not impossible, but difficult to pull off without creasting an incredibly slow and complex system.

Anyway, just a few thoughts. Kind of a coincidence as I was working on something like this for a short campaign for my friends.

[Username17]

For purposes of the original post, I think all three should be happening together. Wearing your holdings should certainly happen. When you're far away on some adventure or something, the fact that you are Baron of Shademire should actually matter. Even if it's just a card you can play to get into meetings with important people, it should be something that sits around on your character sheet even when you are not at home.

Secondly, Running your estates should also happen. The estates have incomes in turnips, gold, virgins, and magic power crystals, and as the campaign progresses, you should continue harvesting those things.

But the really big step is playing the damn things. Once having a kingdom is an important part of the character, the minigame of running and expanding the kingdom becomes important. And then people will want the option of doing that. It's acceptable, even good if during the kingdom minigame you bust out into other minigames (like "woo a princess: diplomancy minigame" or "fight some bandits: scouting minigame followed by combat minigame").

---

Looking through Winnah's list, it all seems a bit much. Provinces need resources, features, and populations. But they don't need most of that fiddly stuff. Taxes don't have to be separate from production, for example, ad probably should not be.

-Username17

[mean_liar]

Keep in mind that things ought to be flexible enough to account for multiple people at the table. If its one kingdom, then you've got 3+ people sitting on their hands if one person is pushing buttons and pulling levers.

You'd want everyone to have a portfolio of responsibility.

[Winnah]

I'm still conceptualising things at the moment. A couple of guys were interested in playing a D&D style game, but liked the option of having political power and a home base so to speak. During previous campaigns the majority of these players set about building strongholds and attracting followers.

They're interested in a game like birthright, but not birthright. So it falls to me to make a horrible mash up. The above post is the result of discussions with the group about what sort of game they want. A couple of guys expressed interest in running their own lands, others just want to play in a campaign and have no real preference. One said he would be quite happy playing a well funded 'retainer' wizard... His patron just has to fund his laboratory and research.

Current campaign rounds up in a couple of months when the current DM heads abroad, so I offered to fill in then. I have made horrible system mash-ups before, so it is just a matter of ironing out some of the kinks. The game is not going to last much longer than 6 months, as I'll have other priorities early next year.

Simplifying things like production and taxes is a good idea. I'm going to keep most numbers in an abstract form until absolutely neccesary, so a rating 3 province has a higher population than a rating 2 for example. Things like access and terrain are established by picking a location on a pre-drawn map and drawing borders. This sort of stuff is covered by birthright rules, but the players want some fairly specific mods to the system.

In any case, i still have a while to figure things out and run things by the prospective players. I typically make a handout of houserules and what optional rules are in play for everyone (mainly for my own benefit). For what it is worth, I'll post a copy in the relevant forum when it is done. I would appreciate the critique.

[Wrathzog]

No, it really doesn't.

Normal troops don't do anything anyone cares about, so being able to kill them is a trivial ability.

Any smart kingdom would just not put regular troops on the battlefield at all. Regular troops is the crap that comes in later to occupy the place, assuming you don't just decide to burn it to the ground, in which case all you need is heroes.

No, really, you do .

Not every Kingdom is going to be able to field massive magical support. It's not about being Smart, it's about capability. Not every kingdom is a super power and occasionally, the only military resource you have available is hundreds of thousands of Angry Orcs.
Yes, Magic Superiority may eventually win that war, but until that happens, you're stuck with hundreds of thousands of Angry Orcs sitting in your territory, eating your people. That is not a Trivial issue.

Here is a short list of things I think should take place in a Rulership/Kingdom type game. If it looks suspiciously like birthright, it's because I am an unapologetic fanboy with an open book in front of me.
...
Stuff
...

Yeah, I'm pretty disappointed that Birthright went away. It was probably one of my favorite settings.

Let's see.

Territories contain Population (Manpower), Terrain, Sites, and Resources.

Loyalty can be something that you can assume success if you control the territory. There might be special statuses like "Unrest" and "Revolt," but you probably don't need to get more specific than that.

Taxes, Trade, and Industry can be rolled up between Sites and Resources.

Sites include things like Gold Mines, Thieves Guilds, and Ley Lines of Eldritch Energy. They provide bonuses for the controlling Kingdom, provide additional options for interacting with that territory, or may simply be used to indicate Things of Interest.

Resources should be kept abstract, I think. Whether or not you have a Forest Territory or a Mine doesn't matter. You get more resources and that's that.

Population + Resources + Time = Armies

Do territories keep track of race demographics? Maybe just the Dominant Race... and you have the option of Supplanting it after a few rounds. Age of Wonders did that with the conquered cities of other races.

[Username17]

Do territories keep track of race demographics? Maybe just the Dominant Race... and you have the option of Supplanting it after a few rounds. Age of Wonders did that with the conquered cities of other races.

In general, I would like to avoid rules for genocide or ethnic cleansing. Instead, provinces should have population group types - like Heroes of Might and Magic cities.

So if you're in a "Sylvan" population province, you can recruit elves or sprites or human woodsy types. And if you're in a "Black Blood" population province you can recruit orcs and goblins and ogres and stuff. You have some arbitrary number of population types and an individual province never has more than 2. If something becomes more cosmopolitan than that, the province divides into more provinces. That's actually a fairly reasonable thing to happen under feudalism. It's why you get lords of vast forests and other lords of like part of London.

But in any case, rather than having some rule where you kill all the mindflayers and more in hobbits to their empty homes, provinces with Aberrant Population type should simply have things they can pop while under good management and the specific genocide or lack thereof of the Ilithids should be left up to ad hoccing and flavor text. Because that way you can ignore it if genocide makes you uncomfortable.

-Username17

[Almaz]

But in any case, rather than having some rule where you kill all the mindflayers and more in hobbits to their empty homes, provinces with Aberrant Population type should simply have things they can pop while under good management and the specific genocide or lack thereof of the Ilithids should be left up to ad hoccing and flavor text. Because that way you can ignore it if genocide makes you uncomfortable.

I like this paragraph mostly because it subtly implies halflings are a possibly race of the Aberrant type.

[Swordslinger]

No, really, you do .

Not every Kingdom is going to be able to field massive magical support. It's not about being Smart, it's about capability. Not every kingdom is a super power and occasionally, the only military resource you have available is hundreds of thousands of Angry Orcs.
Yes, Magic Superiority may eventually win that war, but until that happens, you're stuck with hundreds of thousands of Angry Orcs sitting in your territory, eating your people. That is not a Trivial issue.

And if a kingdom has no magical superiority, they're just chumps. You don't want to field an army to take out a nation of orcs that'd be stupid, because you're just losing men for no purpose. A high level wizard could take them out in a few days without any losses at all.

The only reason you'd ever kingdoms like that is if the land is so awful there that nobody even wants to take the trouble of conquering it. There's no mines or anything producing anything remotely valuable.

But getting back to my main point, before kingdom rulership ever becomes something of note, you have to scale back the power of heroes away from superhero.

When you have heroes being able to singlehandedly beat armies, armies are useless. When you're using wish economy: production, taxation and mining are all irrelevant. Until you cut the high magic superhero stuff, it's always going to be crap. Until having an army and a workforce is worth a damn, nobody is going to care about it.

[the_taken]

Halfway through reading this thread, ideas started forming on a Kingdom running (mini)game. I'm not entirely certain as to how all the mechanics will work, but I do have some ideas...

I imagine a sort of abstract mapping system for an large region that the GM has divided up into smaller chunks to manipulate. There would be a number of different ways to affect these chunks to transform them from one kind of area to another, and the areas would have attributes and things that a Ruler would have to contend with.

As an example of how to play it, imagine a 6x6 block of squares that represent your little town. In the middle somewhere, you have one square that is the Government square, another is the Market square, and another is the Church square. You have a population, and there are houses in those squares where people live, but they really aren't much more than a token amount of residents to maintain your little village. So you decide to expand your city. To get stuff done, you designate one of the adjacent wilderness squares as a slum, then hire some labourers to build some sod shacks for people to live in. It's not much, but the hobos can squat in there, and then you can go in and force them to work so that they can pay you taxes.

I imagine there would be a whole slew of different ways you can manage the real estate you own. The squares would have attributes that would be diff from each other, such as what the different facilities produce and the various other benefits. I would also have two or three attributes that represent how much the population appreciate your governance, as well as stat that shows how much crime is going on.

I have no idea how to run the politics portion of it, but the resource management practically wrights it self out in my head. I even have some game rule mechanics developing in my head right now!

[Username17]

Taken, that sounds a lot like Puerto Rico. No offense, but that sounds needlessly complex. If I'm in control of a giant Drow city, I don't want to be keeping track of sim city lots.

Cities should operate on a level more similar to Settlers of Cataan. Your Province has certain stuff it produces for you irregularly, and you get that stuff. You can undertake actions and spend resources to improve things and develop them so more and different resources are produced.

But I don't think I should have to zone dense residential areas on a grid. Ever.

-Username17

[the_taken]

So more abstract? Like, no squares or yardage count, you just have a book keeping of the amount of places you have and hope for the best?

So something like:

Dragonstown
Terrain:
Weather:
Special Features:

Wilderness - That area people avoid cause there's stuff that will kill them in it.
Monster Rate:
Crime Rate:
Maintenance Cost: (There's a price to pay for letting Dragon Bandits or Giant Fire Ants do as they please.)
Resource Production: (Yes, untamed wilds provide resources if you go and harvest them.)

Agriculture - That area of land where people grow food.
Quality:
Maintenance Cost:
Crime Rate:
Resource Production:
Special Features:

Slums - You population of serfs and unskilled labour.
Capacity:
Quality:
Maintenance Cost:
Crime Rate:
Resource Production:
Special Features:
Mood: (how likely the peasantry will riot or even revolt!)

Market - Your economy and exotic resource acquisition sector.
Quality:
Maintenance Cost:
Crime Rate:
Resource Production:
Special Features:

Urbania - You population of middle class merchants and skilled labour.
Capacity:
Quality:
Maintenance Cost:
Crime Rate:
Resource Production:
Special Features:
Mood:

Government - That area where the important decisions are made.
Quality:
Maintenance Cost:
Special Features:

Mansion Hill - The area where the nobles and wealthy merchants live.
Capacity:
Maintenance Cost:
Crime Rate:
Special Features:
Mood:

And so back Puerto Rico, there's no actual map needed... You can spend money and pay labourers to keep upgrading the capacity of the Slums section, or you can have them work on adding an academy special feature to the... well, some place. Then you can get skilled people like architects and masons to build some respectable area where some real work can get done.

And there's all the other things associated with having nice real estate, like a big temple to Cod to prevent zombification from ever happening in the city. Or a Fountain the uses a gate to the elemental plane of water to always provide clean water... and lets you summon a giant water elemental to protect the town.

Every now and then, the GM will go through and roll some dice based on some of the numbers or special features.

Something like that?

[DSMatticus]

That was a loooot of stuff, taken, and those attributes are just the sums of the special buildings and modifiers you have. People have to be able to do your system by hand, and nobody is going to want to do that by hand.

Really, I would break it down like this:

Kingdoms are divided into provinces. Each province has a population, a list of finance modifiers, and a list of resources they can produce. Every unit of time, that province makes a finance check (d20 + sum of finance modifiers), and then you compare the check and the population to get some amount of 'wealth' generated. This wealth can take any form, based on the resources that region can produce. You can distribute the wealth you earned among the resources (X turnips = Y gold = Z magic crystals). So if your region has a 'lumber' and 'taxes' as resources it can produce, you can take your generated wealth in either lumber or gold/silver/copper, or some mix of the two as long as the total value doesn't exceed the wealth generated.

Those modifiers can be things like, "has lots of wood, +2" or "grows particularly ripe oranges, +1." You can go on quests to acquire new modifiers for a province (go over to your neighbors and conquer their mine, and you gain the modifier "has a sweet-ass mine (smells faintly of decaying dwarves), +3". There can also be negative modifiers, like "bandit infested, -3", that you can go on quests to clear, and the DM should be encouraged to occasionally throw these at players.

Resources can be anything relevant to your campaign. PC's may be able to add resources to the list (build a mine in a region, but only if there's a place to actually mine something).

This encourages PC's to focus on high-level stuff, like "should I take over my neighbor's mine? Is it worth it to clear out those bandits, or can I just accept that they exist? I need more iron, should I try to establish a mine in one of my provinces?" They aren't focusing on, "hm. Should this city have a school or a grainary?" That's beneath them, and far more work than its worth.

Note: training and equipping soldiers should probably be a resource that provinces with a military infrastructure can produce, and just having soldiers around should consume other resources, like food and gold, every wealth check.

[Swordslinger]

This encourages PC's to focus on high-level stuff, like "should I take over my neighbor's mine? Is it worth it to clear out those bandits, or can I just accept that they exist? I need more iron, should I try to establish a mine in one of my provinces?" They aren't focusing on, "hm. Should this city have a school or a grainary?" That's beneath them, and far more work than its worth.

All the stuff you said seemed like it would make for an interesting low level game, at the high or even mid levels of play, wiping out bandits is a trivial problem.

If you want to focus on empire building, you probably want to do it in GURPS or something that focuses more on non-superhero based low fantasy.

[Wrathzog]

And if a kingdom has no magical superiority, they're just chumps. You don't want to field an army to take out a nation of orcs that'd be stupid, because you're just losing men for no purpose. A high level wizard could take them out in a few days without any losses at all.

It Does Not Matter. We still need to have rules for "Chump-league" kingdoms. Sometimes, people become Dukes and the only wizard they can afford to hire is their old adventuring buddy because he's working for free.

In fact, that's actually the balancing point for "Magic Superiority". Wizards are super rare as an asset and place exorbitant amounts of strain on your kingdom's resources on top of that. Also, if they decide to leave, they will, and there's almost nothing you can do to stop them.

province makes a finance check (d20 + sum of finance modifiers)

Oh god, don't do that. You gotta keep things simple because we don't know how many provinces a player may control. I highly suggest a static number for every province. If you're set on introducing a level of randomness for this, I would try to keep it to one Di roll per round regardless of how large the player's Domain is.

I would recommend something like:

Step 1) Gather Resources however you choose to do it. Place the resources into your "Resource Pool."
Step 2) Upkeep. You take the upkeep values of all of your troops and heroes and you subtract that from your Resource Pool. If this puts you into the negatives, bad things happen TBD.
Step 3) Spend Resources on Things. Things may include improvements to your provinces or hiring more troops or whatever.
Step 4) Army Movement, Fighting, etc, etc....
Step 5) Diplomacy Actions?
???
Step X) Dump Resources to an arbitrarily decided maximum amount. Like 10 per Province under your control. Hoarding resources is cool and all but I would like some sort of mechanic that would push people towards spending them.

I like the idea that provinces keep track of specific resource types like Iron, Wood, or sheep. I just want to reiterate keeping the entire thing as abstract as possible.

-e-
Rewrote some stuff.

[DSMatticus]

I was being inspired by the business rules. But you're right, we don't strictly need randomness at that step, and if players have more than a few provinces it gets tedious. Static numbers work just fine.

So a province has two properties.
1) List of modifiers, and a brief explanation/cause for each. (+2, has a mine; -2, has bandits)
2) List of resource-producing features. (mine, produces iron; lumberyard, produces wood; barracks, produces soldiers).

You can spend resources to add a barracks to a province, and now that province can produce soldiers. You could also spend resources to add a lumberyard, but only if that province contains wood. Or a mine, but only if it contains iron. So we need to keep track of resources a province has, but are currently being untapped. There may even be resources a player doesn't know exist (a province may be unsurveyed for precious metals).

So it may be "unsurveyed, may be able to produce metals" or "unmined iron" or "unharvested forests."

[Novembermike]

Oh god, don't do that. You gotta keep things simple because we don't know how many provinces a player may control. I highly suggest a static number for every province. If you're set on introducing a level of randomness for this, I would try to keep it to one Di roll per round regardless of how large the player's Domain is.

I would recommend something like:

Step 1) Gather Resources however you choose to do it. Place the resources into your "Resource Pool."
Step 2) Upkeep. You take the upkeep values of all of your troops and heroes and you subtract that from your Resource Pool. If this puts you into the negatives, bad things happen TBD.
Step 3) Spend Resources on Things. Things may include improvements to your provinces or hiring more troops or whatever.
Step 4) Army Movement, Fighting, etc, etc....
Step 5) Diplomacy Actions?
???
Step X) Dump Resources to an arbitrarily decided maximum amount. Like 10 per Province under your control. Hoarding resources is cool and all but I would like some sort of mechanic that would push people towards spending them.

I like the idea that provinces keep track of specific resource types like Iron, Wood, or sheep. I just want to reiterate keeping the entire thing as abstract as possible.

-e-
Rewrote some stuff.

I'm pretty sure you can abstract a lot of that away. You don't really gather "resources" in the sense of stockpiling them, you have a certain level of wealth through trade agreements, markets, taxes etc. Again, this is really easy to model with FATE. Give yourself a skill for wealth to represent the overall amount of spending power you have and then have a resource Aspect like "High Quality Iron" or "Bountiful Fields" to give you an advantage in certain areas.

[Winnah]

Rather than loyalty, i decided to with attitude, similar to NPC attitudes. Things like Helpful, Friendly, Indifferent, Unfriendly and Hostile sync up with the base system I'll be using. I'll probably use something similiar for diplomacy as well. The baseline is indifferent; citizens are content but not really interested in the politics of their nation.

Tracking the stats of NPC nations is going to be a bit of a hassle. I'm thinking of a few different ways of handling this. The simplest method is that your neighbors advance at roughly the same rate...Seems simple enough but this approach breaks the game once a ruler has several developing territories under their control. Such a system also leaves little room to develop specific enemy nations without things getting stupid, such as a small province with a vampire count and small squard of elite vampire commandoes for example. I'll give this a bit of thought.

The discussion on trade is useful, I might steal that. I'll make production in excess of costs effectively lost unless the ruler or someone makes a financial action to bank the surplus in the treasury. That should stop wealth for spiraling out of control too quickly.

[Username17]

I like the wealth model in which a province rolls a profit check and then you can take those profits in various different forms depending on what resources are available. For one thing, that allows you to condense population types into being just another Resource.

A resource has a number that acts as a bonus to the province's profit checks, and it has a type that acts a a pointer to a menu of things that you can take profit in. So if you have Dwarves +3, you add +3 to the profit check and come tax time you can collect money or dwarf crafts or levy dwarven troops or whatever. If you get more or richer Dwarves, they might increase to Dwarves +5, and then you'd add more to the profit checks (but the options would remain the same).

This also allows you to have villages that have unrest. You might have Orcs -2, which would allow you to levy orcish troops or get pigs or orcish art or whatever with your profits for taxing the province. But because of unrest and banditry the Orcs would actually subtract from the total profit checks for the province until pacified.

-Username17

[RadiantPhoenix]

I feel like Sim-Citying would just be an extension of the dungeon-building rules to urban environments. You design some buildings, then you plop them down, and you run it like a big old dungeon that just happens to be sunny and full of civilians.

[DSMatticus]

Hm. That's an even further simplification I hadn't considered, Frank.

So a province might look like...
{Dwarves +3,
Orcs -2,
Deep mines +2
Seaports +2
Banditry -2}

{Gold,
Metal,
Dwarven trade goods
Orc trade goods
Dwarf soldiers
Orc soldiers}

You'd probably want mechanics to explain some of these things. "Having a racial profit modifier automatically adds trade goods of that race to the list of resources." "Having a racial profit modifier and a barracks (or some other generic military housing word) allows you to train members of those race as soldiers." "Having a mine in a territory enables you to produce metal." (Gold, or rather currency, is implied in all provinces, unless that province literally has no people in it (i.e. no racial profit modifiers). This may still be useful, in that you might want to move people into that empty province later).

Do you need to maintain a list of formal infrastructure for a province? Things like lumberyards, mines, barracks, advanced barracks, churches (produce clerics?), things like that?

Also, there's the problem that "orcs -2" might have multiple explanations. Are they in such crushing poverty that the rest of your economy must support them, or are they a source of civil unrest? If we're going to allow players to remove that -2 (as we must), then we have to be able to track why that -2 exists at all.

I think what I'm getting at is the lists might need more information - "-2" probably isn't sufficient to explain why the orcs are penalizing your economy. And being able to produce metal seems like it depends on having a mine; how do we add (or enemies remove) that resource?

[Username17]

there's the problem that "orcs -2" might have multiple explanations. Are they in such crushing poverty that the rest of your economy must support them, or are they a source of civil unrest? If we're going to allow players to remove that -2 (as we must), then we have to be able to track why that -2 exists at all.

Honestly, I don't think we necessarily do. Yes, it is entirely possible for each poptype to have 3 subnumbers (loyalty, numbers, and development) which sum up to the total profit modifier. And then you could undertake various actions or quests to raise those sub numbers. But it's a role playing game, you could honestly just assume that sort of thing and let the MC wing it as to the hows and whys of the Orcs providing a -3 or a +5 in some province or another.

Do you need to maintain a list of formal infrastructure for a province? Things like lumberyards, mines, barracks, advanced barracks, churches (produce clerics?), things like that?

You only need to track improvements that actually allow you to produce a commodity that you didn't already have access to. And then it's just a resource. An improvement that doesn't add a new commodity option could just increase a number you already had and move on. So a "gem mine" is actually a shitty Resource at whatever profit modifier it provides. Because all it adds to the list of available Commodities is "gems". A PopType Resource would add art and livestock and retainers and troop options. Now presumably the Gem Mine has a large profit modifier (like +8 or something), but if you had a Sylvan PopType Resource with th same bonus, that would be way better. And a saw mill in the woods doesn't even need to be written down. Just increase the bonus on the woods from +2 to +3 and call it good.

And being able to produce metal seems like it depends on having a mine; how do we add (or enemies remove) that resource?

Resources can be improved, degraded, added or removed by the result of kingdom management actions, campaign events, or the good old results of quests and roleplaying. However, metal does not just come from the ground. It is also traded, recycled, and stored. You could certainly get iron out of a Port Resource, but you could probably get it out of your Dwarves as well.

Which brings up another point: it might be desirable to have Resources come not only with shopping lists for your provincial profits, but also price lists for various stuff. Idea being that you actually get a better deal cashing out for iron if you have an actual iron mine than if you're recycling horse shoes from your peasants. There might want to be commodity maximums that you can get in a month at a discounted rate, thereby encouraging people to diversify their portfolio.

-Username17

[fectin]

So, that makes sense. It looks like it's teetering on the precipice of too much granularity though. Is there an arguement for why "Orcs +2" is better than just "+2", and a note that it has some orcs? (i.e., whether or not "orcs" has game effect or is confined to flavor).

Though, I suppose "Orcs +2" would be a typed bonus, and that would mechanically set up that tolerant societies are superior. That could be cool.