Anyway, I keep missing little things and right now can't be assed to go back to edit them back in. So lets call it a couple of items of “Errata” first.
Small Vehicle Zones and Attack Ranges
Whoops, I suggested that sometimes chariots and carriages and such should be zones of their own. Which really they probably should for a number of reasons.
BUT that means you can't do a casual type ride by swording on a chariot or off the side of a carriage at close range, because technically that is now actually an adjacent zone and technically SHORT range. And we can't have that.
So hereby I implement the “Mobile Zone” range exception. If you are on/in a mobile zone, and you are the pilot, or the pilot is co-operating with your action, and the zone is moving under it's own power without inhibitions then you may perform actions off the edge of the zone and treat yourself as being in the zone the mobile zone is inside of for all Range , LoF and LoS purposes.
The Retrain Action
I wanted to include this but it would look a bit funny, or get lost, turning up in the Training Room descriptions. So. Ah. Yeah.
The Retrain Action takes 1 Strategic Turn. It lets you retrain all your Skill points however you like. It does NOT change which Skill Sets you have unlocked, it does not train a new skill set for unlocking, and it actually CLEARS your current “In Training” skill set slot.
The Retain Action requires you to meet the full Skill Point Cap requirements of the re-allocated skill points. If you do not meet your skill point cap requirements then you regain XP and lose access to those skill points until you DO meet your skill point total.
NOTE: Your first 20 character points MUST be spent on LT Skills. You may NOT retrain them to MT skills later on.
And Now for even more setting up of foundations.
Defining An Organisation
Organisations are groups of characters that work together to do something. They are of interest because they interact with the Cultures and Peoples rules and the Base Building rules. Basically for the most part by directly using those rules in the same way that player characters do.
So for our purposes “the player characters” are probably an organization, or some sort of organised sub unit of one.
But more commonly organisations will be things like, Religions, Governments, Armies, Mercenary Companies, Bandit Gangs, Other Gangs, Merchant Cartels, Town Councils and so on.
Fortunately for us Organisations are largely made out of Characters, with Skills, and Equipment, and Sites and Buildings. And well, we have rules for basically all that junk already.
Which means you can simply define the organisations in the setting with the rules we already have! A mercenary company is just another group of character's like the players are with their own employees and possessions and skills just like the players.
Just because the organisations of the world use the same rules for building bases, storing wealth, advancing characters, and doing stuff in general as the PC group does, does not mean you need to actually manage and adjudicate all that in full detail.
Off screen organisational and character activity is NOT rolled for, not adjudicated, rarely even described and generally not important.
The “Church of The Space Kraken” are just some cult you have heard of. But if you encounter their cultists... they are characters that adhere to the basic character rules. If you visit their temple, it is built with the same components and works in the same ways as the standard Base Building rules. Think of “on screen” time as a roving magnifying glass. You only describe the details of things, in a manner consistent with the rules, while people are looking at them with a magnifying glass.
Off screen, stuff, should merely exist or change in a manner that could be achieved by the rules. Talking about the fire priestesses of volcano island is FINE if when we DO get around to putting the magnifying glass over them we can use the rules to describe them. Talking about how the Space Kraken Cultists have added a new wing to their temple since the last time the magnifying glass was here is FINE if the addition of that wing potentially COULD have been done using the rules, even if you haven't ACTUALLY been tracking the exact funds and work forces available to the Krakenites.
Organisations and Skills
Importantly organisations have access to skills through the characters that work for them and can train and learn skills just like the player characters. So even if an organisation is associated with a specific culture, and operates within the borders of that culture, and has membership drawn from that culture, and hell, declares itself King over that culture, if it employs some high ranking guy who knows some skill set from some OTHER culture due to his “Adventures” (just like a Player Character) then he can totally teach his subordinates and buddies those skills, acquire related items and supervise the construction of related buildings.
This means that the orginisation of say “The Royal Family of Tiny Island” may well have one or two unique skill sets available to them not normally available to Tiny Islander Culture. Of course it is EASIER for that organisation to train and use local cultural skill sets, so they probably would have a bunch of local skill sets. But it is certainly not a hard rule.
Disorganised Religions
Some religions are just a series of mad old men in robes, one in each village for as far as the eye can see. They may or may not speak to each other, they probably share somewhat similar beliefs, act on a similar agenda, and may even have similar skills, powers and equipment sets. You could probably even get away with stating up a “mad hedge priest” template and using it whenever the players run into one of them.
These guys may well communicate with each other, a bit, especially in a “religious emergency”. They may be friends, they may have a character out there somewhere they regard, vaguely, as a leader. They may have some sort of ramshackle temple home base even a few side kick minions. They MIGHT even be associated with a more organised religion in a more major city or distant Region.
But all in all they largely only hold authority within whatever reach they themselves can achieve with their available resources, or that the community arbitrarily and superstitiously decides to grant them.
Hell in disorganised Religions the priests might not even have any skills from the Priest Skill set they could just as easily be Witches, or even Dancers or something.
Organised Religions
Other religions function a lot like highly organised empires, Because, basically, they are. They may well have a Regional, even Pan Regional hierarchy, a solid command structure, even a promotional career path for their loyal members. They will control resources, maybe even population centres, in some cases even acting as a local government.
More Organised religions are more likely to ACTUALLY train their actual Priests with ACTUAL Priest skill set skills. But that doesn't mean they CAN'T also be Witches or Dancers, or employ them.
While Organised religions are a little LESS likely to have notably differing beliefs about their own faith from village to village as your average Disorganised religion they ARE somewhat prone to schisms and heresies. Which could mean there are some mix of variant rival organised religions (and maybe some disorganised ones) with similar but different beliefs, competing for the faith (and resources) of their regional populations.
The “Goddess Cult” could be an organised religious order of cloaked fertility nuns who hit things with hammers, but have a schism or back woods heretics who run a disorganised religion made up of mad naked plump women who dance in the wheat harvest, AND could have a heretical organised secret cult of spiky armour wearing “blood goddess” anti-paladin girls operating out of the city sewers trying to take over the main faith's base of operations and it's control of the local city and coal mine.
Religions and Gods
One thing religion type organisations may have is GODS. These may just be myths and legends. But they also might actually just be characters.
It is entirely appropriate for a religion’s highest ranking leader (or leaders) to just claim to be deities. They might even have some relevant and appropriate skills.
Alternatively some religions will have large numbers of moderate or even lower rank members that are considered to be “mortal manifestations” of their deity (who may or may not be that higher level character). Even the general priesthood itself could be considered a bunch of mortal manifestations of their deity or religious ideals.
What this rules set DOESN'T particularly advocate is having deities that are “real but not mechanically represented as characters”. Unless they USED to be real, but then died or left or something. Because having “Omnipotent gods in the sky” or whatever is generally a bad thing, so don't do it.
Disorganised Bandits
Some bandits and squatters are just low tier guys who happened to be around and tried to rob you. Or stop you from robbing them. Or something. They generally suck and basically have low tier structures and traits, maybe even low low tier traits (like say, not even being Elite characters). Their organisation is minimal and they are lucky if they have low level named characters.
Organised Bandits
Are basically a lot like the Player Characters during Low Tier or even low Mid Tier. They are almost certainly led by one or more named characters, they have troops, they live in a castle, and they go on adventures. It's just their adventures mostly involve marauding through the Region robbing random Rich passers by. Occasionally they give to the poor, but mostly they don't.
Businesses
It is a tough fantasy world out there. And if you actually want to run a trade post or a market or a factory or a mine (or a complex international network of them). Then you probably need to basically be a wizard with an army, (just like the Player Characters). You build bases at your resources and sit in them with your armed minions plotting take overs of OTHER resources while fighting off bandits, rival businesses and the supposed local King's Tax Army.
Governments
A government could range from some guy who is mayor of a village and a few thugs he is mostly blood related to, to some guy who runs a large number of regions and cities and other important sites within them.
The exact organisational structure of who is in charge of what can vary in a government. It may even involve multiple organisations with an alliance between varying interests such as Religions, Armies and Businesses that support some sort of meta-organisation like an alliance lead by a Monarchy or a Senate or a Round Robin random lottery of the citizenry.
What is important is that Governments need to do two things in order to BE governments.
1) You must have unopposed access to the population they intend to govern (that's unopposed, NOT unshared, if a merchant is running a mining compound in town that DOESN'T stop you from declaring yourself town mayor unless he disputes your action, presumably sending his troops to do so).
2) You must build, man and control an appropriate “government” structure, like a Mayors House or a Throne Room.
Then, whoever does that can declare themselves king, or senator, or keeper of the random lottery box or whatever the crap they want.
And they can collect taxes and issue laws and other fun things.
Armies
Mostly work for governments, but are sometimes mercenary, or both. One notable thing Armies tend to do is occupy important border Choke Points, and send marauding Patrols into their occupied regions to collect taxes and hunt criminals.
Mercenaries
Look a lot like armies, and bandits, and the organisations run by Player Characters. Their most notable quirk though is that they generally try to remain sufficiently legitimate as to be employable and not on the run from the law (at least in their home base regions) and they work in return for money. Small LT mercenary groups will work for Coins, but larger groups will demand things like Treasures, Lands, even Resources.
Schools
Some organisations exist specifically to spread knowledge, though sometimes specifically to spread it to specific narrow minorities. Schools basically operate as a large bases with a lot of lodging for LT named characters and the like. Someone somewhere pays them something to take in untrained LT characters and assist them in training and unlocking LT skill caps. Usually within specific skill fields.
The most common example is a Government funded military or wizard school, that funnels the trained students back out of the School organisation and into the government and it's armies as MT officers.
Defining A Region
We need regions because we need places for Characters, Peoples and Cultures to originate from (and hang around in) and because we need some details that interact with the base building rules.
What Is A Region?
A Region is an abstract large map sized area equivalent to “Zones” from combat scale maps.
A Region is defined primarily by it's interaction with other rules. So for instance a character, using standard means of travel (on foot) can travel one region as a Strategic Action.
Regions also contain Resources and Sites. As well as having a number of other traits.
Resources
A region may have one or more “resources”. These are... things... of value to various cultures (and potentially to player characters and other organisations). Most resources will require some sort of site or structure in order to produce their actual product. Sometimes the same resource may exist multiple times in the same Region, indicating multiple sites and the potential for separate exploitation with multiple mining or farming structures.
Here are some sample resources.
Forest – You can farm it for wood.
Spider Colonies – You can farm it for silk.
Iron Ore – you can mine it for Metal.
Stone – You can mine it for Stone.
Crystals – You can mine nifty Crystals.
Desert Sands – You can mine it for Glass.
Arable Lands – You can farm it for (large amounts of) Food.
Resources are intended to tie in somewhat with the MT rules. As such right now there aren't all that many resource types or things to do with them.
Resources can influence the nature of cultural items available in a region or pan region cultural group. While it might be nice to cover that influence here.. too bad, it's in the cultural items section, sort of.
Sites
A “site” is a place you can go to in a Region and do, well, stuff. Generally anywhere you might care to go and do anything (especially anything involving construction and/or combat) is a Site. Resources for instance are also Sites.
Sites are basically just an abstraction for travel rules. But here is a list of site types...
Resource Site – It's where the resource is at. If you build some sort of structure to mine the resource it will usually also be at this site. Often a village, a town, even a city might be built at the site. Certainly fortifications and bases to defend the resource are also commonly found on the site.
Civilian Population – Some sites are simply most notable for being the place where people live. Sometimes a site is just a village, town, or city, and whatever else might happen to be there, like various bases, fortifications, palaces and other organisational occupiers of the site there to either control, exploit or experience the convenience of being near a population centre.
Empty Plot – The site is just a place where someone MIGHT build something. It might be especially interesting in it's topography or something and have cool caves, a babbling brook, or a nice mountain or something else you might want to exploit while building a private secluded castle or palace. In theory a Region might well have a LOT of Empty plots that no one cares about until someone starts asking.
Stronghold – The site is basically only notable because some character or organisation has built a base or palace or something there. Just like an Empty Plot... only it has something in it.
Choke Point – Some regions have one or more choke points. These sites either sit on a border, or “in between” the other sites in the region. In order to travel across that border (or between sites), you MUST pass through the choke point. Bandits and monsters tend to hang out here. Sometimes they build a castle or a palace here and call themselves King of the region or something.
Modern Ruins – Sometimes people build a stronghold, or a town, or even a resource mine, and then abandon it (maybe the resource ran out, or something). These places still have the shells of buildings, maybe some remnant or squatter populations, and maybe some remnant loot or still functioning (or restorable) structures. Modern Ruins are particularly interesting sites for LT characters looking for adventure and loot, or a place to start restoring into an LT/MT base.
Ancient Ruins – Are like modern ruins, only older. Importantly though this means that Ancient Ruins may have been built by a people and/or culture that is DIFFERENT to those currently present in the Region in modern times, possibly even different to ones that have are present ANYWHERE in modern times. Ancient Ruins are particularly interesting because the remnants and scraps of stuff they contain will potentially be from that different culture and it may be a way of making available exciting items, even skill sets (probably in the form of crumbling ancient skill manuals) that aren't otherwise available in that region, or possibly not anywhere nearby.
Travelling Within A Region
When you are “in” a Region you are ALSO “at” one of the Sites within that region. While you are there during your Strategic turns you can do... whatever the hell it is you do, at that Site. However if you WANT to do something with your Strategic Action at some OTHER site within the same Region travelling TO another site in a region during your Strategic Turn is free you do NOT need to spend any time travelling, or rather the time spent travelling is “less than a Strategic Turn” and less by such a large margin you still get to have your Strategic Turn. You can even travel through MULTIPLE sites in the same region while still having your Strategic turn in that region. If you REALLY want to, and assuming the Strategic action isn't kinda tied to a specific location (which most of them SHOULD be).
If the Region has an “inter site” choke point you DO pass through the choke point site on your way to any other sites in the region. And that COULD cause trouble.
Travelling Between Regions
As a strategic action you can just walk to the neighbouring Region. Technically you start at your origin site in your current region. Then move to a destination Site in the next one. Which is notable in case something interesting happens to you at the sites at either end.
If the Region border you pass through has a Choke Point site you DO have to pass through it, and things might happen there.
Travelling Faster
Sometimes you can travel faster. Boats, Horses and Vehicles generally let you travel TWO Regions per Strategic Turn. This works just like performing two normal 1 Region trips in a row, passing through your start Site, a Site in the first Region you pass through, and ending in a destination Site in the second Region (and passing through any Choke Point sites on either or both of the borders you pass through).
Potentially other fun effects like Teleporting could turn up... but whatever that's extra and probably at least MT at that.
Types Of Travel
Potentially there are different... types of travel. So you can travel by land, by sea, by river, by air, or even by tunnels (or tunnelling).
As such you sometimes need a boat, or need to be a fish, or be riding on a fish, in order to travel into some regions or across some borders what with you know, seas and junk.
So seas need to be drawn onto the map so you can indicate if a region is an island surrounded by water (need water capable travel to leave or enter), a coastal region (water capable travel can leave or enter from SOME borders), has a major navigable river (water restricted travel can travel through the region, but only along the river choke point and only to specific destination sites and borders), or is outright just ocean (water capable transport required to go anywhere, and possibly even to stay at a site).
In addition SOME regions may even have undersea locations. Which would require submarines or water breathing to visit.
Flight is a bit more simple, but notably could allow you to avoid some Regional Obstacles, and various potential Choke Point Sites.
Burrowing could have similar effects to flight, but pre-existing tunnel networks would work a lot like Rivers and Choke Point Sites.
Don't even get me going about space travel.
Regional Obstacles
It would not be unreasonable for some Region borders to have outright impassable borders, or borders that require special transport (or access to a hidden or defended Choke Point site, or particular survival skills) in order to travel across them.
So you can totally put a bunch of “mountains so high you need air travel to cross them” or something stupid like that, on your map, if you REALLY want to.
Regional Terrain
It is also handy to have SOME idea of what general regional terrain looks like. Just encase you encounter someone on the road or go looking for empty plots or something. So Regions need to describe their general terrain type, which will then influence the types of maps you get out of them.
Here are some sample terrain types.
Desert
Volcanic Wasteland
Deep Ocean
Jungle
Woodland
Grasslands
Obsidian Craters
Swamp
Hills
Mountains
Glaciers
Mushroom Forests
But really it's a fairly vague attribute so you can just add things like “Cotton Candy Cloud Lands” or something.
Regional Hazards
Just like a Zone can have a slippery floor, a deadly gas cloud and a dangerous pitfall, regions also... can have, well, a slippery floor, a deadly gas cloud and a dangerous pitfall.
Some regions are full of sink holes, clouds of obscuring mists, dangerous acid fogs, pits full of lava, or a wide variety of other things you can fall into and generally get lost in.
While travelling (even between sites) in a region with hazards the hazards get to make an attack on you, to try and get you lost, suck your favourite item into a bottomless peat bog, or fall you down a lava pit or something. If they hit... they do that, possibly wasting your strategic turn while you find your location or crawl out of the lava pit, or possibly just damaging you in case you run into trouble before the strategic turn is over.
Some regional hazards might be associated with specific sites or choke point sites. So you only need to worry about the Lava Pits attacking you if you travel to, from, or through the Lava Mountain Pass choke point on the border, or something.
Some regional hazards, especially site related ones, could potentially be eliminated or reduced with infrastructure. So you can totally build bridges and safety railings around the lava pits if you have the time and money.
Here for one night only, some actual regional hazards!
Spooky Mists Undamaging Hazard Deceptive Obfuscating Tricky Social Single-Target Close-Range +4 vs Non-Blind +2 vs Non-Tricky +2 vs Stupid
The region is full of spooky mist all the time. Characters hit by the spooky mist are Lost and end up spending their turn wandering in the mists. Spooky mist deals 1 Normal injury if it hits a Clumsy character. You can also use Spooky Mists as a default profile for other “lost in haze” effects like deserts prone to mirages (add Illusion remove Obfuscating), and Jungles (add Grab effect) or wild briar (remove social add minimum normal damage and maybe Rip)
Hungry Bogs Undamaging Hazard Disarm Grab Strong Single-Target Close-Range +2 vs Non-Strong +2 vs Weak +2 vs Clumsy
This attack ignores Armour, Obfuscatng and Evasive bonuses to defence.
The region is full of dangerous bogs that grab you and steal your boots. Characters hit by the hungry bog are Lost, Grabbed and Disarmed of an item. The disarmed item is then lost in the bog. It MIGHT be recoverable with a minimum 1 Strategic Turn search per item but it has lots of hide bonuses and the bog will attack you while you search. Hungry Bogs Disarms ALL items instead of just one if it hits a Clumsy character. Use this hazard as a template for other similar effects like quick sand, shifting sands, grasping briar nettles and kleptomaniacal monkeys.
Precarious Pit Falls Mistep Hazard Single-Target Close-Range +2 vs Non-Fast -2 vs Fast +4 vs [color]Clumsy[/color]
This attack ignores Armour and Obfuscating bonuses to defence.
Crumbling pit or cliff edges, hidden sink holes or some other major fall hazard plague this region. This hazard should also have a typical pit profile for determining the falling attack and effects (how many zones fallen, material and hardness of pit floor, any spikes or jagged rocks in the bottom, any water, monsters or lava in the bottom, and whether the pit is so hard to get out of that the victim is Lost for the turn).
Mystic Travel Curse Mystic Undamaging Social Magic Deceptive Illusion Hazard Single-Target Close-Range +4 vs Non-Mystic +2 vs Non-Tricky +2 vs [color]Clumsy[/color]
This Region is warded against mere mortals. Attempting to travel in the region is like travelling in an ever shifting psychedelic magic maze. Mystic characters hit by this attack are lost for 1 turn. Non-Mystic characters hit by this attack are Lost then deposited at a specific site tied to this curse at the end of this turn (inside the region, on it's border, or even outside of the region). Clumsy characters (regardless of Mystic Status) hit by this attack are lost, but then could turn up almost anywhere in the world pretty much at random/GMs whim.
Bad River Crossing Undamaging Hazard Grab Strong Single-Target Close-Range +2 vs Non-Strong +2 vs Weak +4 vs [color]Clumsy[/color]
This attack ignores Armour, Obfuscatng and Evasive bonuses to defence.
This region (or choke point site) requires you to cross a wild river in order to continue travelling. If you are hit you are swept away, risking drowning, getting lost, losing items and ending up somewhere way down river. Clumsy characters are likely to lose most if not all of their items in the river. Others might lose one or two, or anything heavy. Actual injuries can occur in some rivers due to water falls (falling damage) or sharp jagged rock spikes in the river. Or both.
SOME regions sometimes have special survival requirements. For instance, they may lack easily available food or drinking water (so you need to bring your own, or otherwise specially obtain it for any Strategic Turns you spend there).
Other Regions may have a harsh climate. Typically either Extreme Heat or Extreme Cold that requires you to dress appropriately, and will otherwise attack you in combat time with a persistent hazard of variable severity until you are DEAD.
Some regions just have intermittent climate hazards, which then work more like Regional hazards.
Peoples in Regions with survival requirements either have a Mutation Trait that allows them to survive that climate (Climate Survival) or they have cultural bonus items that help, like rations, water flasks, deep well buildings, fur coats, warming body lotions, big shade hats or whatever ridiculous fantasy crap they find most appropriate for survival in the Snowy Lava Waste Desert.
Regional Marauders
Monsters, Bandits and other characters can try and intercept you during regional travel.
The first method is simple. They can wait at a site (ideally a Choke Point) and declare as a Strategic Action that they are lying in wait. And then when you get there you will encounter them (note, you can also do this yourself). Now “encounter” is a broad term, sure, you are there, they are there, they are waiting for you (or at least someone) but you MIGHT still just sneak right past them. But basically a combat map turns up and interaction of SOME form will occur.
The second method is more complex. Characters can get together in a mob and go marauding the entire Region looking for trouble, as a Strategic Action. Any characters travelling that region (including other marauders) now MIGHT encounter them. The simplest way to emulate this is with a single Sneak action check with a Range Modifier of -5. If it fails the Marauders don't precisely spot you, but they DO happen to stumble across your path and end up NEAR you, and an encounter might begin. Unless the results of their marauding end their action Marauders might encounter any number of travellers or groups or travellers during their marauding, and a traveller might also encounter any number of separate marauder groups during their journey.
Dunno.
However. It would be a good idea if MOST marauders were actually mobs aligned to Organisations. And then you could trace them back to their source site, blow up their base and prevent future marauder mobs from spawning using basically the same recruitment mechanics player characters use.
Even “The Owl Bears” should probably be some sort of marauding patrol deployed from “Owl Bear Hive” site owned by “The Local Owl Bears” organisation.
So anyway, assuming you stumble across a manned choke point or a marauder group, what basically happens is everyone rolls Cause A Disturbance actions against each other starting at the maximum ranges at which they can detect each other as they get closer, and presumable someone then succeeds and starts sneaking, waiting, or charging into battle, or something. OR no one succeeds and they eventually by pure chance stop getting closer to each other, the rolls end due to Stealth Persistence and they pass like ships in the night.
Secret Resources and Sites
It is perfectly reasonable that some resources and sites in a Region or on it's border, including potential Choke Points you might need to find in order to pass some bullshit impassable border might be SECRET.
That means those sites are hiding from you using a Hide action. They have fairly arbitrary bonuses and penalties to this action. They only even roll the action if you go pointlessly trying to cross that choke point border OR spend a Strategic Turn searching the region for hidden sites (which you might do for various reasons, not the least of which is looking for cool Empty Plots for your new base building project).
Alternatively if you obtain a map to a hidden site you just plain know where the site is. Which is handy for all those lost ancient ruins and stuff.
Regional Populations
One important aspect of a region is who lives there.
Now. Originally I WAS going to have some fixed population stats and pools for recruiting and... actually it's more detail than required.
When tracking populations we only really care if there are specific Peoples or Cultures there or not.
So a Region itself will have either No Population, or a small list of “Rural Populations” by people and culture, and maybe some “Nomadic” popultions by people and culture.
A Rural Population represents scattered farmers or other land holders.
Nomadic populations represent wandering groups or tribes. Nomadic populations often maraud in whole (usually still small) tribal groups (not necessarily looking for trouble, though they might find it), They also aren't always home, as they may be in other Regions at any given time and should have either a seasonal route mapped in Strategic Turns or a flat “chance of being home” when the recruiters come calling.
A site like a Village, Town or City also has populations, and again basically just lists the peoples and cultures available.
Recruiting People
When you build appropriate housing to place various sorts of recruit characters in you now need to go get some recruits to put in them.
The actual money cost of recruiting is all included in housing and other base facilities. But in order to fill your open recruit slots you need to have a Named Character act as a recruitment officer and spend 1 Strategic Turn at a Site (the base itself is fine) “Recruiting” as their action.
Recruits are then drawn from any Regional Rural or Nomadic populations AND and Urban Populations at the same site.
Recruits don't have any specific skills or items, those generally come from base structures. Even status as elites, civilians, named etc... is based on structures. But your recruit's cultural skill sets can be marginally important and their basic People physical traits can be important. Which means that sometimes you WILL want to recruit the Clawed Amazon Women from the south lands, because THEY have Claws and personal knowledge of the Amazon Pride skill set, and maybe a cultural speciality item or structure you want them to provide.
So you can recruit ANYWHERE, and the recruits will travel back to your base. However rival organisations may wish to prevent recruiting actions. An established rival government in control of a non-rebellious population CAN simply say no. (rebellious under classes and the like tend to ignore governments in this regard). Other organisations may attempt more active means of interrupting your actions or intercepting recruits in transit, so sending the recruiter back home with the recruits might not be a bad idea.
Swapping Recruits
In addition to simple recruiting you CAN replace recruits. So if you decide you DO want to recruit some cool Clawed Amazons or something, you can just fire a bunch of Vanilla Farm Boys or whatever you currently have to make up slots.
But in addition to that if you have multiple Sites you also CAN order existing recruits to MOVE to other sites, allowing you to shuffle around Vanilla Farm Boys and Clawed Amazons and stuff. Though, since they actually travel between sites, you might want to send a named character and maybe some other friends along to keep an eye on them in case they get lost or attacked or something...
While those things would be NICE unfortunately, well, no.
In the end tracking them was too much complexity for too little payout.
If you are happy recruiting from the pool of two and a half vanilla flavoured farm boys or whatever is hanging around in your rural population you can just get your Five Thousand basic recruits from those guys. In one turn.
Yeah I know. Whatever. The alternative appears to generally involve a lot of numbers and the five thousand farm boys in one night scenario shouldn't be TOO likely to hit such extreme scales.
Sometimes you may want to spend your available moneys and such not on buildings for specific sites, but on an entire region. You might say, want to build a road network, or some safety railings around all those god damn lava pits.
Regional upgrades refers to some mechanics from the Base Building section like Work Turns so you might want to read that section first.
Opposing Construction
Any organisation with a presence in the Region can attempt to oppose construction, basically allowing them to turn up on site and encounter your workers (so you might want to send guards or named characters to keep an eye out).
Detecting Construction
Anyone present in a region will normally notice Regional Upgrades being built, unlike building at sites it is basically impossible to keep it secret.
Destroying A Regional Upgrade
Destroying a regional upgrade requires an investment of the same amount of Work Turns as it took to build it, but no other cost and you may allocate non-workers to the task (typically Warriors). Destroying a Regional Upgrade will typically be noticed by anyone in the region, and potentially opposed with outright violence.
Marked Trails
Cost 1 Treasure
WT : 10
Builds signs and simple trails out of culturally appropriate materials. Used to negate the effects of an unpleasant “confusing you until you are lost” type Regional hazard, like Spooky Mists. Characters destroying Marked Trails may opt to instead attempt to secretly (sneak attack against “observers” in region at -5 range penalty by the “group leader” for the project) alter them so that the signs and markings all point the wrong way. Changing the effect of the marked trails to +4 to hit for the “lost” attack instead of negating it.
Secretly Marked Trails
Cost 2 Treasures
WT : 30
Just like Marked Trails only they only work for characters who know the secret sign code. Secretly Marked Trails unlike other similar upgrades can be installed (or attempt to be installed) secretly (sneak attack against “observers” in region at -5 range penalty by the “group leader” for the project). Secret Trails may be detected by characters travelling their Region. And roll the following Hide Action to avoid that, Hide Stealth Tricky Chameleon Obfuscating Deceptive Silent +5 vs Non-Tricky +5 vs Stupid +3 vs Non-Mystic. Once spotted Secret Marked Trails can be “decyphered” by a character who spends one turn doing so. The trails then roll the same hide check against the character, if it misses the Secret Code of the trail has been decyphered, if it hits it remains enigmatic. Multiple secretly marked trails can exist in a region and they can exist with or without Marked Trails which may or may not be sabotaged.
Dirt Roads
Cost : 0 Treasures
WT: 30
Creates simple dirt roads in a region, allowing wheeled vehicles including large ones to move around. Which is handy. Unfortunately the roads tend to develop slippery mud in rainy weather and dangerous cart ruts that can damage wheeled vehicles. The cart ruts are a Regional Hazard triggered against wheeled movement vehicles and characters as follows. Undamaging Sever Knock Ceramic Soft Single-Target Close-Range +X vs All (where X is speed), +4 vs Clumsy +4 vs Non-Fast. On hit the cart rut breaks off a wheel then knocks the vehicle causing it to crash. This effectively knocks most vehicles out of travelling any further, requiring them to be abandoned and potentially ending the drivers movement and Strategic action before it's normal completion (due to ending extended vehicle based Strategic Regional Movement).
Cart Ruts do not appear until 1-4 Strategic Turns after the roads are built. You can keep “rebuilding” the roads to keep them fresh and Rut free, or to simply undo ruts when you encounter them.
Dirt Roads can be designed to all pass through any site in the Region as a Regional Choke Point.
Paved Roads
Cost : 1 Treasure
WT: 60
Creates a network of roads paved with culturally appropriate regionally available materials (usually stone). Which is handy, and doesn't rut up and generally go to crap like Dirt Roads.
Paved Roads can be designed to all pass through any site in the Region as a Regional Choke Point.
Elevated Roads
Cost : 1 Treasure
WT: 90
Like Paved roads (but usually built from Wood or Bone) for swampy or similar regions. An elevated network of roads that among other things allows travellers immunity to Hungry Bogs.
Like Paved Roads may be designed to all past through any site in the Region as a Regional Choke Point.
Bridges
Cost : 1 Treasure
WT: 30
Builds bridges across a Chasm site or a Wild River Crossing type site. Allowing casual crossing with ease.
Regional Safety Railings
Cost : 1 Treasure
WT: 50
Puts safety railings around Pit Fall hazards in the Region preventing constant falling accidents for the population and other travellers.
Rural Housing
Cost : 3 Treasures
WT: 30
Builds housing for a Rural Population to move into and inhabit the region (or for a Nomadic Culture to settle down into). Can be built multiple times but most regions can only really fit 1-3 Rural or Nomadic populations. Handy if you want to colonise a region with farmers. Structures are of course Culturally appropriate, but may be made culturally appropriate to inhabitants instead of constructors if you prefer.