Game in the Brain

To simplify my Civic Stat system, I’ll just give a basic competence score that works with the GURPS skill system. Basically, each City, Province, Port, Fief, Pronoia has someone running it for its Lord. As the Status (which will go into into more detail in a future post) of this Asset gets higher it requires greater proficiency and a wider set of specialized skills.

Merchant

Literacy, Writing

Mathematics (Applied), Finance, Accounting, Market Analysis

Mathematics (Geometry), Engineering (Civic)

Law (Common, Merchant)

Mathematics (Geometry), Engineering (Combat)

Intelligence Analysis (Politics)

Streetwise, Intelligence Analysis (Local) – this deals with goings on in the city

Diplomacy, Public Speaking, Politics

Note on skills – Many of these skills are very difficult to acquire through the recruitment and training of the specialists and professionals who possess them. In low tech settings the poor literacy and education, makes for a very small pool and fragile system that can fall apart with the death of any key member.

This makes it expensive or very fortunate for powerful cities to have a competence-12. exceptions are found in the greatest of cities, in the medieval age before the 13th Century (the sack of Constantinople in 1204) this puts Constantinople at 11 in its lowest points and 15 at it highest points.

Simplifying everything to an Average helps the GM determine the skills of various specialists.

Institutional Strength. The health of the Institution means how quickly and able these people can recover lost knowledge or experts after a damaging circumstances like riots, surrender, sacking, coups, etc.

This is optional, but very illustrative of what can happen if the acquisition of a holding with a precious Institution is mishandled or when the Lord choses to transfer key personnel to other realms as gifts, to bolster administrative competence of another asset, or to diversify his risks.

This can be represented as a parenthetical HT beside the competence rating.

Future Topics. I’m working my way topic per topic towards my Civic Stats ruleset. Along the same line, I’ve joined the Cartographers Guild in hopes of learning to make Mass Combat Maps for the purpose of making GURPS mass combat more easily playable (its already playable if you ad hoc background resources).

I’m trying to figure out City Status, Asset Costs, and Special Features (Like Developed Industries) hope to post more about them and collect them and edit them for useful Homebrew ruleset for building mass combat, diplomacy, espionage and economic game play.