Country character sheet

[The Boz]

I need some character sheets for kingdoms, empires, cities, stuff like that. Where might I find these things?

[The Boz]

Bumpage. I really need this soon, so that I may still print it out before the weekend starts.

[Totally Guy]

What game are you talking about?

[The Boz]

Any derivation of a 3rd edition system.

[Rhynn]

Well, you're going to need a system (or subsystem), surely.

Fields of Blood - The Book of War (3.X third-party book) has such a system, with rules for realms and their characteristics.

A realm has a Type, a Regent, a Race, a Civilization, a Governing Style, and provinces with Terrain, Population Center, Production, Total Production, and Upkeep, and the Realm has a Total Production and Upkeep derived from those.

A Magical Medieval Society has some rules for realms, too, although IIRC not terribly detailed.

[Totally Guy]

Any derivation of a 3rd edition system.

Lots of planets have a north.:smallamused:

[KillianHawkeye]

Are you looking for a character sheet that has a space to put what country the character is from, or some kind of actual "character sheet" that represents a country somehow?

I think most sheets will have a space for character's homeland or country of origin somewhere. Heck, you can just write that in the margin if it's just the name of someplace.

If it's the other thing, well I don't think I can help with that. You'll probably be better off making something that fits your needs from scratch.

[The Boz]

Are you looking for a character sheet that has a space to put what country the character is from, or some kind of actual "character sheet" that represents a country somehow?
The last one.

You'll probably be better off making something that fits your needs from scratch.
I fear that.

[KillianHawkeye]

Yeah, I think you're screwed, bro.

The problem I'm seeing is that there isn't a strong need to have particular info about a city or country placed in an organized fashion on a single sheet of paper. I mean, the main reason the PCs have character sheets is to keep their combat stats, equipment, and non-combat skills organized and easy to find. These needs are all supported by the game rules and are pretty much universally helpful to have on a sheet. The same can't usually be said for locations.

I can only think of a few things you might need to know about a city or country. Population and demographics, maybe. Important people and organizations (and alignment thereof, if applicable). Important locations. Shops and taverns. Quest locations. That's pretty much it. That's like half a dozen lines on a text document or more (depending on number of important NPCs/organizations/locations).

If you look at the info for a town from a published adventure, they generally give all that info in a single paragraph.

Once you go beyond that, you're getting into pretty specific needs, which require pretty specific solutions.

[The Boz]

Once you go beyond that, you're getting into pretty specific needs, which require pretty specific solutions.

The specific need here is the creation of a new setting. Since this is me collaborating with a few friends, I thought a standardized country sheet would help us when we're working out what goes where and how.

[KillianHawkeye]

Well at least you have friends to help you decide how to layout your new Country Sheet. :smallbiggrin:

Good luck!

[Deaxsa]

i'm actually very interested in this. let me know if'n you finish

[Craft (Cheese)]

Well, if building a setting is what you want, here's my (rather informal) method:

Craft's townbaking guide!

First, a few caveats. This won't give you a complete town, really just an outline of it. The true purpose of this guide is to build a set of quest hooks that, once you introduce the PCs, can produce an interesting emergent storyline; Complete verisimilitude is less important to me than having a good number of elements that play off each other. You can also technically do these steps in any order, but I'm going to produce them in the sequence that I think gives the best results. Also, although this guide applies to "towns" it can be used to build smaller villages and big cities just as well, though big cities should be fractalized: Make a sheet for the whole city first, then break the city down into a number of districts and repeat the process for each section, using information from the overview sheet to feed the district sheets.

To bake yourself up a town, you need the following ingredients: Setpiece, Name, Powers, Fears, Plans, Secrets, and Aftermath.

The setpiece is something immediately visual about the town. Come up with something to make it really stand out in your descriptions of it as compared to other towns. Rome has its seven hills, Sharn has its towers, and you need something as well.

For our example town, let's say that the majority of our town is built with stones from a local quarry that produces a strange, black granite, almost as dark as coal. This black material absorbs heat well, which makes the city much warmer than it otherwise would be, which turns out to be rather temperate once you take the local cold climate into account.

The name is one of the most important parts: It needs to be memorable, euphonic, and communicate the city's essential character. Names for places are usually inspired either by the geography or a historical event, but naming conventions vary with culture: If you want to be super-snazzy about it, you can come up with your own naming conventions for each culture and have the place names conform to them, but it's not something you necessarily need to worry about. An easy method is to name your city based on its setpiece, hence why I advise you make up the setpiece first. But sometimes a name just feels natural, and you can derive your setpiece from that as well.

Our example town shall be named Blackstone, for the color and material of its walls.

The powers of a town are its most powerful individuals: "Power" in this context meaning "having the means to bring about what you want to happen." The power might be magical, it might be political, it might be economic, it might even be just plain physical. A power can be a group if the group is mostly homogenous in its goals and acts as a single unit. For example, if a town is ruled by an elected council with no real internal conflicts, then the council can count as a power. But if it's split into two factions (like, say, political parties) each faction should count as a power separately.

Three is a good number of powers to start with, and you can make these in any way you'd normally make a character or a faction.

Let's define our three powers for Blackstone real quick-like:

- Joanna Thundermane, aged 43, captain of the town guard and militia. While Blackstone is nominally ruled by a local lord, he's an incompetent idiot who cares nothing about what goes on in the city so long as he's kept comfortable, so by circumstances the real decisions fall to Joanna. She's renowned as a war hero from the conflict with Greensboro a decade ago.

- Sylvester Patrice, aged 65, the town's wealthiest moneylender. He also runs the most successful (and perfectly legal) gambling halls and brothels of Blackstone. His lending services are preferred among businessmen in town because he gives the lowest interest rates and the laxest on collections. However, he's trying to get a foot in organized crime. He's not particularly good at it, but his large resources more than make up for it.

- Eodwinn Midge, aged 51, the local high priest of the city's official religion. A bit unhinged, but he has a large number of vocal supporters, largely in part due to his miraculous efforts that spared Blackstone from the ravages of a recent plague.

Note that we've introduced several new details about the town in our descriptions here: The war with Greensboro, and the plague. This is a good thing! We don't have to flesh out these ideas right now, but it's good to keep in mind when you want to branch out and add more towns to the same setting. They'll also come in handy later.

Next up are Fears. The fears of a town are known things that threaten the town in a relatively immediate way. Most everyone is worried about these things in some way, and they color the mood of the town as the players interact with it. Like with powers, three is a good number of fears to have, but to keep it simple with Blackstone we'll have only two:

- Though Eodwinn managed to keep the plague out of the walls of Blackstone, he could not prevent it from ravaging the countryside around it. This left many of the farmers outside of Blackstone dead, and many fields left untended this year. This means a sparse harvest: Sparse enough that when winter comes there's not gonna be enough food to go around for everyone.

- A serial killer has been prowling the streets at night, with a new body being found every morning, but no witnesses or leads as to who the killer might be. The attacks are apparently random and opportunistic, and many citizens are scared to go outside at night because of it.

Next up are the Plans. The Plans are how the Powers of the town are responding to the Fears. Each power should have a plan for each fear. "They don't care" is a valid Plan, but this should be the exception rather than the rule.

- Joanna is attempting to deal with the food problem by secretly diverting some tax funds that are going to the town's lord to instead pay for extra food to be shipped in, to hopefully ease the coming winter. However, she's actively covering up evidence to hide the serial killer's tracks: Most of the victims have been immigrants from Greensboro, whom she still holds a deep-seated hatred for due to the atrocities committed by their military during the war, and she believes the serial killer is targeting them because of this sort of racial hatred, and secretly wants it to continue.

- Sylvester is dealing with the food shortage by attempting to stockpile as much of it as possible so he can sell it at a premium when winter starts. He's also actively sabotaging Joanna's food acquisition efforts, as he doesn't want the lower food prices it will bring. As for the serial killer, he has the same belief as Joanna that the murders are motivated by racial hatred, and as a greensboro immigrant himself, he works to bring them to justice as soon as possible.

- Eodwinn preaches that the food crisis is divine punishment for the city's legalization of gambling and prostitution, and the only ones who will die of starvation of those who have taken part in these vices. He offers support and blessings to the families of the victims and comfort to those who are frightened by the killer's presence, but offers neither help nor harm to the investigation.

Notice how we're using the plans not only to build a dynamic between the powers, but also as a way to establish character traits about them.

Next are the Secrets. A secret is, well, something that most people don't know about, but is an important reveal with regards to the struggles currently taking place within the town (or the world at large). Three is a good number, but since Joanna's covering up of the murder evidence is enough to count as a secret, I'll only give two for Blackstone:

- Most people believe Eodwinn saved them from the plague through praying for divine intervention, and though he was responsible this was not the case. Unable to get the help he needed from his deity, Eodwinn instead enlisted the help of a powerful devil, summoned and bound under the church, and sold his soul in order to get the devil to use its power to protect the city. He believes he made a noble sacrifice for his people.

- The killer, Evlyn Moonglade, aged 27, is actually a vigilante who is targeting members of a cult who plan to free the devil sealed under the church to set it loose on the city. Evlyn agrees with Eodwinn's sacrifice, and does not want his reputation to be destroyed by the revelation of diabolic intervention, so she does this work in secret.


Finally, there's the Aftermath. This is the "default" way for the events set up in the town to play out, assuming the PCs don't interfere. After all the players might show up in town and then pass through without messing with any of this stuff. The DM could simply choose to set things on hold in case the players decide to come back and mess with it, or they could choose to use the Aftermath to play out the consequences of the PC's inaction. Or they could come up with their own, alternative aftermath instead. So this step is sorta optional, but it's something I like to have set up in advance.

Here's our aftermath for Blackstone: Sylvester succeeds at finding and defeating Evlyn, which causes the cult to succeed at freeing the devil. Blackstone is wiped off the map, and Joanna is killed and raised as a Death Knight. Both Joanna and the freed devil come across the PC's path at one point in a future adventure.

One last note: I've intentionally made blackstone rather self-contained, but it's actually a great idea to integrate pieces of your setting together. Maybe Sylvester's death has far-reaching consequences as his business empire falls apart in other towns. With the exception of the war I didn't talk at all about Blackstone's connections to the rest of the setting, but the easiest way to do this is to just make parts of it related.

Now, you may notice a few deficiencies with this guide:

- I don't talk at all about how to define the town's layout.

- I don't define any way to specify the demographics or economic structure.

- There's basically one adventure to be had here (though it could go in any number of directions depending on what the PCs do) and once it's over there's basically nothing left to do here unless you make some other stuff up.

These are all important, but I prefer this method because, well, towns, villages, and cities in real-life are immensely complicated things. Your biggest challenge as a DM is getting an interesting game world for the players to interact with, but it's difficult to do that when you let yourself get bogged down in relatively tiny details like how many inns there are. My method focuses on getting the interesting bits down first (the struggles between the various factions that control the town) and worrying about the details later. It's a "sketch" for a reason.

Hope all this helps!

[Lionheart]

You probably won't need it after Craft (Cheese)'s input tbh, but Pathfinder's GM Guide has a whole section on building cities/towns etc. including a 'character sheet'

I don't know it too well, but it seems like it could be easily adapted to encompass a whole country.

[Aidan305]

I believe that Evil Hat's Dresden Files game (Not 3rd ed) has a locational character sheet that you could adapt.