Yakk
2022-03-11, 02:42 PM
So I'm a bit of a mechanics junky. Thus I'm fiddling with mechanics in world building.
The hope is that this helps organize thoughts and makes societies make a bit of sense.
Scale is an integer that represents how "powerful" a given faction or society is overall. I'm going to use an exponential scale here; every 3 steps is 2x, and every 10 steps is x10.
So a scale 0 faction is 10x weaker/smaller than a scale 10 faction, and a scale 15 faction is 2x weaker/smaller than a scale 18 faction.
Next we can start with a baseline value. Scale 0 is "10 motivated soldier with a sword, shield and medium armor, enough food to keep them fed, and roads to walk on" to generate a baseline. (This is so scale 1 through 9 is not fractions-of-soldiers).
Scale 10 is then 100, scale 20 is 1000, scale 30 is 10k, scale 40 is 100k, scale 50 is 1 million soldiers, etc.
---
D&D 5e specific:
We can map this to CR reasonably well. To go from monsters with CR to a scale, we can add up the CR in question and divide by 3, take the base-10 log and multiply by 10.
To go the other way, divide by 10, raise to the power 10, then multiply by 3.
(For this to work, note that monsters over CR 20 are actually 3 CR per point; so a CR 30 monster is "really" CR 50)
So a CR 30 (really 50) creature is a Scale 12 faction in and of itself from its raw combat power (and more if it isn't an idiot).
---
Now, I'm using "able to project power with soldiers", but that is just one simple and easy axis to measure power on. A merchant guild is going to have less soldiers than its scale indicates, and more money and shipping capabilities than its scale indicates. But most power is fungible, in that the merchants could (if need arises) support a martial power (hire mercenaries, petition the emperor who they pay taxes to, or even set up their own puppet force) with their power (of course, doing so would weaken their other abilities, as it isn't cheap).
I hope to use this to set up factions quickly. I can create rivalries and ensure they are at least in the right ballpark, and break factions down into sub-factions in sensible ways.
A faction has a budget of 100 points to buy subfactions:
-1: 80
-2: 64
-3: 50
-4: 40
-5: 32
-6: 25
-7: 20
-8: 16
-9: 12
-10: 10
-11: 8
each of these subfactions can have subfactions; a subfaction is "part" of the larger faction, so its power adds to it.
Lets see if this works.
Albion is a major world power. I'll call that 40, because it is a round number.
Its major subfactions are:
The Crown, The South Seas Trading Company, the Admiralty and the Museum of Antiquities.
I can start off by making these equal, and assign another share to "other factions". Dividing 100 point budget into 5 gives 20 points each.
So each of these are a 33 point faction. And I'll make the "other" bag be "the Senate and People".
Albion: 40
Crown of Albion: 33
South Seas Trading Company: 33
Albion Admiralty: 33
Albion Museum of Antiquities: 33
Senate and People of Albion: 33
We can now drill down in one of these. Say, the Crown.
Under it are the Nobility (I'll treat this as a subfaction a sub faction), the Protectorate (a colony ruled by the Crown), the Crown Knights (order of Paladins), the Civil Service and the Palace (executive branch).
Again we have 5. So evenly divided they are all Power 26.
Albion: 40
*Crown: 33
**Nobility: 26
**Protectorate: 26
**Knights of the Crown: 26
**Administration: 26
**Palace: 26
*South Seas Trading: 33
*Admiralty: 33
*Museum: 33
*Senate and People: 33
We can do a sanity check. At 26 power, the Crown Knights have a power roughly equivalent to 4000 soldiers. That seems plausible as a strong military organization. Or a total CR of 1200 or so; 200 CR 3 "elites" each with a dozen CR 1/4 footsoldiers. Seems not insanely beefy.
The Knights of the Crown I can split into 3 roughly equal bits: the Royal Guard, the Blades and the Rangers, each (100/3 is 33, -5) Scale 21. The Royal Guard is the shiny bits that guard the palace and the capital city. The Rangers are the envoys and messengers of the Crown. The Blades are the secret police. Each have roughly 60 "elites" CR 3 plus support (or some combination like that) in terms of force available.
Next, let's play with the Museum. I want a scrappy smaller rival faction; Spiretop University. So I'll shave a point off the Museum (bring it down to 32) and Senate and People (32) to free up 8, which is enough to add a Spiretop University (29)
Albion: 40
*Crown: 33
**Nobility: 26
**Protectorate: 26
**Knights of the Crown: 26
*** Royal Guard: 21
*** Blades: 21
*** Rangers: 21
**Administration: 26
**Palace: 26
*South Seas Trading: 33
*Admiralty: 33
*Museum: 32
*Senate and People: 32
*Spiretop University: 29
3 points under the Museum, it is half the scale -- a smaller, scrappy rival.
The Museum is a power because in this D&D based world, ancient artifacts are magic, and researching the past is a way to find magic and learn magic. So the archeologists of the museum are now an institution that provides the most powerful spellcasters of Albion.
Spiretop University was a school that has grown to rival it. In the last century it has grown to rival the Museum as a center of magical research. It is less focused on the past, and more focused on applying what we know to the world.
Anyhow, I think this helps me understand the relative power scales of each sub organization, and the effects of what happens if I accidentally boost one or another too far. And as it is factal, I can sketch the main subfactions of a faction and leave the details for when I need it later. Like, at this point, I don't know what the main subfactions of the Museum or Spiretop are, but I can tell you roughly how beefy they have to be (they'll be in the 20s).
I should probably improve the currency system. A problem is "what if a I add another 34 size subfaction to Albion 'out of nowhere'"; doing the math to figure out what happens to Albion's total scale is a bit annoying right now. (The answer, by the way, is it becomes a Scale 41 faction; I can do the math, but the currency system only helps a bit; Albion is 100, and 41 would be 125, 42 would be 160, 43 200. Codifying how that works would feel better than winging it).
Thoughts? Is this just mathematical insanity?
The hope is that this helps organize thoughts and makes societies make a bit of sense.
Scale is an integer that represents how "powerful" a given faction or society is overall. I'm going to use an exponential scale here; every 3 steps is 2x, and every 10 steps is x10.
So a scale 0 faction is 10x weaker/smaller than a scale 10 faction, and a scale 15 faction is 2x weaker/smaller than a scale 18 faction.
Next we can start with a baseline value. Scale 0 is "10 motivated soldier with a sword, shield and medium armor, enough food to keep them fed, and roads to walk on" to generate a baseline. (This is so scale 1 through 9 is not fractions-of-soldiers).
Scale 10 is then 100, scale 20 is 1000, scale 30 is 10k, scale 40 is 100k, scale 50 is 1 million soldiers, etc.
---
D&D 5e specific:
We can map this to CR reasonably well. To go from monsters with CR to a scale, we can add up the CR in question and divide by 3, take the base-10 log and multiply by 10.
To go the other way, divide by 10, raise to the power 10, then multiply by 3.
(For this to work, note that monsters over CR 20 are actually 3 CR per point; so a CR 30 monster is "really" CR 50)
So a CR 30 (really 50) creature is a Scale 12 faction in and of itself from its raw combat power (and more if it isn't an idiot).
---
Now, I'm using "able to project power with soldiers", but that is just one simple and easy axis to measure power on. A merchant guild is going to have less soldiers than its scale indicates, and more money and shipping capabilities than its scale indicates. But most power is fungible, in that the merchants could (if need arises) support a martial power (hire mercenaries, petition the emperor who they pay taxes to, or even set up their own puppet force) with their power (of course, doing so would weaken their other abilities, as it isn't cheap).
I hope to use this to set up factions quickly. I can create rivalries and ensure they are at least in the right ballpark, and break factions down into sub-factions in sensible ways.
A faction has a budget of 100 points to buy subfactions:
-1: 80
-2: 64
-3: 50
-4: 40
-5: 32
-6: 25
-7: 20
-8: 16
-9: 12
-10: 10
-11: 8
each of these subfactions can have subfactions; a subfaction is "part" of the larger faction, so its power adds to it.
Lets see if this works.
Albion is a major world power. I'll call that 40, because it is a round number.
Its major subfactions are:
The Crown, The South Seas Trading Company, the Admiralty and the Museum of Antiquities.
I can start off by making these equal, and assign another share to "other factions". Dividing 100 point budget into 5 gives 20 points each.
So each of these are a 33 point faction. And I'll make the "other" bag be "the Senate and People".
Albion: 40
Crown of Albion: 33
South Seas Trading Company: 33
Albion Admiralty: 33
Albion Museum of Antiquities: 33
Senate and People of Albion: 33
We can now drill down in one of these. Say, the Crown.
Under it are the Nobility (I'll treat this as a subfaction a sub faction), the Protectorate (a colony ruled by the Crown), the Crown Knights (order of Paladins), the Civil Service and the Palace (executive branch).
Again we have 5. So evenly divided they are all Power 26.
Albion: 40
*Crown: 33
**Nobility: 26
**Protectorate: 26
**Knights of the Crown: 26
**Administration: 26
**Palace: 26
*South Seas Trading: 33
*Admiralty: 33
*Museum: 33
*Senate and People: 33
We can do a sanity check. At 26 power, the Crown Knights have a power roughly equivalent to 4000 soldiers. That seems plausible as a strong military organization. Or a total CR of 1200 or so; 200 CR 3 "elites" each with a dozen CR 1/4 footsoldiers. Seems not insanely beefy.
The Knights of the Crown I can split into 3 roughly equal bits: the Royal Guard, the Blades and the Rangers, each (100/3 is 33, -5) Scale 21. The Royal Guard is the shiny bits that guard the palace and the capital city. The Rangers are the envoys and messengers of the Crown. The Blades are the secret police. Each have roughly 60 "elites" CR 3 plus support (or some combination like that) in terms of force available.
Next, let's play with the Museum. I want a scrappy smaller rival faction; Spiretop University. So I'll shave a point off the Museum (bring it down to 32) and Senate and People (32) to free up 8, which is enough to add a Spiretop University (29)
Albion: 40
*Crown: 33
**Nobility: 26
**Protectorate: 26
**Knights of the Crown: 26
*** Royal Guard: 21
*** Blades: 21
*** Rangers: 21
**Administration: 26
**Palace: 26
*South Seas Trading: 33
*Admiralty: 33
*Museum: 32
*Senate and People: 32
*Spiretop University: 29
3 points under the Museum, it is half the scale -- a smaller, scrappy rival.
The Museum is a power because in this D&D based world, ancient artifacts are magic, and researching the past is a way to find magic and learn magic. So the archeologists of the museum are now an institution that provides the most powerful spellcasters of Albion.
Spiretop University was a school that has grown to rival it. In the last century it has grown to rival the Museum as a center of magical research. It is less focused on the past, and more focused on applying what we know to the world.
Anyhow, I think this helps me understand the relative power scales of each sub organization, and the effects of what happens if I accidentally boost one or another too far. And as it is factal, I can sketch the main subfactions of a faction and leave the details for when I need it later. Like, at this point, I don't know what the main subfactions of the Museum or Spiretop are, but I can tell you roughly how beefy they have to be (they'll be in the 20s).
I should probably improve the currency system. A problem is "what if a I add another 34 size subfaction to Albion 'out of nowhere'"; doing the math to figure out what happens to Albion's total scale is a bit annoying right now. (The answer, by the way, is it becomes a Scale 41 faction; I can do the math, but the currency system only helps a bit; Albion is 100, and 41 would be 125, 42 would be 160, 43 200. Codifying how that works would feel better than winging it).
Thoughts? Is this just mathematical insanity?