Today, I have something truly special to share. A friend of mine who is participating in the Basedstein took the time to write up a detailed economic system for it. As part of that, he is acting as my first ever guest writer on this blog, writing the following article. To preserve what I wrote and what he wrote, everything between this paragraph and the ending paragraph is not indented, while what he wrote is indented. I cannot express my thanks to the author, Clayton, who did excellent work with this tool. While this article was written to be player facing and requires the context of the actual sheet, what is here is quite thought provoking.
On behalf of Cosmo and I, it is my honor to introduce to you the unified Economics and Military management system for the Basedstein. If you have any questions at any time, whether about how the system works or just if you have an issue with your sheet, please don't hesitate to leave a comment here, and either Cosmo or I can get to it when possible.
The goal for this system is that each domain player can easily control all aspects of their domain's management, from trade to village production to hiring adventurers to military force organization, from one place and see how those decisions impact one another. Furthermore, we wanted to use the power of software to automate virtually all of the math of these systems, leaving the player to make simple but meaningful choices and see their effects immediately rather than having to wait for GM adjudication (of course, nothing takes effect until the end of each week). All values are for the current week, but everything (your priorities, forces, trade deals, etc.) persists from one week to the next.
The system is based on material from ACKS II as well as GURPS (including references such as GURPS Realm Management, GURPS Low-Tech Companion 3: Daily Life & Economics, and Pyramid 3, Issue 52: Lord of the Manor). While neither game system fully provides the detail that this tool exhibits, we wanted to keep it in line with those rules and references as much as possible. The commodity list was taken from ACKS’ market system, as well as some of the production modifiers for biomes and other factors. Both of these were expanded with a few more commodities (to add Magic Items, Potions, and Spellbooks) and a great deal more settlement modifiers, to include the addition of guild presence, among other factors. From this point, all prices were normalized to GURPS references. Production and consumption values were derived from GURPS content, which had a number of gaps to interpolate through, and from GURPS definitions of wealth levels and living costs. The military and adventurer aspects were directly taken from Cosmo’s previous rules renditions, which are simplified versions of GURPS Mass Combat and Tactical Mass Combat.
How the economic system works:
Each settlement has underlying traits that increase or decrease production efficiency - factors include biome, climate, water sources, elevation, local guilds, inhabitant races, and more. A forest village will produce more wood with the same workforce, while a city with a Mages' guild will produce more potions. Note that this is production efficiency per worker - you can still produce a good that’s less efficient, you just have to devote more workers to it. Numerically, this is expressed as a number from -10 to +10. A value of +3, for example, corresponds to an efficiency of +30%, and a value of -1.5 would represent a 15% lower efficiency. A -10 in a commodity means it can’t be produced at all at this settlement!
From these efficiency values, a player sets priorities for how to split up their workforce. This represents allocation of workers to the production of each good. The default values are listed as a percentage, but any values work - the distribution of workers is relative.
All settlement populations are split into two groups: rural, Struggling-wealth workers that produce basic goods, and urban, Average-wealth workers that produce luxury goods. The ratio of urban families increases with settlement size. A small village will have a very high rural population, likely producing a large surplus of basic goods but a deficit of luxury items; on the other hand, a large city will have a large urban population that produces an excess of luxury items, but struggles to meet its needs for basic goods. Trade is necessary to maintain a balance between these settlements! A medium-sized town may strike a balance, producing enough of everything to be self-sufficient, but will have little of anything left over for trade as a result.
The default values here are aimed at equalizing surpluses of all goods relative to each other, tailored to settlement conditions. It is up to each player to decide how they’ll modify these defaults to focus production towards various goods - will a ruler prioritize low-efficiency items to ensure they fill all gaps for a generally self-sufficient settlement, or double down on high-efficiency items to specialize the settlement, filling in gaps with trade?
After goods are produced, they are taxed according to Control Rating (CR). CR is taken directly from Realm Management, and describes on a 0-6 scale how much control the government exerts over its subjects. Higher CR leads to higher taxes and higher levy and guard conscription, but will quickly throttle a settlement’s production and growth if there are no resources left over for the population themselves!
Following taxation, remaining goods can be traded away (or imported to add to the total). Trade between settlements is handled with the Master Trade Ledger, discussed below.
Once taxes and trade are assessed, the population of the settlement can consume their fill of the remaining goods. Consumption of each good varies for low- and high-wealth families; predictably, higher-wealth families consume higher-end food and much more luxury items.
If there is anything left over after consumption, that is a surplus. If goods run out before consumption is satisfied, there is a deficit. In both cases, these remainders are grouped for basic and luxury goods to have an effect on the population of the settlement at the end of the week. The degree of surplus or deficit will also directly affect the price of that item locally to the settlement. A value of -3, for example, corresponds to a 30% surplus above consumption, and indicates a 30% lower price at that settlement.
A surplus of basic goods will increase population - families are expanding, or new ones are moving in. A deficit will decrease it - families are leaving, starving, or freezing!
A surplus of luxury goods will increase urbanization - poor families are gaining the resources to move up to higher-end jobs, or fine items are attracting experienced craftspeople from afar. A deficit will decrease it - urban families are down on their luck, or are driven away to places they can maintain their lifestyle.
Urbanization and wealth are expressed in Wealth Factor. WF is a ratio of rural families to urban ones - a lower number indicates higher wealth/urbanization.
An intentional choice in this system was to avoid tracking stockpiles of each item for each settlement. Surpluses are essentially “stored” as increased population/wealth in the settlement, and a subsequent deficit will decrease them, leaving the settlement where it started in much the same way as if it had built up a stockpile and then expended it in a time of need.
How the Master Trade Ledger works:
All trades between settlements (even within a single player's domain) should be recorded here, and the data will filter into each player's domain-specific sheet immediately.
Player(s) select the two participating settlements to the trade, which will populate the table with the respective local prices for goods at both settlements.
It is assumed that the seller has a surplus that drives prices down, while the buyer has a deficit that drives prices up. As a default, the average price between both settlements is suggested, as this gives incentives to both buyers and sellers to get a better price than they can locally. From there, players may negotiate higher or lower prices for a commodity.
Once a price is decided, the players input the quantity of each commodity, which begins to build a total mass of goods in the caravan.
With information on the distance between settlements, a shipping cost will be computed based on the transit method(s) and mass of goods. Lastly, the players may assign a number of guards to accompany the caravan. These do not come out of a settlement’s existing guard population and are paid for separately. It is up to players to negotiate how the costs of shipping and guarding are split between the settlements.
Once the trade deal is confirmed, it will be added to the master ledger and imported into both settlements’ economy sheets
How the Adventurers & Military section works:
As a settlement's population grows, it will attract adventurers that can be hired by the player. Different ratios will appear based on the type of settlement (i.e. Magic-Users will tend to civilized cities while Barbarians will stick to the wilderness). A portion of these “freelance” adventurers can be hired by the settlement’s ruler to perform missions or other duties.
Hired adventurers each earn $125 per week for the ruler, plus whatever spoils are gained from their adventuring missions.
In each settlement are town guards, which are hired automatically based on the settlement population and Control Rating. Building watchtowers around the settlement will also increase the quantity of guards.
In each settlement, levies can be hired up to a limit. These can be raised in an instant, but are quite bad in a fight - they’re even worse than Unarmored Infantry.
Both levies and town guards are assumed to be taken from the local population, and are deducted from the available workforce for economic production. Other forces can theoretically be raised from abroad as well, so they do not deduct from the workforce at this time.
Besides these special cases, normal military units can be raised and maintained as stated in previous rules from Cosmo.
Finally, a note from the lead developer, who wrote this article: “With Cosmo's help, this was a lot of fun to put together. I hope this tool will allow for us to have some detailed mechanics while being light and simple for each player to use.”
Once again, I want to thank Clayton for writing this tool and taking the time to be the first guest writer on this blog. Further, I will make sure to update you guys on the progress of the Basedstein!