Regional Resource Management and Trade Rules [closed]

Question

I've been looking at TSR's old Birthright setting lately, searching for an easy way to quantify trade between political entities. I'm thinking about ways for a city or region or planet to develop resources, create industries, and trade with other regions. Birthright's guild system is a little clunky so I'm looking for other systems or techniques, especially ones that can work universally since I'd like to use a similar system for Traveller's deep space setting as well.

Here's a fantasy example: a dwarven clanhold decides to develop its iron mining industry. It starts generating surplus iron which can be traded for more food to grow the community. When the community grows, it attracts more smiths to generate surplus armor and weapons to sell at a higher profit for more food and luxury goods. Right now I have no system to quantify any part of this situation, and I fear the day my players focus on unraveling my handwaved economic system.

What game systems, settings, supplements, or online resources contain rules for regional resource management and trading between regions? How do you track and manage your game world's regional economies?

Answer 1

Being something of an economics wonk, I've found it easiest to back out of RPG-space by doing some rough conversions of the currencies moving around and the value of goods, and then build a coherent economic system without a lot of detail - basically writing an economy at the narrative scale.

When it's time to move back into the game world, at whatever level, you simply render the narrative, iteratively until you hit the desired depth of detail. It takes some time to do it from the top down, but since most fantasy games operate under feudal economics, the context that matters is always one of "where do I fit in the superior level's picture?"

It sounds like you're doing something like this already, but you're worried that your economics credentials aren't up to the task. Two factors work in your favor, though:

1) Odds are, your players' economics credentials aren't any better than yours. It doesn't actually matter if your economic system matches up with a real-world understanding of the discipline. All you need for a good game is sufficient detail that you get players to suspend their disbelief. If they don't know any better, your work here is done. :) 1a) If you do have an economics wonk among your players, odds are they'll derive a great amount of pleasure in geeking out your setting. You can harness that expertise to tighten your setting since it's highly unlikely that economic data about your world needs to be behind the DM-Screen.

2) When players start to try and push big, self-balancing forces like economics around, there's a tremendous amount of pushback from billions of different sources. Some are subtle (market forces), some are less so (Baron John Q. VonCrankypants is annoyed that you're throwing money around like that and decides on some 'special' taxes, hoping you'll resist so he can just arrest you.). Do NOT hesitate to drop some deus ex when people are playing with world-spanning forces like economics. Even in our modern age we really don't understand why things happen the way they do. Backwoods feudal hicks don't stand a chance, no matter how many skillpoints they sink into 'profession: derivative finance peddler'. :P

Answer 2

You could take a look at Reign.

[Give] the PCs the fun and interesting parts of governance — tough decisions, leadership, real ‘buck stops here’ stuff — while hand waving all the plodding and dull everyday routine of tax levels and administrivia.

—Reign Q&A.

It's designed to plug into existing RPGs.

Answer 3

Pendragon

Focus is on feudal manors. Works quite well on a local or even small baronies; the greater barons (Viscounts, Counts, Dukes) and Kings don't work so well. 3 different large scale landhold rulesets: Noble's Book (1e), Lordly Domains (3e/4e), Book of the Manor (5E, and only smaller landholds - Manors and Estates). Abstraction level varies. Primarily designed to part PC's and their loot.

Reign

Extensive landholding rules. Slightly abstracted. Don't have it, so can't comment in detail, but well respected by ORE fans, and designed to be focused upon it.

D&D Companion Set Dominion Rules

Comparable level of detail to Pendragon, but slightly crunchier. Easily adapted to AD&D. Makes use of the traditional 2-mile hex maps, and is somewhat abstract.

Essentially, this is an event system with economics, and ties nicely to followers and such. Mostly about the cashflow, and requires extensive GM interaction.

For those who lack the older rules, Dark Dungeons includes a clone of this.

D&D 3E Strongholds Book

Not really that good for running things. Less economic detail even than Birthright... but more on building strongholds (in weird detail...) Not a good choice, IMO.

Houses of the Blooded

Like reign, focuses on using the system as a metagame. Unlike Reign, not so much crunch. Very narrativist. Very playable, and drives the campaign, but tries to NOT be the focal point of the campaign.

highly abstracted. Seasonal economic turns.

Blood and Honor

Japanese setting, rules essentially "Houses of the Blooded Lite"... Simple, and stylized. Works pretty well, very abstracted. Again, seasonal econ turns.

Answer 4

The Tao of D&D has actually created a complete economic framework for AD&D. And he describes how to calculate the production of goods in each twenty mile hex on a world map and how to roughly appreciate them over distances.

This certainly isn't easy but it is quite complete.

Answer 5

The original Dominion rules* contain subsystems dealing with such commercial activity. It is a framework only -- for example, simplifying the categories into Resource Income of Animal/Vegetable/Mineral types -- and should be customized by the GM. The metrics can be scaled (formulae suitable for villages, regions, or nations), and thus provide a usable method of objective codification.

Good: Extremely few details are specific to any game system. The style of the system is crunchy and abstract, with generic formulae and examples.

Bad: In being constructed for high-level play the Dominion rules introduce a major revenue boost, which can be disruptive to an ongoing campaign.

-* See D&D Companion set (1984) and Rules Cyclopedia (1991)

Answer 6

I was poking through my bookmarks and unearthed this link to an economic system for D&D 3E from about 10 years ago. http://gez117.free.fr/dnd/economics.html

This is a straightforward pricing/profit system, applicable at a variety of scales from Kingdom down to the PCs owning a craft business. It doesn't cover all the details I want out of an economic system, but it seems like a good tradeoff between detail and ease of use. And maybe qoonpooka is right about needing to be only one step ahead of the players.

I should probably bite the bullet and pick up a decent macroeconomics book to see if there's anything I can easily adapt into RPGs.