Iron World

Awright, time to get my hands dirty and try to do some hacking.

I'm looking at making a hack for something based on Iron Empires, Chis Moeller's setting for Luke Crane's Burning Empires. At the moment I'm not that interested in the whole meta-plot conflict with the Vaylen (parasitic aliens), but that might change. But right now playing warlords, planetary governors, criminal bosses, court diplomats and stuff seems interesting enough.

Stats might be something like Bold, Hard, Comely and Sharp, perhaps Mantle (inspired by Nathan Orlando Wilson's Bulwark)

My current list of character types include the Ruler, the Commander, the Diplomat, the Provider, the Boss, the Pilot, the Spy and the Grunt.

Obviously this game is going to be a lot about running stuff. Running your country or your world, keeping your liege happy, taking your anvil army toe to toe with rival armies, going after space pirates with your hammer fleet, but also brokering deals in back-rooms, sneaking about and getting into serious scraps in space stations and on the ground.

Strata are orders of magnitude and size and are used with things like wealth, armies, populations and so on.

• 1-stratum is people and groups of people, households, gangs and squads, hammer gunboats.
• 2-stratum is small towns, small businesses, anvil platoons, hammer corvettes.
• 3-stratum is large towns, anvil companies, hammer frigates, small strategic nukes.
• 4-stratum is major cities or small countries, anvil regiments, hammer fleets based around a cruiser.
• 5-stratum is major countries or whole worlds, anvil armies, large hammer fleets with a line of cruisers.

I have this idea or armies and navies requiring wealth of an appropriate stratum for supplies and repairs and so on, and that a worlds of lesser strata might not be able to supply that, thus driving the anvil or hammer lord to go mercenary or pirate or risk desertion and breakdown. I don't know if this will actually be interesting, though, but for now it's still there.

So a country or a city generates wealth of its own stratum, but I'm not sure how that should translate to the ruler's wealth, for example.

A ruler's realm
A large town or small city, with a couple hundred thousand people, or an equivalent piece of countryside. (3-stratum surplus: 1-wealth)
Levied militia soldiers for defense. (2-stratum 2-harm army unprofessional 1-armor)
Choose a few of these options:

• +1stratum for both the realm and the army.
• -1stratum for the realm, +1good option.
• Trade lanes. Surplus: +1wealth, want: +piracy
• Heavy industries: Surplus: +1wealth, want: +pollution.
• Your army is well trained. Drop unprofessional.
• Your army is well armed. +1harm.
• Your realm has fortified borders. +1armor when defending.
• You rule a civilian fleet instead of a city or country. Defense is a 2-stratum navy, like a hammer corvette and a bunch of gunboats.
• Anvil Lord. If you have an army, it is +1stratum, if you have a navy, you also get an army of the same stratum.
• Hammer Lord. If you have a navy, it is +1stratum, if you don’t, you get one of the same stratum as your army.

Choose two of these options:

• You are a vassal under a more powerful lord. Surplus: -1wealth, want: +obligations.
• Your rule is under constant scrutiny. Want: +judgement.
• Your army is -1stratum.
• Border world. Want: +anxiety.
• Not self-sufficient. Want: +supply crisis
• Corruption. Want: -1wealth.

Uhm, gotta go, but I'll be back with more. I guess there isn't much to say about this yet, but that's cool with me.

I like where you're going with the strata and the wealth! I was starting to think of wealth in such terms for the Song of Ice and Fire hack I'm trying to do, but I was basically just going to have the 'normal' stratum and the 'house level' stratum. Maybe some more modularity can get worked in there.

On your realm stuff, most of that looks good, but one stands out like it could possibly use some tweaking:

You are a vassal under a more powerful lord. Surplus: -1wealth, want: +obligations.

Compared to the other negative options, this one is something of a double whammy, not to mention you have the in-fiction issues of having to listen to your boss man (I suppose that's basically what the obligations is, but still). Since people willingly entered into vassalage all the time in the Middle Ages, this seems like a good opportunity to sneak in a lot of complications and social ties for a seemingly "not as bad" downside. Maybe drop the -1 wealth, and allow obligations to sometimes encompass in-game wealth expenditure (whoops, your liege is coming to visit, you gotta host him all expenses paid until he's bored and leaves. That's gonna cost at least 1 or 2 wealth). Or else add "+ protection" to the two downsides you already have (your lord wants the taxes to keep rolling, so he'll usually help defend your stuff if you get attacked).