Domain Trial Run (ACKS II -> GURPS)

Domain Trial Run (ACKS II -> GURPS)

As I get closer and closer to being able to run a game that might feature domains, I realize that there is no way to understand everything better than simply doing a trial run. Thus, I'm going to go through the ACKS II domain management rules step-by-step and see if anything needs adjustment for GURPS games. In addition, its going to help me decide what rules I actually want to use, because sometimes what looks good on paper doesn't play that well. There are people who claim that ACKS II domain rules are not suitable for Braunstein scenarios, but I still would like to see it myself and compare to what AD&D (and UMBROS) rules have to offer.

1. Before one can establish a domain, one must clear the area of all threats. But how many of them are in the area? On p. RR337, you see that a very small domain is a 1.5-mile hex, a typical domain is a one 6-mile hex, and a very large domain is a one 24-mile hex. The answer is on pages JJ68-69 - a 6-mile hex has from 1d2 to 2d8 lairs, depending on the terrain type. On average, this is 2-4 lairs, which isn't that many, honestly. There are no numbers for smaller or larger hexes, but you can extrapolate.

2. For each 6-mile hex, you establish a land value by rolling 3d3 or just taking 6 gp for simplicity. In GURPS, multiply it by $40 (thus, 3dx$20 or $240). Land surveying probably requires a special skill - Professional Skill (Lnad Surveyor) with -2 for scrub or hills, -3 for barren or desert, -4 for mountains or woods, and -5 for swamp or jungle.

3. To secure a domain, you need to have a stronghold of a certain minimum value. The value depends on the size of the domain in hexes, and the domain classification (civilized, borderlands, outlands). Let us assume a starting domain that has merely one 6-mile hex. For civilized, borderlands, and outlands domains, the minimum values are 15,000 gp, 22,500 gp, and 30,000 gp, respectively. In GURPS, that should be about $600K, $900K, and $1,2M. This may seem like a lot, but it really isn't that expensive.

First, let's see what you can afford in ACKS II on that sum of money. Let's see p. RR132 for a list of structures. A stone keep (80' high, 60' square) already costs 125,000 gp, which is more than enough. A medim round stone tower (20' diameter, 40' high) is 10,000 gp, four stone walls (100' long, 20' high, 5' thick) are 4 x 5,000 gp = 20,000 gp. This alone is enough even for an outlands domain, and even less is enough for a more civilized domain. As adventurers, it's highly likely that you won't even have to build it - you can clear out an occupied tower and claim it.

GURPS doesn't have "prefab" buildings (something I'm planning to fix), unfortunately, so I'll have to open GURPS Low-Tech Companion 3 and do some calculations myself.

TL	Structure	Weight	HP	DR	Cost	Construction Time
						Full	Labor
2	Keep, Stone (80’ high, 60’ square)	60,480 tons	3,925	1,440	$33M	66,676 man-months	3,333 man-months
2	Tower, stone, medium round (20’ diameter, 40’ high)	1,318 tons	1,097	720	$792K	1,600 man-months	80 man-months
2	Wall, stone (100’ long, 20’ high, 5’ thick)	210 tons	594	720	$115K	231 man-months	11.6 man-months

As you can see, the cost discrepancy for the keep is very high (the ACKS keep should be around $5M if we use the $40 = 1 gp conversion rate), but such keep could keep a huge domain secure. A tower is almost enough without anything else for a borderlands domain, and with walls it will be enough even for an outlands domain. Keep in mind that I didn't even count the gatehouses. Anyway, I think keeping the minimum stronghold values for ACKS but using prices from LTC3 is sensible.

4. Attracting peasants is the next step, unless the domain has already been settled. Population is measured in families in ACKS II, with each family having ~5 peasants. There are several ways to acquire population.

    4.1. A number of peasant families arrive to settle down in your domain with your followers (if you have them, of course). This number depends on the hex classification (civilized, borderlands, or outlands).

    4.2. You can make agricultural investments to attract peasants. For every 1000 gp ($40K) spent on these investments in a month, you attract 1d10 new peasant families. There is a cap to the investments - the greater of 1000 gp or the domain's monthly revenue.

    4.3. If you adventure once a month and keep the domain safe, your prestige attracts families.

    4.4. Population growth and shrinkage. Each month, a ruler makes two die rolls of 1d10! per 1,000 families in the domain (rounded up). The first one is the increase, the second one is the decrease.

    There also are limits to this growth, but they do not matter for this exercise.

5. Collecting revenue is, of course, important. That's what you need to maintain your stronghold, hire and train troops, and expand your influence. There are four sources of revenue - land, services, tax, and tribute. We are going to ignore tribute for now, as we're looking at a domain in a vacuum. Land revenue is land value multiplied by the number of families (3-9 gp/family ot $120-$360/family), services is 4 gp per family ($160/family), and taxes are 2 gp per family ($80/family). A statistically average domain with a land value of 6 gp will bring 6+4+2=12 gp per month per family ($480, which might as well be rounded up to $500 for ease of calculation when NPC domains are concerned).

    A question one might ask is "Why is revenue split into three categories?" and if I had to guess, the reasoning would be that service revenue is the base, static value that you cannot change, land value is something that depends on the land and cannot be easily affected by the ruler (you can improve land value by pumping gold into it - 25 gold kilopieces/$1M per hex), and taxes is something the ruler can affect. Thus, the separation does make sense, unless you'd like to simplify things.

6. Paying expenses is the opposite of collecting revenue. There are five types of expenses - garrison, liturgies, maintenance, tithes, and tribute. We're going to ignore tribute for now, yet again.

    To maintain security, you must spend at minimum 2/3/4 gp per family in civilized/borderlands/outlands domains.

    Liturgies are various public works and festivities to keep the population's morale high. This requires 1 gp/family ($40/family).

    Maintenance, which yet again is 1 gp/family, is required to maintain your stronghold. Interestingly enough, there is no explicit correlation with the stronghold's cost. But, as a rule, bigger and more expensive strongholds have bigger domains and hence spend more money on maintenance. Wasn't this 1% of stronghold value in AD&D?

    Tithes are, again, 1 gp/family.

7. Since all revenue streams and expenses are based on the number of families, you can just add up all the revenue, subtract all the expenses, and get income per family. Nothing a very simple spreadsheet cannot do.

For most purposes, this is already enough (sometimes even more than enough). There are also rules for urban settlements that basically are the same as described above, with some minor alterations, and rules for domain morale. Rules for domain morale would have to be adjusted a bit for GURPS, but that's something for another time. What I'd like to do now is check out some of the domain management procedures - what you can do and how, focusing more on Braunstein-related activities, such as hiring troops, etc.

First, let's find out how many families there are in my hypothetical domain. Our starting domain is comprised on a single 6-mile hex. As per p. JJ197, such a domain should have 120-200 families (there are also population density values on p JJ205). Let's say that we have 160 families or ~800 population total. Let's pretend that we have a borderlands domain. Thus, our income should be around 6 gp per family, which is 960 gp/month (or $38,400/month in GURPS). On p. JJ199, we see that such domain usually has income of 450-760 gp. Why is it lower than what I calculated? The main reason, I assume, is that more than the minimum amount of gold is spent on the garrison. Speaking of garrison, since we allocate the minimum 3 gp ($120) per family, we can support troops with the total value of 480 gp ($19,200).

If we check p. RR443, we will see the various units with their costs to field in gp/month. As you will see, a barony cannot really support even a single full militia unit! We can support approximately a half-strength unit of light infantry (60 men) or ~90 of untrained conscripts. This... looks fine, actually - there are only 800 people in the domain after all.

In addition, you can conscript peasants as described on p. RR430. You can conscript up to 1 peasant per 10 families without affecting morale. Thus, we'd be able to conscript a whopping 16 peasants. They could be trained and equipped to become proper troops, but that requires somewhere between 1 month to 1 year, depending on the resulting troop type. For Braunstein campaigns with weekly turns, few training times are relevant, probably only those up to 2 months. If your turns are longer, you have potential to train more varied troops.

Aside from the conscripts, you can levy peasant militia (p. RR432). That's up to 2 additional peasants per 10 families, i.e. 32 in our case. This, of course, will reduce the revenue - minus one family per levied peasant, and also negatively impacts morale.

Finally, you can hire mercenaries. Rules for hiring mercenaries in an entire realm are on p. RR427. There's a table that tells you how many mercenaries of each type are available. Our tiny barony would have 3 light infantry, 2 heavy infantry, 1 of each of slinger, bowman, crossbowman, longbowman, and light cavalry. Not much to work with, but that's sensible. More detailed rules for what mercenaries are available on a market can be found on p. RR164. Generally, no rules need any adjustments, it seems to me. Perhaps, later I could adapt them to use GURPS reaction rolls, or some rules from GURPS Social Engineering.

Let's inspect some other aspects that are less military-related. How many workers are available? After all, all construction projects benefit massively from the number of workers. There's a table on p. RR165 - for a Class VI market (the smallest one), there are 2d4x3 unskilled laborers and 2d4 skilled laborers. GURPS differentiates between skilled and unskilled labor differently, so I'd suggest simply treating the number of laborers as 2d4x4. Do not expect to build anything quickly here. In addition, you can levy peasants to work for you (see above), or use your troops as unskilled labor. That should make things quicker, that's for sure.

For the most part, this is what has been concerning to me, and now I see that these rules aren't really difficult, and with a simple spreadsheet, they aren't even cumbersome (at least on relatively small scales). I believe them to be suitable for my purposes, at least on paper, but my final verdict would have to wait until I give them a try in a real game that, hopefully, will happen in a couple of months from now.