For my MARINER project -- basically Traveller set here on Earth, right now -- I've been developing a Standardised Port Profile in lieu of the Universal World Profile.  It's a means of looking at a city in a nutshell to determine what kind of action you'd be likely to find there.  Here's a rough draft of what I'm working on currently:

Yoon Kwan:  A-1234567-B

Yoon Kwan is the name of the port, in this case a fictious special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China on the South China Sea, much like Hong Kong or Macau.
A refers to the port type, with appropriate current-day analogs to starport types A, B, C, D, E, and X. A refers to a city with top-class and multiple port facilities -- nautical, air, and rail. B is a city with lesser port facilities, possibly lacking a significant airport. C features mediocre facilities only, no air, limited rail. D is a poor port facility, usually with limited access by other means. E is a bare-bones port, barely able to service any ships, and usually of a limited tonnage and/or draft. X indicates no port facilities.
1 refers to the Geographic Climate Code.  Rated 1 for Tropical, 2 for Subtropical, 3 for Arid, 4 for Semiarid, 5 for Mediterranean, 6 for Temperate, 7 for Oceanic, 8 for Continental, 9 for Subarctic, and A for Polar.
2 refers to the Population of the host city that supports the port, rated from 0 to 9, where each digit represents a factor of 10.  Most cities are not likely to ever exceed 7.
3 refers to the Human Development Index. Rated from 0 to 9, where each number corresponds roughly to a rounded figure of the real HDI.
4 refers to Law Level, rated 0 to F, rather than Traveller's original 0 to 9.  Law Level is the degree of stringency with which the government will interfere with the public and private conduct of its citizens.
5 refers to Response Level, the degree of force that may be brought to bear. Rated from 0 to F. Response Level may be seen as the effective degree to which the local government is able or willing to enforce the Law Level. Also the degree of lethality they are willing to apply to law enforcement.
6 refers to Industrial Trade Index, the degree to which the port serves as a point of transfer for industrial goods. Rated from 0 to F.
7 refers to Agricultural Trade Index, the degree to which the port serves as a point of export for agricultural goods. Rated from 0 to F.
B refers to the prevailing Economic Status of the host nation, rated A for Developed, B for Newly Industrialized, C for Emerging, D for Developing, and X for Failed State.

Now, most of the port characteristics described above purposefully fall within the scale of modifiers described in Mongoose's forthcoming Traveller rules:

Rating ... DM
0 .......... -3
1-2 ....... -2
3-5 ....... -1
6-8 ....... ±0
9-11 ..... +1
12-14 ... +2
15 ........ +3

By and large, I'm satisfied with the results.  The Industrial and Agricultural Trade Indeces will have a directly mappable effect on any roll for determining the presence, type, and quantity of trade goods, and the player will have a clear idea of the sort of die modifiers to expect in such situations.  Similarly, Law Level and Response Level will allow a player to have a quick and ready expectation of what sort of activity can be conducted in a city within a calculated degree of risk.

The Human Development Index only scales up to 9, though, which seemingly weights its effect in the negative range; however, one may note that virtually no place on Earth rates below 3, so the DM is either +1, 0, or -1 (unless your players manage to find some unholy shithole straight out of Apocalypse Now where the HDI is maybe 2). So the HDI works fine in my book.

The only real problem that I have is with the Population scale.  Again, rated from 0 to 9, the scale is weighted toward negative DMs.  I honestly think that there ought to be various applicable DMs for higher population (the greater likelihood of finding certain types of trade goods, maybe a greater likelihood of getting away with illegal activity, as well as the distinct likelihood of a more forceful response).  Also, the scale using factors of 10 means that the vast majority of significant port cities will be rated either 6 (from 1 to 10 million people) or 7 (from 10 million to 100 million people).  The scale works well at lower populations, but the jump starts to falter somewhere between Pop 5 and Pop 6, I think.  I need a different scale for rating population, but that factor of 10 is just so damned convenient.

Any thoughts on how the Standardised Port Profile works and whether or not it delivers the necessary information well?  Can any of the scales be improved upon?  Have I missed any useful indeces?

!i!

D'oh!  I just realised that I was throwing out terminology like "on a scale from 0 to F" without explaining what that means.  Traveller uses an alpha-numeric notation so that some double-digit numbers can be represented by a single character.  MARINER follows the same convention, where the digits 0 through 9 are represented by the common Arabic numerals, while subsequent digits are represented by Latin letters, in alphabetical order: A for 10, B for 11, and so forth through F for 15.

Sorry if that was a point of confusion for some.

!i!

You know, I really need to use something like this for Nebuleon. The whole code though always seems so cryptic.

Cool stuff though. I will look it over in more detail and let you know if I have any questions.

Thanks,
Bill

Quote from: HinterWeltYou know, I really need to use something like this for Nebuleon. The whole code though always seems so cryptic.

The code may seem a little counter-intuitive at first, but, as with any sort of jargon, once you get the basics down, you can suss out whole paragraphs at a glance.

Now, back to my main bugaboo: Population.  Here's the deal.  Taking a look at the scale of stats and their attendant die modifiers...

Rating ... DM
0 .......... -3
1-2 ....... -2
3-5 ....... -1
6-8 ....... ±0
9-11 ..... +1
12-14 ... +2
15 ........ +3

...I want to rate the population of a city, anywhere in the world, on a scale from 0 to 15, with 6, 7, and 8 being the "average" city size.  On the low end of the spectrum, 0 represents zero population, or at least close enough to zero to be effectively none -- Traveller always handled 0 to represent fewer than 10 people total.  On the high end of the spectrum, 15 should represent the highest population encountered in any city on the planet.  A quick survey of the highest single-city populations top out at around 13 million (Mumbai), with a goodly cluster between 10 million and 13 million (São Paulo, Istanbul, Moscow, Karachi).  That should probably be represented by the score of 15.

So the big question that I have is this: What population represents the "average" city? The score in the middle of the spectrum that gets a ±0 die modifier.  Should this be 50,000 -- the smallest size of a common "metropolitan" area by US definition? Maybe a score of 6 equals a population of 50,000 citizens, 7 equals 100,000 people, and 8 equals 200,000 people.  Is that too low to represent the middling average port city?

!i!

I'll just keep talking to myself here until something sparks someone's interest and they pipe up with a comment or two.

I've tentatively decided on the population spread:

Rating ... Population
0 .......... 0 to 99
1 .......... 100 to 999
2 .......... 1,000 to 9,999
3 .......... 10,000 to 29,999
4 .......... 30,000 to 59,999
5 .......... 60,000 to 99,999
6 .......... 100,000 to 149,000
7 .......... 150,000 to 199,999
8 .......... 200,000 to 499,000
9 .......... 500,000 to 999,999
A .......... 1,000,000 to 1,499,999
B .......... 1,500,000 to 2,499,999
C .......... 2,500,000 to 4,999,999
D .......... 5,000,000 to 6,999,999
E .......... 7,000,000 to 9,999,999
F .......... 10,000,000+

I like this spread pretty well.  You only start getting real positive modifiers to trade and big city activity until you reach a population of half-a-million or more (examples of half-mil cities might be Boston or Seattle). The +2 DM becomes possible when you start talking about cities like Chicago or Los Angeles. Negative DMs occur for cities where the population just isn't big enough to merit significant port trade or the size of the community is small enough to encourage more personal and communal accountability.

Me likey.

!i!

Quote...I want to rate the population of a city, anywhere in the world, on a scale from 0 to 15, with 6, 7, and 8 being the "average" city size. On the low end of the spectrum, 0 represents zero population, or at least close enough to zero to be effectively none -- Traveller always handled 0 to represent fewer than 10 people total. On the high end of the spectrum, 15 should represent the highest population encountered in any city on the planet. A quick survey of the highest single-city populations top out at around 13 million (Mumbai), with a goodly cluster between 10 million and 13 million (São Paulo, Istanbul, Moscow, Karachi). That should probably be represented by the score of 15.

The population number squared and multiplied by 100,000 pretty much does that. Some of the larger cities in the world, depending on how you define the city limits, are actually pushing on in the 20-30 million range. No seaport cities are, but won't Mariner have the option to be zipping about in a freight plane? Also, you could always put in the disclaimer that the population represents not only the people who live there, but those who commute to work, and a good part of the province around the city - in game terms, what PCs are interested in is how many people they have access to so they can hire or hide...

                                0             0                              
1             100,000                              
2             400,000                              
3             900,000                              
4             1,600,000                              
5             2,500,000                              
6             3,600,000                              
7             4,900,000                              
8             6,400,000                              
9             8,100,000                              
A             10,000,000                              
B             12,100,000                              
C             14,400,000                              
D             16,900,000                              
E             19,600,000                              
F             22,500,000              

It depends on whether you want people to consult charts, or be able to remember things off-hand. If charts, well you can fine-tune it and make it perfect; if memory, then some simple formula like 10^(pop number), or (pop number)*(pop number)*100,000 works best.

Quote from: Kyle AaronThe population number squared and multiplied by 100,000 pretty much does that.

That's a nifty function -- certainly more intuitive than the chart that I've been cobbling together.  However, the low end of the scale -- the end that will be penalised with negative DMs -- are actually good sized cities, and the "average" sized cities are really very big. You have LA on the low end of the middle there, for instance.

QuoteSome of the larger cities in the world, depending on how you define the city limits, are actually pushing on in the 20-30 million range.

I've been considering using "metropolitan area" or whatever for the defining limits of population instead of discrete city limits.  For instance, the greater Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan area is pushing 30 million people.  But with this sort of approach, you'd get port centers like "the greater Bay Area" that fails to differentiate between the port of San Francisco and the port of Oakland, which are administered quite separately from one another, as the two cities are very different from one another.

Quote...won't Mariner have the option to be zipping about in a freight plane?

They certainly will.  Just as the play of Traveller so frequently diverged from what it was seemingly intended to be.

QuoteIt depends on whether you want people to consult charts, or be able to remember things off-hand. If charts, well you can fine-tune it and make it perfect; if memory, then some simple formula like 10^(pop number), or (pop number)*(pop number)*100,000 works best.

This is a good point, but I think it's ultimately a problem with dealing with a population scale below the planetary level.  I think there's also a precedent in Traveller to have to simply memorise certain values and their corresponding definitions (government type leaps immediately to mind).  I've been trying my damnedest to work out a mathematical formula for an intuitive scale, but the closest I've come so far involves applying a logarithmic function.  I think that's a little too pointy-headed for most people.  I'm totally open to other suggestions though, especially ones that preserve the low end of the scale (I want to be able to model backwater shithole villages, too).

!i!

Well, if you want to model shitty little villages as well, then I think basically your choice comes down to 10^P, or a chart to refer to.

I'd treat "population" as "the number of people you have some access to in this city", which means including the "greater metropolitan area" and/or some chunk of the surrounding province. The PCs get to go to the burbs if they want to, and maybe whoever they're meeting comes from there for day-to-day work.

You just have to ask what the number will be used for. I'm thinking it'll basically be the chances of hiring and hiding; hiring someone with required skills from among that population, and hiding in the crowd, so to speak, witness protection-style. So for those purposes it's not just the city limits...

I like the inclusion of HDI, that's neat. I don't like to imagine what HDI0 would be! Illiterate Kalahair Bushmen infected with plague and carrying AK-47s?

   4 refers to Law Level, rated 0 to F, rather than Traveller's original 0 to 9. Law Level is the degree of stringency with which the government will interfere with the public and private conduct of its citizens.
5 refers to Response Level, the degree of force that may be brought to bear. Rated from 0 to F. Response Level may be seen as the effective degree to which the local government is able or willing to enforce the Law Level. Also the degree of lethality they are willing to apply to law enforcement.

Looking at these makes me wonder about corruption. I could imagine a place like Saigon, something like A5 - heavy laws, but the police are bribable. And then there's somewhere like a free trade port, 4B - the laws are pretty slack, but the cops are honest.

I ask because corruption is something that's bound to come up in a Mariner campaign, especially given what the average PC is like...

Quote from: Kyle AaronYou just have to ask what the number will be used for. I'm thinking it'll basically be the chances of hiring and hiding; hiring someone with required skills from among that population, and hiding in the crowd, so to speak, witness protection-style.

All good points, and food for thought.  This is one thing that I like about expanding the scales to map to the same DMs as character stats -- something the original Traveller didn't handle so smoothly.

QuoteI like the inclusion of HDI, that's neat. I don't like to imagine what HDI0 would be! Illiterate Kalahair Bushmen infected with plague and carrying AK-47s?

Thanks.  I rather just stumbled across it, but I really like it as a means of readily describing to a player what the average lifestyle is like in a new port of call.  By the way, according to the map in that article, the only two countries with an HDI rating of .350 or lower that I could find were French Guiana and Sierra Leone. *shudder*

!i!

Quote from: Kyle AaronLooking at these makes me wonder about corruption. I could imagine a place like Saigon, something like A5 - heavy laws, but the police are bribable. And then there's somewhere like a free trade port, 4B - the laws are pretty slack, but the cops are honest.

I ask because corruption is something that's bound to come up in a Mariner campaign, especially given what the average PC is like...

Yes, yes! Precisely what I was hoping to reflect with the pairing of Law Level and Response Level.  A city or nation can have the strictest laws ever on the book, but little or no means to enforce them, either because they lack the resources or because enforcement personnel are corruptable.  So, in some places you can obviously break the law with impunity, but God help you if you get caught and can't buy your way out.

!i!

I think Somalia and Afghanistan tentatively have HDIs of less than 0.3, since they're in civil war and so on, though the figures aren't official because... well, not much stat collection going on.

For the Law Level vs Responses, you might want to explicitly mention corruption as part of being willing and able to mention the laws. Readers will likely largely be from pretty much non-corrupted countries, so...

Also as a rules thing the DM of Responses might act as a flipped one for Bribery skill