[This is a "how" thread. I strongly advise nobody to question the process itself. Do so in other threads.]

As Jeff suggested, it might be a pretty smart idea to reflect on the organizatorial sides of managing a strategically challenging campaign.

Let´s take a look at how I did it in my last traveller campaign as a starting point for discusson. I´ll be doing this piecemeal as time allows.

First, I generated the sector the campaign would play in. I then looked at the UPPs with a spreadsheet program, to dig up all "Powerhouse Planets", that is to say all planets that had one billion ore more inhabitants and at least TL 7. I marked those in different colours on my map. As I have to work with screen maps, I prefer to do my hobby cartography per hand. Parallel to that, I drew up the borders of the factions, not heeding the results of step one.
Then I checked the maximum tech level and number of high pop worlds for each interstellar power.
I pulled Pocket Empires from my shelve and made the Space Fleets for the Powers.

After this process I had:

Max TL
Spaceforces
Important Worlds
General Power Level

form my sector factions.

As one can quickly abstracize, these steps are already done in most settings. The important thing must be to identify the sources of power and their distribution. In Trav that´s pretty easy: Power comes from population modified by TL. In other settings, this might be different.

Quote from: SettembriniThe important thing must be to identify the sources of power and their distribution. In Trav that´s pretty easy: Power comes from population modified by TL. In other settings, this might be different.

Great start!  Using Traveller made the point crystal clear to me.  In a D&D game what would you use in place of POP and TL?

In a pre-industrial setting (to include other games or setting than D&D) I'd look at the distribution of natural agricultural heartlands*, modified by cultural factors and speed of communication. High cultural fractiousness (like Europe) and low communication speed would lead to smaller polities and vice versa.

* like Egypt or Mesopotamia. Or northern France or the American Midwest, once the necessary technology was in place.

Wait, is this a world generation thread? I suspect not, the title sounds unusual and interesting. What can we look forward to here? Birthright for Traveller?

In D&D I think I would break it down by character class, except re-imagined as stats: And then scaled by 3-18 for traditions sake.

Fighter: How many soldiers a nation can field. So a nation with 'Fighter:3' might have minimal warriors, while an Orc nation with a trained horde might have 'Fighter: 18'

Arcane: How many arcane casters (and what level) a nation can boast of. Arcane drives high-tech stuff like "how many elementals you can summon" etc.

Divine: (as a stat) would determine regenerative capacity for the nation: the ability to recover the wounded, provide food and water, etc.

Rogue: might give you an edge on skilled laborers, or a boost to your economy.

Prelimenary thoughts:

For fantasy, it´s quite different. First we must differentiate quasi-medieval and high fantasy settings.

In quasi medieval settings like Harnworld, it´s pretty easy:

Manors!
In a truely feudal society, it´s all about manorial distribution. Knights are the penultimate weapon, a knight needs a manor to support himself. The economies of the cities aren´t nearly as important. There is very few population percentage in them.

Still, there might be the odd trade union (Hanse) or Trade Republic (Venice). They gain their improtance from geopolitical grand trade, like Baltic grain or Levantinian Spice & oriental stuff. And even those powers strived to grab more terrain, and where only really important in the late middle ages, when world trade was important again. So for a medieval campaign, the cultivated area and supported number of armoured and mounted warriors is of utmost importance.

In a D&D surrounding, things get a little complicated. First you have differetn layers of power strugggles. You have the humanoid empires and you have the grand planar scheming in the background. Military power in D&D derives from levelled individuals  & money (to pay and to buy magic ressources), although there might be fluff restrictions that enforce a more feudalistic interpretation. Levels and money are a direct function of the total population. As D&D cities are way larger than real medieval cities, and populations are higher, those population centers become very important again, like in traveller. Another big factor is magic, but it is very different from TL: Any punk or lone druid can produce magic items with the right feat, and sufficient XPs. And they are as efficient as the Artificer guild. If the world should function after those rules, then ultimately magic is just another form of money, or money can be interchanged with magic.
Money is generated by the populace and collected in the coffers of the respective monarchs, who can accumulate enough to purchase magic and organize levelled fighting outfits.
In Mystara, there´s large maps with revenue per citizen on it. That´s pretty useful, and there is no other way to measure different productivities in D&D.

So for D&D you need:

Population
Revenue per population

Souls & artifacts for the planar struggle

As sources of power.

But: To really make assumptions, you as DM have to decide how your world is supposed to work. For example, you might want to give organizations more influence over individuals. Right now, D&D doesn´t  give any mechanical reason for Wizards to form guilds.

Keep also in mind the skewing of power that is induced by large quantities of money dug up from the earth/ruins/lairs. Where does all this money come from?
It´s a bit like fossil fuel IMHO.

EDIT: You also need to fluff-ascribe what possibilites and what chances of levelling are! A dirt poor Barbarian tribe might face such dangers, that you either get to high levels quick, or die very young. With different levelling distributions per populace, you can have quite some fun modelling interesting conflicts. R.E.H.´s pampered civilization vs. battle ready barbarians are just the most obvious example.

To continue the thoughts, let´s take a quick look at another SciFi favorite of mine:

Battletech.
Although many people don´t grasp/care for the Roleplaying potential in that universe, it´s maybe my single most loved game (although when I feel too old for the Giant Robots and the military hardware wankery, I might say that would be Traveller). For me it´s the little sweet spot in Jeffs Wheel of Gaming:

Silly, for the Giant Robots from an Anime Series
Retro, because it´s definitely an eighties phenomenon
Pretentious, from the fact, that William H. Keith Jr, of Traveller fame set the standard for Traveller-like hard-SF and world building. Add to that Military-Hardware pretentiousness/wankery. Also look at the Houses and their political metaplotting.

There is one area, where the military pretentious part really shine: in regards to designing strategic adventure opportunities!

As a Traveller derivate, at first we could think population and TL are ruling supreme again. But that´s not how it works. Due to the fluffascriptions (and table top rules, but not as clearly as in the fluffoverse), it is obvious, that BattleMechs and their pilots are the penultimate source of power.
So, we need to know how many 'Mechs does a faction have, and how many can it produce. In addition: How good are the pilots and the general military organization.

Thankfully, this is extremely well documented!
Down to single production lines, one can pinpoint the sources of power extremely well.
There are some variations on this, to make things more interesting:

Other Succession War induced scarcities are:

Communication (Comstar)
Transportation (Sacrosanctity of Merchant JumpShips)

Those two factors are mostly just mentioned and not highly integrated into gaming products. So one would have to rule the ressources a faction has, or we would need a new model.
The model used in the publications is total bullshit:

Money.
Although prices are given, they make no sense. Or, the world as described would make no sense, if those prices were real. Tanks would rule the battlefield, for example, as their power per Credit is superiour. Basically, it would lead to the end of war, as any punk could buy himself defenses that noone could overcome with some 'Mech Bataillons.

So we have a very decent resource in the books for the Hardware Factories, but no decent model for economy. As LosTech is a major concept, I´d assume that all 'Mech factories produce at maximum capacity, and can always be paid for. So those 'Mech factories rule.

For smaller scale Campaigns, those high level information need to be broken down.
Say you´d want a planetary invasion campaign:

Determine

Attacking Forces
Defending Forces

To do this, it´d be wise to look at the unit rosters in official publications. Then, you´d need to determine the war plan of the attacker. The operation would be directly realted in size to the important ressources at stake in the larger war. That is very important: Maybe this planet is only a diversionary attack, or it is definitely needed as refueling point. But the value of the operation in the larger war ultimately lies in the war aims of the faction. and those war aims ultimately are  determined by the distribution of

'Mech factories (Hard Factor)

Histroical Claims to Planets (Important Soft Factor)
Communication (Lesser Soft Factor)
Trade (Lesser Soft Factor)

The historical claim as fluffascription is very important in the storyline, just look at the clans. But ultimately this is not backed up by the rules. So there is your leeway, the onus is on the GM to figure out how he wants to handle it in his Universe. My personal viewpoint would be:
If I have the importatn historical claims to pursue, it´s better to secue the 'Mech factories first. Goal and method need not be the same, the one is an end the other is a means.
Actually, Communication and Trade/Economy would be hard factors too. But they aren´t modelled, so they become fluffascripted stuff, just like historical claims.

Addendum:

Actually, Battletech has a  (new, at least for me) supplement called:

Combat Operations, wherein the "BSG: Battletech Strategic Game" is  printed.
It has a decent model for modelling the soft factors!
Really, a treasure trove, and an inspiration for abstract strategic conflicts in an RPG environment. More on that later.

I´m totally in love with this rough gem.


It might be a good way for Jeff, or anyone else, to model things, again more on that later.

For my new D&D campaign one important question I am asking is "Where can PCs buy magic items and spells?"  I'm not just assuming they can get whatever they like inbetween action scenes.

That´s a good one.

In the DMG, you have the gold pieces limit for items of any sort, which is a function of the population. Following that reasoning, any city capable of producing +3 swords, will also be capable of producing any +3 weapon.

That might not be satisfactory for you.

One way around this, would be to change the infrastructure needed for item creation.
Do you want to keep the "every punk with the right feat" flavour?
Then you could go the route of magical ressources.

Let´s call them mana crystals; every item needs those as material components. Remember the gp cost for creation? in that model, you´d have a very high percentage of that value be in the form of mana crystals. Now you "only" have to place mana crystal sources (mines would fit nicely) on your world/continent map. Factions control these, and sell them acording to their political aims, or use them for their causes. The GP conversion is already done by the system, so that´s easy to begin with.
EDIT: Adding different kinds of magical materials ads to that fun, but also ads to the prep needed. There might be ways of randomizing and automatizing this task.

Another way would be to rule, that there´s some kind of organisatorial infrastructure needed for item creation. Let´s say you need a library of "blueprints", a laboratory, and a bunch of specialist. Then, artificer guilds would need a certain size, and might also be specialized, to make good use of that expensive capital investment. That would be a bit like the mech-factory setup, and would benefit from spelling out different kinds of "magic workshops" with different capabilities. The DMG has different kinds of items, which could be used as a start.

I can imagine stuff like a:

700GP arcane potion brewery run by the Herbomancers
or
40.000GP armour smithy run by the Moradin Magecrafters

Those institutions would be powers unto themselves, or miught face nationalization. All kinds of adventure situations and flavourful encounters and conflicts could arise from that.
EDIT: You could randomly attribute "blueprints" to the manufacturies, to further differentiate, and to act as a scenario/conflict source. Go, find the arcane pattern for the wand of cure light wounds, we need it for the war!

There are other ways, but these two came to my mind.

*bump*


Tumbleweed.

Quote from: jrientsFor my new D&D campaign one important question I am asking is "Where can PCs buy magic items and spells?"  I'm not just assuming they can get whatever they like inbetween action scenes.

A thread on ENWorld discussed this recently.  My favorite solution so far is this:

Magic Item sellers have an individual shop limit "on hand" of 10% of the gp limit of the city (adjust that percentage however you like).  Anything pricier has to be custom-made or custom-ordered, and takes one day per 1,000 gp in the item's cost.

That should make shopping for low-level scrolls and everything relatively easy in a major city, but big-ticket items will have to be custom made.