Ah, cool. Personally, I like to rip off obscure real-world words of any language when I can.
How about for languages/wordsets? Do you just make up words that go along with your themes? Construction?
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Boradgamey economic rules draft!
SETTLEMENT STATS:
Settlement Name (Province Name) [Total Income]
Population: Qualitative [Income]
Resources: Qualitative [Income]
Modifiers: The few special things go here
EXAMPLE:
Sebastopolis (Sebastike) [+1]
Population: Massive [+1]
Resources: Plentiful (wine, olives, metals, trade) [+1]
Modifiers: Super-taxed [-1] <7>, Wonder (Megas Phuskopeion) [+1]
Sebastopolis (Sebastike) [+2]
- Mostly self-explanatory! The number shows the total income from this province, calculated from all the pluses and minuses below it, for easy reference.
Population: Massive [+1]
- Levels are: Tiny [+1], Small [+1], Medium [+1], Large [+1], and Massive [+1], representing ~500, ~1,000, ~5,000, ~10,000, and ~25,000 people each, respectively. I put the [+1] there to represent default income taxes (which, due to corruption and administrative costs, never really goes up).
Resources: Plentiful (wine, olives, metals, trade) [+1]
- Levels are: Scarce [-1], Sufficient [+0], Plentiful [+1], and Abundant [+2]. The words in the parentheses are "tags" to note what the region produces; if it is strong in trade is noted here for simplicity.
Modifiers: Super-taxed [-1] <7>, Wonder (Megas Phuskopeion) [+1]
- Here is a tricky part I might cut out in the final draft. This is where all "special conditions" will go.
In this example, there is super-taxed (meaning the place just got an emergency taxing or something); the [number] shows how much it reduces from the province's turn-by-turn income (like the other [numbers]), while the <number> shows how long the effect will last (I put that there so that when its stat updating time, I just have to decrement it per turn).
There is also a wonder, the Megas Phuskopeion, which I envision to be this magnificent royal mint (the world-standard currency is the
phuskon, and each point represents about a thousand of these) so magnificent that it generates income by attracting... regular pilgrimages of worshipers of money or something. I could also change it to Penalized Megas Phuskopeion [0] <until peace is restored> whenever I feel like it, too.
That's not important though; the important thing is that it is a "special effect" and it goes in the appropriate section.
>>> A player might have a stat block as such:
Barbados of Eirene (flyingchicken)
stuff
Provinces Owned:
Sebastopolis
As you see, the [anchor] and [set_anchor] tags will be used for those who don't have the good sense to use Ctrl-F!
My design philosophy for these boardgamey rules is as simple as possible, without totally throwing out immersion. I could have just had Province Name [Income] for extreme simplicity, or just Player + Player Income stat which I could edit at a whim, but what little flavor there is left is lost that way.
I especially like the format which you've always been good at. And the active NPCs btw.
