Yo Polybius! I remember you from that one thread where I never realized there was eventually an OOC. Doesn't matter though, this interests me more, really. xD Glad I caught it.
@ClocktowerEchosI think I understand your point. I would still agree with Polybius's statement however on the basis that characters (individuals) are inherently different to nations. That's not to say that they have to be dry, clinical and emotionless. They're just made up of different components that set them apart. If a nation had to be equated to a character, I'd say it would have to be a character with a multiple personality disorder. As I see it, no nation is ever a singular will, a singular personality. Not unless it is, say, a hive mind. Nations are typically a tug of war between competing (and sometimes opposing) ideologies and aspirations. Characters can have conflicting emotions and thoughts, true, but I think it's different to a country that's just about ready to split under, let's say a religious schism or, to use a more contemporary example, the election of a particularly controversial leader. This becomes even more relevant in the case that a country
does, in fact, split up. Character's can't do that, but countries can split, merge and morph.
This would also be my first contribution to Polybius's question for concepts he might have missed. If you're aiming for realism, dynamism and
drama (that's what we want, right?), I think it's pretty important to represent more than just a single facet of a nation, even if it might be the dominant one. That's also, probably, one of the primary reasons why, as Polybius already said, nations are a bit more complex than characters. They're a large, heterogenous group of characters, or groups of characters, each with their own personal distinctions and each interacting with the others on various obvious and less obvious levels. Simulating all of this to the extreme is ridiculous of course, but I want to make a point that it should be acknowledged in a good nation sheet.
Other random points I can come up with while reading the OP:
Culture - How influential your nations culture is on other nations. For instance, American culture (especially media and movies) influences even nations that are at odds with the USA.
If this point is strictly about projected power, you could probably widen the scope and have it be a metric for hard and soft power - two expressions used to measure a country's realistic, military pressure (hard power) as well as its cultural dominance (soft power). Economic pressure (wealth, control of stock markets, owning important trade hubs, etc.) kind of falls in between the two. It's gentler than bullying somebody with tanks, but by putting embargos, sanctions or simply imposing unreasonable taxes on imported goods, a country still has relatively hard methods for disempowering their competitor nations.
On a related note, though this might be stretching the complexity - I think this "value" shouldn't exist in a vacuum. America's culture isn't a projected value that we all take in the face (though it kind of looks like it). In reality, both hard and soft power are a sliding scale of at least two projected powers trying to push against one another. The projected (I'm overusing this word, help me) impact of America's culture can only even really be measured by comparing it to that of Europe, Asia etc. They're winning the tug of war on a lot of fronts. So to represent this on, say, a map, I would draw a web of lines connecting every country to every other country, and then have that line be filled to a representative percentage with each of the two countries' colors. Even that is a bit simple though because none of these competitions exist in a vacuum either, nor are they strictly mutually exclusive... Eh, let's leave it at that. :'D
Economy - How strong and stable your economic institutions are.
Should probably not just mention strength, but also origin. It matters if your nation is rich because it's a tax haven for foreign companies, or if it's just really good at exporting primary materials, cheap mass produced goods, or high tech ware. Or any other reason!
Production - How fast you can build units and structures.
Maybe it's relevant if you actually produce all the goods needed for your production line yourself, or if you depend on someone else for part of the chain. Especially in a more complex world (particularly as we move into the contemporary or sci-fi epochs) it becomes increasingly unlikely that any one country is completely self sufficient, unless it is absolutely massive or wallows in below-average quality of life. That said, if your nation starts encompassing entire planets and solar systems, your autonomy becomes a little more plausible again due to the sheer mass of your people and exploitable resources. The only scarcity you might face is technological know-how, culture, maybe money - soft things.
Infrastructure - The physical and organizational institutions of your nation. Roads, bridges, walls, but also emergency services, clergy etc.
Technology - How technologically advanced your nation is.
I feel like both of these are a bit vague for the time being. They're vast subjects that really ought to be defined in greater specific details. You're probably aware though and summarized it for brevity's sake, so I'll just mention it off hand.
Militarism - Not to be confused with actual military strength. How willing your nation is to go to war and how it conducts itself. A better name might be "Aggression".
In contrast, this is a relatively specific metric. Feels like you could, in theory, stick it under "culture" as it is part of what defines your national identity (or the prevailing national identity - in case we have multiple ones going on. Could easily have a extremist pacifist minority in an otherwise militaristic country).
Stability - Not sure about this one. Measures how likely your nation is to be thrown into anarchy or social collapse.
A country's stability, as I see it, depends on two things: Quality of life, and ethics divergence. To clarify, you compare the current state of both of these with their expected, or desired states. The larger the divide is, the more unhappy the civilization will generally be and, depending on their tolerance and toppling point, they'll cross the threshold into revolt eventually.
Quality of life measures just that; personal privileges, luxuries, safety and comfort. Bread and games for the peasantry!
Ethics is a bit more nebulous; it describes how much in harmony the prevailing ethics of the population are not only with themselves (different groups, again) but also with the government. If a country that's been a liberal, capitalistic society for decades, maybe centuries suddenly finds itself under the yoke of a hugely socialistic ruler that sees fit to limit the individual's freedoms to enforce his ideals, you can bet those people aren't going to be thrilled.
As opposed to CTE's point, it is very heavily focused on the leader. (...)
It's a fair approach. Since we usually write (N)RPs to write fascinating stories, invoke emotion and drama, focusing on characters makes sense either way. Since this is a thread about making a system and appropriate game mechanics, though, I'd say it's very optional. I think a system where the macro game (country scale, or wider) is governed by rules, while the micro game (character, personal scale) is free-form prose is just fine. Since we're on a forum where we write stories first and play games second, I imagine that going lighter on rules is generally preferrable, so if we can cut them out somewhere without compromising the project, it's probably worth doing.
That's my personal bias anyway; I don't think I'd mind doing some dice rolling to determine my losses in a military campaign, but I would feel very iffy about doing the same to determine the success my lordling has in courting that princess.
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I've written a reasonable amount already, so I'll stop here and give you folks a chance to digest and argue some of my points. I'll try and bring some additional concepts in next time though. In particular, I think wars ought to be something that need stricter defining in terms of rules, as they are usually something controversial and in need of moderation. They're also nice and juicy things with lots of complexity where we can cram metrics in. Wars are about more than people hitting or shooting each other, after all. They're about resources being pooled (and transported!) from both sides, about transit speeds, about morale (of the front, and of the homefront!), about politics, about war crimes. And of course about the more pedestrian and expected comparisons like tech disparity and troop counts. Should be fun to discuss sometime when we have a grasp on what a nation makes.
Edit: The Land Tax would be how much you get from each amount of land wether that be in tiles/hex/km2 or what not, basically a national tax. The Land Upkeep would be how much you have to pay for the land in terms of infrastructure and what have, probably be like... 50% of the the Land Tax (just using 50% as an easy example number).
If the Land Tax and Land Upkeep are unseparably linked to the same variable (owned land tiles/whatever), and if Tax is always superior to Upkeep, then it would probably make sense to get rid of Upkeep in the table and just calculate it into Tax. In your example, you could just list Tax at half its value, and have no Upkeep in the right table. Essentially the same thing, but you get rid of one variable, simplifying the table and maths involved. Not a huge thing, but a slight optimization.
Valid to keep them separate, though, if Upkeep is something that can change frequently.
