Anyone Use Kingdom Creation Rules from Ult Base to make Organizations?

[Supabeasto]

I recently picked up and started reading Ultimate Base when I noticed it had rules for Kingdom creation and combat.

 

Has anyone used these rules to make organizations for their games?

 

I'm super hyped to start using them for my games, but I was hoping someone could share what they have so I could have a bit of a guideline. For instance, how much strength would a unit of thugs be? How many thugs in a unit? For that matter, how many units in a thug?

[Netzilla]

The answer to the thugs/unit question (along with thug strength) entirely depends on what scale you're running your kingdoms at.  The rules are deliberately ambiguous so that GMs can set kingdoms up as anything from mob families up to interstellar empires.  The only real criteria is that all kingdoms that will interact with each other should operate on roughly the same scale.

 

For example, I ran a brief Mythical Greece campaign face-to-face and on the side, set up a PBEM with some other friends all running different Greek/Thracian states competing with each other.  Occasionally the two overlapped.  Mostly, things the PCs did in the FtF would grant bonuses to things in the PBEM and occasional missions launched in the PBEM could generate scenarios for the FtF game.  For example, one kingdom launched a sabotage mission against another of some type (don't remember the specific action type) meant to demoralize/weaken the target city.  In the FtF game, the PCs happened to be in that city, so I set it up as a scenario where they were present when a religious relic (an omphalos) was stolen.  This led to the PCs giving chase to try to get it back. The trickiest part of all that was in the timing.  Fortunately, the PBEM side was okay with putting things on hold if the FtF game took more than one session to resolve a tie-in scenario.

[Christougher]

Not yet, just got the PDF, and planning to see what use it can be in Master of Orion campaign.  Based on the computer games of the same name, you and several alien empires try to take over the galaxy.

 

Chris.

[megaplayboy]

As a guideline for modern era military units, a battalion is considered the smallest unit capable of independent operations, and is between 500 and 1000 soldiers strong. So that might be a 5 STR unit, with +5 STR per doubling of unit size(e.g., 50-100k soldiers might be STR 40-45, a million might be STR 60, etc.).

[Supabeasto]

Ok, that guideline is pretty helpful. Hehe, I'm not playing anywhere near that scale, but with some numbers to play with I think I can scale that down to fit my game.

[TheQuestionMan]

Create a Game of Throes example playtest.

 

Might work

 

QM

[Supabeasto]

I'm hoping to do a playtest this weekend.

 

Ideally, I'd like to create "kingdoms" for the different factions in my game.

Then I could have something similar to Netzilla's game where I hand over the factions to other friends in hopes of creating a city that feels more alive.

[Netzilla]

Yeah, the main trick is deciding what the "average" unit is at your scale. So, if you're focusing on mob/police action, that average unit might be a team of thug enforcers (say a half-dozen guys with various small arms). Then a low-level gang drive-by would be weaker (less skilled and lighter gear), while a SWAT team or elite hit squad would be far tougher. At that scale you could conceivably stat out a single patrol car or small "collections" team.

[Netzilla]

You know, I'm now reminded of the old PBM, "It's A Crime", which has apparently become a PBeM game. Man, I haven't played that since the 80s.