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Governance Abstractor

This may be poorly explained at first, but it will hopefully make sense once fully developed. The goal: To allow someone to abstract the bureacracy of a kingdom enough to be able to play it and still have fun.

Resources

Step 1: Resources Abstraction.

Posit: Each Resources level is about 1/10 of the level that comes after it. Furthermore, each Resources level is about how much money a given person makes in a season; therefore, that is used as a basis for determining taxes and expenses. When totalling resources, count it as a total number based on Resources 1, with the number of digits being the total Resources level. (So, 592.3 is five Resources 3, 9 Resources 2, 2 Resources 1, and 3 Resources x).

Step 2: Kingdom Resources

A kingdom (or satrapy's) Resources are usually equal to the taxes that they can raise, and are spent on permanent armies, bureaucracy, maintenance, and so on. Charms can reduce the cost of various things, but the baseline still exists. (Note: In the case of satrapies, tributes to the Realm must also be paid, and in modern times these do not match the money that comes back - take that into account.) Some kingdoms have extra sources of income (hiring out their army as mercenaries, the king is a sorcerer, etc.) which are calculated seperately.

Taxes

When creating the population, figure out their Resources level. As a rule, the bulk of the nation will have Resources 1. Each season, a given percentage of that (based on the satrapy) is taken for taxes, and in satrasome of that is sent back to the Realm (theoretically in exchange for armed protection and Dragon-Blooded governers).

Example: The Kingdom of Harranth has a population of 50,000, and a tax rate of 10%:
2,000 - Resources x. Provides no real taxes.
40,000 - Resources 1. Provides 4,000x1= 4,000 in taxes.
6,000 - Resources 2. Provides 600x10= 6,000 in taxes
1,990 - Resources 3. Provides 195x100 = 19,900 in taxes
10 - Resources 4. Provides 50x1000 = 10,000 in taxes

In theory, Harranth can produce around 39,900 worth of taxes, or enough for almost 4 Resources 5 purchases each season.

Once you have that, however, two extra factors come into play: Collection efficiency, and Corruption.

COLLECTION EFFICIENCY: Medieval bureaucracies aren't, as a whole, amazingly efficient. Not all taxes are actually collected - due to a combination of bribing tax officers to under-report, hiding belongings in order to appear poorer, and outright avoiding the taxman. The combination of these effects means that there is a base loss rate of about a quarter. A well-run bureaucracy or a very large one can reduce this rate; each increase in Size or Skill may reduce loss by 5%, to a minimum 10%. After that, each increase only reduces loss by 2%, to a minimum of 0%.

CORRUPTION: A second, larger problem tends to be that not all the money gathered makes its way to the treasury. Corruption penalties apply to the starting tax amount, rather than the remaining amount after Efficiency fails, for the sake of ease. As a rule, Corruption is based on how loyal the bureaucracy is, how well-paid the bureaucracy is, and how badly people get punished for corruption (although frequent punishment tends to lower Skill.) Consider the base corruption rate in the Second Age to be 25%; each increase in Pay or Loyalty reduces it by 5%, to a minimum 10%. After that, each increase only reduces loss by 2%, to a minimum of 0%. Note that there may be NPCs trying to actively reduce Loyalty in order to more easily hide their own corruption.

(Note: Exact rules on increasing and decreasing Size, Skill, Pay, and Loyalty will follow.)

Comments

I tak tit you have Issues with Mandate of Heaven? Or deas tha ruelset not cover this stuff? -Azurelight

The Mandate of Heaven ruleset, while neat, is designed for nations fighting each other, and abstracts internal ruling to a single dieroll as a rule. This set of rules was mainly designed for a Dragon-Blooded game; I started running the game without a complete ruleset, and want to finish it before I start the game's next incarnation. There will be more coming to this; work has been tiring of late. - FrivYeti

I like this its interesting and a cool concept. I'm wondering what would the effects of Charms, Sorcery and other Exalted effects would be on this system. From reducing corruption to making the number of bureacrats needed in the government smaller. The magic of Exalted would have a lot of effect on this sort of system. But, beyond all that its very cool and interesting to read. - Heru

Yeah, Charms will do brutal things to the rolls required to keep Loyalty up and Size down without disaster. :) Sidereals can stave off Corruption, Solars just make everything work better... Exalts make Bureacracy easy. Or hard. Their choice, really. ;) - FrivYeti