Worldbuilding 3c: Control

This post is part of a series on worldbuilding; links for the whole series can be found on this page.

By now, the reader has enough to create the world's big picture: lay out the coastlines, define the river basins and put mountains, hills or plateaus between the rivers.  Seed your main cities in place where the rivers meet the coasts, or where great rivers meet each other.  Define the latitude of your first continent with respect to the world's sphere and sketch out the prevailing winds, east and west, that hit the continent on each side.  By now you should know what kind of large-scale world you want, as we've discussed.  We'll talk about all these things again in upcoming posts — so for the moment, just make broad, sweeping strokes as you draw in these details.

For example, don't worry what the mountains are like, exactly ... a single line that stretches around the edges of a large river basin will do.  Remember, the larger the mountain range is, the more river basins it feeds; and remember that mountains feed river basins in every direction, not just on one of its sides.  But ... we'll leave that for another day.

Once all this is approximately laid out, the time has come to establish political boundaries.  There's a lot to consider here, so don't rush.  We've spoken about how river basins produce "frontiers," in the sense of sparsely populated areas the provide natural divisions between cultures ... in the way that the southern highlands of Scotland served to keep out the Romans, causing the Picts to become Scots while the southern Celts became English.  A "boundary-line" is meticulous; it defines the exact measure of land down to separating this field from that; this hill from that ridge; this side of the river from that side.  In the sense I'm using it, a "frontier" is a topographical division; a "boundary" is a civil decision, established over time through negotiation and threat.

This last is what we want to focus upon.  Boundaries define wealth — fresh water, mineral deposits, access to transport — things that monarchies and peoples fight and die to possess, when they believe they're stronger than their weaker neighbours.  Boundaries, therefore, change.  Clever, capable rulers reorganize and empower their military and financial positions to take advantage of complacent, fumbling rulers ... rolling into enemy territory, seizing towns, resources and equipment; enslaving citizens; executing enemies; dictating what gods the peasants must worship; and other everyday atrocities.

In 21st century terms, this seems, um, impolite.  And so, worldbuilders seek to create nice, neat lines where everyone lives happily in a medieval EU without a need for Brussels and talk.  After all, it sucks having to redraw our map if the Prussians sieze the port of Danzig.  Isn't it better if the Prussians and Poles just get along?

Okay; I appreciate that for some, including aspects in the game world inconsistent with modern perspectives — like, as JB postulated, having "fantasy European conquistadors murdering their way through the Americas — seems "squicky."  But I don't get that myself.  If I include a group of racist, slaughtering religious fanatics into my game world, it makes a very good foil for my players to fucking hate ... just as having murderous Nazis in an Indiana Jones film makes for satisfying, justified triumphs.  As a DM, I didn't invent Mongols.  Or rampaging cossacks.  Or the religious stoning of women.  But, in my game world, those things are there.  Not because I'm running a "simulation."  But because the potential satisfaction a player can achieve through ENDING these things is a game motivation I'm not prepared to surrender.

Sociologists tell us that we're capable, as humans, of maintaining a familiar relationship with about 150 people.  This is called "Dunbar's number" ... and yes, the reader can see from the link that the actual number is disputed and debated at length.  What matters is there is a number.  And that number is much smaller than "nation-sized."  It's easy for people on this side of the river to hate, dispise and wish the death of people on that side of the river, because we don't know them.  We don't care about them.  And we want their stuff.

No one says you have to design your game world this way.  We're perfectly free to pretend that in a fantasy game world, all the humans get along and the only things that keep peace from happening are those pesky orcs, goblins and mind flayers ... but personally I think this is a childish point of view.  And I think it makes for a banal, gutless world, bereft of nuance, meaningful purpose and the angst needed to stir characters to action.

But let me shelve this digression.  I encourage designers to create political entities along the following lines, installing a steady-state battery-like tension that underlies the game world's dynamic.

I.  Set up four to six MAJOR states.  Combined, these should control about 60% of the continent.  The "virility" of these states can be defined in three ways:  ascending, in which the state is presently threatening its neighbours; declining, in which the state is falling apart; and stable, in which the state is holding its own against its neighbours but not growing.

In places, these major states should border upon at least one other of the same rank, with each boundary creating a place of political friction.  The English-Scottish border, the French-Walloon border, the Byzantine-Turkish border; the Swedish-Russian border; or the Polish-Russian border.  Limit the number of borders with states of the same rank to no more than TWO.

II.  Where a border might occur between major powers, insert as secondary power as a BUFFER state.  Buffer states are cheaper to influence and win over than they are to conquer.  Buffer states pay tribute, sometimes to more than one side.  Buffer states ease tension between enemies, who agree not to invade a buffer state.  Create 4 to 6 buffer states and wedge them between the major states.

III.  Create one to two dozen TERTIARY states.  Yes, I said dozen.  Assign each of these to a dominant major state; this need not be a state upon which they border.  In fact, with ascending states, they often control scattered tertiary states on the other side of their enemies — for example, Habsburg Spain's control of Milan, Hesse-Kassel, Tyrol, Tunis and so on.  France was virtually surrounded ... yet it still triumphed in that contest, though for a long time it only held its own before, 150 years after Charles V, it became an ascendant state.

Each tertiary state occupies a small niche in the game world's topography.  The top of a valley, an island, a valuable coastline with a defendable hinterland, a set of oases in the desert and so on.  Some tertiary states are isolated enough to be free from outside influence; others are so perfectly defensible, like Switzerland, that they exist untouched inside a violent dynamic.  Some secondary powers have one ace in the hole that gives them relative security, like Denmark's control over the waterway between the North and Baltic seas.  Geography creates a lot of variation, subtlety and refinement in the way a country is managed and how dependent it is on protection — or how enslaved it is by a greater power.

Remember, it's always easier to have a staunch ally rule his or her country, providing arms and men, and money, that invading and ruling that country yourself.  IF Hungary can be relied upon, then it's better for Austria to make friends than to attempt domination.  It's better for Poland and Lithuania to  make friends; or for Denmark and Norway to do so.  Leon, Navarre, Castile, Aragon and Granada were eventually melded into one entity through self-preservation, mutual ambition and one agreeable marriage.  Conquest is not always the solution. 

Plunk these little enclaves into the spaces between major states and buffer states, like chinks in a rock wall.

IV.  Last — and a subject that needs redressing later — give a reason why these are major states.  England is perfect country for farming and divided from Europe by a big moat.  Constantinople is at the crossroads of the world, north-to-south, east-to-west.  China occupies a huge homogenic topographical plain, as did northern India.  Persia is a conglomeration of highly defensible and strategically productive hills and valleys, with access to everywhere.  Egypt is overflowing with food and is unapproachable from every side.  Kampuchea rebuilt the jungle into a paradise.  Make the reason for the kingdom's glory MAKE SENSE.  It should be something that can't be taken away; that will still be there, no matter whose running the place.

Good.  That's lots of food.  Let's stop there.