Worldbuilding 101: Organizations

September 1, 2008 No comments

A number of systems have tried to express organizations with a stat blocks as if they were characters, containing numerical values for skills, abilities, and so forth. The failure with these attempts has been because there is no “one size fits all” method of defining all organizations, which come in a vast variety of sizes, purposes, and resources. What follows is intended to be used as a “cap system”, to be used in conjunction with the system of your choice.

Rank the Organization’s Resources
All organizations have only one core attribute: Resources. This represents the amount of wealth, influence, personnel, equipment, and so on that they are able to put into play at any given time. Resources are ranked on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the least, 10 being the best in the world, and 5 being average. These numbers are subjective, so it’s recommended that the gamemaster create examples of Rank 1, Rank 5 and rank 10 organizations as a benchmark both for the gamemaster and the players. The benchmark organizations don’t necessarily have to come into play other than things referenced in the setting background, but having them not only provides a point or reference but a little additional color as well.

Size Does Not Equal Scale or Scope
Note that rank does not necessarily reflect size. The gamemaster should determine the size of the organization and it’s theater of operations — local, regional, national, global, interstellar, etc. A powerful organization could be nothing more than a handful of businessmen and politicians who meet informally at the local ale house. A weak organization could have hundreds of unskilled, disorganized members who have regular meetings at dozens of locations across the country but don’t get much done.

Define Resources with Descriptives
This is where organizations are differentiated. What sorts of resources are that their disposal? If they’ve got ninjas, write “ninjas”. If they’ve got political power, write “political power”. Each descriptive should be no more than a single word or phrase that conveys what you mean, and no organization should have more descriptives than their rank (i.e., a rank 7 organization can have, at most, 7 descriptives).

Resource Points Make Things Happen
In each game session, the organization gets a number of Resource Points equal to their rank. These get spent to make things happen. Corporate soldiers (equivalent to a fair encounter) attack the player characters? That’s a point spent. Making a piece of evidence disappear? That’s a point. the game master should use the points creatively to generate the effects of the organization’s operations and machinations as either fluff or crunch.

Settling Scores
If an organization defeats another organization of equal or greater strength, they get all the points they spent back plus one more resource point. If they beat down someone less powerful, they get nothing extra but do get their spent resource points back. If an organization loses, they lose all of the resource points spent, but will regain them over days, weeks and months, whatever time frame the gamemaster feels is most appropriate for them to regroup.

Player Character Organizations
If the player characters are members of an organization and defeat a larger organization, the resource point comes under their control. This is subject to the gamemaster’s discretion, of course. Even if the characters work for a larger “NPC” organization, they get control of the resource point. This reflects a rise in responsibility and possibly rank within the NPC organzation. The caveat is that the players must all agree upon what the point is spent on – this reflects the bureaucracy of organizations.