Families, Capitals & Settlements
Families is a score indicating the number of households located in a Faction’s Capital that provide support for & has a dependency on that Faction. All human power is downstream from the Families who follow a Leader.
One household is estimated to be 5 people — on average, a husband, his wife, and three children, of whom one is capable of labor & war & might be an independent unmarried agent.
The table adjacent correlates Families to Faction Level. The scale is approximately logarithmic; each step is around 3.16 × the Follower count of the previous step up.
| Families in Capital | Faction Level | Capital Size | Army Size | Realm Size | Euro Nobility Equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | — | — | A person | — | — |
| 1+ | 1 | Cottage | 3-man lance | Farm | Gentleman |
| 3+ | 2 | Manor | Squad | Manor | Lord |
| 10+ | 3 | Hamlet | Platoon | — | — |
| 30+ | 4 | Small village | Company | — | — |
| 100+ | 5 | Village | Cohort | — | — |
| 300+ | 6 | Small town | Battalion | — | — |
| 1,000+ | 7 | Large town | Brigade | Barony | Baron |
| 3,000+ | 8 | City | Division | County | Count |
| 10k+ | 9 | Large city | Corps | Duchy | Duke |
| 30k+ | 10 | Metropolis | Field army | Petty kingdom | King |
| 100k+ | 11 | Megalopolis | Imperial army | Kingdom | — |
| 300k+ | 12 | Rome | Front | Empire | Emperor |
To determine Faction Level from a Families score:
- Find the number of digits in the Families stat (i.e. a village of 120 = 3).
- Double it (i.e. 3 × 2 = 6).
- If the first digit in the Families stat is 2 or 1, subtract 1 (i.e. “1” in 120, so 6 - 1 = 5).
To determine a viable Families number from a given character Level:
- Divide the character’s Level by 2 (i.e. Level 7 ÷ 2 = 3.5).
- Write any number with that many digits. If you got a 0.5, round up, but the first digit must be 1 or 2 (i.e. 3.5 = 4 digits, but no more than 2,999).
The Followers of the Leader of an entire Settlement is equal to the number of Families living in that Settlement, because even if they don’t like their Leader, their presence is still contributing to that Leader’s power.
If a Leader doesn’t control the entirety of a Settlement, their Capital is a smaller structure within that Settlement (such as its market, gate society/guards, temple, bank, or a business) & his Families represent the attendees, customers, employees, or other people who support his Faction, depending on his Faction Type.
A Faction’s Level is tied to its current Families score & is frequently referenced by a character, so it’s worth writing down the Level of a Leader’s controlled Factions on his sheet.
For example, a city of 40,000 has 5 digits (×2 = 10) & the highest digit (4) is greater than 3; therefore, that city’s Leader has a Level of 11. And if you look at the table, you’ll find that that’s exactly correct.
Similarly, you can convert from Leader Level to Follower score by dividing the Leader’s Level by 2 & writing a number with that many digits, starting with 3 if there’s a 0.5 remainder & 1 if there isn’t.
For example, a Leader of Lv13: 13 ÷ 2 = 6.5. There’s a 0.5 remainder & 6 digits, so the Leader must rule a Capital of at least 300,000 people (but not ≥1,000,000, or else he’d be Level 14).
People can be Followers to many Factions at once.
The Followers of the smallest village in a kingdom are considered Followers of the village mayor, the local province’s lord, the magistrate above him, the bureaucratic body overseeing the region, & the emperor himself, in addition to being Followers of whichever businesses & gods & family members they patronize. Their commitments directly serve to reinforce & enhance the Factions they commit to. The degree of their devotion doesn’t matter; the math already accounts for variation in support.
Many reasons!
- You do not rule territory; you rule people. Rural regions are of such thin density that to declare control over them is at best a technicality.
- As soon as you start counting all controlled populations over an area, you have a billion issues determining which areas are controlled & which aren’t; this leads to drawing borders & arguing over population density for people you’d have no right to know even existed (as censuses are notoriously difficult to conduct without modern technology, whereas a city’s size can be more easily approximated).
- Relatedly, outlying populations’ proof of existence is in the existence of the city itself. If a city didn’t have rural populations, the city would not exist. It is dependent upon them for survival. Therefore, we can simplify them out of the equation & only account for the city.
- Rulers tended to care far more about their local demesne & capital than outlying regions, and tended to invest heavily in their own capital precisely because it was most important to them.
- Gods, too, are limited in power by space & distance. Every god is local.
- You need administrators to rule any other settlement. They’re simply too distant to monitor.
It is also worth noting that nearly all pre-industrial capitals were the largest city in their respective realms, because power attracts people — specifically, it attracts courtesans, foreign diplomats, assassins & thieves, mercenaries, fellow rulers, scribes, spies, and every other form of scum who seek proximity to power.
It is absolutely critical to maintain a basis in economics. All human relationships are economic in nature, especially grudges. A defined capital allows tethering of Faction activity to in-game economic factors (such as trade routes, iron mines, and population densities) which lets us turn proximity into relationships that matter.