Probably not my best work, but I'm tired and want to get ot bed. So here is the promised write up detailing how I handle states and large organizations in my own games. Note that most of this is setting agnostic, as it comes from years of dming various other games and is not specific to any one system. I will try to include some exalted specific hacks at the end, but I am a relative newcomer to the franchise so others could probably do it better. Now, without further ado:
Seeing Like a State
Or
How to Reduce GM workload by limiting player interaction to the bits of the world which are relevant and that they want to interact with.
Part 1: The Overview
The issues, as I see it, with modeling a state level actor in a campaign are two fold. The first issue is that states are big, complicated things and modeling them is hard work. Work which might never even see the light of day if your players aren't interested in that nation, or take the campaign in an unexpected direction. The second is that states are inherently impersonal things. This makes them hard for players to interact with and change. It makes them boring. So how do we solve this? I personally use what I call the Fractal Granularity Index, because I like fancy names, and the Spokesperson system. Neither is really revolutionary, and I'm sure there is a blog post or 500 somewhere explaining them in other terms, but I feel it is worthwhile to get my thoughts down on paper.
The Fractal Granulairty Index is a method of GMing based around decreasing both player and GM work by limiting the amount of actionable information to only what the players and GM want to interact with. What does that mean? It means that when you start a campaign or session, the GM comes to the table with a certain amount, I go with 5, setting elements/plothooks
1, and that each of these elements should have 5 associated setting elements/plothooks of their own. This gives the players a series of different widgets to interact with, each of which has their own method of driving the story forward. Once they start interacting with one of these widgets they can drill down for further detail and giving you a sense of where to focus your work when fleshing out the session. Crucially, it also prevents you from "locking in" any setting elements or choices, allowing you to change them based on player reactions. Then you simply repeat this every session, aiming to build your story only one step ahead of the players so that it can be customized to their taste (and so you don't waste work).
So how does this work in practice?
Evan is playing a lvl 3 Barbarian who has just entered the town of Kingsland. He is overwhelmed by the stench and noise of so many people in one place, more people than he has ever seen in his life. People and animals wander the street aimlessly, calling out deals or selling wares or just making the endless noise of life. He can see a tower in the center of the city, once proud stone pockmarked from age and with the roof caved in. It is the only building with space to breath, none of the others approaching within 25 feet of its floor. A seemingly endless array of sheep line stalls, sold for meat or wool or milk. These sheep though look sickly and thin, it must not have been a good harvest this year. Suddenly a noble's carriage fly past him, forcing him to dive out of the way, and a thief takes this opportunity to try and steal his purse, fat with loot from the last adventure. Roll to avoid!
So here we have 4 plot hooks. Ruined tower. Sickly sheep. Mean noble. Pickpocket.
Evan manages to stop the thief, but elects not to chase him when he runs. Instead he decides to track down the noble, hoping he can get more money by shaking him down for "damanges". There he learns that the noble is a member of the Guild and recently lost a lot of money on an expedition, leaving him unable to pay his membership fee. Unbeknownst to Evan, this noble is also a member of the thieves guild (which one the plotline opened if he went after the thief because I am nothing if not lazy
2) and may send assassins if the dealings go poorly.
And so on and so forth. If you get good at improving, this should allow you to constantly stay one step ahead of your players.
3
The spokesperson system is much easier. Instead of having players deal with institutions, have them deal with people. Give each institution a spokesperson who can act as a stand in for that institution during actual play. Is the church evil? Have them meet the local bishop Murderface McOrphanmaker and how he likes to eat puppies on the weekdays. Are the besieging a castle? Have the lord come out and try and talk to them or shout threats from the walls, etc.
Part 2: Applying this to organizations
Now, that's all well and good, but how does that apply to organizations? Simple, when creating an organization create its leader, the Spokesperson, as well as a few additional subleaders, such as faction leaders, bishops, rebels, etc. each of which will be Spokesperson for the subgroups they are leading.
When the players interact with an organization, its Spokesperson and the Organization are assumed to be one and the same. The King or Bishop or Principle or Local Political Party Spokesperson is assumed to be able to enact their will on whatever they are leading. Using a King as an example, they are assumed to be able to raise taxes, wage wars or start national projects. This may not be easy, and it may not be clean, but barring intervention by the PCs or the GM, assume that the leader is in control of their organization.
4
At this level, all you need to model is the highest member of the organization that your players are dealing with, plus a few quick outlines of the next step down in case the players want to interact with the organization in a more granular level. If the players want to start converting their neighbors into sun worshipers then you need to start modeling the provincial politics, but unless they are personally going to a city to preach then you don't really need to be able to model more than that. If all they want to do is talk to the king for a good trade deal, then they don't really need to know that the Baron of Catch'up is in a feud with the Duke of Mush-tard.
5
Part 3: Applying this to your game
That was a lot of words, but we need some examples for this all to make sense.
Evan is playing Bunny, the Elven Queen of the Twilight Imperium. She is a powerful sorceress, her birthstone is stone and her hobbies are eating, sleeping and taking the easy way out. To her west lie the fertile plains of Tukahn, a settled agrarian economy ruled by the King. There kings symbolically revoke their names, and thus ties to the nobility, upon ascension. To her North lie the undead kingdom of The Waste. This is a barren wasteland full of monsters and poisonous miasma. Its only intelligent inhabitants are a series of nomadic undead knights who travel the land on their necrotech chariots in search of powerful magical reagents and herbs. The closest powerful grouping of such are the skeletal Knights of Steel, who have coated their bones in steel to strengthen them. Their leader is The Man, who rides a great centipedesque creature made from the bones of elephants stuck end to end. To her south lies the Kingdom of Mourning, last remnant of a nascent solar empire which has managed to hold on to some of the wonders left behind. It is ruled by a council of hereditary sorcerer priests. The spokesperson for this is
usually Mofti Zhul daughter of the sun
6, and voice of the gods. Technically the council rules as a collective, but the PCs can safely treat her as the council unless they start getting involved in internal politics.
7
Now, at the start of a session/campaign this is all the characters would know about each kingdom and their rulers. Players may also, if they ask, be informed of major imports and exports, common rumors, borders and even the broad strokes of power, but they won't know anything thing about the internal politics or specific economics of their neighbors in the broadest sense unless they devote information to such an endeavor.
8 Remember, this is not the modern world, so you can't assume a country will have an accurate, up to date census of its own population and exports except in the broadest of terms. Maybe Tukahn only performs a census once every 5 years and its accuracy can't be assumed
9. If they do decide to take action to investigate these things then the players are indicating a desire for more granularity in their plots, and so you can dig down deeper.
But lets say that a civil war breaks out in Tukahn, and one of the provinces near the border of the Twilight Imperium petitions Bunny, asking to become of province of her empire and enjoy her protection. Bunny accepts, and gets drawn into the civil war. Now she has a ready source of information about Tukahn's internal structure, the province leader, as well as incentive to learn more. So Bunny learns the head of each of the major factions, the loyalists who want to preserve the throne led by the King, the nobility seeking to end his tyranny, the clergy seeking peace and various nobles who wish no part in the fighting.
10 She probably also knows a few facts about most major provinces and has a rough idea of their geography, but nothing super detailed.
As the war goes on, the focus will shift, and the amount of information the player has will shift with it. When the Bunny personally besieges the town of Luasobarg then you as the GM should probably pay attention to the internal politics of it, and she will probably take action to learn more about it. During the siege, it should be treated as a living breathing setting with multiple fault lines and internal politics and different characters playing off each other. Afterword's though? Well a Queen on the march won't be getting anything more than the most cursory of reports from such a place. She'll know if its taxes are down, or if the ruler has changed or if there was a famine, but she won't know if the Rixbys are still feuding with the Sutherbees, or if the local stonemasons guild has lost its position of prominence due to an influx of cheap labor. Not unless such things are brought to her attention, and whether that is so is at the discretion of the GM.
Eventually the war ends. The Twilight Imperium is a few provinces richer. The King is still on the throne. We zoom back out. The player no longer needs to keep track of Tukahn as a series of interlocking pieces interacting with each other. She can safely treat it as a singular character again. At least until something else happens which draws her attention there.
The idea to remember here is that a real person only has so much attention to devote to things. That the more things you are responsible for the less you can pay attention to any one thing, and so the greater the level of abstraction and disconnection. Bunny simply doesn't have the time to keep up with the local politics of every area in the Twilight Imperium outside of special circumstances, and so there is no need for the DM to pay attention either.
TL;DR Don't bother making stuff your players won't see.
1: A good setting element should be a plot hook of its own and vice versa. The tower houses a dragon, the pickpocket is part of a thieves guild, the snooty noble has pull with the king, etc.
2: Remember we want to do as little work as possible, while still maintain the illusion of a completely open world where players can do anything.
3: Don't be afraid to buy time for ideas to come by adding some padding or pizza breaks or something. If they do something really unexpected, just tell them they completely upended your plans and you need to call the session early so you can come up with new material.
4: Note that this doesn't mean their isn't internal strife or politics going on behind the scenes, just that the PCs are unaware of it. Several nobles might be plotting to overthrow the king of Tukahn in order to place his mentally ill, and far more tractable, uncle upon the throne, but they won't hear about it as anything more than rumors and hints until the king is dead. Even then all they might know is that he "died of a hunting accident" and that his uncle has taken the throne. They might not even know about the uncles illness or that the nobles are the real powers unless they look into things. Of course, the king dying and being replaced is a clear signal from the GM that he has a cool scenario he'd like to run, if the players bite the bait and investigate.
5:The Baron of Catch'up is technically a vassal of Mush-tard, but he had land on a border province which he has recently expanded, giving him military might at or above the level of Mush-tard. Mush-Tard has been trying to limit his growth in order to avoid losing so valuable a vassal, while Catch'up years for status befitting his might.
6: Technically she is the daughter of a volcano god, but it has subordinated itself to the empire and she has symbolically renounced her heritage. The Son/Daughter of the Sun is the title of her position and has nothing to do with her being god blooded
7: Technically, in this set up the players would be more likely to interact with diplomatic envoys than they would be to interact with the direct rulers in this set up. In which case those would be the Spokerspersons of each kingdom. But it gets too confusing splitting the ruler and spokesperson up in this example, so I have simplified things.
8: Possible actions they could take to investigate this sort of thing? Starting a spy ring. Bribing court officials, diplomatic overtures, just straight up sending their own census takers into the country in a flagrant disregard for that countries sovereignty. All things which open up more plots to be explored.
9: It would sure be great if we had some well read people on this forum to explain how the ancient world performed census taking in the roman/han empire, which I believe are the two big sources for the realm and thus where it would be most accurate.
10: Notice no faction is spoken of in bad terms. This serves a dual purpose. First it increases verisimilitude, since nobody fights under the banner of "I want to oppress people!", instead they will put their best foot forward and dress up their goals. The second is that it allows you to make whichever group the players finds most appealing into the good guys. Or bad guys if that is the kind of story you want to tell.
