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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnBrown" data-source="post: 764370" data-attributes="member: 2243">William,You are completely correct.  The level of Nationalism (or as Mr. Draco phrased it Morale) could potentially be very subjective.  You are also correct that a nation faced with an outside threat does tend to band together fairly effectively.  It could be argued, however, that a strength of a nation isn’t measured by how well it can defend itself, but how well it can project “power” in some or all of its various forms (military, economic, cultural, etc.).  To do that well, a nation would have to have a pretty good sense of “self”.While such a ranking probably doesn’t exist currently, I think that it could be inferable, however.  To change venues for a moment to Greyhawk so that I can make a reasonable example, the demi-humans there tend to be on the clannish side.  Sure the gnomes of the Good Hills have sworn loyalty to the Lion Throne of Keoland, but they tend to think of themselves as members of their clans first, citizens of Keoland second.  They readily lend their support when faced with an enemy that threatens them both, such as the giant invasion during the Greyhawk Wars, but probably wouldn’t be quite as eager to help Keoland, say annex the Hold of the Sea Princes.  Seeing Keoland survive is one thing.  Seeing Keoland restored to its former glory is another.  The elves of Highfolk are closely aligned to Furyondy, and often lend support, but such support would probably disappear if Furyondy tried to annex Dyvers.  Then you have the elven country of Celene that won’t help anyone unless it is a true elven cause.  Even to the point of refusing to aid dwarves and gnomes fight the orcs of the Pomarj in the Ulek states.So, it would be safe to assume that true enclaves of demi-humans in Greyhawk would have a generally tepid attitude toward the human nations that they lived in.  And thus you would be relatively safe in assigning a generally low nationalism/morale rating to any given percentage of demi-human population within a given nation.  Is it still subjective?  Yes, but you could make some reasonable guesses.  If the same holds true for the Realms, well there you go.  As far as the human population is concerned, again still subjective, but any nation that is truly a nation would have to have at least a moderate level of nationalism/morale.  If they didn’t then they wouldn’t be a nation – a collection of loosely aligned tribes or city-states perhaps, but not a true nation in the terms that we generally think of nations.In other words, it would take some work, but I think you could assign such things accurately enough for a D&D campaign or as a staring point to an IR.Mr. Draco,Let me say I love your formulas.  They are much tighter than mine.  I could quibble the point that some of your factors could be rolled together for simplicity sake, but that is neither here nor there.  I would ask a couple of questions on how you would envision some of these factors being used?  Mainly those things that make up your Political Ranking.If what you are talking about is to use this information in a D&D campaign then using factors such as Leadership and Political Influence might be important things to quantify.  If it were to be used in an IR-type situation where the players are the leaders of the nations, how would those numbers be used?  I’m not saying they couldn’t be, it just isn’t as intuitive to me as say Information Gathering.  Also, assuming an IR-like situation, by what means could a ruler adjust his nation’s focus?  Your formulas seem to be a really good way to quantify a starting point, but I don’t see how they are adjustable.  Again, they might be, but it isn’t jumping out at me.Edena,I believe William and Green Slime are right.  If you are looking to run another IR, it might help to just focus first on those nations that are more easily quantifiable before trying to tackle things like the whole of dragon-kind.  First, define how the nations behave.  Once you are comfortable with that base formula, wildcard situations, such as dragons might prove to be easier to tackle.  Realistically (assuming that you could call any of this realistic <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ), many of these wildcards might just side with one faction or the other, effectively becoming part of a nation as opposed to establishing their own faction, assuming that they choose to become active at all, or could realistically turn the tide of a campaign.</blockquote>

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