[MENTION=6797661]Mark Kernow[/MENTION] & your Gone Stew article.
HS. It is like our brains are linked. I have a whole system for developing Realms, which I use from everything from a goblin tribe to a forest, to en empire.
It was initially created using ideas from Ray Winniger's Dragon Articles. I took it one step further and developed a character sheet for them, much like our 3E PC one.
For 1 campaign I even had players 'play' a realm each. Seasons were campaign turns etc. This was only a session or 2 and then the players created characters and played in that setting that they had helped shape.
Over 4E, I removed the stats, and just converted to rolls for the DM to generate interesting 'realms'.
But recently, (
http://connorscampaigns.wikidot.com/forum/t-1286339/realms-stats#post-2368471), I brought it up on our forums again, to go back to giving stats to our realms... and we discussed pretty much the same ideas. Wow. So, yeah, obviously, I am on board

Love it
(Sorry for big thread jack here: I was actually going to work towards a system to submit for an EN5ider article, but it would be very big

If interested, see FIles section at bottom of:
http://connorscampaigns.wikidot.com/gm-tools. There you will find our current realms creation charts, but I intend to go back to stat-based ones. Obviously a lot of these are for general rolls at this time. Might make for a good collaborative piece

).