World Tamer's Handbook for Traveller: The New Era was about founding and devloping a colony / retaming a dead world Post-Virus. Has bits about resources and trade as well as tech rules for creating black powder/lower tech weapons in FF&S IIRC.

http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/World_Tamer%27s_Handbook
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=348&it=1&filters=0_0_0_10137

Pocket Empires for Marc Miller's Traveller (Traveller 4th Edition / T4) was about carving out your own pocket empire, founding and continuing a dynasty, trade and increasing your worlds' technology levels (the last IIRC).

http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Pocket_Empires
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=234&it=1&filters=0_0_0_10137

World Tamers should be fairly cheap used, Pocket Empires is one of the few rough gems of T4 and likely rare and a tad pricey. Both are on PDF from DTRPG (linked above) and likely on any GDW cd/dvd PDF collection for TNE or T4.

Task rolls and skill/stat levels aside, the rules should be fairly useable with most any Traveller edition. World Tamer's also acts as expanded worldgen IIRC for TNE.

Or you could just add your favorite rpg rules to Starfire (any edition with the tech tree/empire building rules) and just crunch numbers on the compy tools. The later editions are mostly computer/pdf maintained and have automated 4X tools. And far too much number tracking for my tastes, I'd rather just play an actual computer 4X game.

Quote from: estar;163559The Great Game used in house by GDW is a great example of this. It was used take the twilight 2000 timeline forward to 2300 AD for the RPG of the same name.

Now that is an epic campaign. :worship:

Didn't realise this was a necro'd thread when I first started reading.

Quote from: Age of Fable;163674Playing a culture as a character:

Constitution: how well do you survive being taken over by another culture? eg the Chinese culture has a high Constitution.

Charisma: how much do other cultures want to copy you? eg the Greek culture has a high Charisma.

Strength: how well do you make war on other cultures? eg the Roman culture has a high Strength.

Agility: how well do you cope with unforseen circumstances, such as the introduction of new technology?

Intelligence: how likely is your culture to produce geniuses? The lower your Intelligence, the more conformist and anti-intellectual your culture.

Speed: how many actions can your culture's government take? The higher your Speed, the larger the machinery of your government.

Sanity: A secondary characteristic, equal to some number MINUS (Intelligence + Speed). How likely are you to refrain from 'going mad' - that is, falling into civil war, apocolyptic cults etc.

The rationale for how Sanity is calculated is that a culture with a low Intelligence and Speed will be a conformist, anti-intellectual culture where the government leaves people to plod along - a culture with a high Intelligence and Speed will be one where a large number of independently-minded thinkers rail against an invasive government to an appreciative audience of individualists. Thus the 'stupid and slow' culture will at least not suffer civil war or religious mania.

MRQII Empires does this.

A state has six characteristics: Military strength; Law; Size; Communication; Religion; and Wealth.

From this can be derived "Attributes": Military damage; Initiative; Population.

There are also "Capabilities" and "Advanced capabilities" which are functionally similar to skills in standard MRQII play: Commerce; Dogma; Espionage; Government; Warfare; Magic; Culture; Technology; Diplomacy; Loyalty.

The book can essentially be used to play states entirely like characters - including improvement rolls to increase capability scores.

The other thought that came to my mind reading this thread was that back in the day there used to be a pbm game called "Tribes of Crane" that was frequently advertised in Dragon and White Dwarf. Players ran a tribe rather than a character. I never played though so I have no idea how it actually worked.

I think simpler is probably better here. Some basic abstract mechanics for determining the development of cultures over time in a campaign world might be fun and produce interesting results. But it could get crunchy and confusing very quick.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;466011I think simpler is probably better here. Some basic abstract mechanics for determining the development of cultures over time in a campaign world might be fun and produce interesting results. But it could get crunchy and confusing very quick.

I basically agree.

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