Updated Turn Order
As I mentioned briefly last turn, I’m going to make some major changes to the turn order, and the whole process for the worldbuilding. The new turn order will take affect in Turn 11.
The new turn order is below. Below that is explanations for the many changes I’m making to the turn order. At the very bottom of this post, I have the updated random event tables —I’m still filling out the settled regions random event table.
It’s getting a lot more complex with these changes, as I’m officially separating out the settled/sedentary region (previously region 16, now region ‘S1’) into a new category of the turn order and as a new category of region. For now, the actions will be mostly the same, but I’ll start making more changes as there are more settled regions and as I think more about how it’ll work. And I’m also making a number of actions happen multiple times depending on how many total regions there are, which will make things longer and more complex.
Turn Order
Universal Round:
The following can apply to any region, migratory or settled, and all regions are rolled between. Add the number of settled regions to the migratory regions for all rolls.
Planetary Random Event:
For every twenty regions (rounded up), roll once on the planetary/environmental random event table. Roll the region it occurs in.
Genetic Differentiation:
For every forty regions (rounded up), roll one region. That region undergoes minor genetic differentiation (color of feathers, for example).
Technological Diffusion:
Roll one region. If that region has any technological developments, roll between neighboring regions and roll among the technologies and transfer that technology to the new region.
Settled Regions Round:
Will be built out more later. For now, mostly the same as the migratory regions round, with the exception of the population increase mechanic, and different numbers for how many rolls to make each turn.
Social Development:
For every five regions (rounded up), roll one region. That region will have a minor social development. That region will also undergo basic language development.
Myths/Oral History:
For every twenty regions (rounded up), roll one region. That region has a new festival, ritual or major tradition.
For every twenty regions (rounded up), roll one region. That region has a new individual come to prominence.
Population Increase:
Every region increases in population by 10%.
If any region goes above local carrying capacity, they expand to form another settlement
Technological Development:
For every five regions (rounded up), roll one region. That region will have a minor technological development. That region will also undergo basic language development.
Societal Random Event
For every ten regions (rounded up), roll once on the cultural/societal random event table, then roll the region it occurs in.
Cultural Evolution:
For every ten regions (rounded up), roll one region. If that region has anything in myths/history, see how that remembrance has changed over time.
Language Development:
For every ten regions (rounded up), roll one region. That region undergoes language change in all categories.
Cultural Exchange:
For every twenty regions (rounded up), roll one region. Then roll amongst the neighboring regions and do a cultural exchange between the two.
Migratory Regions Round:
Count only migratory regions for these rolls
Social Development:
For every twenty regions (rounded up), roll one region. That region will have a minor social development. That region will also undergo basic language development.
Myths/Oral History:
For every twenty regions (rounded up), roll one region. That region has a new festival, ritual or major tradition.
For every twenty regions (rounded up), roll one region. That region has a new individual come to prominence.
Expansion:
Roll a region. That region will expand to a neighboring region.
Roll among possible destinations. If the region is populated, that region will migrate to a nearby region, and the activated region will take their place (waves of migration pushing previous waves away).
If moving through populated region, for each migration, do a cultural exchange between the two
Biome Generation:
Generate a biome for the region that has been expanded into. Every nearby biome will contribute one feature to the new biome, and there will be two taken at random from a different biome as well.
Develop new words to describe all new creatures.
The new region undergoes full language development
Technological Development:
For every twenty regions (rounded up), roll one region. That region will have a minor technological development. That region will also undergo basic language development.
Societal Random Event
For every ten regions (rounded up), roll once on the cultural/societal random event table, then roll the region it occurs in.
Cultural Evolution:
For every ten regions (rounded up), roll one region. If that region has anything in myths/history, see how that remembrance has changed over time.
Language Development:
For every ten regions (rounded up), roll one region. That region undergoes language change in all categories.
Cultural Exchange:
For every twenty regions (rounded up), roll one region. Then roll amongst the neigboring regions and do a cultural exchange between the two.
Discussion of Changes
As mentioned, I’m splitting the semi-sedentary region into its own special category of regions. They haven’t quite yet become a settled agricultural civilization, but the functions of a semi-sedentary culture with a permanent settlement (even if it’s not permanently inhabited) are sufficiently different that it’s time to treat them differently.
Thus, I renumber the regions, changing the region previously numbered 16 to ‘S1,’ and renumbering 17 and 18 appropriately.
So, overall, I’m going to have three ‘rounds’ each turn. One round will be the ‘universal round’ (probably should come up with a better name for that at some point), which is stuff that can apply to all regions, settled and migratory. Any region rolls during this round will be rolled between all regions. To do so, I’ll take the number of migratory regions and add the number of settled regions. E.g., currently there are 17 migratory regions and one settled region. I will roll a 1d18 - if the result is 1-17, I’ll just pick that region, and if it is 18 I’ll pick settled region 1. Later, if there are 31 migratory regions and 11 settled regions, I’ll roll a 1d42, taking the migratory region of that number if it is 1-31, and the settled region of that number minus 31 if it is greater than that.
Then I’ll have a settled regions round, which will apply only to the settled regions, and any roll there will only be rolled amongst the settled regions.
Finally I’ll have a migratory regions round, which will apply only to the migratory regions, and any roll there will only be rolled amongst the migratory regions.
Right now, the actual steps in the settled regions round are very similar to how migratory regions develop, but as I go along, I’ll add in more things to distinguish them.
One distinguishing feature I have already added is that each settled region is going to have a ‘carrying capacity’ — basically, the number of Eekraw who can be supported in the local area without starving. I’m setting the carrying capacity of Region S1 to 200.
Each turn, every settled culture’s population will increase by 10%. If that brings them over the carrying capacity of the local area, they’ll create a new settlement (basically the same as the hunter-gatherer expansion, but just to a new settled area nearby, no migration pushing waves away, at least yet). The ‘10% every turn’ rule is a bit arbitrary, and possibly unrealistic (depends on the time scale of the turns, which I haven’t actually set yet). But it takes the guesswork and randomness out of something that isn’t all that interesting to randomize, so I think it’s a fair abstraction. If I come up with an interesting way to represent it that is more random, then I might implement that. The other thought is that doing it to all regions, though not a big deal yet, may end up being too much before too long. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
The second biggest change to the turn order is that for most of the phases of the turn order, I’ll roll a number of regions that the phase takes effect on, based on the total number of inhabited regions, to allow for increased differentiation as the number of regions increases. When there were only a few regions, rolling once per turn made real differentiation between the regions. Now that there are nearly twenty regions, rolling once is simply not enough, it’s too easy to have regions that aren’t selected for multiple turns in a row.
Most rolls other than the roll for expansion will be based on the number of regions. For some of the phases, I’ll roll once for every ten regions present, for others once for every twenty (rounded up, in all cases).
Of course, the actual effect of all this will be to stretch out everything, as there are more actions taken between expansions each time. I think that if I start from scratch again ever, I might say that no cultural, social or technological changes happen until there’s a certain number of regions, or even until the whole globe is settled — but at this point I’ve started doing the social, etc. stuff, so I’ll keep on doing things.
In addition to the already mentioned changes, I’m making a bunch of other minor changes too - in fact, I’m largely revamping the entire system, though I’m keeping most of the major parts of it. I’m making a number of other changes that apply both to the settled regions and the migratory ones. For one thing, I’m splitting the random events into planetary and cultural/societal events. The planetary events will be rolled in the universal round, while the cultural/societal events will be rolled in the settled and migratory regions round. Right now they’ll use the same event list, but as I move on and think of new things, I’ll split them.
I’ll also add a genetic differentiation step to the universal round, in which Eekraw may have things like feathers changing, to represent a certain amount of changes in visible looks, like different ethnicities of humans. The universal round will also have a technological diffusion step — just making sure that technology moves around the Eekraw.
I’m removing culture as a separate category of the societal overview. Instead, I’ll have “Myth/Oral History/Culture,” and treat cultural practices similarly to myths. The rationale for that is that cultural practices are fundamentally different from social and technological innovations, in that they can easily change without ‘devolving’ as such, as opposed to technological, where there isn’t really much of a ‘step sideways’ possibility. So rather than before, where the societal overview had the categories ‘Social Structure,’ ‘Culture,’ ‘Tools/Technology,’ and ‘Oral History/Myth,’ now it’ll be ‘Social Structure,’ ‘Tools/Technology,’ and ‘Culture/Myth/Oral History.’ All of the items within the culture section will have a strength from 1-10, and will develop depending on the strength of the cultural belief.
For myths/oral history, I’m adding in a new ‘festival, ritual or major tradition,’ step, which will occur similarly to the prominent individual step.
I’m splitting up the ‘development’ step in the old turn order. Before it was technological, social or cultural development. Now, cultural development will be handled by myths/oral history. Social and Technological development will both be separate steps, to make sure that both occur.
Finally, I’ll add a cultural exchange step, similar to that if migration occurs across territories. I’m not sure about that one, to be honest - based on the last turn, if a region is picked for expansion in the middle of the settled territories, then cultural exchange will happen to several cultures already in the turn.
Random Event Tables
These tables aren’t exactly the same as I’m using in Turn 11 — I made some changes as I went through Turn 11 (which I’m in the middle of it as I write this).
Planetary/Environmental Random Events:
A species migrates from one region to another
A species dies out
A new species becomes prominent
A new variant of a species becomes prominent
A new plant becomes prominent
A new resource is found (possibly related to technology - technology advances as well?)
A resource is depleted
Major natural formation/landmark adopted into cultural beliefs
Mystical/unexplained phenomenon occurs (may cause new beliefs/myths)
Local Natural Disaster (flood, drought, etc.)
Describe an existing feature in more detail
Genetic change - develop new feather colors, for example
Major Event. Roll on this table again, conducting the apropriate event for three contiguous regions. If this event is rolled a second time, roll among the following major possibilities.
Another species gains sentience.
Global cooling.
Global Warming.
Major volcanic eruption.
Meteor impact.
Extra-terrestrial visitation (probably without contact, probably leave artifacts somewhere).
Major plant/animal die-off
Major disease.
Sea-levels rise.
Sea-levels fall.
Migratory Region Random Events:
Cultural schism: A region splits into two distinct cultures (possibly ignore/re-roll if it’s a biome that can’t support a large population)
Separated region subsumed into nearby (only applies to regions from the same biome)
Society devolves - some complexity of society is reduced
Society evolves - complexity is added
Society changes - some aspect of society changes
Major societal shift- massive rapid changes across the entire societal structure
Culture devolves - some complexity of culture is reduced
Culture Evolves - complexity is added
Culture changes - some aspect of culture changes
Culture massively changes - massive rapid changes across the entire culture
Technology devolves
Technology evolves
Technology changes - a new or different take on the same thing (not sure if this makes sense - maybe a change in priority - hard to distinguish from devolving or evolving)
A loan word is transmitted from one region to another
An additional round of linguistic change occurs - full language development in the rolled region to all categories
Language evolves complexity - add particles, tenses, etc.
Language devolves - remove particles, tenses, verbs
Major linguistic shift - run language development twice
Individual figure rises to prominence (shapes culture, later turned into myth)
New ritual or tradition created
Conflict between two clans in the tribe (not sure what exactly I’d do for this, but interesting)
A remnant of the society is left behind (i.e., burial mound, artifacts, etc.)
Local legend about place, event or individual spreads to nearby regions
Create specifics about an aspect of the society - e.g., describe more details about one of the clans in a region
Settled Regions Random Events
Society devolves - some complexity of society is reduced
Society evolves - complexity is added
Society changes - some aspect of society changes
Major societal shift- massive rapid changes across the entire societal structure
Cultural aspect reduces in strength
Cultural aspect increases in strength
Culture Evolves - complexity is added
Culture changes - some aspect of culture changes
Culture massively changes - massive rapid changes across the entire culture
Technology devolves
Technology evolves
A loan word is transmitted from one region to another
An additional round of linguistic change occurs - full language development in the rolled region to all categories
Language evolves complexity - add particles, tenses, etc.
Language devolves - remove particles, tenses, verbs
Major linguistic shift - run language development twice
New major landmark (constructed or found)
Individual figure rises to prominence (shapes culture, later turned into myth)
New ritual or tradition created
Conflict between two factions in the clan (not sure what exactly I’d do for this, but interesting)
Run a solo roleplaying session set in the tribe (probably using Ironsworn, details to be determined)
A remnant of the society is left behind (i.e., burial mound, artifacts, etc.)
Local legend about place, event or individual spreads to nearby regions
Create specifics about an aspect of the society - e.g., describe more details about one of the clans in a region