Random Nations / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page Random Nations.

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It's Alive

jhubert 10 Jun 2009 13:43

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

Ahem. I hope you like my prototype of the Random Nations generator. More details will be added - on government, religion, and economic issues - but I will have to leave that until I have more Procrastination Time.

Though it would help if someone could get started on the various types of government…

*hint, hint*

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jhubert 28 Jul 2009 08:40

Added a category for "raw resources" that a nation might import or export. These could include ore, cattle, and other materials which require little in the way of processing. This doesn't mean such materials have to be boring - see my entry on acacia what might be done with it.

Further such entries should be given the rng_resource tag.

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Last edited on 28 Jul 2009 08:41 by jhubert + Show more

jhubert 18 Sep 2009 12:52

I've started to use the rng_economy tag, and added the following new economic systems:

• Just-in-Time Socialism
• Resilience Economics
• Robonomics

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jhubert 11 Oct 2009 12:44

I've started an RPGNet thread in which I demonstrate how to use the Random Nations Generator in practice.

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Recent Changes, and questions about linked_title

r_b_bergstrom 08 Mar 2010 19:06

I love that we have this page, it's growing in usefulness all the time. But it's also really hard to navigate, because there's so much going on. I added a Table of Contents to it, coded so that it appears over on the left-hand column. That placement is a tiny bit obnoxious, but I think it's better than no TOC, or than having a TOC at the top of the page where you can't look at it and the content at the same time.

Part of why this page needs a Table of Contents is because it's got so much information, but part of it is also because there's weird extra lines that just break up the flow and don't seem to do what they're meant to do. Can anyone explain to me what the following is on there for?

%%linked_title%%
by %%author%% %%date|%O ago (%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z)%%
%%short%%

On my screen, it's just displaying like that, except in large bold print that really messes up the page. I could just go in and delete that stuff to make the page look better, but I figure somebody put it there on purpose, and I don't want to start a revision war. I'd also like to know what it's intended to do. Can anyone fill me in on what's going on with this page?

I'm not sure how to undo this...

r_b_bergstrom 08 Mar 2010 19:30

So, I went over to the Random Planets Generator, to add a Table of Contents to it, because I realized that would be helpful there. As soon as I added one, a bunch of %%linked_title%% blocks started showing up all over the page, and the List Pages modules stopped working. I then deleted the TOC, and the problems stayed. So, it would appear TOC is not compatible with List Pages, and I can't figure out how to fix it. I may have screwed up both pages. (Or, it could be temporary problem with the software or server, that's just coincidentally timed with what I did, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.)

I'm gonna go ask around the wikidot forums to see if anyone there can help me fix it. If any of you guys have ideas, let me know. I tried reverting, and that didn't fix the planet generator.

I've got a solution.

r_b_bergstrom 08 Mar 2010 22:28

The problem seems to be caused by use having other things on the same line as [[/module]] . Weird thing is, both pages have had that coding for months now, and only today did it become an issue because I edited the page. I didn't alter the line in question, but editing the page caused wikidot to recompile it, and the latest version of wikidot is more sensitive to the syntax in regards to modules. That's my understanding, anyway. I fixed the Planet Generator already, since it was the smaller file. I'm gonna go fix the nations generator now, which will take a few minutes.

I expect it may strike our other random generator pages when next we edit them, so: The solution is just to make sure the commands that start and end modules are on their own line, with nothing else before or after those commands.

A few questions and observations on the Trade Goods

r_b_bergstrom 09 Mar 2010 01:15

So, now that this page is working again, I went and added the trade goods tags to a bunch of pages. This lead to a couple of observations:

1. I kinda feel like the trade goods are subdivided too much. My gut instinct is that we have too many "tech levels", for starters. Distinguishing between simple, complex, and advanced is really a matter of opinion. A similar degree of difficulty exists in distinguishing between advanced, modern, and near future. I'd rather have too much detail and subdivision than not enough, I guess.
2. If this wiki sticks around for 5 or 10 years, things will transition from near future to modern.
3. When you're making a modern nation, for example, you're going to want some possibility of having raw, simple, complex, and/or advanced trade goods come up. My understanding of the ListPages command is that it works with comma-delimited lists, so we could have each tech tab draw from multiple tag categories to get that tech level or lower.
4. I'm not sure why Imported Alien Phlebotinum has rng_ftg and not rng_sftg. I saw one or two others with fantasy tags where I would have put them as sci-fi tags, which leaves me wondering if I'm missing some aspect or intent of the page.
5. IIRC correctly, the rng_resources section sometimes churns up stuff that has a fantasy or sci-fi bend. IIRC (again) I think that's because the resources section predates the more specific trade goods sections. Should we go clean up the tags to make it only produce relatively mundane resources?

I'm not 100% certain whether or not I feel anything needs to be changed, but it might be worth a dialog or brainstorming session. If you have an opinion (even a meek one), or insight, please lend your voice to the conversation.

jhubert 15 Nov 2010 17:07

A few days ago, this generator didn't load. I went and reported this as a bug, and got some astonishment that this page ever worked in the first place, as it includes more than 280 modules and thus is a major resource hog.

They asked me to do something about that, and suggested splitting it up into smaller parts. I will probably do something on these lines later this week, but if I'm about to rework the generator I might as well get some further ideas for improvement from you guys. So, suggest away!

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re: jhubert's thoughts about splitting this up or trimming it down.

r_b_bergstrom 01 Dec 2010 22:06

Here's a number of ideas. I eyeballed how many modules each proposal would strip out of the page, and bolded it to make it easier to compare the options.

1. Reduce the number of tabs per section.
   • 1a: Reduce to 1 "tab" per section: Rather than having tabs that you click on with modules for "1 government type", "2 government types", "3 government types" etc, we could just make each section have a single module that lists a number of government types (or whatever) that matches the largest number available in that section currently. So you'd have just one "government types" section, which would generate 5 government types at random. We'd then include text suggesting the GM not always use all selected options, but instead roll a die for how many, or use just the ones that sound fun to them. This would eliminate nearly 200 modules.
   • 1b: Reduce to 3 tabs per section: We could remove just the tabs for 2, 3, 4, and 6, 7, 8 and 9 options in each section. Basically, each section would have a tab for 1, 5, and 10 of whatever that section is about (or maybe 1, 3 and 10? or 1, 3, 5, and 10?). The GM would still have pretty distinct choices, but the number would be reduced by about 140 modules. If somebody wants 8 historical events (for example) they'd just have to select the 10 event tab, and choose 2 to not use.
2. Merge imports and exports. Reduce it to just one "imports and exports" section, with a note saying the top half of your list is imports, the bottom half is exports. This would eliminate situations where a nation both imports and exports a product, which I'm not 100% certain is either good or bad. Merging the import and export sections could eliminate 80 modules from the page.
3. Reduce the number of tech levels. As I said in my comments on this page dating back to March, the tech levels strike me as overly complex, somewhat redundant, and dependent on a lot of arbitrary decisions. At current count, we have 8 trade goods categories (raw resources, simple trade goods, complex trade goods, advanced trade goods, modern trade goods, near-future trade goods, science fiction trade goods, and fantastic trade goods). Differentiating between some categories is tricky, like complex vs advanced vs modern, and near-future vs sci-fi, and eventually near-future vs modern if this wiki sticks around for 10 years.
   • 3a: I think we could easily simplify to 5 categories: raw resources, pre-industrial trade goods, industrial trade goods, science fiction trade goods and fantasy trade goods. This would require re-tagging numerous pages. Since each category appears twice (export and import) and has 10 tabs in each appearance, that would remove about 60 modules from the page.
   • 3b: given that modules could use comma-delimited lists, we could actually reduce to 4: primitive, industrial, sci-fi, and fantasy, each of which would include multiple tag types. We wouldn't have to re-tag any pages, we'd just tell each tech level module to draw from multiple appropriate tags. Primitive would only include raw resources, simple, complex and advanced trade goods. Industrial would use complex, advanced, and modern trade goods. Sci-fi would use advanced, modern, near-future and science fiction trade goods. Fantasy would use raw, simple, and complex trade goods, plus magical/fantasy trade goods, but nothing more advanced since they have magic instead of guns. That leaves some "black powder" settings not quite corresponding to any generator, though. It would remove some about 40 modules.
4. Break the page up into separate generators based on tech level. We'd keep the existing tech levels, but spread the modules out over different pages, so there'd be a "modern nation generator" and a "fantasy nation generator" and a "medieval nation generator", and who knows what else. Some ideas are in 3b, above. This would allow us to reduce the number of modules per page by a large margin, but would result in numerous mildly redundant pages. However, if we hit upon a cool thing to add to a generator, we'd now have to go add it to X number of individual generators, which might be annoying. There's also the issue of some of the generators might still need a large number of categories, and some nation/setting concepts might not fit in neatly into a generator "sub-genre". The number of modules this would eliminate varies from page to page.
5. Put the economics section in another page. You'd have a two-part generator, one which generates the economic system and major imports and exports, and one which generates everything else about the nation. This cuts the number by 120 to 170 modules per new page, but makes the whole generator more of a chore to use, since the GM would have to visit two different pages and integrate the results themselves.

My vote would be for 1b, as it reduces the number of modules in half without really stripping any functionality out of the page.

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