Coming across a fellow German blogger’s concept for some rules to simulate a rebellion, I felt reminded of an old house rule I put together some years ago. Originally intended for The Red Star, it is also usable with other D&D 3.x and d20 games and, as it is based on a rules module that has few interactions with the rest of the system, games of other lineages as well.
Going from the rules for dynamic affiliations (D&D 3.5, Player’s Handbook II), which are used to portray organisations and their interactions with one another in general, the following house rules are meant to provide more utility for modeling the course of revolutions, civil wars and other violent power struggles.
Each faction in the struggle is build as an affiliation. This also goes for outside powers intervening.
The first change to the rules affects affiliation scale. This score gains even more prominence than under the normal rules, as it now directly represents the regions or sections of the population under control of the affiliation.
Accordingly, the affiliation scale needs to become more dynamic, prone to rapid adjustments up or down rather than the slow, gradual growth favoured in the original rules. To this end, the affiliation scale remains bound to affiliation capital.
If, at the end of a month, the affiliation capital is twice as high or higher than the current affiliation scale, scale increases by one.
If, at the end of a month, the affiliation capital is zero or less, scale is decreased by one.
In the month following an adjustment of the affiliaition scale (either up or down), the affiliaition has to use the “consolidation” executive power (see below).
The second change deals with executive powers. In addition to its regular three individual executive powers, an affiliation also gains access to two new, special executive powers: Consolidation and restructuring.
Consolidation can only ever be used, when the affiliation scale changed at the end of the preceding month. If this happened, consolidation must be used and no other executive power may be used in its stead. The use of the consolidation executive power changes the affiliation capital of the affiliation to be equal to its current affiliation scale.
Restructuring allows to make changes to an affiliation’s executive powers. When restrukturing is used, one of the affiliation’s three individual executive powers may be exchanged for another executive power legally available to an affiliation of the respective type. The use of restructuring decreases affilitation capital by one.