I am thinking through just what how much narrative weight to give to geography in my design. Furthermore, how much mechanical weight would it need then, and what mechanics would best support that idea?
At a glance, I am looking at some other design takes on political games, and none of them include geography as an element, and I'm sure that these games work well enough for the lenses and filters the writers chose. However, I have been thinking about what sort of game I want to play for a long time, and through to the current incarnation in a Fate framework, I keep coming back to the land as the stage for the play, and the stage the players play on matters to the kind of stories I am looking for.
I mean, imagine right off the top, Dune without the starkness of Arakis.
In real history, geography matters... a lot. Russia is a vast country and was even before the Soviets began gobbling up even more, but much if Russian history in the last two hundred years (and longer) has been shaped by the need for a port that didn't freeze in the winter. This was critical because in order to keep up with the advance of the industrialized world, it behooved Russia to not be land-locked into a backwater. The Russo-Japanese wars contributed to Japan taking control of Manchuria which was the springboard for the invasion of China decades later. The Soviet bear licking it's chops after the appetizer of eastern Europe in 1945 was not lost to the rest of the allies who saw it ready to gobble up some or all of Japan after the Japanese were defeated. More recent scholarship has given credence to the notion that the atomic bomb was at least as much to stop the advance of the bear as to beat the Japanese. All for want of a port...
When the Roman Republic went to war with Carthage in the Punic Wars, what started as a local squabble in Sicily, brought Rome and Carthage on opposite sides initially to settle things. The initiating powers were ultimately eclipsed by the Republic and the Empire who clashed for the first time, but not for the last. Ultimately, of course, multiple wars led to the fame of Hannibal, the Carthagenian who unimaginably marched an army including war elephants over Alpine passes difficult enough to traverse for experienced climbers, to harass the Romans for years before his defeat. That story matters in large part because Sicily was a cosmopolitan island crossroads, and the Alps an absurdly imposing obstacle.
Denmark and Sweden sit at the mouth of the Baltic Sea. In the era of the Hanseatic League, proxy wars with pirates were fought partly because control of the mouth of the sea gave the trading edge to whoever could safely enter and exit into the North Sea, and from there, on to business with ports in the rest of Europe to the warm and sunny south. Just add some chrome. Times change, people don't. And landscape matters to how people maneuver.
I have also recently been reading the book Revenge of Geography which I thought might be another fun study to add while I'm writing. So far there are lots of interesting points, including more on Russia. Being a huge country of vast steppes in the south and vast forests in the north, it faced the conundrum of being mostly indefensible whenever it wanted to expand civilization out of the forests into the warmer and more farmable southern expanses. Sure it could grow wheat down in the Ukraine, but then it had wave after wave of barbarian horsemen pillaging it over and over again, which aspect of geography led to a more aggressive expansionist way of expanding civilization. The book argues that the need to push back the frontiers for safety was part of what shaped the brutality of the modern Soviets. Greece is a mountainous region with very limited space or soil to grow grain, but suitable for growing tougher olive trees and grape arbors which grow in more marginal conditions. Also, the region is just full of excellent harbors. Becoming far reaching, inquisitive maritime traders with ships laden with wine and olive oil seems to have been destiny.
England and Japan, both island empires at some point, became so because they faced the choice of being annexed or relegated to insignificance by their larger neighbors if they did not take to the seas. They had both the benefit of a maritime buffer for safety, but not at such a distance that they could not easily trade with their neighbors if they became capable naval powers. The opportunity to enjoy the safety to grow, the need to capably expand and control other territory by a variety of means, and the access to the thassaline highway all made them the nations they became.
Now I want a good many other things to provide lenses and filters for my game, but this does explain why I think geography should not be left out, and furthermore, why it makes the stories better because it provides very tangible motives and methods and locations for interesting action.
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