How would you handle this in Realm Works?

[gloranphile]

In the world I'm entering into Realm Works (Glorantha), there is a section of land (Region: Geographical) that is ruled by an empire (Region: Political). This empire rules other Geo areas as well.

Would you have the Geo Region directly under the Political Region, or make the empire a Group: Government?

Just trying to get a grip on what you guys/gals are doing for sub-sections within the tool.

[Chemlak]

I would make the empire a Region: Political, and set all of the Region: Political kingdoms within to have it as a containing topic.

I tend to use Region: Geographical for forests, lakes, mountain ranges, that sort of thing - usually parts of the world that are either unclaimed, or contested, or even wholly within a Region: Political.

So, for example, three separate kingdoms might claim The Denbar Forest as their own, making it a prime candidate for Region: Geographical, and each of the three kingdoms would be Region: Political. One of the kingdoms has long held the much smaller Verathain Wood, which, they claim, was once part of Denbar Forest, but logging split it off. The Verathain Wood is also a Region: Geographical. Of course, far to the north is the Darkwyrm mountain range, which none of them claim, but is also a Region: Geographical.

[gloranphile]

Gotcha. I've been trying to stick with Political Regions being subordinate to Geo Regions, as the latter are outlined in the source (Guide to Glorantha) as being very large, very inclusive parts of the world.

This may be an exception to my general rule, since the Political Region in question is larger than many Geographical Regions. Thanks for clearing my head a bit!

[AEIOU]

I'm totally with Chemlak. Making geography politically agnostic allows it to exchange hands and be disputed. This is particularly helpful when a region has had many empires claim it over the centuries. In essence, I use political regions (countries, states, towns, fiefdoms, etc) and geographical regions (forests, mountains, rivers, etc) to define the same locations and they are separate from one another.

I haven't looked at the current region categories which are considerably more robust and useful as I'd entered that data months ago; but one thing I found useful was to create containers for forests, mountains/hills, rivers/water, deserts, etc. That way I could narrow down the geographical region quicker.

Aliases are useful here too in that the names of geographic regions and features may differ between empires and cultures. I plan to use the most common but also refer to the Elvish, Goblin or whatever if appropriate. Nothing like an old map that refers to a prominent land feature whose name has fallen out of use....