How to Add Geopolitics into Your Universe

Roleplaying games are full of various kingdoms, republics, empires and other polities. It can be difficult for a game master to figure out how they should interact with each other. In this lecture, I will explain simple methods to estimate the power of polities, how to rank the polities by power and how to use this information to build out the political landscape of your universe. I will use a subsector map from the Traveller role playing game as an example, but the method can be adapted easily for other universes.