Responding to John’s post “In Response…”
Resources
Yes, resources/money/etc. is a tricky thing, especially when you’re trying to be generic. You might look at FantasyCraft’s approach here (which I have to admit I don’t remember well enough off the top of my head to summarize, and I don’t have the book handy – I’m on my lunch break at work).
Races and Templates
My approach is similar, so I know exactly what you mean about the results being somewhat scattered. This is why I do my pondering and tentative thoughts in my blog at www.kjd-imc.org and post the ‘final results’ of my thinking at www.echelond20.org.
Allegiance
Again, you might look at FantasyCraft ‘alignments’. They appear to be a more formalized structure for presenting the same concept as allegiances and include such things as allies and enemies, and identify ‘domain powers’ (I forget the exact term used) that followers might learn. As with many things in FantasyCraft, the use of such rules is optional, but worth examination.
It isn’t strictly part of Echelon, but I expect to use entity definitions (that might look something like the one for the Kreshtar Tribes) to capture this same information.