A problem with location-based decisions of power is the Inquisition are just as powerful everywhere. Although, attacking them in the Church is -extremely- stupid.
Then you agree the Inquisition has more power in some places than others. We simply disagree on the levels. I keep to my stance, the Inquisition won't be able to muscle over the Barons at Riddleport, nor would they the Bandit lords at their lair, or the Queen of the Pirates at the Cove. It should be a common understanding that the rulers of a city are the highest power in that city unless under special circumstances, such as all out war or other massively-scaled invasion.
So yes, if the King decides that Riddleport is being too much of a nuisance, he could invade and bring in his entire military force, at which point I'd concede that the Barons are no longer the highest power. But as I said before, that's more of a special event rather than the norm, don't you think? However, in a normal day, if a few of the king's men come to Riddleport demanding one thing or another, they will have a hard time accomplishing their tasks unless they are on the good side of at least one of the Barons. It's simple political and martial strength really. In the same way one man cannot move a mountain on his own, One man cannot best an entire army, no matter how skilled.
sneaky, saw your edit, and I'm not
not keen on points, it's just that in all things we should try and keep any proposed system as simple as possible. The simpler the system, the less rules to abide by, the less loopholes to be abused, and the easier for the playerbase as a whole to adopt. If we come out with massive charts and tables of what defines points and the ways the groups get them and lose them and so on and so forth... Most people will either simply tune out, while many others will nitpick the points. Keep it simple, and it gives people less to complain about
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and you are correct, some of the active but smaller groups will probably not have a share of "actual power," but in this realistic system some groups shouldn't have any actual power. All those secret organizations that we're not supposed to know about, for instance, can't have a way to show power and still be a secret. Some groups, like mercenaries, won't have any power of their own either, since their power is bought by other groups. This is really more for the groups that control a location, which is typically the guardsmen, or thugs in case of outlaw groups. Remember this process is to give groups with responsibility to keep the peace or protect their turf the ability to do so.
I also think your idea about mapping out altera and showing the borders of the different groups' power is a great idea.