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Spicing up your nobility. Government forms besides absolute monarchies
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<blockquote data-quote="John Dallman" data-source="post: 8261592" data-attributes="member: 6999616"><p>In my long-running fantasy setting, which has seen several hundred PCs played since 1979, I've only ever had one who wanted to be a land-holding noble, and he went to the effort of setting up an entire country. This is quite expensive. He didn't write a constitution, and is theoretically an absolute monarch, but he is well aware that if he started to rule oppressively adventurers would come along and overthrow him. After a few years he retired to let his eldest child rule, since he seemed better-suited to the job. </p><p></p><p>The neighbouring countries are not monarchies. Well, one of them pretends to be, but the post of King is rented out by the day to raise funds. You get a parade and a banquet, and get to wear a crown, but you don't get to make laws or administer justice. The power is in the hands of an oligarchy, which balances the interests of the churches, who have popular support, the Thieves' Guild, who do the day-to-day administration, and the wizards, who can blow people up, but are usually more interested in their research. The country used to be ruled by a conventional military dictator, but he got thrown out, along with his army, by an alliance between the wizards and thieves. I'd like to point out that I developed this polity several years before Terry Pratchett published The Colour of Magic, and he never went so far as to have the police force employed by the Thieves' Guild. </p><p></p><p>The other neighbouring country used to be ruled by a bizarre cult of absolute lawfulness, which suppressed most normal religions, most non-human races and almost all magic. They had some strange biological arts that enabled them to create extremely capable humans in bulk, but were overthrown when some PCs organised a war against them. The country is now run by a syndicate of merchants, and a lot of the population are still having trouble with the amount of weirdness that's common in a high-magic AD&D setting.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="John Dallman, post: 8261592, member: 6999616"] In my long-running fantasy setting, which has seen several hundred PCs played since 1979, I've only ever had one who wanted to be a land-holding noble, and he went to the effort of setting up an entire country. This is quite expensive. He didn't write a constitution, and is theoretically an absolute monarch, but he is well aware that if he started to rule oppressively adventurers would come along and overthrow him. After a few years he retired to let his eldest child rule, since he seemed better-suited to the job. The neighbouring countries are not monarchies. Well, one of them pretends to be, but the post of King is rented out by the day to raise funds. You get a parade and a banquet, and get to wear a crown, but you don't get to make laws or administer justice. The power is in the hands of an oligarchy, which balances the interests of the churches, who have popular support, the Thieves' Guild, who do the day-to-day administration, and the wizards, who can blow people up, but are usually more interested in their research. The country used to be ruled by a conventional military dictator, but he got thrown out, along with his army, by an alliance between the wizards and thieves. I'd like to point out that I developed this polity several years before Terry Pratchett published The Colour of Magic, and he never went so far as to have the police force employed by the Thieves' Guild. The other neighbouring country used to be ruled by a bizarre cult of absolute lawfulness, which suppressed most normal religions, most non-human races and almost all magic. They had some strange biological arts that enabled them to create extremely capable humans in bulk, but were overthrown when some PCs organised a war against them. The country is now run by a syndicate of merchants, and a lot of the population are still having trouble with the amount of weirdness that's common in a high-magic AD&D setting. [/QUOTE]
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