What would you expect to find in....

[Heretic Apostate]

What would you expect to find in an empire?

Me, at the least, I would expect a good system of roads. Nothing connects an empire like trade. And nothing makes moving military around as easy as roads.

What else would you expect to find?

 

[madriel]

Tax collectors.

 

[fba827]

Well (under the presumption that the ruler has some civil sense) there would have to be many things done in bulk so that it can cater to the would-be larger population.

For instance, there would no doubt be a large organization of an army / armed forces to deal with the large territory to deal with

There may be large store houses for food if there is any possibility of famine during the winter months (hmm.. and a lower supply of clerics to cast create food ;-) )

In history, most people with ruling title over an empire had a home that showed it - so, there would definatly be a capitol and that place would def. have a large emporer's palace or some such thing - both for the sake of his ego and/or to make his presense known

And, finally, ice cream, lots and lots of ice cream.

:-D

PS. Ignore the last one, I'm just having a craving an had to vent

 

[Old One]

Alex, I'll take "Things in Empires" for $200...

By no means an exhaustive list, but:

• Transportation Network - It doesn't have to be roads. It could be canals, shipping lanes or teleport circles.
• Bureaucracy - Gotta have it. Virtually every empire from the dawn of time has had some manner of Imperial Bureaucracy (with the Imperial Chinese taking the cake). This includes tax collectors, judges, scribes, customs agents, building inspectors, etc. Everything requires a permit or a charter to operate legally (ie, businesses, adventuring companies, spell casters, merchant companies). You can make the bureaucracy either a minor inconvenience or a major nuisance.
• Taxes - Somebody has to pay for all of those civic improvement projects and the PCs just discovered a huge treasure horde...
• Entertainment - Most empires need something to distract the huddled masses from their miserable existence. In Rome, it was gladitorial games and chariot racing, but you could use the Aztec precursor to bastketball (where the losing team was sacrificed to the gods), the Mongol version of polo - grab the goat carcass (still played in Afghanistan today or Olympic games.
• Art - Most empires had some manner of well-defined artistic expression, from poetry to sculpture to plays.
• Codified Law - Whether it is the Code of Hammurabi, the Canon of Augustus or the Code Napolean, virtually every empire has well-codified laws. Whether they are applied evenly is another matter!
• Powerful Military - An empire doesn't survive very long without a powerful military. It can be land, sea or even air-based. Most empires started off with a home grown army, but added increasing numbers of mercenaries and/or foreign troops over time (which eventually contributed to the downfall of many empires) as the citizens got lazy.
• Underground - You are going to have a certain segment of the population that doesn't want to play be the rules. They may disagree with the empire for financial, philosophical or religious reasons, but they want to do their own thing. The "underground" can range from radicals that are actively seeking to overthrow the empire to those that just want to be left alone.
• Secret Police - For routing our the Underground!

I use all of these elements, to one extent or another, in my own Faded Glory setting.

~ Old One

 

[Fade]

Efficient messenger network - essential to keeping that bureaucracy running and administering a large empire. Could be propelled by horseback relays, pigeons, heliographs or magic.

 

[Darklone]

Re: Alex, I'll take "Things in Empires" for $200...

By no means an exhaustive list, but:

• Transportation Network
• Bureaucracy -

• For mayor nuisances: Buttercup asked once here about help for a city interlude... we gave some devilish advices there.
  [*] Taxes
  [*] Entertainment
  [*] Art
  [*] Codified Law
  [*] Powerful Military - Only thing I want to add to Old Ones list: Mobile troups. Be it aerial cavalry or fast messenger ships, if it takes week to send something to the corners of the Empire, it's likely to come too late.
  [*] Underground
  [*] Secret Police
  

I use all of these elements, to one extent or another, in my own Faded Glory setting.

~ Old One

Yeah. Another thing you could be stealin' from Old Ones campaign: Religion. Decide if there's a pantheon for the empire, an official church, several sects or whatever. Then think about it's influence. Nearly everything on the list may be tainted (oops!) by the church.

Inquisition: Need I say more?

Hmm. It's D&D. So think about the official alignment of the empire. Is it neutral evil with lots of corruption? Chaotic evil where local barons rule with force and shiver from the punishment of their superiors? Lawful evil with LOTS of bureaucraziness? Lawful good? Whatever.

Enemies. Foreign countries. Other cultures. An empire like the Romans tended to assimilate and incorporate foreign customs. (think about the greeks or egypts)

 

[Songwind]

Don't forget the wizards!

It'd be part of what other people have mentioned, but I think it's important enough in a D&D setting to mention explicitly.

The Imperial establishment (beauracracy, despot, whichever) will need to have good, powerful magic on his side. He'll probably make it very lucrative to work for the government as a mage, or dangerous not to.

I'm doing a lot of thinking about "magic in society" right now because I'm running my first serious campaign with an all pervasive presence of magic. I generally go for more low-magic worlds, so it's a nice challenge and an interesting change of pace.

 

[madriel]

Re: Don't forget the wizards!

The Imperial establishment (beauracracy, despot, whichever) will need to have good, powerful magic on his side. He'll probably make it very lucrative to work for the government as a mage, or dangerous not to.

The Imperial establishment could make it mandatory to learn wizardry from an Imperial College of Wizardry.

Sorcery (or any other "natural" magic) would be harder to regulate and Romanesque bureacratic empires would hate that. I could see an empire handling that by declaring them pariahs or making them high caste citizens. Heck, they could even decide that sorcerors are a state resource, little more than serfs whose abilities belong to the empire.