Creating a govement based on D&D reality

[Slife]

To me, both of these are very, very true. Pratchett takes the same approach in his Ankh-Morpork Discworld books. The Patrician is hardly the most dangerous physically. However, he's the one who does all the work.

He's at least a mid/high level assassin.

 

[Evilhalfling]

city states are a good model, but so are short term empires created by a single individual or group that conquers the societies around it and then falls apart. (Alexander, Napoleon, Gengis Kahn) You could easily see a group of ambitious HLs taking over 2-5 countries, then it collapsing as the humans & halflings died from old age (barring litchdom or reincarnation sillyness)

I did a survey of human history, in that with a few exceptions (like China) governments have at most a 600 yr lifespan. Personal empires lasted 25 yrs or less, many goverments last about 300 yrs with 500 yrs+ only found in eygypt 18th-20th dynasties, Rome as republic, and the Ottoman Empire. (and perhaps Mayans)

Not sure how fantasy lifespans would impact this model. But the 6000 year old countires with a single type of government assumed in some games and books is absurd. Cities tend to be far more permanant so I could see a city lasting that long, but not a civilization.

Trying to build any sort of nation is extremely difficult in the RL where it is marginally possible to have homogeneous populations. In a D&D world, it would be virtually impossible to get any large body to agree on what a nation should be.

It helps a little if you assume that different races in a fantasy world are like differernt ethinic groups in RL. They can live togeather peacefully, usually with one group in a postion of greater power. At other times it becomes endless small scale warfare.

 

[Tonguez]

I did a survey of human history, in that with a few exceptions (like China) governments have at most a 600 yr lifespan. Personal empires lasted 25 yrs or less, many goverments last about 300 yrs with 500 yrs+ only found in eygypt 18th-20th dynasties, Rome as republic, and the Ottoman Empire. (and perhaps Mayans) .

The Mongol Empire lasted at least 3 generations as an integrated whole and 300 years in its fractured form (the Four Great Khanates) the last remnant of the Empire the Khanate of Crimea survived to about 1783

 

[Umbran]

Why would they?

Why did he need to be high level in the first place?

The whole point is that these guys have to be powerful to protect themselves, and able to slay lots and lots of people on their own. If they stop earning levels, and the other guys don't, they lose this "arms race" - they are no longer protected, and are less of a threat than their enemies. If the leader allows himself to drop significantly below the other guys out there, there's no point in him being high level in the first place.

...death is hardly more than an inconvenience to these people. Old age is a far greater concern.

Death is not much more than an inconvenience to PCs, because monsters typically aren't concerned with keeping you dead. Another political power will behave differently.

If your power flows from being the toughest guy around, and you get killed by a politically-minded foe, how long do you figure the less-tough-than-you clerics who might raise you are going to last?

Heck, all they have to do to keep you form being raised or ressurected in short order is to animate your body as a zombie, and shove it off someplace difficult to reach. Sure, eventually you come back if there's someone willing to dig your butt out of the hole, but you're now proven to be weaker, and sans your equipment, and sans a nation supporting you as the new ruler has enthroned himself. Sounds like more than an inconveninece to me.

This is the best argument yet for the fact that the level of the leader himself does not determine stability - the level and power of the people willing to try to rescue him from threat or death is what untimately matters. If they are powerful enough, the level of the leader is pretty much irrelevant.

 

[Umbran]

I think the odds of any kind of "peasant uprising" in D&D world to be slim at best. HL individuals can slay hundreds, even thousands of commoners with impunity - and they know it. Fear would keep most in line, especially if a few "examples" were made of them every now and again.

One wonders, then, how long it would take the peasants to figure out passive resistance. Sure, you can't kill the king. But the king cannot be everywhere at once, forcing them to labor, and forcing them to remain on their land.

 

[gizmo33]

I think the odds of any kind of "peasant uprising" in D&D world to be slim at best. HL individuals can slay hundreds, even thousands of commoners with impunity - and they know it. Fear would keep most in line, especially if a few "examples" were made of them every now and again.

I don't have the "Mob" template here in front of me, but by those rules a group of 48 peasants can turn themselves in to CR 10 swarm that does 5d6 damage just by virtue of occupying the same space. "Thousands" of commoners would turn into dozens of such swarms, and that could be ugly. Granted, the mobs would still need some magic and air support to be well-rounded.

 

[painandgreed]

I think "peasant uprisings" are quite probable. Piss somebody off enough and they will riot and revolt, especially if it already looks like they are going to die due to starvation or what not. I doubt if most uprisings happened because those people thought they had a serious chance of causing social change but rather because once people are mad, they act on emotion rather than logic. Some might dream of social change, but many will just want to strike out at something and others will just want to see what they can grab and run.

 

[gizmo33]

What are the ramifications of the rules and assumptions of charater advancement and wealth on government?

The problem/challenge with this line of reasoning is, IMO, that the rules were not designed to be a simulation of a fantasy world. The rules were designed to support the game. For example - I don't think that the rules for assigning XP to *player characters* apply to NPCs. Given the demographic rules in the DMG, I seriously doubt that commoners above 1st level have really accumulated XP in the same way that PCs have. That's a heck of a lot of monsters being killed.

Ultimately, I think you could create the reality for your campaign world and then work backwards with the rules. I would not consider DnD to be a complete set of rules.

1. Power comes not from inherited wealth or military might, but from enormous personal wealth and strong personal bonds

You spend either inherited or personal wealth the same way, so I don't see the advantage in one vs. the other. Military might can be a result of personal bonds, or of dedication to the state, or whatever. I don't see the difference between the types of dedication if the end result is that the soldier fights for that cause. AFAIK DnD rules do not address the nature of the loyalty.

2. In order to gain wealth you have to spend most of it upgrading your equipment.

I'm not sure that the number of soldiers you could hire for an equivalent amount of money to upgrade a +2 sword to a +3 sword but I suspect that the extra +1 to hit and damage is dwarfed by the military might gained by hiring. Most DMs don't allow (whether explicity or through guilt-trips) PCs to do this kind of hiring. That works fine for DnD as a game, but can be misleading for a simulation.

3. personal bonds are nearly unbreakable, except by death. Replacement friends can be found quickly.

I'm not sure what you mean by personal bonds being nearly unbreakable. Players are more likely to have their characters accomodate each other but this is metagaming. I don't think it make sense to give metagaming logic this sort of official recognition in the campaign culture. No one would actually *choose* to be a 1st level commoner - so the implication IMO there is that the metagame logic, and even some of the explicit rules of DnD, are PC-only constructs. If the players knew that I'd DM each one seperately with equal time, *many* would have broken bonds with their fellow PCs.

4. people can rise to great power in a single year.

Again, PCs are given adventures to go on because of metagaming logic. If players had to actually have their characters *find* the adventures, rather than just have them dumped in their laps by the DM, then it could take far longer than a year to go up a level. It's the metagaming logic that requires the DM to provide the PCs with an adventure every gaming session that creates this situation. A simulation would make PCs look for their adventures.

5. Rulers need time to adventure.

This assumes a certain set of guidelines in granting XP that aren't clear to me. Why not give a ruler XP for officiating over a yearly holiday ceremony? Consider it "story award".

5b. rulers need loyal and competant stewards.

This is completely in line with history and seems sort of natural no matter what the rules are. AFAIK this one is pretty naturally accomplished by the current rules.

Perhaps a series of Baronial grants? Galantri had a system where younger rulers were given small outlying baronies then slowly promoted each time moving closer to the capital. Baronies could band together to form larger dominions.

Older, more established realms would have trouble coming up with developed lands that were cleared and farmable to grant to new barons - and the number of such "wanna-be barons" could be really high. It's possible that realms would start wars by virtue of the sheer number of ambitious, agressive, and weapon-weilding nobles without land.

You would also need a system for declaring groups acting outside the system "Villians" who would become fair game for other groups to hunt and kill. Along with strong disincetives and penalties for attacking those in power (as well as under condtions for the suspecions of these rules)

The system of laws against attacking someone in power is the law of the land, pretty natural for any system of government. "Acting outside the system" is a pretty broad statement, I'm not sure what that means. If that means assembling a group of armed people (ie. "adventuring party") and going off and killing someone, there are a number of historical examples of laws against that, enforced to varying degrees.

It's the nature of the DnD game though, that players operate in somewhat lawless situations. If they didn't, they could understandably expect the authorities to take care of most (probably all) situations that PCs are expected to take care of. Take pretty much any premise of any published adventure, and with a strong government it pretty much becomes implausable.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Why did he need to be high level in the first place?

The whole point is that these guys have to be powerful to protect themselves, and able to slay lots and lots of people on their own. If they stop earning levels, and the other guys don't, they lose this "arms race" - they are no longer protected, and are less of a threat than their enemies. If the leader allows himself to drop significantly below the other guys out there, there's no point in him being high level in the first place.

I don't see how your "arms race" scenario is possible, though, unless you're throwing out the demographics guidelines entirely and assuming that all NPCs just continue advancing to higher and higher levels with time. A 17th-level NPC [insert class here] is a rare bird. He doesn't need to be more powerful than this to hold power unless there are plenty of other folks who are higher than 17th level and willing to wrest power from him. In most campaigns, this seems unlikely; the core demographics (and the CR/XP guidelines) are built around the assumption that advancing to 20th level is *not* a natural product of time and routine activity. Reaching such lofty levels is a highly risky and unlikely proposition, and thus makes you a rare bird. If you then decide to retire and found your own kingdom, you are a tough customer to overthrow. You have personal power AND political power; anyone desiring to unseat you has to contend with your arsenal of powers as well as the armies/spy networks/other resources at your command. If you adopt the succession model I suggested, then there's also the issue of up-and-coming adventurers willing to support you as the powers-that-be because they know that doing so ups their own odds of succeeding to rulership one day.

 

[Nomad4life]

You know, this post has made me realize that every governmental ruling body in every D&D game I’ve ever run were pretty much oligarchies under various guises.