Help with Institutional Magic Abuse

[Deekin]

Also, if you have a chance, pick up and flip through Secrets of Sarlona, particularly the chapter on Riedra. It may be psionic 1984 like society, but many of the powers could be converted over to spells.

 

[phindar]

Is there a Lawful Neutral paladin variant with Detect Chaos as a class feature? Something along those lines might be helpful.

I've always wanted to run a game like this, where the central conflict was against Law and Chaos rather than Good and Evil. My idea was based partly out of Hunter S. Thompson's book on the Hell's Angels; the One-Percenters, the people that were never going to fit into society. Robin Hood, Jesse James, you know. Outlaws.

 

[Bad Paper]

you could stake your life on the trains being *exactly* on time in Mussolini's Italy

well, not actually, but it makes a nice story. Did you hear the one about George Washington and the cherry tree?

 

[Plane Sailing]

I think one of the top components for a city with a fascistic magic policy that ignored personal privacy issues would be Geas. Require all citizens to submit to a Geas to uphold the city law in every way (specified as clearly as necessary) and you've got excellent magical enforcement possibilities

(caveat - I've not looked at the Geas spell in a long while, and 3.5e might have made this a bad option now... but worth looking at)

Cheers

 

[1500run]

well, not actually, but it makes a nice story. Did you hear the one about George Washington and the cherry tree?

true, italy was not as good as could be. if you want a true oppressive state, and are concerned about the trains running on time, look to the former USSR. you could literally set your watch by the moscow subway. it was an important fact for anyone in the intel biz.

oh, to the OP: for a society that oppresses its people, you're dead on with the one poster who said to have at least 1/3 of the populace in the pay of the govt. add to that a massive civil works program, an omnipresent security force, and a strong borders guard. make something like the KGB, with its numerous directives: one for internal security, another directive for the foreign branch, one for border patrol, one to patrol itself, one to oversee the military, one to oversee the arcanists, another that controls the actions of the priesthood, and so forth.

as a GM, never underestimate the power of paranoia. make it pervasive. the computer is your friend.

 

[Hidden Master]

How about having a state religion with mandated attendance at services at least once a week, and confession as a required part of the service? I'm too lazy to look up specifics right now, but I bet confessionals could be gimmicked up pretty nicely with truth detecting or similar magic...

 

[mosaic]

A lot of the spells used by the patrols could be stored in wands. That would allow the patrols to be lower level that they would need to be to actually cast the spells.

I was working on a slightly different law-vs-chaos idea a while back - Chaos has warped most of the surrounding lands and only one city remains. Inside the forces of law try to hold back the Chaos. Guards at the gates used wands of detect chaos (like those x-ray sticks at the airport) to check refugees as they poured in. Lots of purify food and water spells.

Actually, this makes me think of something I don't think has been mentioned yet. Oppressive/facist societies also always have an Other. Who's the enemy? Even if it's like 1984 where there really is no enemy, you need an external threat. And maybe it is Chaos. Maybe the state tells the people that Chaos is loose in the world and they have to submit to all these checks for their own good and the good of society.

Another part of my Chaos-on-the-loose idea was Chaos-tainted mutants. The really bad ones were monsters, but what about the farmer who drank some tainted water and picked up some Chaos? That made me think of a whole black market focused on avoiding detection and masking taint. Your resistance could carry things to protect them from mind reading or whatever. Slippery mind becomes a very important ability. Masking alignment too.

Finally, nothing says facism to me like hobgoblins.

 

[igavskoga]

well, not actually, but it makes a nice story. Did you hear the one about George Washington and the cherry tree?

Was there really any point to ridiculing what was a simple mistake? I did mean Moscow actually, but misremembered. Thanks, though, for encouraging a relatively new poster. Bang-up job, really.

OP:

A state enemy, or at the very least a local scapegoat, to push all of everyone's problems onto, is something you should really think about as well, as the last poster mentioned.

Also, thinking about some kind of naturally abundant and valuable resource in their territory, whether it be magical or mundane, is really something to consider as well - if only to be thorough. It helps to have a controlled source of wealth to use, then one does not need to curry legitimacy from the populace in the form of taxes.

 

[Felix]

Big Huge Important Point #1

People are going to grumble about this government. People are going to eventually look for ways to strike at the government. Have a government arm established to represent and recruit for the resistance. Have it send out missions to partisans, some of which are designed to be successes, some designed to be failures. Train and hone operatives as agents against the state, and when they are ready, give them a difficult solo mission only to have it turn bad against them and reveal to them that there is no resistance; reveal to them that it was the government training them the whole time. Offer them positions as an agent with the government; kill those that refuse.

You will effectively quash resistance against your rule by supplying the outlet for rebellious feelings.​

Big Huge Important Point #2

Unless you want to have a "this is the government, they are evil, end of story" campaign, make this facist government Lawful in the extreme and unafraid of Evil measures, but don't make it a recklessly malicious government.

If the government enforces laws harshly, also highlight that the laws provide a safe and increasingly wealthy and comfortable society. If the government represses people, highlight that its repression is systematic and not random: actual conspirators against the government are arrested, not because they institute pogroms against left-handed red-heads. If the government maintains a police force who deals with law-breakers violently and often holds public executions, highlight that the cities are very safe, and the murder of and theft from law-abiding citizens almost unheard-of. Endeavor to note that those people who were disappeared were not innocent of conspiracy against the government. Note that law-abiding citizens can lead prosperous and unmolested lives. The PCs will want a moral leg to stand on. Don't give it to them.

Make Lawful government the opposition of your PCs instead of Evil government. It makes things ever so much more interesting. Especially when most of the population doesn't really want a change in the status quo, and those that do are busy being recruited by the government's own Ministry of Rebellion.

Besides, if society is prosperous you'll have a ready reason why there hasn't been a general uprising and won't have to explain exactly where this facist government gets the money for all these privacy invasions: they get it from the willingly-paid tax revenues collected from a bustling business sector.​