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<blockquote data-quote="eamon" data-source="post: 5522486" data-attributes="member: 51942">To expand on this: ...or they could be burned, drowned, poisoned, buried alive, tricked into a fight with a higher level power, blackmailed by other ties (family ties or anything else of value)... etc.&nbsp; And the whole thing assumes that the &quot;high level rulers&quot; are actually the most powerful thing about: but in a standard D&amp;D setting you might well expect to encounter deities, demons and other alien beings that make their hold on power entirely less predictable - which would thus reasonable bend their attention away from controlling the generally harmless populace, and towards preventing a fatal encounter with some entirely more alien personality.But what Balesir says makes some sense; obviously if the only danger to high-level creatures is their own underlings rising in power, then their focus should be preventing that (which as you say itself requires a considerable social network) - and that very idea is explored in Dark Sun.yep.&nbsp;Right, and you'd need a huge level gap to be entirely safe - and that's in normal PC encounter style, without considering some kind of subterfuge.&nbsp; Which you know, if the &quot;rebels&quot; really wanted to win, they'd probably use.Yep!Quite reasonable.So yeah, you could have a really dark, chaotic setting in which merely the rule of the most powerful holds - but you can also imagine a more connected society.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="eamon, post: 5522486, member: 51942"] To expand on this: ...or they could be burned, drowned, poisoned, buried alive, tricked into a fight with a higher level power, blackmailed by other ties (family ties or anything else of value)... etc. And the whole thing assumes that the "high level rulers" are actually the most powerful thing about: but in a standard D&D setting you might well expect to encounter deities, demons and other alien beings that make their hold on power entirely less predictable - which would thus reasonable bend their attention away from controlling the generally harmless populace, and towards preventing a fatal encounter with some entirely more alien personality. But what Balesir says makes some sense; obviously if the only danger to high-level creatures is their own underlings rising in power, then their focus should be preventing that (which as you say itself requires a considerable social network) - and that very idea is explored in Dark Sun. yep. Right, and you'd need a huge level gap to be entirely safe - and that's in normal PC encounter style, without considering some kind of subterfuge. Which you know, if the "rebels" really wanted to win, they'd probably use. Yep! Quite reasonable. So yeah, you could have a really dark, chaotic setting in which merely the rule of the most powerful holds - but you can also imagine a more connected society. [/QUOTE]

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