Order gone overboard

[RedTonic]

...Possession? A spell gone awry? (A huge "protection vs. chaos" ritual that was flubbed!) The descent to the prime material plane of some great power of Order, whose presence actually twists reality to reflect the being's essential nature?

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

One word: Modrons.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

If they want to investigate. Any group I've ever been a part of would flip off the gate guards and leave rather than put up with all the beaurocratic nonsense that would be required to do whatever they wanted to do there.

 

[Lancelot]

It'd work much like air travel in our own world.

• A long list of items that you cannot carry; some of which are completely inexplicable. For example, you can't carry a lantern... because it's fueled by lamp oil... which resembles alchemist's fire... which is sometimes used for arson or combat. In more restrictive towns, you may not even be able to carry a waterskin... because it could be used to carry lamp oil...
• Armed guards patrolling street corners, as expected. But also, at least one "plain clothes" armed guard assigned to every ship, tavern and public meeting place.
• Multiple surveillance checkpoints. You will be forced to remove your armor and clothes from time-to-time to prove you're not carrying contraband.
• Regular, magical scanning of citizens. Detect magic is used on a regular basis to ensure nobody is using magical items or charms to gain unfair advantage over other citizens, and to ensure that nobody is carrying magical contraband. Also, to ensure that all PCs are correctly taxed for importing magical items into the city. In some locations, ESP and detect lies will be used regularly as well.
• Documentation is required for all travel, and will be checked multiple times - even simply moving between quarters or districts of the town.
• You must inform the authorities days, or weeks, before you intend to arrive or leave the town. Failure to do so will prevent your travel.
• Many topics and activities are prohibited. Strange behavior of any kind, or simply referring to certain substances (like alchemist's fire, or maybe even potions of healing), may result in arrest and questioning by the authorities.
• Past associations or actions will be grounds to refuse entry or trade. This could include religious affiliations (priests of foreign deities), past run-ins with the law in other cities (regardless of what laws those cities choose to administer), and any hint of culpability in genocide (that goblin lair your party wiped out last month, for example...).
• Food and water cannot be brought into the town, but can be purchased locally. Locally-bought food is 25% more expensive than normal, due to monopoly control of the market and government levies.

I thought about doing something like that for my own campaign a few years ago, but realized my players would just end up sacking the town. They have no problems fighting flying fire-breathing 50-foot long lizards, but they'll go nuts if I tell them that carrying a waterskin is illegal in a town because it might contain alchemist's fire...

 

[jonesy]

Regular, magical scanning of citizens. Detect magic is used on a regular basis to ensure nobody is using magical items or charms to gain unfair advantage over other citizens, and to ensure that nobody is carrying magical contraband.

I would change that to "..ensure nobody is using magical items or charms to gain unfair advantage over the government.."

 

[Wardo]

Check out "The Healthy Dead" by Steven Erikson for some ideas for what happens in the government cares too much about public health (a form of order).

Collected here: http://www.amazon.com/First-Collect...r_1_13?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1306707932&sr=1-13

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

According to Michael Moorcock, the ultimate triumph of Order is Stasis. Nothing. Ever. Changes.

 

[Ranes]

Extreme order can mean a lot of paperwork, but it would also mean extreme efficiency.

It can do. Certainly, that is the goal of order. Efficiency is, however, not necessarily the inevitable outcome.

In the days of the Soviet Union, a highly ordered society, there was a factory that made doors. It had a quota to meet. It had to make so many tons of doors every year. Inefficiency elsewhere meant that there weren't always enough orders for doors. To meet its quota, it ended up making absurdly massive doors. Had its quota been expressed as a number of doors, it would have ended up with lots of doors it could not ship. But its quota was tonnage and so ridiculously massive doors became the order of the day.

On a different note, don't forget the terrible price that can come from trying to maintain a given idea of order. There are states and cultures that provide incentives to encourage their populations to have no more than a certain number of children per family or to maintain a certain ratio of the sexes. Given a couple of decades, you can end up with millions of people who do not officially exist or - even worse - who should exist but don't.

Of course, the OP is talking about sudden change, so these longer term potential consequences are just that - something to be wary of, to be feared, perhaps. And long term consequences often go unseen in the near term.

This change might well make people wonder why it has happened. It sure makes me curious. Maybe the new order is modelling itself on something that exists elsewhere. If this is the case, it is possible that some of the populace are thinking about what they know of that other place. They may fear or welcome the change, depending on their knowledge of this example.

Is there a protest movement? If there is, does it dare show its face? Do the agents of the new order tolerate discussion or do they entrap those they suspect of being a threat do it?

One thing seems certain. Radical change does not manifest overnight, unless it comes from outside or it came from within but then could have been seen gaining momentum. If it is the case that the PCs, without being able to account for it, suddenly find themselves somewhere that seems alien when it shouldn't, alarm bells should start ringing.

I can't help thinking that if I, as a player, came upon this scenario, my PC would be deeply suspicious of it. How cool then would it be for me to discover, eventually, that the forces behind the change were forces of good?

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Could there be an overly-ordered society where the state was minimalist, where bureaucracy was nearly non-existent?

Imagine a society where the social contract was so strong, so ingrained, so pervasive, that every member of it just agreed about everything. Maybe it is enforced/reinforced through an extreme shunning, in the vein of the Amish shunning. Or maybe in a magical fantasy world there was some other way to transmit the social contract throughout a society's members.

 

[jonesy]

Imagine a society where the social contract was so strong, so ingrained, so pervasive, that every member of it just agreed about everything. Maybe it is enforced/reinforced through an extreme shunning, in the vein of the Amish shunning.

Sounds like Innsmouth.