The case for democracy* in RPG settings

[bedir than]

Yeah, he's not arguing for pure democracies, because that gets way too messy to adjudicate and PCs trying to influence an electorate of potentially millions of people isn't easy or as fun. (Also, it becomes depressingly too much like real life.)

But if a dozen lords or powerful merchants or something get to choose the next head of state, that's something PCs can get involved with if they want, in a variety of ways.

One of my PCs a couple campaigns ago started seeing themselves in campaign posters as if they were running to be mayor of the city they'd helped liberate.
He won (based on his in game actions supporting the populace), refused to serve and then convinced the town to have a Council. He then won a seat on that and refused to serve too.

 

[Autumnal]

I want to say maybe some Roman historians, though not exactly epics.

I vaguely remember reading about emperors claiming dead rich citizens left them huge amounts in wills and then enforcing them.

Very true. But to get really technical here, they did so before there were Icelanders.

As for the even older Near East, they certainly had major masses of documents, which give us fun side trips like Ea/Nasir, but not much in the ways of stories and sagas. Irving Finkel’s book The First Ghosts shows this in action, with routine encounters with the supernatural being presented in non-story, even anti-story, ways. (It’s also amazingly cool stuff. The audio version, with him reading, is even better.)

 

[John Dallman]

There is a larger state which used to be a military dictatorship, but that ruler left when the priests, magicians and thieves united against him, and it became clear that he couldn't win a civil wat against those groups.

I forgot to mention it, but the post of monarch still exists. It is rented out by the day to anyone who feels like paying to feel like a king or queen. There is no power or authority, but you get to invite people to a banquet, and have a parade. This is a deliberate parody of monarchy, created and used within the setting by the city government.

 

[el-remmen]

In a recent campaign when the party arrived in town to start undertaking missions and adventures, many of which at the behest of the local prefect, who was soon encouraging them to buy property and hang around and vote in the next year’s elections. The idea being that if the party supported him it would encourage others to vote for him as well since the PCs are turning into local heroes. But a rival considers getting a PC to run for prefect.


Just as a simple example of local electoral politics