Weird political systems

[airwalkrr]

The leader of a lizardman nation (aztecish theocracy) was decided by the lone survivor of a group of high priests who undertake a spiritual journey involving magic, drugs, and a desert.

Heh, when I first read that, I read "magic, drugs, and a dessert," and I thought, hmm, they throw pies at eat other?

 

[Zanticor]

The campaign world I´m running originaly did´nt have to much of a political structure. I just figured there was a standard king who send out his knights to govern the lands. Kinda medieval european style. But my players went of the beaten campaign track forcing me to create a church system with a council and a lot of secret infighting and political sceaming. Then they needed a thief guild to buy some things so I came up with one run by noble houses controlling the trade and extorting business. More of a mafia guild that an assasin vagebond kind of organisation. A down turn of devising your system like this is that it gets out of hand. My whole kingdom seemed like a sceaming and chaotic place without any leadership at all. All these private organisations competing against eachother without the government interfering. I had to come up with a reason behind what had kept this system together for thousends of years. Since the campaign is geared to towards the destruction of an aboleth city, I came up with the old: ‘there is a greater power behind it all plot’. The aboleth are so powerfull that they have their minions in all the different organisations and propup a figurehead king which they controle through the mageguild. They can control people directly through domination or through treads and keep everything from falling appart. By keeping the different organisations fighting they keep them bussy enough so they don´t disturb them down in their underdark city. Everybody knows there is something wrong but what can you do about it. If people start questioning the system they are immidiately controlled or taken down to work as slaves. Heck the surrounding countries probably work the same way. Since my players are about to attack the aboleth city they are actually working as agents of chaos and are bound to totally disrupt their own society. Quite the chaotic good objective you would say and I have some of them in my party. But I´m really looking forward to the face of the player with a lawfull neutral cleric of Saint Cuthbert who has been screeming for ever that he´ll bring law to the savage underdark once he´ll realise his society is gooing into totall collapse without the aboleth to keep the semblance of order. By then they might be level 19-20 so they should be able to keep the peace themselves and find their own system of government. Do any of you have any experiences about players coming up with their own system of government once they destroy the previous one?

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

How do you, as a DM, maintain control of the game – and that is the most important thing – if you imposes a strange government in the fantasy world?