Weird political systems

[Hawke]

I thought I replied but I guess not...

I always thought it'd be cool to have the leader be chosen by some unknown (magic? divine?) way that was very clear and obvious. So the person in the city that had blue skin was the ruler. That could change at any moment with the color disappearing and it shifting to someone else. Nobody is quite sure the reason and it doesn't happen that often to be disruptive. Most of the time the kingdom functions like any other except the ruler is blue.

This can lead to some cool storylines. What if when the PCs come into town one of them suddenly is the new ruler? What if someone suspected of being a very evil corrupt guy suddenly gets the mantle? What if the PCs find the divine source or arcane source is a farce and really it's a group running the powerful ritual? What if no ruler is chosen and a massive search for the next leader goes about as those fight for power in the vacuum and try to thwart others? What if the blueness also confers some kind of special ability (unable to make attacks, but gains resist 100 all?)

Sounds kind of fun.

 

[Aramax]

Rule by beauty-a pagent is held best looking wins
Rule by Ugly or deformaty-another pagent
Only a cirtain trait,Blind Deaf ,Red hair
Rule by the dead,Speak w/ dead to find out his rulings

 

[CruelSummerLord]

The world of Titan, setting for many of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, gave its goblins an interesting way of choosing their chief. If the current chief dies, and there is no obvious successor, then all goblins willing to take the challenge are sent out to bring back a trophy, whether it be killing a wild boar, a giant lizard, or even something like a mountain giant (keep in mind that the mechanics for Fighting Fantasy are very different than D&D). The goblin who brings back the most impressive trophy at the end of five days is declared chief.

An interesting variant, that was actually used in a multiplayer adventure, centered around a goblin tribe that had a hereditary monarchy, but who could be challenged at any time by another goblin. What makes this unique is that the goblins set up an important safeguard to ensure that their kings remain intelligent as well as strong. When they issue their challenges, goblins have to give a very long, ritualized speech, one that very few goblins could remember in its entirety. If the ritual is done correctly, the king has to fight to defend his position. It also works to weed out kings who are no longer fit rulers-in the adventure itself, the goblin king the player had to challenge had only become king himself when his predecessor had forgotten the ritual and agreed to fight even after he got it wrong.

Two more interesting points: The kingship was also open to humans, orcs, trolls and centaurs, and one of the rules was that the new king had three months to take a goblin bride and produce a son and heir. Fortunately, a king can voluntarily step down...which probably convinced most players to give up their thrones once the adventure was over!

One ritual I came up with, which can be an adventure in and of itself, was fleshing out the Hold of Stonefist's Rite of Battle Fitness in the World of Greyhawk...

Canonfire! - The Rite of Battle Fitness Revealed

In a nutshell, the Rite consists of several stages designed to test the candidate's strength, intelligence, stamina, survival skills, charisma, and fighting ability, one after another, as well as ways the current ruler of the Hold could cheat to maintain his position. At first, the Rite was only open to descendents of the Hold's founder, and the winner was able to challenge one of the tribal leaders, or even the Master of the Hold himself. When one of the Hold's rulers changed things so he became a hereditary king, the Rite was made available to anyone who wanted to participate, its prize now being able to serve in the king's standing army and become his lieutenants.

 

[DreadPirateMurphy]

The world of Titan, setting for many of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, gave its goblins an interesting way of choosing their chief. If the current chief dies, and there is no obvious successor, then all goblins willing to take the challenge are sent out to bring back a trophy, whether it be killing a wild boar, a giant lizard, or even something like a mountain giant (keep in mind that the mechanics for Fighting Fantasy are very different than D&D). The goblin who brings back the most impressive trophy at the end of five days is declared chief.

Wasn't that basically the premise of the old SnarfQuest comic in Dragon magazine?

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

Giant lizards and the color green aside (smacks hypersmurf upside the head), is the fictional government part of an open society or a closed society?

The game itself, by its nature, must be a closed society, operated by and for the DM, with all the critical decisions being made by the DM or with the approval of the DM. Though appearances to the contrary can be useful, namely the illusion that the players have some say in the matter.

The majority of medieval societies were autocracies of one kind or another, monarchies, lordships, theocracies and so forth. In such a place, only someone born into power (or someone who had somehow accumulated power) could make any assertion to freedom or self determination. Further, most fantasy games are set in a pseudo-medieval society. Lastly, most players are not running a noble character (this is an option, not a prerequisite.). Step out of this and you are stepping out of one of the longest traditions and most significant components of the game.

However, you can still present a unusual government, while still adhering to the usefulness of a pseudo-medieval autocracies and satisfying the need for complete control by the DM. This includes government by a council of mages, rule by king priests (similar to that of the Aztec, Egyptians and Sumerians) and dominance by non-humans (say, elves took over centuries ago and are breeding humans into “something better.”)

 

[Ravilah]

I had a city-state that was really just a cluster of huge wizard-colleges. They had started as small cabals of hermit-wizards, but over a few hundred years they grew into arcane universities housed in enormous structures, along with workshops, scriptoriums, and libraries to aid the making of magic items. Eventually, this cluster of colleges effectively became a city, but the Deans who ran the colleges were myopically focused on their academics, they could barely take care of their own hygiene, much less govern a city.

The hired servants were the ones who kept things running: managed the accounts, got food on the table, and dealt with emergencies (one time even fighting off a band of wild-elven raiders), all with the wizards blissfully (and arrogantly) ignorant. At present, the Serviles are the actual rulers of the city, with the Nine Stewards acting as a ruling council. However, if asked, everyone says that the Nine Deans of the Nine Colleges are in charge, though they almost never convene and rarely even see each other. Inside the walls of a college, the Dean is the king, yet in the streets of the City, the Serviles are the humble, secret ruling nobility.

 

[haakon1]

I always thought it'd be cool to have the leader be chosen by some unknown (magic? divine?) way that was very clear and obvious. So the person in the city that had blue skin was the ruler. That could change at any moment with the color disappearing and it shifting to someone else. Nobody is quite sure the reason and it doesn't happen that often to be disruptive. Most of the time the kingdom functions like any other except the ruler is blue.

I like that. Sounds like something that would happen in old Trek.

Which reminds me, if you don't mind old school style sci fi/fantasy combo, rule by a computer. Which, naturally, was built thousands of years ago, either by aliens or by people who have since devolved technologically, and is no longer known to be a computer . . .

 

[SKyOdin]

-- Divine Mandate -- enough people have claimed it, why not have it as a real form of god-appointed leadership in a fantasy game?

I have actually seen a very interesting version of this in the Japanese novel/anime series The Twelve Kingdoms. In this series, the rulers of the titular kingdoms are chosen by the distant, intangable gods of the world. However, only a kirin, a kind of shapeshifting divine animal, can tell who was chosen by the gods to be the ruler (and each country has only one Kirin at a time). The ruler can be anyone who was born in the country in question, irregardless of social status, age, or gender. So, when a country needs a new ruler, almost everyone in the country arranges to go on a pilgrimage to the holy mountain where the kirin are raised, hoping to be chosen. When the Kirin finally finds the ruler, that individual is granted immortality by the gods.

However, the divinely chosen ruler can't just do as he pleases. If the land suffers from neglect and the people suffer at the hands of an unjust ruler, the gods can take away the divine mandate. When that happens, the ruler's Kirin begins to suffer from a terrible disease, and the land begins to be overrun by monsters. If left unchecked, the kirin will die, which invariably leads to the death of the ruler.

Because the rulers are immortal until they go down the wrong path, the length of a ruler's reign is a good indicator of his or her skill as a ruler. Poor rulers will last only a few years, while truly great ones can bring centuries of peace and prosperity.

I still think it is a really fascinating system.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Some from campaigns of mine:

-The controlling government is a conglomerate of Necromancers who rule through a combination of armed soldiers and the face that they are literally connected through nerve-tissue to everything in a city that uses Necromatic-Technology they have essentially created a "Big Brother" society/government.

-A group of Aberrations (called Pandorans), rule through a blanket government called the Aristocracy. Their real control however is the fact that they have some control over reality and can simply manipulate reality till it fits their satisfactory.

-One of the few controlled and docile Spirits in the city, briefly possessing each of those of power in the city till it gathers enough information to properly mandate the city for another year.

 

[Piedmon Sama]

Probably the most off-the-wall culture I ever made was a democratic city-state called the Republic of Zagirad. Superficially, they resembled an Arabian-Nights sort of setting, with fabulous domed palaces, flying carpets and all the other trappings. Politically and culturally, though, they drew heavily from Golden Age Athens and a kind of Charles Atlas/Doc Savage "peak of mental/physical condition" ideal. They produced an incredibly high number of Wizards and Spellswords, and their culture of hard scientific rationalism clashed with pretty much every other culture (human and otherwise) on the continent.

While Zagirad's ruling council (called the Archoniyeh) could propose laws, an assembly of 1,099 randomly selected citizens met once a year to vote on proposals and measures. It meant that the House of Wisdom (the legislative branch of their two-branch government) never knew what kind of Assembly it was going to get, whether the higher or lower classes of the city would form the majority. All the Archoniyeh (there were 21) had to agree to a new measure before it could be proposed, and then they had to select one of their own to argue for its passage before the Assembly (while another Archon had to play the Devil's Advocate and point out any flaws). The only autonomous power the Archoniyeh actually had was to appoint two supreme generals of the city's defense force, called the Sharifs, whom they could bring under review and dismiss anytime. On the other side of the fence, the Nine High Justices who headed the House of Justice (the judicial half of the government) could appoint and dismiss the Supreme Commanders of the Navy, called the Emirs al-Bar.

For its size, Zagirad was an extremely powerful nation, due to its encouragement of Arcane magic (usually maligned and marginalized in other societies), and had the most "humanist" outlook of the various human cultures (the Elves and Dwarves, incidentally, didn't like them, probably because they're used to being treated with some degree of awe by humans, which the hard-nosed Zagirans certainly lacked).